Remembering Pearl Harbor, the day that lives in infamy
Toolbox
Published: December 7, 2008
Editor's note: East Carolina University interviewed graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy, class of 1941. The following interview with Frederick Ruder, who lived in Manchester for a brief period, was conducted in 1987.
Ensign Ruder: We had a change of command on Dec. 6, 1941. After the change of command, there was a change-of-command party in a restaurant on the other side of the island.
Q: Who was assigned?
Ruder: The new skipper was Lt. Cmdr. Ed Beck. The executive officer was Lt. Dan Carlson. The engineering officer (I remember him well because his initials were B.E.S.T.) was Bruce E.S. Trippensee.
We went to the change-of-command party. I didn't have a girlfriend, but my roommate, Archie Kelley, had his girlfriend there. He had been assigned to the U.S.S. West Virginia, which was on the West Coast at the time he reported on board, and he told me, "When you get out there, take good care of 'Rosebud.'" That was her nickname. So I dated her until Archie arrived. That night, Dec. 6, 1941, the West Virginia was in port, but Archie had the duty. I thought, "Why don't I take 'Rosebud' to the change-of-command party?" I did with his O.K., and then I took her home. One of the other officers on board, Ensign Isbell, and I went to the Moana Hotel for the night because we didn't have to report in until Sunday afternoon. We were awakened in the morning by the telephone ringing. A voice on the phone said, "Report back to your ship immediately." I asked, "Why?" They said, "Just report back to your ship. There is some sort of emergency." I said, "Okay." I hung up the phone and rolled over. Then "Ring, ring." "Report back to your ship immediately." So we got up and crawled into some duds, threw our suitcases together, and left.
Q: Was the hotel in an area that was that far away from the Naval station?
Ruder: Yes. It was in Waikiki Beach. It was about 10 or 15 miles away.
Q: You were far enough away that you could not hear all that was going on?
Ruder: No. We thought that it was some sort of air raid drill. They said that there were planes around. So we decided that we would stop at the Crossroads Restaurant and have some breakfast. When we arrived there and had our first clear view of the sky, we realized that it was not a drill. We started heading to Pearl. We were still in civilian clothes, but the car must have had stickers on it because they kept waving us through. Unfortunately, it was the engineering officer's car, an old Essex, and it had a radiator leak and ran out of water. We pulled in someplace and poured some water in there and then kept on going. The first thing I saw was the MPs shoving cars off the road that were not supposed to be there, especially Japanese cars. When we got near the gate, this one car came tearing out of there. It was a Japanese laundry or dry cleaning car, and part of the back end was sort of blown off. You could see the door hanging loose and kind of shredded.
We got down to the landing, and by this time there was no doubt in our minds that the Japanese were hitting. The whaleboats were coming in and out from the destroyer nest. We hopped in the first one we recognized and started heading for the destroyer nest. When we were in midstream, a second wave of Japanese planes came in and torpedoes were dropped all around us, you might say. Battleship Row was already ablaze and there were a few more hits from that wave of planes. We could see the Arizona from there. It was utter confusion. When we looked for our destroyer, it was not there. It had gotten under way. We boarded another destroyer and went out to sea. We stayed out for three days. There was quite a collection of officers on her — so many that they didn't know what to do with them.
Q: Both the Phelps and this other destroyer that you got on got away without being damaged.
Ruder: Yes. I think all of the rest got away without being damaged. We were all in a pique. Things were torn down. When the Phelps got underway, I think we had four torpedoes out on deck being worked on. We had been working on them over the weekend. The water filters had clogged and I had them taken apart and disassembled in order to get to the water filters, clean them out and change the water. The water had algae or something growing in it, because of the warm weather and the impurities in the water. Fortunately, my first class torpedo man (Frank Day) was on board. He and a couple of others put those torpedoes together, slamming them back in the lockers or in tubes — wherever they could put them. They did this underway at sea. I have never seen a ship putting out to sea with torpedoes on deck. I was real proud of those guys. The only two officers on board were the engineering officer, Lt. Trippensee, who was the only ship's officer, and the commodore's aide, who was a JG (lieutenant junior grade). He had nothing to do with the ship and didn't know anything about a ship. Those two got that ship underway and took it out to sea and operated it for three days by themselves.
Q: Once you got out to sea you didn't transfer to the Phelps, you just stayed where you were.
Ruder: Right. We could not even find the Phelps. We didn't even know where she was. We were ordered to stay where we were. We came back about the third night. They put us in a motor whaleboat and said, "Go out and see if you can find your destroyer." It was kind of scary, because it was all blacked out. Anytime you came near anything, there was a "Stop or I'll shoot" type of thing.
Q: Did you have a lot of hulks of sunken vessels around?
Ruder: Yes. As we tore out of there on Dec. 7, we watched one of the four-stack cruisers. She was sitting on the bottom. The deck was awash. Everybody on board was waving us off. They could not get out, of course. There was a midget Japanese submarine reported near the entrance. One of the destroyers up ahead had depth charged the hell out of her. We didn't know if she was sunk or not. We got out of there. We finally found our ship, and things settled down to a dull roar.
Q: Trying to go out to the ships during the middle of the attack was a pretty hairy experience, wasn't it?
Ruder: Yes, it was. The gunners who manned our 1.1 anti-aircraft guns were right at the head of the bridge. I think we had another set back aft. They were very difficult machines to operate. They would go "tunk, tunk." We had a little clip of four in one side and by the time those would go down and flip over, you had another clip of four on the other side. We got rid of them in four or five months and got some 40-millimeters in there — Bofors. The gunner claimed a hit on a Japanese plane, but a lot of other people claimed a hit on the same one. But it was enough to put a Japanese aircraft on the side of the destroyer.
Q: Wasn't it kind of frustrating that you couldn't raise your big guns?
Ruder: Yes. She was designed for surface warfare, not for anti-aircraft. I don't know why they built them that way.
Q: Talk about being shortsighted.
Ruder: Well, air battles were not expected too much at that time, I guess. All we had were the 1.1s and 50-caliber machine guns. I don't remember if we had the 20-millimeters yet or not. We got those later. I don't remember any of the battles very well except the Coral Sea. I was on board for engagements of Bougainville, the Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and the Solomons.
Q: After Pearl Harbor, did you stay with the Phelps?
Ruder: Yes.
Q: Were you assigned to a task force or were you all operating on your own?
Ruder: We ended up with a carrier task force. Usually it was the Lexington, sometimes the Saratoga or the Yorktown. Sometimes it would be two carriers at a time. It seems to me that we spent most of our time with the old Lexington. In a short time we had four or five qualified officers of the deck underway. I was the general quarters officer of the deck, so when we went to general quarters I was officer of the deck. The earliest battle I can remember after we left Pearl Harbor was when we were sailing into someplace, probably Bougainville, to launch an air attack, and a formation of bombers came in very high and started dropping bombs on us. Meanwhile, the ships that had anti-aircraft batteries were shooting away, and our fighters were also homing in on them. They started going down like mad. One after another started going down. They turned back quickly after dropping some bombs. As far as I know, we didn't get any damage in that task force at all. A lot of those Japanese bombers were sure shot down by our aircraft and by anti-aircraft fire.
Q: Maybe it was one of the early battles.
Ruder: Yes. If you have time to go through the Battle of the Coral Sea, I'll talk about it.
Q: OK. Let's talk about it.
Ruder: Being an ensign on board, you didn't know a heck of a lot that was going on, but we did know there was a Japanese task force nearby. Finally, general quarters sounded up. By this time we had been shaken down quite a bit and were well trained. Cmdr. Beck, the skipper, knew there was not time for the carrier to put up signal flags to change course, speed, or anything like that; so they would just put up a signal, "Follow my movements." That was it. I'm not sure but I think we were assigned 2,000 yards with the carrier on a true bearing, about west. When she started turning, we started turning. When she came back, we came back. We just followed her motion and kept her on that true bearing and distance as close as we could. We didn't have radar then. We used a stadimeter and eyeball. The stadimeter was a device for measuring distance optically by prisms. Cmdr. Beck turned the bridge over to Ensign Isbell and me. Isbell had the starboard side and I had the port side. Whenever the carrier was on my side, I maneuvered the ship, and when the carrier was on his side, he maneuvered the ship. The skipper paced back and forth. We were in charge of conning the ship. We were maneuvering madly. The planes had been launched when all of a sudden one of the light cruisers appeared to burst into flames. She was an anti-aircraft cruiser, and with all her weapons firing at once looked like a sheet of flame. I think it was the Juneau. Then we saw these planes coming in high and low. Dive bombers started peeling off and going into the carriers, and torpedo planes were coming in. I saw one wave of torpedo planes coming in and drop their torpedoes. I watched one torpedo come at us, aiming right toward our bridge, then pass underneath my feet. I didn't have the conn at this time. Isbell had it because the carrier was on his side. The torpedo was aimed for and hit the carrier, and it was set deep enough to go underneath us. Thank goodness. That was the first time I really felt uptight.
It got dark then and we could see her burning. One explosion on her lifted her mast straight up before it tumbled.
Q: What condition was the carrier in?
Ruder: The carrier had to order "abandon ship." She was in bad condition. Evidently, they were just not able to control the fire. She had been hit several times by dive bombers and torpedoes. So we, along with a couple of other destroyers and cruisers, were ordered to stand by. All ships started putting boats in the water. We put a boat in the water with Ensign Bill Sweatt, a junior officer, who started picking up survivors. We were so close that we could see them with our binoculars easily. About the third trip back, he was very low in the water — he had the boat loaded and people were hanging on the sides. Fortunately, it was not too rough then. He got back after he had delivered most of the survivors to the nearest destroyer, which was not us. But some of the survivors came aboard us, too. He told me later on, "I never thought I was going to make that last trip because I couldn't get away from the ship. She was sinking and the suction was pulling us in. We finally had everybody give a hard shove at the same time we put on full power and managed to break away." That was close. He said, "I could see that ship right over my head, and I couldn't get away from it."
Q: That would be frightening.
Ruder: Yes. He got some sort of award for that action.
Q: The Japanese had broken off the attack as it got dark, so he didn't have the danger of them coming in.
Ruder: Not at that time. The Phelps received orders to go ahead and sink the Lexington, because we didn't want it to get into Japanese hands. Everybody was off of the ship by that time. Just recently I found out that one of my classmates was on board there at that time, and I didn't even know about it. It was Herbie Anderson.
Q: How was the Lexington sitting in the water at this time?
Ruder: She was sitting perfectly still but burning like a torch. It was listing but not sinking, and we didn't know how long it would take. My skipper sent me down to the torpedo mounts, and my chief torpedo man, Frank Day, and I got on the mount with our headphones on. We were ordered to go ahead and launch our torpedoes. It is in the report there. I can't remember, but I think the first one missed and went under. It had been set too deeply. The way I remember it was that we were told to use our magnetic exploders. The idea was that the magnetic exploders would activate right underneath the keel, because of the magnetism, but they didn't work. Then we were told to set them to hit. So we set them shallow, so they wouldn't go underneath the carrier. I think either two or three of them hit. The third one had a nice hit. By this time, it was getting quite dark, but we could still see her. She was still sitting up there. The skipper said, "Go ahead and launch No. 4." We sent it off. I don't know whether the torpedo hit it or not, but shortly after the torpedo was launched, all we could see was a little flame in the edge of the water. My guess is it hit. Then it got so quiet and perfectly dark. All of the burning hulk had disappeared. It was just a little burning flame. Then there was the most awful explosion you have ever seen, felt or heard. The deck felt like it jumped up a foot. I was still sitting on the mount, the mount still pointed to the starboard side and up there on my right hand was a 20-millimeter gun crew. It was about 10 feet above the main deck. One of the men up there dropped right over the side of the mount and landed down on the main deck. He looked around kind of sheepishly and climbed back up again to his battle station. After we found out we had not been hit, we were ordered to return to rejoin the task force.
Q: When we left off at the last interview, Capt. Ruder, we were talking about the Battle of the Coral Sea, I believe, and your sinking of the Lexington.
Ruder: Since our last interview, I have received a letter from Frank Day, who was the chief torpedo man on the Phelps and who was on the mount with me at the sinking of the Lexington. He is a retired lieutenant commander and lives in Prescott, Ariz. I'd like to bring out a few points that he has in his letter to me.
The air battle had caused the Lexington to burn fiercely that night. Finally, we had orders to sink her. We had confidence that we had prepared our "fish" well. The first four fish were set at 50-foot depths to explode under the Lexington. The fourth fish had an erratic run. It ran off to the right and missed. After this event (announced by sonar), we changed the depth to 30 feet and then fired another fish. Directly after the fifth torpedo was fired, the Lexington capsized. What had been a well-lit sky from the burning Lexington became very dark. We didn't really know what had happened until a torpedo hit and the Lexington blew up. After that, we were glad to head south and join the rest of the ships.