INTERVIEW of ROBERT L. ELLINGER USS CALIFORNIA Mr

Home , Crossing the T, USS California (BB-44)

INTERVIEW OF ROBERT L. ELLINGER USS CALIFORNIA

Mr. Litzelfelner: This is Joe Litzelfelner. Today is December 8, 2001. I am interviewing Mr. Robert L. Ellinger. This interview is taking place in Fredericksburg, Texas. This interview is in support of the Center for Pacific Studies archives for the National Museum of the Pacific War, Texas Parks and Wildlife, for the preservation of historical information related to this site.

Mr. Ellinger, where were you living on December 7, 1941?

Mr. Ellinger: Kansas City, Missouri.

Mr. Litzelfelner: What were you doing at that time?

Mr. Ellinger: I was a high school student. I was 16 years old.

Mr. Litzelfelner: That means you didn’t go the service right away after December 7?

Mr. Ellinger: No, they wouldn’t take me for one thing and, also, my mother wouldn’t let me go.

Mr. Litzelfelner: When did you join the Navy?

Mr. Ellinger: I joined the Navy in August, 1943. The reason I joined was because I wanted to pick the service I wanted to serve in. I was drawn to the U. S. Navy so I joined to make sure I would be in the Navy.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Did you join in Kansas City?

Mr. Ellinger: Yes, I did.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Where did you go after you signed up?

Mr. Ellinger: There was a waiting period of two or three weeks. I left for Farragat, Idaho, on August 30, 1943. It took about three days to get up there. That is where I went to Boot Camp was in Farragat, Idaho.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Did they send you on a train?

Mr. Ellinger: Yes.

Mr. Litzelfelner: You went to Boot Camp then in Idaho?

Mr. Ellinger: Farragat, Idaho, yes.

Mr. Litzelfelner: How many weeks did that last?

Mr. Ellinger: Eight weeks.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Then where did you go from Boot Camp?

Mr. Ellinger: I went home for leave. I think we got about a 15-day leave. Then I was to report to Bremerton, Washington. Once I reported there, they put us in a waiting area for assignment.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Did you get sent to any schools?

Mr. Ellinger: No, I did not.

Mr. Litzelfelner: So your rating when you came out of Boot Camp was like a Seaman Apprentice?

Mr. Ellinger: Yes.

Mr. Litzelfelner: How did you get assigned after you got to Bremerton, Washington?

Mr. Ellinger: It was a matter of as they came in, they put us on a ship. I didn’t find this out until later on. I went aboard the California on December 7, 1943.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Exactly two years after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Mr. Ellinger: That didn’t mean a lot to me at that point. I didn’t even remember what the date was until I looked back on the ship log. I have a friend in Houston who has a lot of the USS California ship logs.

Mr. Litzelfelner: What was your assignment when you got on the USS California?

Mr. Ellinger: I was assigned to the 9th Division. That was a anti-aircraft division. I started my duties there. Not having any skills whatsoever, I was a deck hand in a deck division. We also were part of the gunnery squad on the 40mm.

We went aboard we didn’t know what was going to go on. There were very small quarters than what we were used to before because of the many sailors that were on that ship.

Mr. Litzelfelner: How did you stow all your personal belongings after you go on the ship? I guess you had a sea bag with your clothes in it.

Mr. Ellinger: That was interesting. We had learned a little bit how to roll our clothes in Boot Camp. So what they gave us there, we had to get all of our contents of our sea bag into our locker and a place where we put a lot of stuff was underneath our mattresses. Also, when we made our beds after sleeping in them, we learned to put our flash-proof gear over it. So all you saw when

you went down the row of bunks, and they were four high, was flash-proof gear. But everything was in there, our reading material, our personal items. It wasn’t a big locker, but it is amazing what you can roll and put in there.

Mr. Litzelfelner: After you got on the USS California, did it stay in Bremerton long? Or did you leave shortly after you got aboard?

Mr. Ellinger: Well, when we went aboard, and we were one of the last large groups to go aboard. They were ready to go to sea. But they had to go out and do test runs. There were a lot of things they had to do before going out to the open sea.

It was just a few days after January 1, 1944, that we did go out. When we left Bremerton, we were recommissioned, the USS California Bb-44 and we headed for Long Beach, California. We were going to be down there for eight weeks, constantly training. At least 85%-90% of the crew didn’t know anything about the sea or the equipment we were about to take care of and use. So that was why we needed 8 weeks of training. We trained all day long.

Mr. Litzelfelner: You would get underway in the morning and go out and then come back into port and....

Mr. Ellinger: Target shooting. Shooting guns. I’ll never forget that I was eating lunch down on the OT deck, the mess deck. A five-inch gun went off and I had never heard the five-inch gun go off. And it was near where we were sitting and (could not understand) ______. Oh it was a shocker, it was terrible. But we knew nothing about all that. They were trying to get people aboard these ships trained and going as quickly as possible. As it turned out, when our group went out and joined up with the rest of the old-timers, the big push was to get off. We didn’t stop and rest for anything. We just kept going from operation to operation to operation, island to island.

They really had to train us hard for those eight weeks. They did let us come in and have week-end liberty in Long Beach and Los Angeles, which was very nice.

Mr. Litzelfelner: When you were in Long Beach, were you assigned to where your battle station?

Mr. Ellinger: Yes. We learned all of that and trained in those positions. We shot at a lot of targets. The 14-inch were shooting, the 5-inch were shooting. We all had to learn what our equipment was all about. Now we did do a little training with a 40mm. We did that after we were on the California.

We went to San Francisco to do a little more training. Most of the training was aboard ship. We just needed to get use to ship life. It was entirely different.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Did you ever get seasick?

Mr. Ellinger: No. I never did. But I did learn that as we got underway, how to get along with the

motion of the ship. I learned each time we went out after sitting there maybe 30 days at a place. I would go topside to the 7 deck and stand there and get the roll of it and get the wind blowing in my face. Then I could come back down and be ok. Otherwise you would be a little green.

We had quite an experience when we went out from San Francisco. We went from Long Beach to San Francisco and stayed there 30 days. We picked up 800 Seabees to take out to ______and they had to ______there. A lot of them were sleeping on deck. They were all over the place. 800 is a lot of men. They got sick.

Mr. Litzelfelner: So you were acting as a transport ship for those Seabees.

Mr. Ellinger: We were heading that way and they were put on there. We were busy training and they were sitting around watching us. Actually we waited in Frisco till things got together and then we left to go to Pearl Harbor. We met some of the other ships we were going to go out with. When we left Pearl Harbor for Saipan, we were ready for the big push.

We hit Pitcarin (Mr. Ellinger’s voice was very low at this point and the transcriber could not make out what he was saying.) ...... I did realize that until the last couple of years. (once again the voice level is too low to understand).

Mr. Litzelfelner: Now what was your battle station after you left Pearl Harbor?

Mr. Ellinger: I was in Quad 7. It was on the _____ Deck. Most of our Quads except for 7 and 6 were nestled into the ship. But these two had a magazine underneath. The rest of them were underneath in the ship. Ours was on the deck. So we were about 25 feet up in the air. So we had to run to go up there.

Mr. Litzelfelner: What kind of a gun is a Quad 7?

Mr. Ellinger: That was a Quad - 4-barrels, a 49mm.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Oh, I see.

Mr. Ellinger: You would have two and two. You have 1st levels, 2nd levels, and 3rd levels. I became 1st level. I was on gun 1. We would practice our battle stations. I was ready to do my job by taking a clip. Now the clips for the millimeters.....or I would say probably ______a whole 15 or 16 inches. There were four in a clip. You had to drop them down into ______and just leave them. Once you got going, you didn’t see anything because you were concentrating to make sure they got it in there right. Otherwise you could jam the gun. And a jammed gun is dangerous because it could blow-up.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Now was that mostly anti-aircraft?

Mr. Ellinger: They were anti-aircraft guns. That was for when the planes would come in a little closer. They would start shooting the 40’s and 20’s till they got closer.

Mr. Litzelfelner: About how long did you stay in Pearl Harbor? When you went from San Francisco to Pearl Harbor, did you stay there for a while? Or, were you sent right on out again?

Mr. Ellinger: Actually we were there. We were always based on how long you have been some place. How many liberties did you go on? It looked like to me we were on a couple of frees, so that meant we were there a couple of weeks before we took off. The marines were there also. They left about two weeks before we did because their LST’s could only do about 6 knots. So they had to get a head start on every body. Although they had escorts. Our top speed was 21 knots. It was about two weeks before we went to Saipan.

Mr. Litzelfelner: That’s the first place you went?

Mr. Ellinger: Yes. That was our first exposure to the battles.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Is there anything that sticks in your mind that you could relate about what happened when you went to Saipan?

Mr. Ellinger: Well, we were - the advantage of being the anti-aircraft booth was you saw everything that was going on, at least in your vision. While we had most of our crew underneath, we saw it. That was really neat. We were sitting there in the Saipan operation, it was like being in a movie house, watching a newsreel. Hey that’s neat. Oh, they do it that way. Seeing the Marines going in. Seeing the planes bombing before they went in. Seeing them bombarded two days before they went in.

Mr. Litzelfelner: The California was fine. Those 14-inch guns.....

Mr. Ellinger: 14-inch guns. For about two days, before D-Day we would fire on it. When we got up there to support the Marines. We got very close to the shore of Saipan. It was about three thousand yards. Well, (the voice level drops and cannot be understood). We were almost patting them on the head.

As we were swinging around one time to change our position, the guns from the Japanese opened up. Because there we are, swinging around. How close can you get? And they hit. We had shells coming around our ship. They hit our ______and killed a man and injured an officer and four or five other men. Then we knew we were at war.

We tried to dig a foxhole. (voice level too low)

Mr. Litzelfelner: Did you have something to duck down behind up there?

Mr. Ellinger: Not really. We could get down.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Were you on the port side?

Mr. Ellinger: Starboard. Then right away we knew we were at war when we got hit by the shells. Now what was amazing was that our 14-inch was shooting. So they were there. Turret 3 and 4 put their guns on that location - where the firing came from - and opened up. I think they fired 12 rounds of 14-inch guns. (voice level too low) We were able to shoot those things 20 miles and that is what happened. In fact, we shot those rounds so quickly that the damage control people had to come back and hose the barrels down. They got hot. You never heard (voice level too low) no body was there to shoot at us.

The Marines that went in there, we finally saw them back in Seattle in 1945. We ran into them. and they said “boy you guys saved us.” The Japs had them pinned down and (at this point the voice level lowers and it seems the microphone is moved or knocked over - will pick up when the voice level returns).... I asked them “what does it sound like when these projectiles whiz by you every five seconds?” They weight almost 1500 pounds.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Weren’t they 5 feet 7 inches tall?

Mr. Ellinger: The bullets?

Mr. Litzelfelner: Yes.

Mr. Ellinger: And they weigh almost 1500 pounds and you have got them coming out the end of the barrel. (the transcriber apologizes but the voice level is just too low to understand Mr. Ellinger).

He says that if you could see them or hear them there is no problem. But if you didn’t hear them you had better start digging in. I never heard of shooting short, but I didn’t want to hear it either if they did shoot short. Being on a battleship is quite impressive when we were supporting the troops. They did the job. They did a better job than the bombers would do. Because the bombers would come down, drop their bombs and the explosion would go upwards.

But if a ______was going in, where it was going in it would spread. As far as killing the enemy, it is more effective.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Well, they might have been more accurate too.

Mr. Ellinger: That is true.

Mr. Litzelfelner: How long did the battleship stick around there in that area?

Mr. Ellinger: We were in Saipan probably about a week. Then we went back to Guam. That didn’t put us in the Mariannas yet, Saipan then Guam. We went down there and that wasn’t nearly as exciting as Saipan had been.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Well you were an old hand by then?

Mr. Ellinger: Oh, yes. I was more scared. When you go into your first battle your not scared because you don’t know anything. And then we seemed to go between Guam and Saipan. We were actually doing two operations at one time.

After Saipan and Guam we went back and got supplies because when you are feeding 2300 men you carry a lot of groceries.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Now where did you have to go to get more supplies?

Mr. Ellinger: At this particular point, I think we went to H______Eniwetok. Any place that was big ______. We needed a chow wagon to come in ______and they would load us back up. So they just stayed there waiting for the ship to come back and get more supplies.

Mr. Litzelfelner: You didn’t have to go back to Pearl Harbor?

Mr. Ellinger: Oh, no. Now that I look back at it, the logistics out there in the Pacific during World War II were unbelievable. That was the biggest thing they had to work out. Because if you didn’t have supplies there, all those ships out there were useless. But they had the supplies there. And they did a heck of a job. We went back there and came back to Tinian.

Tinian was kind of interesting. Saipan had a mountain on it. Tinian was flat. Incidentally the reason they wanted Tinian is because they wanted to use those big bombers.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Because of an air strip?

Mr. Ellinger: Yes. That is where the big bombers went. That is the one that the Enola Gay and the atomic bomb...... it all was there. It was a small island, very important, but it was flat. We were very close there too. And we found out that the Japs laid low during the day before you would land troops. They would just hide out.

On this particular day, we recognized some of our ships bombarding a particular section. Then they would send the SEALS by. They would go down there and blow them up so they could land troops there. So the Japs says “that’s where they are going to land.” So the next morning, we go to the end of the Island and they were landing troops. They didn’t know that they were suppose to land there. During the night, the Japs all got down here ready for the landing. These guys walked in and nobody was shooting at them.

The Colorado took our place where we were the day before. I guess the Japs figured out what the hell? We gotta do something. They opened up on the Colorado. (voice level has lowered to where the transcriber cannot understand the words). ....

Mr. Litzelfelner: The California had gone out to the north end?

Mr. Ellinger: We went up to that part to land the troops and let anyone in...... because the Japanese were waiting for us to land. Everything showed that we were going to land on that part and we didn’t do it.

Mr. Litzelfelner: I wonder if they knew it was a different battleship out there. The Colorado showed up and ......

Mr. Ellinger: Probably not. They got snuckered. Another interesting thing during this operation in the Mariannas was they started to use flame throwers, by personal flame throwers and tanks. They had a deal rigged up where they would shoot flame out of these tanks and when they would go into these caves that is what they were running into all of the time. The Japs would be in caves and they would just go in there and roast them. So that is how they got them out of there.

Mr. Litzelfelner: I remember seeing newsreels about the war and the firing of the flame throwers. I was thinking that must be a pretty hazardous job. I was wondering ......

Mr. Ellinger: They will shoot at you.

Mr. Litzelfelner: If they wanted someone to shoot at it would be the guy with the flame thrower.

Mr. Ellinger: We had another experience at Saipan that I thought was pretty unique. I don’t know if it happened later on other islands or not. But we picked up on their communications between tanks and we put it over our PA system. So while we weren’t at battle stations at that particular point, we could hear them fighting over there. The Marines fighting in their tanks. As the war was going on, we heard it. It was real. When it is a life or death situation where you could die, you just say things to express yourself.

Mr. Litzelfelner: You probably don’t want people to misunderstand what you are trying to say. Did Japanese air planes attack your ship?

Mr. Ellinger: Yes. They would come and try to bomb you.

Mr. Litzelfelner: That is when you got active on your 40mm.

Mr. Ellinger: We started shooting our guns. They were very clever also. One time in Saipan, ______were lined up, instead of a single line, which we did after this. We would line up two abreast and they would fire right down the middle. Wouldn’t even go towards the ship. They would just fire down the middle. And guess what, we would end up shooting at each other. This one time, they did that and there was a 5-incher cracking over your head. We always wore helmets, combat helmets, and we were all trying to crawl underneath. It was scary to have friendly fire shooting at you. We had a lot of friendly fire when we were out there shooting at each other. ______trying to shoot down that plane.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Do you think that your Quad ever got one of those Japanese air planes?

Mr. Ellinger: The ship, itself, recorded 7 planes. When you did these Quads, because on the starboard side you had five of them and on the port side you had five of them.

Mr. Litzelfelner: You really wouldn’t know which one might have shot it down.

Mr. Ellinger: Because you had a lot of 40mm going at one time. Yes, we did shoot some down. The 5-inchers were very potent when shooting kamikazes down. The 5-inchers would be the only thing that would stop them.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Now the Quad 40mm. How were they aimed? Was there a fire control system that pointed those guns? Or, were they manually done?

Mr. Ellinger: We had a fire control system. We had an upgrader in the back of each Quad. When you would get up there and get ready to fire, a pointer or trainer, could peek in their equipment and that would give the fire control person control of that quad. It was like a viewer setting up get a target. Then he had handles coming out and this is how he guided the Quad anywhere he wanted to go. He aimed it. He had full control. So it made it more accurate than if you were to try to do it yourself.

On some smaller ships, they didn’t have Quads, but they had a one- or a two-barrel thing. They just had to do it on their own. I guess they got pretty good at it after a while. But having that Quad on there being controlled by the fire control apparatus made a lot of sense and made it more accurate.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Did you ever have the opportunity to do that? Use the fire control gun?

Mr. Ellinger: No. They didn’t let us do that at all. We weren’t suppose to.....the fire control people had their own policy. Something could be turned the wrong way and you wouldn’t know it. Or a knob or something and when you went to do something, then it wouldn’t work.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Where did the California go after being at those three islands?

Mr. Ellinger: Our next operation is going to be the Kwaj. We were going down towards Manus, which is just off of New Guinea. This was just going to be a little operation here. Nothing was ever a little operation. We were going down there for a little warm-up, I guess. On the way down there we got rammed by our sister ship, the Tennessee. During the war in the Pacific, when you were traveling in formation, air craft carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, we all would be out there in formation. You never traveled the same course. Every few minutes, maybe fifteen o o minutes, I forget what the situation was now, you would turn 15 or 20 . To go someplace it took us a long time because we were constantly going back and forth. That was to not let a Jap sub sit out there and “if they don’t turn I could hit them with this torpedo.”

While we were going through this manuever about 4 a.m., the Tennessee reported their aft steering wasn’t working properly. That meant they pulled out of formation. So they reported back that they had fixed it and fell back into formation. Then they started doing the turning. We

turned to our left and they turned toward their left. But they started coming straight ahead because their aft steering wasn’t fixed. And they took off our bow. It killed 15 of our men. Put us in dry dock for 21 days. When we looked at that hole up there and could see how much damage was done - battleship hitting battleship. We thought we would go back to the States. We got dry docked down there. They just brought every body down from Pearl Harbor and they worked 24 hours a day and they put it back together.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Now where was this dry dock?

Mr. Ellinger: New Hebrides.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Was there anything to do when you went on liberty at ______?

Mr. Ellinger: We played softball or basketball or baseball or something. (There was laughter and the transcriber could not understand the rest of the answer) ...... So he took us over to another little island for our recreation.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Did the Tennessee have to go into dry dock too?

Mr. Ellinger: No. When they hit us, they knew they were heading for us and they were backing down, backing down, backing down. So when they hit us, they just barely tapped us. All that weight .... if they had hit us full force, they could have probably sunk us. We were not all water tight all the time either. It his us on the bow and as they were backing off, they actually hit the side of our ship and took a ______. Then came back and bounced off the ship and ______.

I had just got off the 12 to 4 watch and I was going off into the washroom to brush my teeth and comb my hair. Then some sleep till maybe 5 or 6. The washroom was totally wiped out. The Tennessee came through and took the washroom out. Thank God, if they were going to hit us that is where they hit. We were just not too far, maybe 20 minutes from having that washroom totally loaded with about 250 sailors.

I was at my locker when we got hit. Some of the guys in our division yelled torpedo.

Mr. Litzelfelner: I guess the collision alarm......

Mr. Ellinger: Oh yes, the whole works. When something like that happens that is how you feel. We were out of formation by that time. So it was kind of spooky for us out there. We could see a couple of destroyers.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Was the California ever attacked by a submarine?

Mr. Ellinger: Not that I know of. But you never know if torpedoes are going through the area. I wasn’t aware of any. The only time they got torpedoed was in Pearl Harbor.

We were told to watch out - keep your eye out for submarines and enemy air craft. When you have that many eyes up there, they were more important to see if planes were in a certain range. (unable to understand Mr. Ellinger, he is not near the microphone.) ......

Mr. Litzelfelner: You probably didn’t have binoculars.

Mr. Ellinger: Oh no. When you are out there and you are looking for air craft or anything up in the sky, you never see it straight ahead of you. As a plane goes around off to the side, then we could see it.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Well, they repaired you in dry dock. The California got a new bow. You left...

Mr. Ellinger: ....off to the Philippines. That was a very very interesting stop over. First thing we ran into was we entered Surigao Straits was everybody, big ships and all, apparently were looking for mines. We cut one loose. It kept bobbing up and down. It kept getting closer to us. One of my shipmates was down in one of the Quads helping the gunners mate clean up his guns and he went over there to look at it. As it was coming up closer, the water would push it back, but it didn’t push it back real far. As we went by it drifted out away from us.

Then a destroyer came along and they had rifles and sharpshooters. And they would shoot at that thing until they hit it and it went off. That is how they got rid of it. When the ships were going through and cut those mines, they would come up and that was how they would get rid of them.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Did you shoot at them with your 40mm?

Mr. Ellinger: You wanted something that was very, very accurate, put it through your eyes. That is how good they were. When you are on board ship, you are in motion. And then you have to hit that ______. And you may not hit it the first time. The one that we cut loose and it came along side us and drifted out. When they hit it from the destroyer, we went “Wow.”

Then we went into Leyte and started our pre-landing bombardment. We always bombarded when we were going to land in an area. An awful lot of things happened at Leyte.

I had my first my first and only sea battle. ______McArthur. We saw a gasoline and ammunition thing blow up on the shore. We saw an American torpedo plane coming in off the field at dusk. They weren’t expecting to see a plane so they shot it down. Things were going on all the time. They tried to land troops on Leyte.

We were there longer than we should have been. We had so many ______and they kept trying to feed us. We had the ______run up come down, try to feed us, we used up a lot of food without eating it.

Mr. Litzelfelner: It was wasted.

Mr. Ellinger: Pretty soon we got sandwiches. They brought the stuff up to us because we

couldn’t leave our guns. In two weeks, ______. We all got a little pudgy. But they did save the Thanksgiving meal for us. That was Navy tradition. No matter what happens we would get the Thanksgiving meal. We got the full meal.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Was this battle still going on at Thanksgiving?

Mr. Ellinger: No. We were coming back from it and we hadn’t eaten much.

I was going to a battle station one time and I came running out to go to the battle station. I looked over there. (unable to understand the tape) .... At this point the tape ended and was turned over...we continue

Joe, there are just somethings I can’t remember what happened this morning or yesterday. But this stuff here just never goes away. It just stays with you.

Mr. Litzelfelner: You were in Platu (sp) and the Japanese air planes were come in flying real low under the radar.

Mr. Ellinger: And they were all new and you weren’t necessarily ______.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Now would these be Kamikaze’s?

Mr. Ellinger: Well started the Kamikazes there at Platu. Because I don’t know what prompted me but, as I reflect back on it now, it is a most effective weapon. They sunk ships. They damaged ships. They killed a lot of men. At Okinawa, especially. They sunk a lot of ships there. It just kept getting bigger and better and it wasn’t any fun anymore.

Before they would dive, you would try to shoot them down. This way they were coming at you. Their chances of hitting you were probably one out of 7. They didn’t hit you all the time. Thank God.

Mr. Litzelfelner: I was thinking that it would probably be 50/50.

Mr. Ellinger: Now at Okinawa it might have been. This whole Kamikaze thing was serious business. We felt, a lot of us felt, that was why - and history always tells it - that why President Truman got the A-bomb. We did have a plan. When you were aboard a ship like we were, also, ______in our fleet, you would get the whole run down of what it was going to be. They would give you the plan.

In our particular case, our Chaplain, would get on the PA system and tell us what the plan was. And the one going to Tokyo, he was on there for quite a while.

We figured if we were going to go in, that our boys told people - family, friends and so forth - that you may feel it is inhumane dropping bombs, but I wouldn’t be here talking to you if they didn’t drop the bombs. Because Nimitz, Truman, all of them felt that too many people were getting

killed. It would be the biggest mess you ever saw in your life.

When you have a country and the philosophy of religion is if you die, you die a hero. You will go to heaven. Dying wasn’t something that was horrible to them. That is why they would be Kamikazes.

Our boys figured that if they were on our shores, we would been ______their ships too. Because you would be a heck of a lot more effective that way. And they were. When we got hit by a Kamikaze, they ______.

That was on the 6th of January. (unable to understand tape) They wounded 150 and sent us back to the states. That put us out of operation.

Mr. Litzelfelner: That was in 1944?

Mr. Ellinger: That was in ‘45. That was when we also sank a U. S. Navy plane.

Here about a few months ago, I found out who he was. He lives in Jacksonville, Texas.

Mr. Litzelfelner: So the pilot got out?

Mr. Ellinger: He parachuted out. I talked to him on the phone and he said that the only thing he remembered was that he got hit. He didn’t remember any thing after that. According to our log, he parachuted out. He hit the water and the parachute wrapped around his legs. Then that’s he remembered - he was in the water. Then a ______came by and picked him up.

Our situation was a little different there. We got hit by a Kamikaze and once the plane crashed into our ______on the starboard side of the ship. The fire control of our anti- craft guns, six officers in there, that is where it hit. Took them all. Knocked out all communication. As we were sitting there, we had no communications for the officers to let the fire control fire the guns. We were on our own.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Now you were at battlestations, I guess, when that happened, weren’t you?

Mr. Ellinger: That Kamikaze came within a hundred feet of our ______, Just went right past us. We felt the heat. None of us got burned. It rolled right over to the port side. They always said that it if hits on the starboard side, folks will go over to the port side. Port side, starboard side. It went right by us and hit this guy. They were a little bit above us.

I looked down. What had happened was we didn’t open fire as quickly as we should have. This plane was going for a destroyer. The destroyer was by us. The Jap looked at it and said “a battleship is right over there.” If you don’t open up on them, that means you are not ready for them. Then they come in on you.

I saw that happen several times. They would be flying along the line. (unable to understand the

tape) That is who they would go after. We had a fire control boy and that was his philosophy. You see one, just keep shooting. Don’t stop. Just keep...... just let them know you are shooting. Then they won’t come in on you.

They came in on us because (unable to understand the tape). And his wing hit the water and he got back up and came in on us. His flying skills were unbelievable. I remember seeing it and he was coming in and I was saying “holy moly, this ain’t good.” We were firing fast, rapid, I was just going this...... and I felt as I was putting the projectiles in, I said to myself, “It’s too long, it’s too long.” Somethings going to happen. And it did.

Our five-inch should have been shooting at it on out a little ways. Because what they did, they brought these destroyers close by us to get more of our protection. Somebody went to sleep. We’re not perfect. Had we opened up sooner, we might not had the Kamikaze.

Mr. Litzelfelner: He might have got the destroyer instead of.....

Mr. Ellinger: Well, what the destroyer did was to kill one of our guys with friendly fire. One of their projectiles came over and hit our five-inch...... what the guy was doing, he was outside getting some fresh air. That five-inch came on down. Nothing is perfect. There were a lot of ships in the harbor.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Were there air craft carriers around, too? Were you in company with air craft carriers?

Mr. Ellinger: Well, they never came into the Gulf. They never got in close to land. They would always be out. They needed their space to land and check it out. They were your guardian angels. In fact, in Saipan, they kept saying “we got some bogies coming in.” We didn’t know how many. It was a turkey shoot out there at Saipan. The first report we got was 150 bogies. That is a lot of bogies. That was the Jap planes coming in and our fleet was out there. (unable to understand tape)

They went out there and just had dog fights. It was something. It was unbelievable how many they got rid of. Some did get through to us. What they came back to do was to try to damage our ships in lieu of protecting the troops. So they would come in and harass us. A few got through and we took care of some of them and there was little damage to the ships at this point that I know of. But that was - 150 planes was a little scary.

Mr. Litzelfelner: You mentioned ______there was the first time there was ships meeting in the water. Did your ship ever shoot at a Japanese ship?

Mr. Ellinger: Yes. That was at the ______Straits. At 2 o’clock in the morning. What had happened was out there in the Philippines, the Japanese made an all out effort to try to destroy our Navy so they could recapture Leyte. They had three groups that came down to Leyte.

The first group came in north of Leyte. Bull Halsey and his gang went up there and challenged

them. All it was, was a trap. Ole Bull was out of it entirely. He didn’t help them at all because he fell for the bait.

The other two came down. One was going to come down to the southern part and the other was coming ______. Well the group that was coming down ran into baby flat tops and destroyers. It was not much ______this fleet of battleships. They didn’t come down, they didn’t have the carriers with them. They came down to do battle. Well, we knew that they were coming in. (unable to understand tape)

These guys up here, they took Bull Halsey and his gang. This was embarrassing to Bull. When they got down there, this bunch that was coming down San Bernadino, straight, (whispering, can’t understand tape).

Attacked them. Torpedoed them. And the reason they didn’t come farther was because they thought they were backed up by a big force. The Japanese, because they were losing so much, they would pull back so they wouldn’t lose more. Thank goodness, they thought that way. Because they could have knocked these guys out in a couple of hours.

Mr. Litzelfelner: How many U. S. ships were there that stopped the Japanese?

Mr. Ellinger: Well, the baby-flat tops were maybe four or five or six. And then maybe fifteen or sixteen ships.

Mr. Litzelfelner: What was it, the air craft ....

Mr. Ellinger: Well, what happened was they were shooting armor piercing projectiles - ship to ship - the big heavy ones. They are 2100 pounds instead of 1300. They go through the armor. I would like to talk to someone. It was scary. They had it really tough. And they were surprised when they looked out. And I think they sunk a couple of destroyers. They look out and they were leaving. What the hell?

The other bunch of us coming down, were still coming. So they had to come through and what we did, we had a line-up of seven battleships, cruisers probably another ten, destroyers, PT boats and others. And we just sat there and waited for them. You have heard of the “crossing of the T” Admiral ______. When you are next to the naval in sea engagement, that is the ultimate is to cross the “T” . You are in the top part of it and the enemy is in the bottom part of it. That is “crossing the T”.

When you get them in that position they are very vulnerable because if they shoot their guns, they have to shoot them, not broadside, and their only guns are the port guns, then they are not too accurate. They had to shoot them over the sides because of the recoil.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Tremendous shot there.

Mr. Ellinger: But when he came in there, we sent the PT boats in and they ran them off. They

carried torpedoes. Boy they went zooming in there. They had enough room to turn sideways. They didn’t turn sideways. Then the cruisers and battleships - that was all she wrote. I don’t know maybe a ship or two got away. We sunk a battleship.

According to our records, the USS California, of the battleships, there were seven, we fired 25% of the fire power. Although during this time, someone in Turrett 2 dropped the bag - the ______bag. So they had to shut that down. See we only had 9 barrels. But it was something, I don’t know if was something to see or not. We were looking for which Japanese - they didn’t use radar. We did.

Mr. Litzelfelner: I didn’t know that.

Mr. Ellinger: We used radar to fire at you. They didn’t use radar. So they had to see your ship. They had to see your silhouette. And what they would do during these battles, they put star shells out and let them drift down and let them see who you were. They were very accurate. But they didn’t have that. They didn’t know. They didn’t see it. But they would do it if they got into position. Which they couldn’t do during this ______#2.

Mr. Litzelfelner: What time of day was that?

Mr. Ellinger: 2 o’clock in the morning. They told us that we would be going to battle at 2 a.m. that afternoon. So we sat around. We had two guys off the South Dakota who were in a sea engagement before. They had been transferred to our Division. Boy we wore them out that afternoon. Asking every question in the world. They said that when they were in sea engagement they started at the top and just kept working down. They said that when they got to 02 deck they just quit.

Sea engagements are something else. Thank goodness we didn’t even get a scratch. They didn’t even shoot as us. They did hit anybody. They might have been shooting at the destroyers. Those guys on the destroyers were very special. Running in that tiny boat on the big sea. That was a chore right there.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Were you ever in any real heavy seas?

Mr. Ellinger: Two cyclones. The China Sea, the ground swells out there were unbelievable. They were huge. But the cyclone. We rode out one cyclone. The other one we were in Okinawa and they found a little nitch for us. I don’t know whether they found it or we found it. What we did, we took our bow, it was there at Buckner Bay, and in the bay it was very tremendously deep. So we pulled in there and it was like a tiny deal, and we just pulled in there and dropped anchor.

It just blew over us. The land protected us. The height of our superstructure might have stuck a blow there.

The other time we had to ride it out, as you are walking down the passageway, you are at about o 45 . It was unbelievable. 16

Mr. Litzelfelner: Do you ever think about that when you start going over the rest of the way?

Mr. Ellinger: Well, not really.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Well, I guess they tried to drive into the direction of the waves.

Mr. Ellinger: Oh yes.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Did you ever watch the destroyers when you were in a heavy sea like that?

Mr. Ellinger: Other than the ground swells, no because you didn’t go out on the deck. You didn’t stand watch. You just stayed batten down and hoped you got through it all right.

Mr. Litzelfelner: You had to stay dry.

Mr. Ellinger: It was terrible. During that time there none of us got sea sick either. But there it was always strange when we would go on land, especially back in the States. We would be walking down the street and somebody would say “you guys just got back, didn’t you?” We say “how do you know?” Well when you walk aboard a ship, you legs spread out and use them for balance. Then you get on land and you are still walking the same way.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Well, where did the California go after you left the Philippines?

Mr. Ellinger: We came back, got some more food and went back to Lingayen. We had to go through all the islands there. Leyte was the south part. We had to go through all those islands. And here comes a Jap plane.

Mr. Litzelfelner: One display they have in the museum here is telling about when some P-38’s shot down Admiral Yamamoto. Did you all hear about that when you were on ship?

Mr. Ellinger: They used to be our protection at night - the P-38’s. We called them Black Widows. And you would know they were around. But they were up there protecting the fleet. We had a deal that wasn’t too good there for a while. I guess the Black Widows took care of them. It was nasty. It would wake us up in the middle of the night. A Jap would go up. We called them “washing machine Charlie” . Where that name came from, I don’t know. They would fly up above us. Way up there.

Mr. Litzelfelner: They used to annoy you.

Mr. Ellinger: Wanted to get back to sleep. And I think we got rid of him. The P-38’s came along. The P-38’s took Yamamoto. I guess they found out where he was and they went out there. (unable to understand tape) Mr. Litzelfelner: That probably had an effect on their morale when that happened.

Mr. Ellinger: We stayed up there at Lingayen for a while. That was an exciting place. I thought Gulfs were supposed to be so big. This one, as far as we were concerned, was extremely small. We had the flag (something about Jesse Olendorf). The only man that crossed the T. He was an old Navy guy.

Mr. Litzelfelner: So he was an admiral.

Mr. Ellinger: Oh yes, he was an admiral. When you had the flag, you lead everybody into where you were going to go. And the first thing they said to us was that well, there is a 12-inch gun that we know of off there. It is on a railroad track. We are going to try to draw them out. We said to ourselves that the 40mm anti-air craft group is.....I hope they don’t draw them out. Because the 12-inch will hurt you.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Was he on the California?

Mr. Ellinger: Well, the whole group. At that point we traveled - when we were in a dangerous area - we would travel in single lines. That way we wouldn’t shoot at each. And having ______the flag, what you do is let the other guys go first, no, we led the way. We were the first ones in.

People don’t realize that the battles don’t last very long. But leading up to them really can wear you out.

Mr. Litzelfelner: You have a lot of time to think about it?

Mr. Ellinger: Definitely. That famous word we used in the Navy, we used it every other word, when we were going in forward zone, was you are scared, scared. But we were all in the same boat, so we just kept going.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Well did you draw out that 12-inch gun.

Mr. Ellinger: No, they were smart. They were saving it for the troops when they tried to land. So my brother went ashore with the Army Engineers Air Force and he said that it was there. The 12-inch gun was. But the troops had quite a close encounter.

The air people - bombers - couldn’t do it. You just had to go in and take it. When they came out, they jumped on them and take it. But we had to get that ______before we could take it. They finally took it down. But it did a lot of damage on the beach.

That is when we got hit with the Kamikaze. That changed our world a lot. Then after that, we went back to the States. We got liberty.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Where do you come back to?

Mr. Ellinger: Bremerton. Each watch got 30 days.

Mr. Litzelfelner: How did the ship get back. With that damage. Did you come back under your own power?

Mr. Ellinger: Yes, we came under our own power. The damage we did have was topside. It wasn’t below. As far as the engine, the motors, we were ok. But the damage was on top. And we were in rotation to go back anyway. We had been out there for about 10 months. So we went back and it was sure nice going back. Then we had to get back on and roll back out again. Some of our men got transferred, not too many. We didn’t have too many transfers off that ship.

Mr. Litzelfelner: So how many weeks were you in Bremerton?

Mr. Ellinger: All together, it was about 90 days. Each watch had 30-day leaves. When they get you into port, these guys worked 24 hours a day. And when you worked on something like that ______. While we were there, they added on four more quads. So we were there ______. And then we took on more personnel. I think we got back up around 2600 men. It was crowded.

That is one of the things you have to learn to live in the crowded conditions. When you are 18 or 19 years old, you know, what the heck, it is part of life. No problem. Most of the time when we were out to sea in the Pacific we didn’t sleep for long. We didn’t want to sleep very long because we were hot. And the heat, it would be tremendously hot down below. It would get hot and stay hot. But topside it was nice and cool. If you could find a place to hunker down and get your sleep. The closer we got to ______the less sleep we got.

(Unable to understand tape, something about going a few days without sleep.)

Mr. Litzelfelner: Did they send you back to Pearl when you left Bremerton?

Mr. Ellinger: Yes. We stopped off there and then went on out to Okinawa. The operation there was getting near the end of it. The Navy had a lot of losses out there. In fact, they had the biggest losses of any of them because of the Kamikazes.

Mr. Litzelfelner: That is when you ran into that hurricane, when you went to Okinawa.

Mr. Ellinger: Yes. Then after that was over, we went to the China Sea with some big flat-tops in our group which there were about five. See the battleships ______the flat-tops to protect them. And the koozies also did that. Then they had the destroyers take care of the rest of us. But then we went out there and the planes were getting off of our baby flat-tops and were going over to China and bombing them. There were also mine-sweepers. They were out there toward China, because eventually they were going to land on China too.

We were ______mines in the China Sea there, next to China. There were a lot of mines out there. We were out there for a little while, I can’t recall how long that was. The China Seas ground swells were just unbelievably huge. You could lose sights of the destroyers.

Mr. Litzelfelner: It must have been because of that hurricane.

Mr. Ellinger: That I don’t know. I have been told that the China Sea is that way. There is something underneath there that causes that.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Would that be, I was thinking of Hong Kong, were you south of Hong Kong, north of.....

Mr. Ellinger: We were north. We were actually off the Shanghai area. Then after we came back to the Philippines, we were up in Luzon when we got the news that the war was over.

Mr. Litzelfelner: So you were back in the Philippines?

Mr. Ellinger: We were operating out of northern Luzon toward the China Sea . I was on watch and we now closer to land. There were skyrockets going off. I wonder, “what the heck was going on. The Japs are back.” Pretty soon on the phone we were told the Japanese were shooting for peace. I went down to see what was going on. (unable to understand tape) I went back up to the quad. It was crazy down there.

Mr. Litzelfelner: There was a celebration?

Mr. Ellinger: Oh, they were just going ape.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Had you’all heard about the dropping of the atomic bomb?

Mr. Ellinger: A little later we found that out.

Mr. Litzelfelner: But you hadn’t heard.

Mr. Ellinger: We hadn’t heard anything. We really weren’t too concerned about those two bombs other than if this is the reason why they are saluting the peace. Amen. What we were looking at was landing in Japan and we didn’t feel too good about that.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Now did the California go up to Tokyo Bay for the signing of the peace conference?

Mr. Ellinger: No, we weren’t there because they assigned us to ______to land troops at ______which was a little village there. Army troops went in. We were there to support them.

Mr. Litzelfelner: What was the name of that town again? Mr. Ellinger: Wakiaminura (?) Japanese was easy to pronouce because they pronounce phonetically. What you see is what you got. Like people would say Nagasaki. Journalists are taking calling Hirosheima - Hiroshima.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Did you ever go ashore in Japan after the war ended.

Mr. Ellinger: Yes. After we through there, they sent us up to Tokyo and we went ashore. Quite an experience. First place, there were hardly any buildings there. The fire bombs for thirty days to try to get them to surrender, they didn’t surrender. There was just a building here, a building here, etc. All the bricks were stacked. Because they were just scorched, they weren’t blown apart. There was just fire, fire, fire. They stacked them all up.

We went over there and it was real strange because ______walk down ______which was a couple of buildings here and there. We amongst these Japanese people. They would look at you, you would look at them. Then they had these little shop keepers over here selling stuff. We would go and look at it and pretty soon you would be on your knees giving one ______then you were on your back looking over our shoulder to see what you were looking at. They couldn’t understand English and couldn’t understand us.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Did they seem to be hostile?

Mr. Ellinger: Yes. They were kind of like us just wait and see. It was just one of those things. The war had ended. Probably they were all glad it was over. We had more relief that anything else. It was very interesting.

Then we came back to Tokyo Bay and they told us we were going home. We wondered how we would get home. We were supposed to report to the Philadelphia Navy Yard. Well, our home base was Bremerton, Washington. Now we wondered how we would do that. We couldn’t go through any of the canals because they rebuilt the California, instead of our hull being like a regular hull, it was very full like the bottom of a back pack. We couldn’t get through the Panama Canal or the Suez Canal. We had to long way around.

Our first stop was Singapore and we stayed there four days. Then we went to Colombo, Ceylon, and another four days. Cape Town, South Africa, for four days. Then we went on to Philadelphia. We were supposed to go to Rio De Janeiro, but we had to wait an extra day to get some of our crew back in Cape Town. So we missed that trip. We traveled the 9,000 miles to Philadelphia and guess what day we pulled in there to the dock.

Mr. Litzelfelner: December 7?

Mr. Ellinger: December 7, 1945. We stayed out in the Chesapeake Bay down there.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Well, you are a shell back, aren’t you?

Mr. Ellinger: Yes, in fact I am a shell back in three oceans. The Pacific, Indian and Atlantic.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Would you have an initiation ceremony?

Mr. Ellinger: The first time in the Pacific, there was only about 10% of the ship was shell backs. And they were tired. So we would go through ______and so forth and the final ceremonies we got to beat up on our shipmates because we were now shell backs. The next time we went around, about 20% of the crew was pollywogs and the rest of us sat around and watch them getting beat up on.

Mr. Litzelfelner: You had already done that.

Mr. Ellinger: By the time we got to the Atlantic, we didn’t need to do that because all the crew members were now shell backs. We not only went through the equator and three oceans, but we also circumvented the globe. I left Kansas City in March of 1945. I came back to Kansas City in December 1945. But I came from Philadelphia. I went around the Pacific, Indian, so forth, but it took a while. We finally circumvented the world. So for a ship was rebuilt and so forth in the matter of a year’s time, we saw a lot of things and we saw a lot of action.

We weren’t sitting around. We were, move ‘em on, hook ‘em up and move ‘em on and get this thing over with.

Mr. Litzelfelner: When you look back on it, what do you think is the worse situation the California ever got into in the battles? Okinawa?

Mr. Ellinger: No, I think it was when we got rammed.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Oh, by the Tennessee.

Mr. Ellinger: That was our worse situation. Because it was so very personal from the standpoint of the personnel aboard there. A lot of people got hurt. Some got killed. The only thing that caught our breath was how many could have been killed. We had been sitting out there for a while, maybe 1/2 day, till we got into ______to the Hebrides, so forth. It was really not too good as far as that goes.

Mr. Litzelfelner: So you were a little bit like a sitting duck out there if there had been any Japanese submarines?

Mr. Ellinger: So to me that was about the worse, then we got the kamikaze and that was terrible. I found my grandson here and this is the story I reflected on. We got hit by the Kamikaze and somebody said that the magazine was going up. I was standing there by my gun and I grabbed that rail and bolted over the shield and went down 25 feet below. Just like Superman. I didn’t break anything, just jumped.

A guy came around to the other side, all he had was a hole in his shoes. The flames hit him. He was roasted. We wanted help. A blanket dropped down, and three other guys took him down. (unable to understand tape) .....and they were still shooting at them. I needed to get back up to my ______. So I went back and I came up over the shield and they said “where in the hell have you been.” Because the plane hit and everybody’s got the hair off the back of

their hands taken off. You feel the heat and you start to count noses. And I wasn’t there. They didn’t know, I might have gotten blown over the side. They looked around and I wasn’t there. I guess they kind of acted like they were glad I came back.

Mr. Litzelfelner: It is good to know you were welcomed back.

Mr. Ellinger: Sixth Division ______where you got the flames and so forth, he was lifted up and put back on his back. He got hurt. He was standing there and then he was down. It saved his life. That sure was a fall, must have been 25 feet. I said, “well, I landed on my feet, you landed on your back?” I talked to ______in St. Louis, Gunnermate ______,

Mr. Litzelfelner: Now what was your rating....

Mr. Ellinger: Seaman First Class, There were a lot of us on that ship, Seaman First Class. No body moved, no rates were, you know. When I was in my division there was one, two, three, four rates. We just somehow kept everybody on there.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Well, I thought you might have become a gunner’s mate.

Mr. Ellinger: Well, I was hoping for a gunner’s mate and at that time I was working on the First Class Gunner’s Mate to get into the, but somehow, somewhere it didn’t come about.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Well, you passed quite a bit.

Mr. Ellinger: The main thing was we survived. That was the main thing.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Well, now how long did you stay in after the war was over?

Mr. Ellinger: They discharged me March 16, 1946. I should have been discharged in January, 1946, but when they were discharging all of the crew, the points came up and I was transferred to the Third Division which was the 14-inch turrets. I know nothing about them. And they were doing recommission of it, painting it.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Now this was in Philadelphia.

Mr. Ellinger: Philadelphia Navy Yard. Yes. I had to stay there for three months. I was actually in the Navy from September 1943 till March 16, 1946. About 2-1/2 years, one month, 9 days, something like that. I was glad to get home. You would always hear “hey, you want to make a career?” “No”. Mr. Litzelfelner: Did you get on the train to get back home to Kansas City?

Mr. Ellinger: Well, we stopped in St. Louis first to get officially discharge. We went on a troop train, which I had never been on before. Which was pretty neat. Compared to standing up all the way when all the seats were taken. Anytime we went by train. Back and forth to home. In St.

Louis, we got discharged and I went on to Kansas City.

Mr. Litzelfelner: Robert, I sure do thank you for telling us about your experiences. Is there anything else you can think of that should be on this tape.

At this point the tape ended.

Typed by Becky Lindig Nimitz Volunteer August 2002