WWII veteran recalls sinking of Liscome Bay

The aircraft escort carrier Liscome Bay was struck by torpedoes from a Japanese submarine around 5 a.m. on November 24, 1943, while her planes were being readied for the dawn invasion of Tarawa and Makin Islands. The explosions and fierce fires afterward sunk the 500-foot vessel.

The flash of the explosion was seen for miles across the South Pacific. It only took the ship another 20 minutes to sink below the waves. The ship went down with over 700 sailors, and during the next eight hours, 272 survivors in various stages of injury, mostly from burns, were plucked from the water and taken aboard transports encircling the disaster.

“I was burnt pretty bad,” said Dewy Smith of Cathlamet. “When the Liscome blew, the fire burnt the left side of my face and back and made both my hands pretty much useless.”

Smith, now 84, was a medical corpsman on board the Liscome Bay during WWII and doesn’t remember how long he floated in his life jacket before his rescue.

“At one point I remember thinking, ‘I hope they find me before my survival vest gets too full of water,’" Smith said with a chuckle.

Affectionately called “baby flattops” by WWII sailors, the Liscome Bay had only been in at sea five months when it was destroyed in the Pacific. Construction started in the Kaiser Shipbuilding Co. yard in Vancouver in December, 1942, and finished in April, 1943. Official Naval records from the period show that the ship moved to San Diego and then departed for Pearl Harbor, Hawaii October 21, 1943, on its way to Operation Galvanic and the seizure of Makin and Tarawa atolls in the Gilbert Islands.

“I was just 17 when I enlisted.” Smith said, “and 18 when I got my first ship. I had been assigned to the Liscome while on leave and missed boarding her in Washington, so had to catch up with her in San Diego.”

The Liscome Bay, the destroyers and other ships that guarded her had been at sea only 90 days before the Japanese submarine I-175, commanded by Commander Sunao Tabata, arrived for battle on November 24.

The Naval incident report from the battle says there was no warning of a submarine in the area until about 5:10 a.m. when the ship's lookout shouted, "Here comes a torpedo!"

The torpedo struck the Liscome starboard side aft of the engine compartment with a shattering roar. A second detonation (the aircraft bomb magazine) occurred a few minutes later. The explosion was intense and lifted the entire stern of the Liscome Bay which then burst into flames and disintegrated.

The ship went down like a stone.

The thinly plated Liscome Bay carried over 200,000 pounds of bombs, which exploded en masse. The fire intensified when the explosion ignited 120,000 gallons of bunker oil and untold thousands of gallons of aviation fuel, and innumerable quantities of bullets and cannon shells.

Reports from the battleship New Mexico stationed 1500 yards from the blast zone say crewmen had to run for their lives when their ship was showered with fragments of burning deck and fiery shards of metal. Five thousand yards further from the zone, the USS Maury reported that it was splattered with clothing and various other debris. Sailors on board the USS Hoel saw smoke and flames rise at least a thousand feet into the air.

When the attack occurred, Smith was on the bridge with Captain Wiltsie.

“When the ship was hit, the captain and bridge officers were busy. As the ship started to list to starboard and sink, the captain turned to me and said, ‘You better get out of here. I’ll be along in a minute,’ so I left,” said Smith.

Smith believes he was in the hands of God at this point because his survival of the Liscome Bay sinking had more to do with the toss of a coin rather than quick thinking on his part.

The morning before the attack, Dewey said the ship had gone to general quarters about 4:10 a.m. He and another medic had arrived at sick bay for their regular duty shift. The duty officer told them that one had been ordered to serve on the bridge deck as the Captain’s medic.

“That morning we flipped a coin and I lost,” Dewy said with a rye smile. “If I’d won, I’d be dead now because the corpsman I flipped with went down with the ship.”

Smith escaped off the ship on a monkey line, a 200-foot piece of rope hanging off the side of the ship.

“I went down the line into the water and started to swim from the ship and that’s when it happened,” he said.

As Smith swam for his life, another explosion beneath the ship’s waterline blew the ship’s belly apart. Pressure from the force of the blast against the water lifted him and everything around the blast zone from the water and then dropped it all back into the water into a blazing inferno.

“The water and everything in it was on fire,” said Dewey. “You couldn’t breathe. Black smoke got in your eyes, your mouth, your nose. The flaming oil stuck to my face and back and hands.”

Smith could feel the heat in his lungs but doesn’t remember how he cleared the fire or the hours he drifted in the Pacific before he was rescued.

The following day, Smith was transported back to Pearl Harbor and then on to San Diego. Six months later, he took shore leave. “I lived in Montana then,”said Dewey, “and when I could finally use my hands again I called my mom, she was speechless. It seems neither the Red Cross or the Department of Defense had notified her I was alive.”

Smith said the Liscome Bay did see action and was instrumental in winning the battle of Makin atoll. He said prior to the sinking, the carrier was part of a pre-dawn invasion force November 20 that pounded the island with bombs and helped smash the Japanese troops' gun emplacements on the island.

The Liscome Bay’s aircraft also helped neutralize enemy air bases and supported U.S. Marines landing on the island. The ship’s aircraft also provided bombing-strafing missions and intercepted enemy raids.

Smith served another 21 years in the navy, retiring at age 37. After retirement he went back to school. He laughs at the thought,

“You know, I joined the Navy because I hated school, and what was the first thing they did when I enlisted – send me to school,” Dewey said. The Navy sent him to 17 different schools.

Smith said that while he was in the Navy, he was part surgeon and part X-ray technician. After his discharge he became one of the 12 original civilian Naval medics at the University of Washington. That program eventually became the first physicians assistant training school in the U.S.

Smith moved to Cathlamet and retired for a second time from what is now the Wahkiakum Family Health Center in 1991. Today, he and wife Jean, 82 (who was instrumental in helping Dewey remember his story for this interview) live comfortably in Cathlamet.