thedrifter
02-06-06, 10:56 AM
Article published Feb 6, 2006
Shelby vet recalls his role during the Marianas Turkey Shoot
By Ron Simon
News Journal
LEXINGTON -- The USS San Juan has a hand in every major South Pacific battle from Guadalcanal's bloody Slot to the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot."
"We fired the first shots going into Guadalcanal before the Marines landed," Ralph Sturts recalled, adding the San Juan was one of the first American warships to enter Tokyo Bay at the end of World War II.
The San Juan was a cruiser, but, as Sturts remembered, it was more of "a glorified destroyer" because of its smaller size and light armament.
And wherever the San Juan went, Gunner's Mate Sturts, a Shelby kid, went with her, a tracker manning the quad 40-millimeter anti-aircraft guns topside.
"They got an immense amount of use," he said.
Sturts said there were two trackers, the men who moved the guns up or down, left or right, depending on where a target could be found. The targets were Japanese war planes that swarmed over the San Juan, trying to kill her.
Later, the enemy would be the Kamikaze pilots who flew their planes directly into American ships.
But the San Juan, unlike two of its sister ships, the USS Juneau and the USS Atlanta, would survive the war, taking just one nasty hit on the fantail during the Marianas battles that froze the rudder and sent the cruiser temporarily sailing in circles. During that same attack a 500-pound bomb crashed alongside the ship.
"We darn near drowned," Sturts said, recalling the wall of saltwater, a miniature tsunami that flooded the gun mounts and drenched the men manning them.
The Turkey Shoot in the Marianas, a group of islands including Guam, was so named for the shootout in June 1944 in which more than 300 Japanese aircraft were destroyed. Although the battle seemed one-sided at times, that didn't mean American forces were unscathed.
But by this time, the San Juan was experienced at dodging the fatal shot. Its sister ships weren't so lucky. Earlier in the war, the USS Juneau went down during the battle in the slot between Guadalcanal and Savo Island. The famous five Sullivan brothers and all crew members went down with her. The USS Atlanta went down soon after.
"We picked up the seven or eight survivors from the Juneau. She had a ship's company of over 600 men. The Atlanta barely had 10 survivors,'' Sturts said.
Those two ships, the San Juan and one other, were smaller cruisers with slightly lighter armament than their larger brethren and no more were made, Sturts said.
One oddity of war came when the San Juan rescued a downed Japanese plane and its crew.
"We used our crane to bring the airplane on board. It had Goodyear tires and a Pratt and Whitney engine," he said.
Then there was the great typhoon in 1945.
"That was fun," Sturts said. "They say if you roll over 30 degrees, water will go down the stacks and sink you. We rolled 70 degrees and survived."
But live ammunition broke free and was rolling on the floors in the ship's upper handling rooms. Sturts, one of the few sailors on the San Juan who wasn't too sick to move, had to go down and secure the loose shells.
Sturts said after Guadalcanal, the San Juan was assigned to aircraft carrier escort duty for the rest of the war. Sturts didn't quite make it to the end.
"Just after Okinawa they sent me home. I had enough points accumulated for three men," he said.
Now 85, Sturts is living in the Lexington Court Care Center and plans to move to the Soldiers and Sailors Home in Sandusky. Both of his wives have died. His first, Miriam, died in 1980 after a long battle with tuberculosis. His second wife, Dee (Doris), died in 2002. Until just two years ago, Sturts was still employed in the security business.
A native of Shelby, he graduated from Shelby Senior High School in 1939.
"You couldn't buy a job back then," he said.
The job he found was with the Shelby Tube Works. He was also dating Miriam Armstrong, of Shelby, but the couple wouldn't marry until Sturts was in the Navy.
He joined just as quickly as he could after Pearl Harbor.
"They were in such a hurry to get us in that basic training was just three weeks long. We didn't even learn the manual of arms," he said.
On Feb. 28, 1942, Sturts and more than 600 other men became the ship's company of the newly launched USS San Juan. Sturts got what he considered one of the best jobs on board, manning a set of anti-aircraft guns.
"Never down below decks. Always up in the fresh air," he said. It was a busy place, and Sturts said gunners were simply too busy to be scared.
"Afterwards, you would realize how close you came to it."
In the next three years, Sturts and the San Juan would be in every major sea battle in the Pacific with the exception of Midway. One of the last ports of call was Saigon, he said.
Many of Sturts' fellow crew members were from Shelby and Mansfield. Among the Shelby residents who served on the San Juan were Herm Talbot, Robert Randall, Howard Ramey and Keith Mong. Talbot, later the owner of Shelby's Coffee Shop, earned a Purple Heart during the attack that damaged the ship's fantail.
There were some memorable shore liberties in New Caledonia where the ship's company played a baseball game -- minus balls, bats and gloves. One of the spectators was Eleanor Roosevelt, who was touring the South Pacific at the time.
"The whole thing really confused her," he recalled.
Once the baseball equipment arrived, so did Bob Feller, who was serving on a battleship at the time.
"He struck me out three times. It was great," Sturts said.
After the war, Sturts worked for the Kroger Company for 15 years and then hooked up with the Richland County Sheriff's Department for a long career on the road, in the detective bureau and in a special job collecting overdue child support payments.
He retired with the rank of lieutenant. He worked for several years as a bailiff for Common Pleas Court Judge James Henson.
Then he and Dee moved to Apache Junction, Ariz., until Dee died and Sturts came home.
Shelby vet recalls his role during the Marianas Turkey Shoot
By Ron Simon
News Journal
LEXINGTON -- The USS San Juan has a hand in every major South Pacific battle from Guadalcanal's bloody Slot to the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot."
"We fired the first shots going into Guadalcanal before the Marines landed," Ralph Sturts recalled, adding the San Juan was one of the first American warships to enter Tokyo Bay at the end of World War II.
The San Juan was a cruiser, but, as Sturts remembered, it was more of "a glorified destroyer" because of its smaller size and light armament.
And wherever the San Juan went, Gunner's Mate Sturts, a Shelby kid, went with her, a tracker manning the quad 40-millimeter anti-aircraft guns topside.
"They got an immense amount of use," he said.
Sturts said there were two trackers, the men who moved the guns up or down, left or right, depending on where a target could be found. The targets were Japanese war planes that swarmed over the San Juan, trying to kill her.
Later, the enemy would be the Kamikaze pilots who flew their planes directly into American ships.
But the San Juan, unlike two of its sister ships, the USS Juneau and the USS Atlanta, would survive the war, taking just one nasty hit on the fantail during the Marianas battles that froze the rudder and sent the cruiser temporarily sailing in circles. During that same attack a 500-pound bomb crashed alongside the ship.
"We darn near drowned," Sturts said, recalling the wall of saltwater, a miniature tsunami that flooded the gun mounts and drenched the men manning them.
The Turkey Shoot in the Marianas, a group of islands including Guam, was so named for the shootout in June 1944 in which more than 300 Japanese aircraft were destroyed. Although the battle seemed one-sided at times, that didn't mean American forces were unscathed.
But by this time, the San Juan was experienced at dodging the fatal shot. Its sister ships weren't so lucky. Earlier in the war, the USS Juneau went down during the battle in the slot between Guadalcanal and Savo Island. The famous five Sullivan brothers and all crew members went down with her. The USS Atlanta went down soon after.
"We picked up the seven or eight survivors from the Juneau. She had a ship's company of over 600 men. The Atlanta barely had 10 survivors,'' Sturts said.
Those two ships, the San Juan and one other, were smaller cruisers with slightly lighter armament than their larger brethren and no more were made, Sturts said.
One oddity of war came when the San Juan rescued a downed Japanese plane and its crew.
"We used our crane to bring the airplane on board. It had Goodyear tires and a Pratt and Whitney engine," he said.
Then there was the great typhoon in 1945.
"That was fun," Sturts said. "They say if you roll over 30 degrees, water will go down the stacks and sink you. We rolled 70 degrees and survived."
But live ammunition broke free and was rolling on the floors in the ship's upper handling rooms. Sturts, one of the few sailors on the San Juan who wasn't too sick to move, had to go down and secure the loose shells.
Sturts said after Guadalcanal, the San Juan was assigned to aircraft carrier escort duty for the rest of the war. Sturts didn't quite make it to the end.
"Just after Okinawa they sent me home. I had enough points accumulated for three men," he said.
Now 85, Sturts is living in the Lexington Court Care Center and plans to move to the Soldiers and Sailors Home in Sandusky. Both of his wives have died. His first, Miriam, died in 1980 after a long battle with tuberculosis. His second wife, Dee (Doris), died in 2002. Until just two years ago, Sturts was still employed in the security business.
A native of Shelby, he graduated from Shelby Senior High School in 1939.
"You couldn't buy a job back then," he said.
The job he found was with the Shelby Tube Works. He was also dating Miriam Armstrong, of Shelby, but the couple wouldn't marry until Sturts was in the Navy.
He joined just as quickly as he could after Pearl Harbor.
"They were in such a hurry to get us in that basic training was just three weeks long. We didn't even learn the manual of arms," he said.
On Feb. 28, 1942, Sturts and more than 600 other men became the ship's company of the newly launched USS San Juan. Sturts got what he considered one of the best jobs on board, manning a set of anti-aircraft guns.
"Never down below decks. Always up in the fresh air," he said. It was a busy place, and Sturts said gunners were simply too busy to be scared.
"Afterwards, you would realize how close you came to it."
In the next three years, Sturts and the San Juan would be in every major sea battle in the Pacific with the exception of Midway. One of the last ports of call was Saigon, he said.
Many of Sturts' fellow crew members were from Shelby and Mansfield. Among the Shelby residents who served on the San Juan were Herm Talbot, Robert Randall, Howard Ramey and Keith Mong. Talbot, later the owner of Shelby's Coffee Shop, earned a Purple Heart during the attack that damaged the ship's fantail.
There were some memorable shore liberties in New Caledonia where the ship's company played a baseball game -- minus balls, bats and gloves. One of the spectators was Eleanor Roosevelt, who was touring the South Pacific at the time.
"The whole thing really confused her," he recalled.
Once the baseball equipment arrived, so did Bob Feller, who was serving on a battleship at the time.
"He struck me out three times. It was great," Sturts said.
After the war, Sturts worked for the Kroger Company for 15 years and then hooked up with the Richland County Sheriff's Department for a long career on the road, in the detective bureau and in a special job collecting overdue child support payments.
He retired with the rank of lieutenant. He worked for several years as a bailiff for Common Pleas Court Judge James Henson.
Then he and Dee moved to Apache Junction, Ariz., until Dee died and Sturts came home.