Yorktown's guns>>>>>>>>
Cake says "6 1000 "8 One thousand rounds for mounts 6 and 8
Yorktown Gun crews for mounts 6 and 8, five inch guns. Ulithi 1944
Picture Caption: First row standing l. to r. Huff, Walker, Allen & Boone Second Row l. to r. Dale (holding cake) Franklin. Armstrong, Popa, Simko Provost & Phillips Third Row (sitting on gun barrel) l. to r. Hooper, Keenan, Holmes, Hummel (holding dog) Rosenfeld & Hefti Top Row l. to r. Check, Lagarde, Fosnaugh & Harriman
Picture from wlag1@cox.net (Willie Lagarde)
The Yorktown's Six Inch Guns or are they "Five Inch Guns"?
I
first boarded "the fighting lady", December of 1965, at that time I was giving
three options. Be a boatswain cook, or a gunner's mate. I was trained as a
"pointer" on one of the ships 5"3/8 guns. The pointer controls the elevation and
pulls the trigger to "shoot" the gun. He also has an automatic switch that
allows the bridge to take control of it's function. We would train by shooting
at drones and floating targets three or four rounds at a time.
Nothing prepared me the first day on station when we shot twenty
contiguous
rounds. We were half
way through when I opened my mouth and the concussion blew my ear plugs out,
next worst thing I did was to look up at the end of the gun. I
had second degree
burns and my eye lashes and brow singe. I asked that day to be relieved. I'm
happy I ended up a boat's.
Picture caption: Gun crews for mounts 6 and 8 five inch guns. Ulithi 1944 (sitting on gun barrel) l. to r. Hooper, Keenan, Holmes. Notice Holmes with gun powder covered face.
Six Inch gun or Five Inch gun? the guns were called five inch thirty
eights (5"3/8) the diameter was six inches (6") and the bore is 5 3/8".
This was explained to me by a old gunners mate. I still don't fully understand
it. Rey Colon, BM3 1966-69
When I was in 2nd Division
I stood gun watches. That's me, the tall skinny guy on the right.
Later on, I remember as a photographer's mate taking pix of the Marines at their
gun, popping away at a sled. I tried to walk on a ladder up to the flight deck
from the gun bay but I'd walk a step and the Marines would fire and the
concussion knocked me into the Yorktown and I'd hit hard against my side on the
ship.
I'd take another step up and the Marines would shoot off another shell and
again I hit the side of the ship from the concussion...went on two or three
times till I finally got to the
flight deck and hastily walked to the island. Those guns sure had a wallop.
But the Yorktown guns couldn't compare with the most powerful battleship ever built; the Japanese ship Yamato. She bristled with three huge triple turrets of 18.1 inch guns that could fire a 1½ ton projectile over 22 miles. Their blast was so fierce that boats could not be carried on the open deck. At each salvo antiaircraft gunners in exposed positions were likely to be scorched, stripped of their clothing, and knocked unconscious.
Daniel A. Bernath Airman in 1968 off the coast of North Vietnam, Yankee
Station.
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