More Heroes

Eventually I called every phone number on the list of living crew members of my father's squadron, Torpedo Squadron 5 (VT5). Unfortunately, quite a few of the numbers did not work.

Ed McGuckin helped me get in contact with a VT5 radio man whose address and phone number were not on the list: Marion "Mars" Dringman. Mr. Dringman, who was 18 when the Franklin was hit, did not remember his skipper, my father, but he did tell me his own experiences on that day. He was strapped into the plane piloted by Lt. Viewig when the first bomb hit. He scrambled out of the plane and somehow made it to the starboard stern, where he and a number of other men were trapped by the conflagrations on the rest of the flight deck. Eventually he went over the side into the water, whose temperature, he told me, was 52 degrees. After three hours he was rescued by the destroyer U.S.S. Hunt, the same vessel that rescued Wally Young.

I spoke to Lieutenant Bob Frank, who had been in charge of bomber maintenance on the Franklin. He would stand midship behind the flight deck officer who would wave the planes off the deck. Lieutenant Frank would listen to the sound of the plane's engine; only if the engine sounded OK to him would he approve the takeoff. He told me that he did not even hear the bombs explode from the initial attack (perhaps the concussion affected his hearing); he realized a disaster had occurred when he saw pieces of deck planking flying in the air. When the dense smoke cleared somewhat, he went out to several abandoned planes on the deck and turned their engines off. Then he fetched some life rafts and made it back to the stern, where he saw my father along with two other officers. He told me that he gave them the rafts and then went forward again to get some more life rafts. He was able to return some 20 minutes later, but the officers were no longer there. He had theorized all these years that the three officers had gone off in the rafts but had been missed by the rescue ships--in other words, that they had been lost at sea. When I told Mr. Frank that I had Ace's dog tags and ring, confirming that he had been found, he suggested that the raft must have presented a fine target for enemy planes and that the officers had been killed by strafing. I give more credence to the version from Ed McGuckin, however.

I also called some of the names listed as contacts on the list of deceased members and had a few interesting conversations. And I called some of the names on the list of VF5 (the fighter squadron) and VB5 (the dive bomber squadron) members. Again, I had some interesting conversations, but none of the crew members had known Ace.

One of these, William McClellan, a VB5 Ensign, had gone for coffee and was several decks down when the bombs struck the ship. He found his way to the flight deck and fought fires for hours. He was never even wounded, and he stayed with the ship all the way to New York.

Mr. McClellan disputed the supposedly official fact that the Franklin had really been named not for Benjamin Franklin, as the popular myth would have it, but for the little-known Civil War battle in Franklin, Tennessee. He said he had been aware of the official story before he had come aboard "Big Ben" for the first time. He had begun correcting some of his crewmates who attributed the name to Mr. Franklin, and they laughed at him. They were certain it really had been named after Benjamin Franklin, just as the U.S.S. Hancock had been named after John Hancock. Mr. McClellan's shipmates convinced him.

To my mind, the argument resembles the one between those who insist that the actual beginning of the millennium was January 1, 2001, on the one hand, and those who say it was a year earlier, on the other hand. There are just too many important controversies to get riled up about, and these arguments are not among them.

Another non-VT5 non-com, Henry Ashbrook, now residing in Kentucky, had been an aviation ordnance man and machinist's mate on the Franklin. He had been trapped below decks during the catastrophe, and he was one of the men rescued from suffocation by joining the human chain led by the celebrated Lt. JG Donald A. Gary.

After we had thoroughly discussed all the details of March 19, I just had to tell him that my stepfather was an Ashbrook, whose family had come from the Appalachian back country of western Virginia, bordering Kentucky. Unfortunately, Mr. Ashbrook did not know of any possible family connection.

A couple of the conversations I had with survivors were difficult. One of the flight crew members was trembling and weeping as he told me his story. Even though I suggested we could talk later or just communicate in the mail, he insisted on going on. He was still living with the horrible carnage of March 19, 1945. He was usually able to cope by stilling his feelings, but my call stirred them up into a seething tumult. The next day he wrote to me:

I'm sorry for the emotions yesterday. I've been holding it in too long. I am getting VA therapy for it. It helps to talk like we did . . .

Lois Ann Watt, the widow of VT5 turret gunner Thomas Watt (who passed away a couple of years ago), called me in response to the message I had left. We chatted for a while, and she told me her husband had talked about the events of March 19 for the rest of his life.

I had also left a message on the answering machine of Lt. Carr's widow (Lt. Carr died in 1984). Weeks later I received a letter from his daughter, Ann Currier Carr. My message had been corrupted and she hadn't been able to discern my number from it, but she was told my address by Wally Young (who was calling her on his own quest to prove his version of events).

I called her and we had a long conversation about Lt. Carr's letter to my mother, in which he stated that Ace's ring and dog tags had been "found" in his stateroom on the ship. Ms. Carr was not born until the 1950s and she knew of these stories only secondhand, but she believes that her father had been telling the truth. She promised she would send me copies of other pertinent correspondence her father had made.

While pursuing these stories during the autumn of 2002, I decided to join the American WWII Orphans Network (AWON), a broker of resources for researching family members killed in the war.

Through Jim Stuart I became acquainted with Phil Gentry, whose father had been a Marine ordnance specialist in the Black Sheep Squadron assigned to the Franklin. Phil has asked me to put Ace's story on his Web site.

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