A moonless
night
in Vella Gulf:
One man’s war
Joe Poitevin
remembers a
watershed battle, 58 years ago
"Listen
to the jingle,
The rumble and the roar
As she glides amongst the islands
Through the lagoons and the shores.
Hear the rush of those mighty engines;
Hear that lonesome sailor call,
While slicing through the Pacific
On the Craven Cannon Ball."
--from "The
Salty C" yearbook, published in 1944
By JEFF
CORDES
Express Staff Writer
Joe
Poitevin was a 22-year-old University of Washington senior when the
startling news broke about Pearl Harbor. It was a Sunday in December 1941
and the lanky young man from Idaho Falls was skiing.
"We
were halfway up Mount Rainier. There weren’t any ski lifts in those
days. We just put on our climbers and climbed up," said Poitevin
recently, recalling the fateful day from a distance of nearly 60 years.
A map of
the Solomon Islands, site of The Battle of Vella Gulf on Aug. 6, 1943.
click
on map for
larger version.
He said,
"On the way down we stopped and talked to some other guys who were
climbing. They said they had heard over the radio that the Japanese had
bombed Pearl Harbor.
"We
looked at each other and I can remember saying that’s the craziest story
I’ve ever heard. The Japanese would never have bombed Pearl Harbor. But
that’s all we heard all the way home, on the radio."
With their
lives irrevocably changed in an instant, Poitevin and his friends got back
to school and immediately started planning their futures. They would serve
their country. What branch of the military and when to enter the service
were big questions.
Millions of
Americans, just like Joe Poitevin, answered the call to duty at the dawn
of World War II.
Many died
in wartime, and many more lived. Their service and the lives they built
after the war have largely made the United States what it is today, at
Independence Day 2001.
A Ketchum
resident from 1965-76, Poitevin now lives in retirement in Ogden, Utah,
with his wife of 55 years, Dodie. Remarkably fit and trim at 81, a
twice-weekly golfer, Poitevin has a remarkable story to tell.
It’s a
story about the destroyer USS Craven and how it played a major role in the
Battle Of Vella Gulf, a watershed American success story that turned the
tide of the South Pacific campaign in August 1943.
The Battle
of Vella Gulf has been called by historians "the most perfect torpedo
attack in U.S. naval history." For years it was required study at the
U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.
Poitevin
was a gunnery officer on the USS Craven at Vella Gulf.
The USS
Craven was the third vessel named for Commander Tunis Augustus MacDonough
Craven, USN, who died on the monitor "Tecumseh" in The Battle of
Mobile Bay on Aug. 5, 1864, during the Civil War. As a result of the
Battle of Vella Gulf, the U.S. Navy commissioned an Aegis Class cruiser
Sept. 18, 1993, at Norfolk, Va.—during the 50-year commemorative reunion
for the crew of the destroyer—and named it USS Vella Gulf.
Aboard from
April 15, 1943 to Sept. 5, 1945, he spent two years, four months and 20
days on the "Salty C." The ship was blessed with good men and
even better luck in its nine years of service, from launching in 1937 to
scrapping in 1946.
The war
gave Poitevin the rest of his life, including a bride, whom he met during
his time at gunnery school in San Diego in 1942. And Dodie gave him four
children. The family came to Ketchum and Joe built three lumberyards for a
city on the cusp of a real estate and construction boom.
So much,
emanating from chance. So much, springing directly from dogged American
determination. So much of our history, arising from a day of infamy in
Pearl Harbor and hard-won victories like Vella Gulf.
"Vella
Gulf was the first time the Navy had a significant victory in a major
battle," said Poitevin about the events of Aug. 6, 1943, when
American torpedoes sank three Japanese destroyers and killed 1,500
Japanese. There were no American casualties.
"Because
it was so decisive, a demonstration of what destroyers could do in combat,
it pumped up the rest of the Navy," Poitevin said.
It helped
the U.S. Pacific Fleet finally establish superiority over the enemy in
night surface action—an area in which the Japanese with its deadly
torpedoes had dominated the Allies in the early days of the war.
A 90-day wonder
World War
II was an interruption for young men from small towns. What they were
doing before the war, they did after. For Poitevin, second oldest of six
children, it was the lumber business.
Poitevin’s
family had been involved in the East Side Lumber Co. in Idaho Falls since
1910. His father operated a retail lumberyard there.
Lt. Joe
Poitevin, gunnery officer of the USS Craven, in this 1944 photo published
in the destroyer’s "Salty C" yearbook.
Joe sold
nails in the store as a teenager during the Depression. He graduated from
Idaho Falls High School in 1937 and pursued a business degree at the
University of Washington. Joe’s dad died during his junior year. Then
Pearl Harbor hit.
At first
Poitevin liked the idea of serving in the Air Force, but they wanted him
right away—and Joe was just six months away from graduation and a
college degree.
"The
Air Force couldn’t guarantee that I’d be able to graduate. The Navy
could," he said.
He enlisted
in the Navy’s V7 officer candidate program, which allowed him to
graduate from UW in Seattle in June 1942. Poitevin took a train to New
York City and went to Midshipman’s School at Columbia University from
August through December 1942.
Those were
some of the darkest days of the war.
The
American military was hastily fortifying itself after Pearl Harbor, in
armaments, ships, planes and men. It needed officers, quickly. After three
months at Columbia, he earned the same commission given to ensigns who had
gone to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis for four years.
"They
called us ‘90-day wonders,’" said Poitevin.
When
confronted with a choice of vessels, Poitevin chose destroyers because he
preferred a smaller ship with a more informal atmosphere. A small crew
meant much individual responsibility. The destroyers were sleek, moved
fast and were highly maneuverable. He liked the idea.
It was
closer quarters in wartime.
For
instance, the USS Craven’s peacetime comple-ment was eight officers and
150 crew. In 1944, its heaviest year of action, the Craven’s complement
was 19 officers, 13 chiefs and 248 crew. The ship was about a football
field in length.
The Navy
assigned Poitevin to the destroyer gunnery division and sent him to a
six-week gunnery school in San Diego. For a Navy man, San Diego has always
been a good place to learn a lot about worldly things.
He met a
local named Dodie Gregory, who had been a UCLA student when Pearl Harbor
broke. She was working in surplus naval material disposal. It was New Year’s
Eve, hours away from 1943, and they ended up at the same party.
Joe
Poitevin, as he approaches his 82nd birthday, is a proud member of the
Ogden Country Club and the USS Craven Reunion Association. He is chairman
of the 15th reunion, to be held in 2002 in Salt Lake City. Express
photo by Jeff Cordes
"You
know, I never saw him out of uniform until we’d been married for six
months," said Dodie recently, looking with affection at her husband,
the same man who’d had the audacity to ask for a date on New Year’s
Eve.
They were
married in October 1945, and he was discharged in May 1946.
But first,
there was a war going on in the Solomon Islands off Australia.
Dark days, small
victories
Pearl
Harbor was such a devastating defeat that it took Allied forces nearly two
years to regroup and take the offensive in the Pacific War.
The Battle
of Midway in June 1942 and Battle of Guadalcanal from August 1942 through
early 1943 were steps in the right direction. But by no means was victory
assured.
"When
the war started, the U.S. Navy was ill-equipped with ships, equipment and
men," said Poitevin. "There were 16 Gridley-class destroyers
built from 1937 to 1940 but other than those, we only had World War I
destroyers. By the end of the war, though, we had 800 destroyers."
"We
knew there was new stuff coming out. But it was touch-and-go in 1942 and
early 1943. Because we didn’t have many destroyers, when we lost one it
was a major loss."
On Nov. 13,
1942 the Navy lost five destroyers during the bloody Naval Battle of
Guadalcanal. It was the worst day’s loss of destroyers in the Navy’s
history. By Dec. 1, 1942, the toll was 25 destroyers lost since Pearl
Harbor.
"In
the first year after the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor, morale was low,"
Poitevin said. "The war in the Solomon Islands was a delaying action
until the Navy got re-equipped."
But it was
more than that. The Solomons became vitally important as a proving ground
and staging area.
The
near-complete destruction of U.S. battleships at Pearl Harbor had altered
the strategy of the naval war in the Southwest Pacific.
"Battleships
took such a hit that the U.S. strategy changed to focus on task forces
with several aircraft carriers—and destroyers running screen," he
said.
"Aircraft
carriers became the centerpiece of the task forces. We always had four,
five or six destroyers traveling ahead, fanning out and using sonar to
detect submarines," Poitevin said. "Eventually the task forces
got bigger and became more effective."
Invading
Japanese captured the Philippines in 1942 and forced Gen. Douglas
MacArthur, commander of American forces in the Philippines, to escape to
Australia. Subsequently the Solomons became critical to MacArthur’s goal
of retaking the Philippines on the road to victory in Tokyo.
The Allies
needed to crack Bismarck’s Barrier, a formidable obstacle of Japanese
air and naval bases on small islands dotting the Bismarck Archipelago off
New Guinea.
At the same
time, the Japanese sought to extend that defensive perimeter into the
Solomons. Pushed off Guadalcanal by the U.S. Marines, they fell back and
fortified another, nearby Solomon island, New Georgia. The Japanese weren’t
going away.
By the
summer of 1943, however, the Japanese Navy was winning.
They gave
better than they got. The general opinion was the Japanese had better
torpedoes than did the United States, although Allied gunnery was judged
as superior. Performance of American torpedoes had been miserable.
The
destroyers had scarcely used their torpedoes. In fight after fight
destroyers had been used for escort, anti-submarine warfare and protection
of cruisers, instead of being sent on independent missions for torpedo
attacks. U.S. destroyer men had been clamoring to be cut loose and used.
"Usually
we didn’t get close enough for torpedoes to be used," said Poitevin.
"We were mostly escorting ships around, doing troop transport."
So was the
enemy.
The
Japanese established a formidable garrison on Kolombangara, an island in
the mid-Solomons on the edge of Vella Gulf. They ran transports with fresh
troops and supplies to Kolombangara three times in 12 days—July 19, July
22 and Aug. 1.
The
transports were nicknamed "The Tokyo Express," by the Allies.
Nothing
stood in their way except Allied PT motor torpedo boats, which "Tokyo
Express" destroyers brushed away like bothersome bugs. In fact, Lt.
John F. Kennedy’s PT-109 had been sliced in half by the retiring
Japanese destroyer Amagiri on Aug. 1, just five days before Vella Gulf.
Somewhat
complacent, the Japanese Command concluded that Allied torpedo boat
patrols weren’t a big danger to large warships. The enemy didn’t
expect to encounter Allied destroyers, especially at night.
Filled with
1,000 troops and 55 tons of supplies, "The Tokyo Express," with
its four, modern and first-rate ships headed into the Vella Gulf, bound
for Kolombangara, on the evening of Aug. 6, 1943.
Strategically,
it didn’t seem to matter to the Japanese that it was the fourth time in
three weeks they had taken the same route. They underestimated the Allies,
a fatal mistake.
They didn’t
see the six U.S. destroyers until it was too late.
The Battle of Vella
Gulf
Shipped
from San Diego to New Zealand after the New Year, Poitevin and six other
"90-day wonder" ensigns joined the USS Craven in New Caledonia
on April 16, 1943.
"You
guys might have been a little better trained, but we’ll take you,"
Poitevin recalled his new shipmates saying when they greeted the
reinforcements, in typical Navy style.
The USS
Craven had lived a charmed life early in World War II.
Escorting
the carrier Enterprise in delivering troops and planes to Guam and Wake
Island, it had been delayed by heavy seas on Dec. 7, 1941—just 50 miles
out of Pearl Harbor.
"They
had been due in Pearl Harbor Dec. 6, but because of the storms and strong
head winds they had to slow down because the destroyers couldn’t keep
up," said Poitevin.
During the
costly Naval Battle of Guadalcanal when many destroyers were lost in 1942,
the USS Craven was in Pearl Harbor, ready to steam off for the Fiji
Islands with a task force headed by the carrier Saratoga.
When he
came aboard, Poitevin was assistant gunnery officer, in charge of one of
the Craven's 20mm anti-aircraft batteries. The ship carried 16 torpedoes
carried in four quadruple torpedo mounts. It had eight guns, four of them
five-inchers.
The torpedo
battery on Gridley-class destroyers such as the Craven was the largest
carried in the Navy. By Vella Gulf, the 21-inch diameter, 2,200-pound
"tin fish" had been improved with flashless powder and flash
hiders—effective in night war.
The
torpedoes traveled fast and close to the surface, at 46 knots for a run of
4,500 yards. Still, they needed the element of surprise to succeed.
On Aug. 6,
the surprise was there. And the mission was clear—to intercept the four
Japanese destroyers.
"We
had these coast watchers, many of them Australian," said Poitevin.
"They’d sit there at night and watch the Japanese ship movements.
It was because of coast watchers that we got the information that Japanese
ships were coming down loaded with troops and supplies."
Newly
assigned Rear Admiral Theodore S. Wilkinson, short of undamaged cruisers,
gave Strike Force leader Frederick Moosbrugger six destroyers and the
freedom to use them in offensive action.
USS Craven,
Dunlap and Maury formed the group assigned with striking first with
torpedoes, since the other division with Lang, Sterett and Stack had lost
half their original torpedo complement for 40mm guns.
They left
Purvis Bay at 11:30 a.m. At 9 p.m., they manned battle stations. At 11:30
p.m., the leading ship Dunlap made radio contact with the fast-moving
Japanese "Tokyo Express" of leading ship Hagikaze, Arashi,
Kawakaze and Shigure, now eight miles off Kolombangara.
"Everybody
was pretty tense and on full alert. The anticipation was great," said
Poitevin. "But we’d been preparing for it a long time. The feeling
was we wanted to get a chance to show what we could do."
Good
fortune favored the Yanks.
It was a
moonless night, black as could be, with visibility restricted to just one
mile, and a calm sea after rain squalls earlier in the evening. Allied
destroyers hugged the coastline of Kolombangara, making them invisible to
the naked eye.
"We
snuck up on them," Poitevin said. "The fact that we were so
close in to the island was the thing that saved us. We fired our
torpedoes, and they never saw us."
Within 30
minutes the destruction would be complete.
At 11:40
p.m. Moosbrugger gave the order to fire. Craven, Dunlap and Maury each
fired eight torpedoes at three-second intervals, from ranges of 4,300 to
4,800 yards. They ran five feet below the surface, at 36 knots, striking
their targets in four minutes.
The four
minutes seemed an eternity to the Americans.
"They
were just huge explosions," said Poitevin, watching from the deck.
There were brilliant flashes over the horizon. PT sailors in Kula Gulf 28
miles away saw the loom of flame and thought Kolombangara’s volcano must
have blown its top.
On the U.S.
strike force destroyers, the sailors broke into cheers. Seven of the 24
torpedoes had hit their marks, an impressive number.
Hit in the
fireroom, Hagikaze, the lead ship, exploded and went down in minutes.
Kawakaze, the replacement for Amagiri, damaged in the collision with
Kennedy’s PT-109, received a tin fish in the magazine and capsized soon
after. Arashi blew up and sank at 12:10 a.m.
Final toll—three
destroyers down.
Tameichi
Hara, skipper of Shigure who had been skeptical about that night’s
"Express", turned tail for Bougainville instead of helping the
Japanese survivors in the water. The U.S. ships tried to rescue the
survivors, but most took their own lives rather than become prisoners of
war.
Stunned by
the attack, the Japanese had fired only two or three shots and one
torpedo. Some 1,500 soldiers and sailors perished. In contrast, a gun
loader on the Lang crushed his hand—the only American casualty. The only
Allied damage was a broken-down feed pump on the Maury.
"By
the crack of dawn, we were back at Purvis Bay," said Poitevin.
"Nobody slept all night. Everybody was hyper. It lasted until
morning."
The battle
was catastrophic for the Japanese. They had never been beaten in night
torpedo action in 20 months of war. Within a week they concluded
Kolombangara could not be held.
With Hara
and the rest of the Shigure crew still alive to tell the tale, the
Japanese had been taught, finally, to respect American torpedo fire.
"It
was a shot in the arm. We were starting to get more ships and starting to
think—we can do this," said Poitevin. "Vella Gulf was the
first time the Navy had a significant win in a major battle."
The battle
was a major stepping stone in the Solomon Islands campaign, which snapped
the logistical backbone of the Japanese Navy.
The USS
Craven further distinguished itself in the South Pacific, particularly in
1944, when it earned battle stars for its part in the capture of Saipan
and Guam, and the Battle of the Philippine Sea.
By October
1944, the destroyer was back in Pearl Harbor, its combat role mostly done.
In May 1945, when Germany surrendered on VE-Day, USS Craven was in the
middle of the Atlantic. Peacekeeping duties followed in the Mediterranean,
then it was decommissioned in April 1946.
Having
sailed 427,434 miles in nine years of service, the Craven had fired only
eight torpedoes in combat, all during the Battle of Vella Gulf.
Poitevin
left the ship as gunnery officer in September 1945, at Marseilles, France,
and headed for duty in the United States. His first personal duty was
getting married, in October 1945. In May 1946, he was discharged with the
rank of first lieutenant.
Building a life
World War
II soldiers and sailors celebrated and got back to work.
After the
war, Poitevin returned to Idaho Falls with his wife and started raising
his family. He worked as a salesman for Bennett Glass & Paint Co. for
two years. Another two years was spent operating an ice cream business in
Idaho Falls.
Poitevin
and his younger brother Dick, a U.S. Army paratrooper who served in
Europe, took over the family lumber business and changed the name to
Poitevin Lumber Co. They ran it for 12 years and then sold it to Anderson
Lumber Co.
"I
went to work for Anderson Lumber in Idaho Falls for a year and a
half," Poitevin said. "One day, the president, Roy Anderson,
came into the store and said he wanted to start a lumber yard in Ketchum.
"Well,
I’d been to Ketchum, and I remembered the little sign at the edge of
town said it had only 600 people, so I asked him if he really wanted to
start a lumber yard in such a small town. Never mind, he said, you’re
going to get over there and do well."
The
Poitevins moved to Ketchum in 1965. He built the first Anderson Lumber
yard at Washington Avenue and Second Street, across from the IOOF Hall.
The original building still stands, housing Business as Usual. The
building where Magic Lantern Cinema is located was the lumber yard.
When they
arrived, oldest son John was attending the University of Washington.
Martha was a freshman at the University of Idaho, soon to transfer to
Berkeley. Jane was a sophomore in high school and Greg was an eighth
grader and avid skier.
Martha
Poitevin returned to Ketchum after graduating from Berkeley and co-founded
the Idaho Mountain Express. She served on the Ketchum City Council and was
the editor of this newspaper before handing the reins to current editor
Pam Morris in 1980. She lives with her family in Indianapolis, Ind.
Joe
Poitevin ended up building three lumber yards in seven years.
Anderson
Lumber moved to its current location on Warm Springs Road in 1971. The
lumber yard was destroyed by fire in 1972 then rebuilt.
Joe and
Dodie left Ketchum in 1976 and moved to Anderson Lumber’s main
headquarters in Ogden, where he was director of personnel before retiring
in 1982.
It’s been
a good life, one made better by USS Craven reunions that started in 1988.
Of 13 reunions, the Poitevins have attended all but three.
For the
first reunion, at Sioux Falls, S.D., 200 USS Craven veterans were
contacted and 90 showed up. Only 35 Craven vets attend now. "People
are dying off," Poitevin said.
This year’s
reunion will be in October in San Antonio. Next year, the 2002 Winter
Olympic year in Utah, the 15th USS Craven reunion will be held
in Salt Lake City. The chairman is Poitevin, who lives close to the
Snowbasin Olympic skiing site.
"We
share a lot of memories, mainly because we were together at a very busy
and exciting time of our lives," Poitevin said.
Editor’s
note: Most of the information for this story came from the
recollections of Joe Poitevin. Some came from historical accounts by the
USS Craven Reunion Association, some from the actual ship’s log from
1937-46, and also official war reports by Vincent P. O’Hara and Samuel
Eliot Morrison.