George Ross Interview - By William "BBall" Ball - Page 1 of 3
A few weeks ago, I had the great privilege of sitting down to talk with a friend of mine by the name of George Ross. In 1943 he enlisted in the United States Navy, serving in the pacific theatre of operations aboard the carrier U.S.S. San Jacinto. What makes George’s story so incredible is that he joined up (to be shipped off to serve his country in a war zone) at the tender age of SEVENTEEN! Coincidentally, he served aboard ship with the Navy’s youngest aviator; a young man by the name of George Herbert Walker Bush. They got to know each other, and their friendship has lasted almost sixty years. When they shipped out, both of these men were still teenagers, and both were uncommonly courageous by today’s standards. However, my guess is that back then, they were very much like many other young men and women, living in a time and a place that few of us would understand. His story both fascinated and inspired me. It also shed some light on his generation, their thoughts, their feelings of patriotism, and their sense of resolve concerning the task before them.
Before hearing George’s words, I thought a brief history of the U.S.S. San Jacinto might be in order.
U.S.S. San Jacinto
She became known as “the Little Queen”, but she began life as more of a bastard child. She was conceived as the cruiser Newark, but the lessons of Pearl Harbor and Midway showed that the real “hammer” of the fleet was now the aircraft carrier. She transformed to what became known as an Independence Class carrier (a hangar and flight deck were added to her cruiser hull), and U.S.S. Reprisal was to be her moniker. However, after an overzealous bond drive by the citizens of Houston (to replace the sunken cruiser by that name), enough money was left over to “buy” a small carrier, and the U.S.S. Reprisal was it. There was a rather large problem though; the name “Reprisal” just wouldn’t work for these Texans. It would have to be a “Lone Star” name, and the Department of the Navy knew that the best solution would be to have the good folks of Houston name her. Historians would come to know this freshman carrier as the CVL-30 or the U.S.S. San Jacinto, but to those that served aboard and loved her, she was the "San Jac".
Barely six months after her birthday, she dropped anchor in the Majuro lagoon, preparing for her baptism of fire. The target was to be the Marianas archipelago in the Central Pacific, and D-Day was 15 June 1944. She was one of the newest members of Vice Admiral Mitsher’s famed Task Force 58, but in the next fifteen months, she would wreck havoc and hell upon the foe, even doing battle with her exact counterpart, the Japanese carrier Zuiho (no surprise here, the “Little Queen” would come out on top). She would amass an incredible total from the enemy, her numbers putting to shame even some of her bigger (and more famous) sisters. She was to destroy or damage:
712 Japanese aircraft (12 by George and his fellow ship’s gunners)
Sink or damage 6 aircraft carriers, 2 battleships, 4 cruisers and 10 destroyers
Sink 200,000 tons of auxiliary, merchant or small craft
Expend 980 tons of bombs, 5,436 rockets, 42 torpedoes, 14,740 40mm rounds, 19,160 20mm rounds, 22,530 .30 cal. rounds, and almost a million and a half .50 cal. rounds.
Fly 11,120 sorties
Steam 153,000 combat miles
Spend 471 days in the forward area without rehabilitation
Spend 357 days at sea
She suffered from many Kamikaze suicide attacks, and although they were never struck full force, her crew would suffer death and destruction from the near misses. Some might say that she was “blessed”, but she had her share of personal tragedy. On the afternoon of October 17th, upon returning from a mission, one of her planes blew a tire on landing thus firing the guns that were inadvertently left “hot”. One crewmember was killed and 27 others wounded (including the Captain). She was to suffer much greater losses to come, but she could also deliver “one hellava punch”. Her gunners saved her time and again, even shredding a plane headed for the “Big E” off the coast of Leyte. Their signalers would blink the message, “thank you Little Queen”, displaying their admiration for the smaller ship and her crew. However, what the Japanese couldn’t accomplish, Mother Nature almost did.
In December of that year, fate concocted a mixture of winds and waves the likes of which this crew had never seen. The typhoon was to toss her in it’s 70-foot waves, and she would pay the price of her fast “cruiser hull”, for it would measure lists of up to 40 degrees. Aircraft broke their lashings, creating havoc on the flight deck. When all was said and done, the fleet was a mess, including three destroyers lost, but the “San Jac” was still afloat. She limped back to Ulithi to care for the wounded, and be patched up…literally patched up. The powers that be decided to make one carrier from three, so they grafted from the flat-tops Cabot and Monterey, and sent her back into the fray (she was to suffer a total of three typhoon encounters).
Her list of battles would read like a play by play of the war in the Pacific; first Philippine Sea, Yap, Ulithi, Peleliu, Leyte, second Philippine Sea, Luzon, Mindoro, Iwo Jima, Okinawa (where for the first time in the PTO, the naval cost in lives was higher than that of the ground forces), Formosa, and the raids on Kure, Kobe, Nagoya, and the Dai Nippon “center of the universe”, Tokyo itself. She would steam more miles in combat, and fight more battles than any other carrier during the last year of the war, and she would do it well.
Accolades would be many. A Presidential Unit Citation for “extraordinary heroism in action…”, seven battle stars, even a cartoon accompanying the operation order for the Okinawa invasion depicting a rather beat-up, rusty light carrier sporting longhorns, and streaming the Texas flag…the caption read, “Boy I sure do patrol this range.” (it would be the only such frontispiece of the entire Pacific War). However, possibly their greatest honor would be the message she received as she departed from Tokyo Bay the evening of Japan’s surrender. It read:
COMMANDER TASK FORCE TO SAN JACINTO
THE SPARK PLUG IS NOT THE BIGGEST PART OF THE MACHINE, BUT IT IS THE THING THAT MAKES HER HUM. WE WILL MISS THE LEADERSHIP OF THE LITTLE QUEEN, THE FLAGSHIP OF THE TEXAS NAVY. OUR BEST WISHES FOLLOW HER AS SHE PARTS COMPANY HOMEWARD BOUND. WELL DONE TO A GALLANT SHIP.
The following are George’s words:
FW: First of all George, I’d just like to say thank you for taking time to sit down and talk to us about your experiences during World War II. There are lots of questions I’d like to ask, but the first one might be the most obvious. Why did you enlist at the age of 17?
George: I had three brothers, and all were in the Army. I guess I felt that I wanted to do what they were doing...and so, my folks had to sign for me in order to enlist being 17.
FW: Could you expound a bit on what it was like growing up in the United States of America back then?
George: Well, back then, when we used to go to the movies, it was five cents, a haircut was two bits, and a shave ten cents...so it was quite a bit different. But at the time that I enlisted, people were really sticking together and stuff, so I thought it was great to be able to serve my country.
FW: Did you follow world events very closely, or would you described yourself as a "normal" teenager?
George: History was my favorite subject when I was going to school. As young as I was, and going through what I was going through at the time, I never dreamt that I would see New York and Boston and Philadelphia and these big cities and end up in Pearl Harbor before we went on to the Pacific. So I really thought that I was making history.
