The U.S.S. Nevada, the only capital ship to get underway during the December 7th. attack on Pearl Harbor, passes the burning hulk of the Arizona. Fearing that the ship might be sunk in the channel, Nevada was run aground near Hospital Point.
Francis J. Thomas didn't pick his 75 minutes on the stage of history. It picked him.
But 61 years ago today, on Dec. 7, 1941, there was no bigger stage in the world than Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. And there were no minutes more important than those that began with the first Japanese torpedoes at 7:55 a.m.
Thomas, who has lived in Aloha for just more than a year now, was a Navy lieutenant commander in charge of the battleship USS Nevada.
So it was Thomas, now a robust 98, who directed one of the most heroic, and ultimately futile, sorties in Navy history. Under his command, the old Nevada managed to get enough oomph to its steam turbine engines to get under way and at least try to take a losing battle to the enemy.
And he was directing the run for deep water when the order came in for the ship to stay in the harbor. So it was on his watch that he let the Nevada drift into the mud at Hospital Point and beach itself.
Still, it was one of the few high points on the most disastrous day in Navy history, when the Pacific Fleet lost 18 ships and more than 3,500 casualties to a surprise Japanese raid.
Most of the hundreds of histories and historians say the order to keep the Nevada from leaving the harbor was to keep it from sinking in a critical part of the channel and blocking the harbor for months. But less asked is another question: Could the Nevada have made it to the blue water? Thomas thinks so.
"We could have gone out to sea," Thomas said this week. "We had no problems with the engines. We felt like we could make it, and we didn't understand at the time why they wouldn't let us."
Duty swapped Thomas was an accidental hero that day. He wasn't even supposed to be in charge.
"We got back from maneuvers with the Arizona and Oklahoma on Friday night," Thomas said, "and all the senior officers went home. They had homes and families on shore, but my family was back in Coronado (Calif.) so I didn't have a home. I stayed on the ship.
Another lieutenant commander was scheduled to be in charge, but swapped duty with Thomas so he could go to the movies with his family that day.
And so it was that at 7:55 a.m., Thomas was alone in the ward room eating breakfast when, while the Nevada's band played the national anthem, the Japanese struck. At first, Thomas said, he thought he heard the hammer of rivet guns at the shipyard across the channel.
At 8:01, according to various histories, somebody sounded general quarters and Thomas went to his battle station below the main deck. From there, he climbed an 80-foot tube to the armored conning tower to take command of the ship.
"Nobody knew what was going on," Thomas said, "but the anti-aircraft guns were already shooting back. We got the word for all ships to get out of the harbor."
Two boilers already had steam left over from the previous week's training run, and had been left running to provide power to the generator, which ran the ship's electrical system. It wasn't full steam, but it was enough to get the Nevada going.
Thomas first had to counterflood the ship to deal with torpedo damage on the port bow, then, at 8:50 a.m. the Nevada shuddered away from its moorage. "We first had to back away from the Arizona," Thomas said. "Then we had to swerve around it to get away."
Up above, according to later interviews with Japanese pilots, the planes took notice of the opportunity to sink a battleship and block the channel at the same time. U.S. admirals worried about the same thing.
So Japanese planes swarmed in while the Nevada inched along at a painfully slow 5 knots and its gun crews fired back as best they could. "Then we got the order," Thomas said, "It said: 'Nevada, do not -- repeat, do not -- leave the harbor.' "
The Nevada passed battleship row to the end of Ford Island and Thomas made plans to drop anchor. A swarm of dive bombers found the range and hit the mark. "I had the anchoring party standing by to drop the anchor," Thomas said. "A bomb came down right on them."
So Thomas steered the still-drifting ship toward Hospital Point and, at 9:10 a.m., the Nevada's run was over. About that time, the ship's skipper, Capt. F.N. Scanland, showed up to resume command. Thomas went back to being the ship's somewhat anonymous damage control officer.
War versus terrorism The Navy awarded Thomas the Navy Cross -- second only to the Medal of Honor. "I'm the only officer," he said, "ever to be awarded the Navy Cross for running a ship aground."
Thomas was, and remains, unperturbed about his day in history. He doesn't recall being at all nervous during the action ("we'd been training for this") or particularly mad at the Japanese.
After the war, he and his wife, the former Betty Schoch -- they were married in 1935 -- set up house in Ohio and raised four children. Thomas went into the steel business and stayed in the Naval Reserve, from which he retired as a rear admiral. The couple retired to Florida, then to Austin, Texas, and to Columbia, Mo., where Betty died in 1998. When son Brian moved to Aloha late in 2001, the admiral came with him.
When terrorists struck the East Coast in 2001, Thomas got mad. "One was Japanese and military," he said, trying to draw a comparison between the his first taste of war and the terrorist attacks. "The other was terrorists. I've never been too mad at the Japanese, but I didn't think too well of the terrorists."
At least, he reasons, the Americans had a chance to shoot back at Pearl Harbor, however futile. Thomas has his doubts about what might have happened to the Nevada had it made the open sea -- "They probably would have sunk us out there."
Perhaps. But in Francis Thomas' 75 minutes of history, while ships all around it were burning and sinking at their moorings, Nevada charged.