Charles Wesley Huntington
Era: World War II
Military Branch: Navy
Charles Wesley Huntington served in World War II in the Pacific Theater serving in the U.S. Navy beginning on June 1, 1942.
He was assigned to the USS Tallulah (AO-50); USNAB Navy 140, USNAB Espiritu Santo; New Hebrides, USS Zebra (AKN-5) and the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt (CVB-12).
He was honorably discharged on May 6, 1946. Mr. Huntington’s rank was Water Tender 2nd Class.
Mr. Huntington was decorated with the Asiatic Pacific Ribbon one star, World War II Victory Ribbon and American Service Ribbon.
Charles Huntington was born in Niagara, WI. He is the son of Joseph and Cecelia Huntington. He attended vocational school in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Source: Veterans’ Memorial Hall veteran history form; veteran’s account follows:
“When ships go through the canal they take three days in fresh water, so all the barnacles and crap on the ship die and fall off, so you get a free cleaning. Just about all ships spend time and anchor there to clean the bottom of the boat. Otherwise everybody, even officers get underneath and scrape the bottom. The canal was free cleaning because we anchored in the freshwater lake.
On the Tallulah, we went to Aruba to pick up gasoline for Guadalcanal. From there, we went through the Panama Canal to the South Seas. I was seventeen. Eventually we arrived at Guadalcanal. At the time we were fighting there, the US owned Henderson Field but not much more of Guadalcanal. We stayed there eighteen days and got bombed at night. Guadalcanal didn’t have facilities for all that gasoline. We would go over to a little bay over at Tulagi, go back over to Henderson Field and fill up all the airplanes and everything. We went back and forth and supplied gasoline.
We were attacked by torpedo planes trying to get back up there. Noumea, New Caledonia is south of the war zone. We would go ‘up there’ meaning north to the war. So we were being bombed because if they knocked out the Tallulah, Henderson Field would not have any gasoline. Torpedo planes would come down and try to torpedo us. We had one escort ship. The convoy was two army cruise ships, full of soldiers. One tanker, us, and one destroyer. The destroyer shot at the torpedo planes. We had a big firefight. Our convoy knocked down all the torpedo planes, about twelve of them. We knocked them all down. I remember the sight of the planes burning in the water.
When the Tallulah returned back to the States in February 1943, I was seventeen years old. I jumped ship and was transferred to Terminal Island 25 in May 1943, four days before my eighteenth birthday. I was in the brig because I jumped ship. I was on leave and didn’t go back to the ship, stationed at Terminal Island. We went up to San Francisco together. Four of us. One guy lived up there. Ran out of money and turned ourselves in. The ship was gone by then. It took us eight days to get back to port. They threw us in the brig. You knew that would happen when you turned yourself in. I wasn't a deserter; I was just Absent Without Leave. There a couple of months.
Then they sent me back to Noumea, New Caledonia to a receiving station and I was assigned from Noumea to the receiving station. They sent me to Espiritu Santu, another set of islands in the South Sea. I went to rank of Fireman 1st Class. The ‘Zebra’ (not the name at the time, a merchant ship) had a torpedo hole in it. We filled the hole up. They cut the hole section out, cut it away and rebuilt it in the dry dock. The Navy took it and then renamed it the ‘ZEBRA’.
I ran the boilers so the thing had its own containment for electricity. Ships are self-contained. You pour oil in one and and it works. It’s a city. It took a long time to get into a dry dock at Espiritu Santu. It took time. I was on it a long time waiting for it to get into dry dock so we sailors were in the war zone on a merchant ship that had a hole in it, moored until it could be repaired. March 24, 1944. It became a navy ship that day.
The USS ZEBRA was a liberty ship which meant they pounded them out and they were generic. Kaiser Frazier made the Liberty Ships, which were not fancy ships, they were thrown together. Germany was sinking so damn many ships that Liberty ships were throwaways. So you won't find a photo of the ZEBRA.
Nets were torpedo nets put across the mouth of a port to catch torpedoes. On the ZEBRA we delivered salvaged as the war was moving north, we went back and picked up netting for netted harbors that were no longer necessary to be netted so the ships picked up the nets and reconditioned them.
When we were in Pearl Harbor, I went on an R and R. They gave you a bunk and you could do anything. The mess hall was open 24 hours a day. You had a period of eat and rest. Then we went back to the ship.
We went to Iwo Jima. I was firing boilers. There were about five of us around the clock tending boilers, about 15 to 20 people. There were that many machinists mates who ran the main propulsion generators. They were the “black gang,” about sixty people including the boiler tenders. We were down below all the time. Being in the black gang is like having a job. You aren’t topside, you just go and make steam, which makes electricity which runs the boat. Maybe two hundred on the ship.
On July 24, 1945 I was transferred and received back at the hospital at San Francisco, because I blacked out when I saw the Golden Gate Bridge. It took about ten days in the hospital before I woke up.
I was transferred off and was sent from San Francisco to the Naval Boiler and Turbine Lab because I had been in the war zone, and on August 11 1945, I went to Navy Yard in Philadelphia to go to school, and got a certificate for the school. It was a Naval Training School for oil burning; a Naval Boiler and Turbine Laboratory. I had been in a war zone so when the war was just about over, some guy at a desk looks at my records and says I’ll send you to school for a while, to give me a break. When the war ended I was in Chicago on VJ night. The troop train happened to pull into Chicago on VJ day and I was on my way to Philadelphia. I was kissing girls and drinking booze. Victory over Japan. VJ day.
On October 4, 1945, I graduated from Navy Boiler and Turbine School.
On October 13, 1945, with the war over, I transferred to New York to the USS FDR Roosevelt. I stayed until April 1946 when transferred to Norfolk, then to Great Lakes Training Station on May 6, 1946, I was honorably discharged.
In the class at the Naval and Boiler Lab in Philadelphia, I was about the fourth down from top of the class. They brought us into a room and up on the board were ships and places you could get assigned to. The top had first choice. I had this little girlfriend up in New York so I picked the FDR because it was unfinished and they were assembling a crew for it at the Navy Yard in Brooklyn. I waited for the FDR to be done. I transferred on to it. Eleanor Roosevelt came to speak at the commissioning. Of course FDR himself was dead. Then I went to RIO for the inauguration of President Dutra, the Brazilian president. I went to Guantanamo Bay on a shakedown cruise. They sent it to RIO for that inauguration of the new president. We were in RIO at festival time for a new president. Kind of a carnival time. After we left there and went back to the States, I was discharged.”
(Chuck sometimes relates the story of the Japanese bomber attack on the USS Tallulah in the Pacific. This poem was written by one of his shipmates.)
‘Contact in the Coral Sea’
By M. W. Mitchell
Off ‘Christobal troop transports ploughing.
Broad off their beam is proud Tallulah.
While plain to be seen in the moonlight gleam
Are Duke and his boys, the destroyer screen.
The ships swing left, moments later, right.
Not ceasing to zig-zag by day or by night.
All is serene, yet the waves and skies
Are constantly scanned by a thousand eyes.
Then off to the right does the skipper stare,
For “Radar” says there are planes out there.
Distance too great for eyes or ears to know
In moments we’ll learn if it’s friend or foe.
Do the black cats come to soar and sail
And to lead us in when the night does pale?
Or do Bogeys gather with their witches’ wings
To split us wide with their devil’s stings?
The answer is quick – a blinding light
A flare comes floating down through the night
Then off to port, ahead, astern and right.
More flares dropping with their hellish light.
Shift positions, Duke, the crescent’s done
Place your boys at the point of a hexagon.
Then motors sound with a rising roar.
The devils are spewed from out hell’s door.
There planes approaching from out port side
Let’s make it the buzzard’s final ride.
Tallulah’s guns answer roar for roar
And one went back through the devil’s door.
He went back to the devil, you can take it from me
For there was fire of hell where he hit the sea.
His brothers watched the lurid glide
And flunked the job for they swerved aside.
Well done, Tallulah, but hang on tight
There are four of them coming from the right.
The forward gunner did set the pace.
His tracer’s fingers did point the place.
Then all our guns joined the mad affray.
There was one more down and down to stay.
A destroyer came up at a racing run
Her guns all ablaze, then there were none.
Now then we take stock as we gaze all around
Then came over, there are nine of them downed
Off ’Christobal troop transports ploughing,
Broad off their beam is proud Tallulah.
Plain to be seen in the moonlight gleam
Are Duke and his boys, the destroyer screen.
All is serene, yet the waves and skies
Are constantly scanned by a thousand eyes.
