Nimitz Historic Site – National Museum of the Pacific War

Center for Pacific War Studies Fredericksburg, Texas

Interview with RADM, James D. Ramage (USN – Retired) Squadron – USS Enterprise Battle of the Philippine Sea

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Interview with James D. Ramage (USN Retired)

Interviewer: Today is September 9, 2004 at the Nimitz Symposium in Kerrville Texas, and this morning we are visiting with Rear Admiral James D. Ramage, Retired and he is going to tell us our story.

Admiral Ramage: I am Jigdog Ramage. I got the ‘Jigdog’ from the phonetic alphabet in the Navy, when I went into the trade school at the Naval Academy. ‘J’ was jig and ‘D’ was dog, and I didn’t particularly care for the name but a lot of other people got worst nicknames, so I will stick with what I got. I was born in Waterloo Iowa and went to the Naval Academy in 1935, graduated in 1939 and went into flight training in ’41, so I was positioned just about right to be in the various battles of the Second World War in the Pacific. My first duty station was the USS Enterprise, CV-6 where I was on the two year make you learn, which we had to do before we could go to flight training. I went to flight training in Pensacola and graduated in February of 1942 and was able to get back out on the Enterprise in time to take part in Admiral Spruance’s big sweep through the central Pacific.

I was in Bombing Squadron 10 and ultimately ended up as commanding of Bombing Squadron 10. It was a great break for me because at that time I was only 27 years old and – which was much younger than most of the other squadron . I think probably the most interesting part I will describe to you will be the Battle of the Philippine Sea.

We left Washington State on the 1st of October, 1943. This was the second cruise with Air Group 10 and the USS Enterprise. They put us on the beach there at Maui for about 6 weeks, which was great. We were back aboard the Enterprise in January after having night qualified Christmas Eve on the Enterprise, off Maui. So we were all set to go for the big sweep through the Pacific, which Admiral Spruance. We took place – we went through the operations in quadulent. We hit a truck which was quite a payback for Pearl Harbor…(voice fades here)

We were able to sink about 60 ships there. Unfortunately, the Japanese fleet had moved out about two weeks before because I guess they felt we were going to hit it, but we did a pretty good job,

2 I think we got about 275 airplanes and about 275,000 pounds of Japanese shipping, so it was at least a partial repayment for Pearl Harbor. The next move we went down to New Guinea in support of McArthur’s landing at Halandia. We hit Palau and did quite a bit of damage to the shipping down there, particularly tankers. And we stood by to be ready for the invasion of the Marianas

Task Force 58 under Admiral Mitscher launched its first strikes on the 11th of June in the afternoon against the airfields in Saipan and Guam, and an airfield on Rota also. That afternoon we achieved air superiority and from then on, in spite of the fact the Japanese had a lot of planes in the air they were never able to bring them to bear.

The landings on Saipan took place on the 15th of June and it was an interesting event. I was to lead the Enterprise strike and our air group commander, Killer Kane, Air Group 10 Enterprise, was to be the airborne coordinator for about the 1,000 planes we had ready to go at that time, flying in that night or early morning. All of a sudden we got hit by everything the amphibious force had in the way of Triple A, (laughter) and Killer got on the air and said ‘you are shooting at me you bastards’, and that had not effect at all and finally Killer said “well, you got me, I am going down”, so down he went. So he was out of it and it was kind of an interesting thing for me because I was able to move up and take over the air coordination job.

So I was able to watch H Hour at 8 o’clock on the 15th of June 1944 at Saipan. It was very impressive. Those Marines – when they hit that beach they started running and they ran until they set up their defensive positions and it was very impressive. They were quite busy ashore but we had the air power and the gun power and they were able to do a magnificent job.

About the 16th of June we began to hear that perhaps the Japanese fleet was coming out of the west. And our strike radius for the SPDs. Ralph Waymington on Lexington and I on Enterprise had the last two SPD squadrons. They were the shortest legged aircraft we had. We figures our strike radius with the 1,000 bombs was about 250 miles. So, I had my engineering officer do a flight profile on how we could get out 300 miles if we were called to do it, and possibly get back to the ship. We were thinking of that about three days – 4 days before we actually went. The task force under Mitscher at that time was made up of 58.1 under Jack O. Clark. He had Hornet, Yorktown, Belleau Wood and Battan (the last two being CVLs – light carriers); 58.2 under Admiral Montgomery had Bunker

3 Hill, Wasp, Monterey and Cabot. 58.3, which we were in, was the Enterprise, the Lexington which was Admiral Mitscher’s flag, the Princeton and the San Jacinto; and 58.4 under Admiral Harrill, had Essex, Langley and Cowpens. It was quite a force. We had 475 fighters, 232 dive-bombers, and 184 torpedo planes for a total count of 891.

The order of battle for the Japanese Mobil Fleet under Admiral Ozawa was his Carrier Division 1, which had the Taiho, Shokaku Zuikaku. This was the class of the Japanese navy – the Shokaku and Zuikaku being their best carriers. Taiho was the brand new carrier, bigger than anything we had. In Carrier Division 1, Ozawa also led that one. Carrier Division 2 was under Admiral Joshima and it had the Junyo, Hiyo, and Yuno and Carrier Division 3, under Admiral Obayashi had the Chitose, Chiyoda and Zuhio. This was a formidable force as you can see, with about nine carriers. So with the 15 carriers that we had in Task Force 58, and their nine carriers it was the biggest carrier battle of the war.

They had a total of 222 fighters, 113 bombers and 95 torpedo planes for a total of 430 planes aboard ship, about half of what he had. However, they had assigned to the operation about 530 planes shore-based, which brings their total up to 970 planes, which was about an even break in numbers. We, however, had all our planes concentrated on our carriers, so Admiral Mitscher could handle them very easily. The Japanese, with their land based air spread all the way from Truk to Wolleai down to Yap had a terrible time trying to coordinate their strength. I don’t think they ever did it.

Interviewer: That’s probably why they prepared in twos and threes, right?

Admiral Ramage: Well, they came out..well, on the shore they came out sorta piecemeal, and you couldn’t ever get them together. So on the 16th we are still striking into Guam mainly to keep the air down cause they still had some flying out of caves and so forth. But we knew the Japanese were coming out of the Philippines. We could smell them. We were sitting down in the ready rooms getting all ready to go, saying ‘let’s get the hell outta here and go after the main source’. Now, Admiral Spruance’s mission was to seize and occupy and defend the Marianas. And he certainly wanted to perform his mission. Any damage he could do to the Japanese fleet was considered secondary. We Airedales down in ready rooms were a little unhappy. We said ‘let’s go get them, they are out there’. Admiral Spruance didn’t know exactly where they were

4 – he was getting reports – he didn’t want to let us go. So it wasn’t until the 19th of June that the battle for the Phillipines Sea started.

The Phillipine Sea Battle was the biggest carrier sea battle of all time as I mentioned. They launched a series of four strikes from the Japanese carriers and then there was intermittent action from the shore-based aircraft. The Japanese Admiral running it never did have complete control of their fleet. So Admiral Mitscher was able to call the shots. On the 19th of June these four separate strikes came in. We were all launched. My strike group was launched from the Enterprise ready to go after the Japanese fleet if we could find the position. And all the fighters went off about 10 o’clock in the morning – 10:30. We kept what we called a flex deck – a flexible decks so the fighters could refuel between the decks so we could have a maximum number of fighters in the air at all time.

Interviewer: Of course they had a longer ranger than you?

Admiral Ramage: Yes. They did. Their scheme was to stay 400 miles, knowing that our strike radius was probably a 300-mile max. The Japanese admiral was going to stay 400 miles out from our task force and land at Guam and various fields, hit us on the way in, rearm and hit us on the way back, and then go back to the carriers.

Interviewer: I see.

Admiral Ramage: That would give them extended range and we couldn’t get them. The big problem was that they just didn’t have the talent, and our fighters made mincemeat of them on the 19th. On the forays, I think he started out with 430-440 planes. At the end of the first day he had less than 100 left. And also, in the first day there, our submarines sank two of the biggest carriers – the Shokaku and the Taiho. Ozawa had a real problem in that he didn’t know what was going on and typical of a lot of aviators, he was getting reports that they had four of our carriers sinking – all sorts of reports – the great advantage they had over the Grumman F6F, so forth. He really didn’t know what was going on and then after losing all these planes the first day, he figured a lot of them were safe on Guam and he could get them back. After losing 300-400 planes that day, which he did – why didn’t he leave? He really didn’t have any striking capabilities. The answer was he didn’t know. His flagship was sunk so he was out of communication and went to a destroyer and it wasn’t until he got back to the Zuikaku and found out what really tough shape he was in.

5 In the meantime, Spruance had released Mitscher to head west and go after them, which leads us into the strike on the Japanese fleet on the second day of the…we were sitting down there with my particular air group, we were briefed, we were over briefed. We were ready to go and had our last nervous pee from time to time and ready to go. Just sitting there saying, “dammit, when is he going to let us go?” It wasn’t until about quarter of 4 on the afternoon of the 20th that Stu Nelson, who was a pilot from Torpedo 10 in our air group, turned in a position report that had the Japanese fleet in sight. So one of the big factors here was that the prevailing wind was from the east so in order to launch aircraft, our fleet had to turn into the prevailing wind. In the meantime the Japanese were heading west. As long as we had operating aircraft we were losing double ground.

So, Mitscher launched this first strike and uh. . We started launching about 4:23 and we were back heading west, I was gone, but the task force was back heading west about 4:30. He got his planes off in a hurry. Being the shortest ranged of all planes and the SPDs, we used what you might call a running rendezvous in that the fighters and torpedoes, who had more fuel, took off first and then as leader of the dive bombers, I took off immediately heading west so everyone formed on me so I could be on the way while we were still rendezvousing. We figured at that time from the position report that the strike would be out about 275-280 miles, which was over our range, but if we did everything right it would be no great problem. At least we felt pretty sure of ourselves.

However, after we became airborne, we found out that Nelson had made one-degree error on longitude, which is 60 miles nearer the equator, which made it 60 miles further out. Made it about 340, which was almost 100 miles beyond what we figured. We were really leaned back. We were the slowest strike group there. I would be ….the fuel problem…the rest of them had to live with it. So, we were leaned back as far as we could in our fuel settings and climbing on course, with a wind indicator of 135-140 knots.

So fairly soon all of the other strike groups who had the SP2C and planes were going on ahead of me, which was fine. We maintained our plan. So we found ourselves at about 5 o’clock being the last of the 217 strike aircraft. We were feeling all right with what we were doing. We went on out for over two hours and finally my gunner, Dave Calluy, sighed some ships off to the port side and down. We were at about 15,000 feet about this time. Turned out they were Japanese oilers. I called the sniper flight – our code name. I said

6 don’t pay any attention to them. The Charlie Victors, the carriers, are dead ahead.

In the meantime, I did see one strike group going after the oilers. I did get on the air and say “Unknown strike group. Don’t go after their merchant marine, the aircraft carriers are dead ahead about 30 miles (laughter). Anyway, they persisted in going after the oilers and did sink a couple. But there was no question about what the priority was. It was carriers, and carriers, and carriers.

We continued on and in due course picked up some Zeroes who were all ready to make a run on us when Kane and his fighters above us took care….every time they nosed into us to make a run, he nosed into them, so they just kept jockeying back and forth above us. They did not want to commit to us until we started into our dive, so we had to break up. The strike went exactly as planned, I would take the first carrier we sighted and Lou Banks, my second division leader, would take the second. Our torpedo planes would go after the remainder.

I didn’t mention our strike composition. We had the 12 F6 fighters; the 12 SPD dive-bombers but we only had five torpedo planes. The reason was because Admiral Mitscher liked to use the torpedo planes for scouting and they were doing all the search out in front so we were light on torpedo planes. As we rolled into our dives it was just there.

Interviewer: And that was the Taiho?

Admiral Ramage: Well, I still am not sure which one it was. I took the first and Banks went after the what we thought was the second and his second division leader under Hugh Grubis, saw a third. So he detached and went after the third. Seeing what was going on he wanted to make sure all three of the carriers were covered. For all purposes we could see they were untouched. Although we were the last ones in. My dive itself was just as planned, directly to the target we peeled off and went into the dive. I put my pepper as they called it just ahead of the bow, headed into the wind and released it at about 2,000 feet, and pulled out. I had two Zeros that went with me. The first one wasn’t any problem; the second I think was trying to Kamikaze me. He came down within 4-5 feet, but… you get your objective and you ignore all the rest of the stuff when you are dive- bombing.

Our dive was…a standard dive was 70 degrees, which is almost straight down. You look up 70 degrees, it is almost straight up.

7 And uh..most of the triple As – there was a lot of, was all flat beneath me. And uh..uh…it was just like a practice go. There wasn’t anything…there was it. The only think I sure hadn’t planned on….I pulled out. I dove from north to south, left hand pull in, and uh, as I pulled out I pulled into Carrier Division 3, which had three light carriers, but it also had the battleships, the Bushashi, Yamayato, those big monsters, and two others big battleships, and I think 6-8 destroyers. So we provided target practice for them (laughter).

The visibility was…it was after sunset, but we could still see the wakes of the ships so there wasn’t any problem in identifying the carriers. After we got clear of the Japanese fleet I started my turn to the left and began to pick up my birds. In due course, Kane with his fighters immediately took escort position above us. My gunner called out, “look over there. Those Japanese Zeroes are putting on an air show.” There were about 6-8 Zeroes doing their acrobatic wingovers, rolls and so forth. I couldn’t help but think that the whole world was falling apart on these guys, what in the hell are they doing over there? Keller immediately went over and took care of them; they were no longer a part of the air show (laughter).

I was talking to Joe Faust a year or so ago about this thing. You know the Marines at Guadalcanal. He said they did that even then, a year before. Why they did it I don’t’ know. In any event, I picked up nine of my birds and the fighter escort and the torpedoes, and then since I was the last one in there I picked up practically everyone else that was there. I guess they looked at us as seemed to know what we were doing. So I took off course, 100 magnetic, I remember it very well. I turned on my running lights and settled back at slow, slow cruise.

Interviewer: Conserve that fuel?

Admiral Ramage: Converse, conserve. I ate an apple, it was a nice day. In the meantime, Cauley my gunner was telling me what was happening, because you don’t see it when you are leading a strike. Your job, I had 29 planes, my job was to set them up and make sure they don’t get screwed up in their dives, and so forth. You really don’t see what goes on except what is in front of you. The one thing on the pullout that I will always remember was, “Cauly said ‘ look back she’s burning from asshole to appetite’.

Interviewer: Oh my, how wonderful.

8 Admiral Ramage: I never did see it. That was when we pulled into the Bushashi, Yamato and they were blasting us with their 18-inch guns and everything. Too busy with them.

So getting back to the trip back. As soon as the other planes saw that we currently heading where they wanted to go, they put on throttle and pulled away, they weren’t going to get stuck with steaming along at 140 knots. I don’t know why they didn’t stay, they ultimately ran out of fuel and we didn’t. But the trip back was uneventful. About 75 miles out it was black. We picked up the discreet beacon signal that was Enterprise and uh.. we flew right back. As we came back into the fleet you could see all the lights in the world. Admiral Mitscher had turned on all the lights, except for one thing. He should have turned on the lights on the carriers, not the destroyers and everything else.

Interviewer: Oh dear, sticking out…

Admiral Ramage: Sticking out. I think we lost a few planes because they couldn’t tell. As a matter of fact we lost about 100 planes that day. I am glad that didn’t happen today. Mitscher would have been relieved, you know. There would have been a depressed Mitscher. Somebody from Washington would say you are through.

Interviewer: That’s true.

Admiral Ramage: But there wasn’t any of that stuff at that time. As I came in I wanted to maintain the integrity of my strike group and take them directly back to the Enterprise that was where we came from. I broke my first division down into the landing pattern. As I came down into the group I could see that I wasn’t going to make it. A plane was on its back with lights on and uh..so I went around. I said to the sniper flight ‘pancake’ which means on any carrier available.

So we were circling around we were down to about 10-15 gallons on gas at that time. We had been out almost 5 ½ hours so….

Interviewer: Okay, so in due course…?

Admiral Ramage: Yes, in due course I was able to see what I think was a light carrier, one our lighter, smaller carriers that has a very narrow deck, but just in front of it I saw a big one, so I just popped up and landed on a carrier. Landing was uneventful, we had been night qualified. Uh. I landed, it was dark, which got ahead of the barriers which they put up so you can’t jump the barriers and go into the pocket we call it, the front of the plane is parked on the forward end of the

9 deck. As I taxied into position I kept getting the ‘wing fold’ signal, trying to get me to fold my wings. But the SPD doesn’t have folding wings, so I wasn’t able to fold my wings (laughter).

Interviewer: So you couldn’t fold it (chuckles)

Admiral Ramage: (Chuckles) I couldn’t fold it. Uh, as I came forward, a crewman from the flight deck came running up to me and said, “Sir get the hell outta here”. He was afraid that someone would jump the barrier and they would lose more airplanes. Apparently they had had one go over the barrier before I landed. So my gunner and I went into the island stretcher, which is right there on the flight deck. I said ‘what ship?’. They said “Yorktown”. So I was glad to be aboard and I wish I could say there was something heroic about it, but it wasn’t. It was all in a day’s work. We were well trained. We had planned it from max range and we had been very lucky. We had found the Japanese fleet without any search; we went directly to it, got in, got some hits and came back out. We were night qualified so although we were spread all over the fleet we couldn’t land on our own ship.

The one thing I like about the thing was Enterprise, although we had some planes in the water that night lost no one. I think we were the only big carrier that didn’t have anyone killed during that battle. I went down below for dinner and about the first one to come up was Capt. John Kromlin, who was the real hero of mine. He had been Executive Officer of the Enterprise the year before and he came in. He had a sheaf of paper and said “Jigdog, it looks like you guys got ‘em today”. I said, “Well, , I was the last one in and the last one out. I am not so sure. I think we got two on the strike”, and it turned out that was right. And he said, look at these, and I said they were optimistic. John looked at me…they were hit but not down. He left and said, “Have you been debriefed?” and I said, “No, they seem to be kinda of ignoring us”. Yorktown had lost all of her bombers; they had run out of fuel and were landing in the water. There were pretty down in the dumps, there were a lot of people that were swimming in the water. And so finally I got a debriefer to come on in he was a Commander. Of course I was barely a Commander.

He asked me questions that I answered to the best of my ability. He said well how many hits did I get. I said, “I really can’t tell you, I was really set up, for the run”. He said “Don’t you even know how many you hit?” (chuckles). All I could think of that here is a guy who has never been shot at, all hell is breaking loose up there with the Zeroes and the Triple A from the Task Group we went on but

10 these big battleships there working us over, and he wants to know whether I knew what we had done! I guess he couldn’t understand that when you are leading a strike your main job is to set up the people who are following you and get them in and out just as fast as you can. This kinking around that a lot of the air groups did I think tried, is not conducive to a long life. You commit yourself and you get in and out.

Interviewer: That’s the reason the Enterprise didn’t lose.

Admiral Ramage: Well the Enterprise was lucky. That was part of what I consider our good fortune. We were Enterprise sailors. She did the job at Midway and so forth. We would never let any other ship forget it too.

Interviewer: My grandson served on the new Enterprise.

Admiral Ramage: Yeah. It was my flagship for a while. So, I was very pleased to be able to get that distinction – not only flying off the old Enterprise but being an Admiral on the new one.

That is about it. I went to bed to sleep that night, but I don’t think I slept at all. I went through the day’s work and just to think if there was any place I screwed up.you know you are probably the same way. You know you make your mistakes before anyone else does. And I couldn’t think of anything…I think we were just fortunate that…

Interviewer: Nothing glaringly wrong.

Admiral Ramage: We thought that we ought to have a lot of hits but we couldn’t claim em until they were verified.

Interviewer: Now those people, for instance, off the Yorktown, that were in the water, were they going to depend on submarines to pick them up? Or on aircraft marking them..how did they…

Admiral Ramage: No, it was night. I only last Banks, my number two guy. He was landing when he ran out of fuel, when I destroyer picked him up. That’s the only one in my squadron. But the fleet the next day retraced the steps. We picked up over 75-80% of the people, so the loss of life was not that great. I can tell you what it was. The results, which we didn’t know at the time, Japanese losses, sunk were the Taiho and Shokaku, two big ones which were gotten by the submarines the day before, which we didn’t know. The third one in that Strike Group was Zuikaku; she was pretty badly beaten

11 up. Hal Beul and his guys from the Hornet and some of the Yorktown guys got good hits, and she was pretty badly beat up. But they got her back in time for the October 25 final defeat of the Japanese there in the Battle for Leyte Gulf. Damaged were the other two carriers that we went for, the Hiyo was sunk. The Junyo, I just found out yesterday, I was talking to an air crewman who had been on the search the next day, the Junyo was really badly hurt and that was the one I think was burning. The Rhio was streaming oil.

There were other carriers that went on this thing, the Lexington in particular. So I don’t want to claim that we did all the damage, but for all practical purposes Carrier Division 2 was out. The Junyo and Rhio never came back to combat. They went into the ship hospital and they were broken up after the war. So that takes care of really…another carrier, which was in Carrier Division 3, was the Chiyoda was a light carrier. I have pictures of her; they did a remodeling job on her. So six out of the nine carriers were for all purposes, out of action. But the main thing was that they had lost all these aircraft the day before in this big turkey shoot as we called it. They had about 100 planes to go into battle on the second day. After the second day they had 12. So for all purposes Japanese carrier air was out. It was the end of the war for them.

We were kind of unhappy and I know Admiral Mitscher was unhappy because we wanted them all and he was only able to get this one have a strike out because of the distance, and so forth. What they had left the next day was hauling it up to the home islands. And again we still had responsibility to the amphibs and so forth. So, I was called over the Admiral Mitscher’s flagship. We went into Eniwetok in about mid-July. He had sent for me; he wanted to know why the SBD squadrons, that is Waymouth’s VB16 and my VD10, were able to make it with few losses. As a matter of fact, the total losses for both days for the US were 30 on the 19th of June in the turkey shoot, and 96 on the 20th, for a total of 126 planes. But in the meantime we had taken the fleet out. Let me see, here is what we had rescued – a total of 76, so we had a good record on them.

The outfit that went on the oilers did sink a couple of them. I might mention that when I got back to the Enterprise the following day I went up to see Admiral Reeves and was telling him about the strike and I mentioned that one of the carrier groups had gone on the oilers and he damn near blew his stack. He said “who was it” and I told him who I thought it was and he said, “he wasn’t working for

12 me but if he was, he would be through”. That’s your job, the carriers.

Interviewer: Let me ask a questions about, you know, when you went into Saipan, just as cover in the air surface part of your job. Tell me a little about that. Did you have as rigid an objective? Admiral Ramage: Yes.

Interviewer: Were you programmed to go and strike there?

Admiral Ramage: Yes, we had both. We had specific objectives. By that time we had some of the escort carriers that had come out. They were attached specifically to the amphibious forces. So they had theirs, although as air coordinator they were under me when I was up there. They had specific objectives on the beach. Some of our bigger aircraft had specific objectives but the rest were held in reserve, circling out so the air coordinator could pull them in, We also had a coordinator on the amphibious flagship who would call them in to specific grid targets.

Interviewer: I see.

Admiral Ramage: We had so many airplanes you were concerned about collisions. I did observe the landings. I have never seen such gunfire in my life as our battleships and cruisers put onto that beach. I don’t see how a blade of grass could live. We have learned that terrible lesson at Tarawa you know. Then of course, this was different. It had a lot of flat areas. When the Marines hit the beach they started running and they ran until they hit their first objective and then they dug in. Man, when they hit the beach they started going. I just have so much respect for these guys. They … it was beautifully done operations and we, particularly the people who had been out there before were saying it was about time. Because on the Enterprise we were down to. . .we were the only ship in the Pacific during the winter of 42-43, in the South Pacific. Boy, when we left Pearl Harbor for the operation against the , you know, I have never seen so many ships in my life.

Interviewer: That must have been a glorious sight. To realize it was happening over in Omaha too.

Admiral Ramage: Yeah. Yeah. We did know. (Tape goes to side two here)

I still have faith. The country is good. We are having a temporary lapse of leadership at the present time. That will be corrected. (laughter).

13

From then on . . . on this cruise, we continued softening up Guam. There were still some planes and caves and we stayed there until about the middle of July. Then Group 10 was through, we had been out about nine months. So we went on into Eniwetok and then back to the States and go ready to go again. The big point was that we by that time had an excellent training situation. We had good people and a lot of them and the Japanese didn’t. They had an excellent first team but they didn’t have any backup. They had excellent airplanes, better than we had, but we had, in the meantime gotten the F6F, which is an excellent airplane, and the F4U, which was coming in. The TBF was a good airplane and we were getting good equipment. Our airplanes were well protected; we had armored seats, bulletproof tanks. Their Zeroes didn’t, if you hit them they were flamers, they were gone.

Interviewer: What about your torpedo people? Did they have any trouble with that mission?

Admiral Ramage: Torpedoes you know are out of season. In this strike that I lead, our torpedo planes carried six, no four 500-pound bombs. Some of the CVLs, the light carriers, carried torpedoes. Belle Wood in particular claimed hits with torpedoes on the Taiho. But we still didn’t trust them. After the first problem, as you know, our submarines were doing a lot better than we figured on getting hits, but they weren’t detonating properly. I think the same thing was true in detonation in our torpedo planes. By this time, however, I think the problem had been rectified. But our torpedo people – we still didn’t trust it. And let’s face it, a torpedo run is not a very fun operation. They fly in at about 1,000 yards at about 200 feet and every things shoots at you, I mean.

Interviewer: Sounds scary to me.

Admiral Ramage: Well, the way we tried to cover it was in this coordinated attack. Let’s say I got 30 planes on this strike. We would have the fighters above, high cover and low cover to protect us against the Zeroes. The dive-bombers were the base element, with the torpedo planes were tucked in underneath that. And so as we could come on in, the first thing the low cover fighters use eight, would go ahead of the dive-bombers. They would raise as much hell with the target area, the Triple A and everything on there. The dive-bombers would follow right with them. We started together, but they didn’t use dive brakes of course. So they were just coordinated right down to the T. And as such, the torpedo planes would come on in undercover of all this mischief that we hoped was being done.

14 Hopefully, this would have distracted them so much that they would be able to slide in low and drop a couple of fish. In the meantime a good carrier deck load strike would be 30-36 planes were usually on and off in about a minute and a half. You gave them concentration on the objective – they had concentration. You gave them a quick blast and were out. By that time our tactics were good, our equipment was good, our people were good, it was a great difference from the year before.

Interviewer: Admiral Ramage, I really thank you. So does the Nimitz. Golly, we are just so anxious to get this history built up.

Admiral Ramage: Our guys that came with us, Webb and George Duncan have had the same good time that I have. I have enjoyed it. Enjoyed the people.

Interviewer: I am so glad.

Admiral Ramage: Helen McDonald has been great for us.

Interviewer: Honestly she is just remarkable.

Admiral Ramage: Yeah.

Interviewer: She does a superior job, with such enthusiasm. Wow. Quite a lady.

Admiral Ramage: I think that is all in particular with that battle. It didn’t get much publicity. Midway was of course, to paraphrase Winston Churchill. The battle of Midway was the end of the beginning, and the Guadalcanal campaign was the beginning of the end.

Interviewer: Well put, which he usually did.

Admiral Ramage: Yeah.

Interviewer: I think that one of your compliments to your fellow warriors is your feeling about your crew chiefs.

Admiral Ramage: Yeah, yeah. I would also like to take this opportunity – I was lucky enough to be in command positions on carriers all the way through. I was skipper of a couple and air group commander, carrier division commander, task force commander. But I would like to say a little bit about our Vietnam guys. Because I think it was more demanding than anything we ever did. Maybe there were instances, like Midway, which were more demanding – we lost all

15 those planes, but these guys would – a carrier would come out there and they were on station for six months and there were actually in combat for 80-90 days at a time. They were going into a very, very complex area in North Vietnam. They had the surface to air missile, the Triple A, the anti-aircraft that is always dangerous. They complimented each other because if you got high enough to avoid the Triple A you were in the surface missile zone. You would always concerned about Migs, but not really. But we lost an awful lot of planes. They did it day after day. We tried to give them one day in ten stand down. Often times, we couldn’t do it. It was a…. let’s say a challenge. I was awfully close to the pilots. I will tell you why they did it. First, was there inner feeling – they did it because it was expected of them. That is why they were there. Then was the closeness within the squadrons. They help each other, professionalism to do their job and comradeship. This is why they did it. There was no great patriotic duty like in World War II. We guys were all doing our job and were dedicated to each other. There was none of this glory, nothing fancy about it. It was a day’s work. We had heroes in the air. I only know of one real hero. That is Jim Stockdale with his eight years in the clink there in Vietnam.

I am very close to the Vietnam guys and I always try to – I would have yesterday if I had the chance but we were short on time – paid a compliment to them as I say, I think much more was demanded of them than us. We never operated in the strike situation of more than 4-5 days. Then we would reload and pull back. In Korea we operated 3 days out of 4. The fourth day was getting ammunition and so forth. There wasn’t anything of this incessant day after day, day and night operations that was demanded in Vietnam.

Interviewer: Which is psychic damaging.

Admiral Ramage: Well, they seemed to do it. The tail hookers which have gotten an evil name, I think incorrectly so; they have guts, they will do the job. And they are still out there.

Interviewer: I am sure happy to hear it. Sometimes, you wonder.

Admiral Ramage: Well, they are in a temporary malaise. They are unhappy with their leadership, political and military, in Washington. The younger guys feel they have forgotten loyalty down. You know it beget loyalty up, and I can stay pretty close to those guys and we are in San Diego right around Tiger town, so I see quite a few of them. I tell them to hang in there, it can’t last forever.

16 Interviewer: You must have been a wonderful officer, and a beloved one, I am sure.

Admiral Ramage: I’d like to think so. It’s a funny thing about a career in the Navy. I came from Iowa. My dad told me as I was going to the Naval Academy; I was about seven years old. Richard Byrd had come back from the North Pole. They weren’t financed by the government. They got some money from National Geographic; they were in debt when they came back. Byrd was around with his slides and movies he had taken. He had on that white uniform when he came to Waterloo, Iowa. Fifty cents to see Admiral Byrd, then Commander Byrd. He had those gold wings and I told my Dad that was what I was going to do. My Dad thought I was a lot smarter than I am. I managed to get into the Naval Academy, which was a great thing for me. Naval aviation was really the great break. If it hadn’t been for the war my max would have been . That was the way it was. Aviation wasn’t really acceptable. We were advised not to go into aviation when we were at the Naval Academy.

Interviewer: Oh really.

Admiral Ramage: No future. An interesting note. I selected the Enterprise right away to go to. Captain Panol was skipper of the ship and the eight of us Ensigns were ordered to the ship. There were only two volunteers because the others had been ordered there. I don’t know why the others were so dumb. Because he asked how many asked to come to the Enterprise. Grant Rogers and I held up our hands, and he said that he wanted to talk to us guys afterwards. We went over and he said, “Young men you are never going regret coming to my ship”. And I never did. I was lucky enough to serve two years as a black shoe in the gunnery department, to come back to the Enterprise as a squadron commander.

Interviewer: You do start out as either, in those days, as radio personnel or gunner, is that the first?

Admiral Ramage: When you get out of – the way it worked, we all graduated as engineers. We had people that graduated with a degree with social studies, or some damn thing. Everyone out of the Academy ought to be an engineer. We can get other people from other colleges to let’s say, level it up a bit with some of the outside stuff. Our degree in the Class lf ’39 was in electrical engineering. I think they are going back to that – we are engineering outfit. The Navy is mechanical and electrical outfit. But after you got through, you got a degree in electrical engineering; you went to the fleet for two

17 years. They rotated you through the various departments on the ship, so you had a good background in sailors. At the time, I was very unhappy because I wanted to be an aviator. I wanted to go to flight training, and my contemporaries on the ship were flying squadrons – God, I just worshipped them. They were gods. As I look back on it, it was wonderful – all of it. Nowadays you don’t have that privilege. As you get out of the Academy you go to your specialty. I guess life is too short.

Interviewer: And to complex, too much technology.

Admiral Ramage: Yeah. But anyway, we got the full treatment and I was so lucky.

Tape ends here.

Transcribed by:

Darlene Smyth Temple, Texas July 17, 2004

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