Virginia “Ginny” Jesperson – Marine
Ginny Jesperson served as a Marine in San Francisco during the war. Not all the men in her office were excited that her service, along with that of other female Marines, freed them up for combat service.
This interview has been transcribed and is ready for archival research. If you are interested in conducting archival research in regards to this interview, please contact us at Info at ww2historyproject.org.
Date of Interview: January 5, 2012.
Interviewer: Heather Steele
Format: Standard Definition Video
Length: 80 minutes
Art Mercer – Doolittle Raid, Guadalcanal, Salerno, Marianas Turkey Shoot
Art Mercer, United States Navy, Chief Gunners Mate
Interview by Heather Steele, January 9, 2011
Profile by Jeff Ballard
Arthur Mercer was born in Frazer, Kentucky February 3, 1921. Art had greater expectations for his life than rural Kentucky promised, “I just did not like farm life.” “I was tired of using a mule’s rear end for a compass.” So, he traveled to Louisville and enlisted in the United States Navy in November 1939.
Mercer attended boot camp at Great Lakes, Illinois completing his basic training in March 1940. The Navy assigned Art to the USS Salt Lake City (CA-25) a heavy cruiser and part of the Hawaii Detachment of the US Pacific Fleet, stationed at Pearl Harbor. Rated a gunner’s mate, Mercer’s battle station was in the No.2 8-inch/55 caliber gun turret just forward of the cruiser’s bridge.
Salt Lake City was at sea, escorting the carrier USS Enterprise (CV-6) when “We got the word on December the 7th that Pearl Harbor was under attack.” [We] came in early in the morning [December 8, 1942], stayed there all day and all night, loaded ammunition, and supplies … we was back out at sea the next morning.” That must have been a terrible sight? “It was, yeah, I still remember it very vividly. “[A] lot of ships on fire, and the Oklahoma was capsized. I’m familiar with some people that spent forty-two hours in an upturned battleship.”
A personal friend of Art’s had the misfortune of being aboard the battleship USS Arizona (BB-39), but survived after he was blown overboard during the Japanese attack. Picked up by the USS Nevada (BB-36), he did not get very far because her captain beached the damaged battleship lest it sink in deep water. He was then transferred to the aircraft carrier USS Lexington (CV-2) which sank from beneath him at the Battle of Coral Sea. Transferred to the USS Yorktown (CV-5), he found himself aboard another sinking ship when the carrier sank at the Battle of Midway. Finally, the Navy gave him shore duty and “he did 30 years and never spent a day aboard another ship because the Navy said they couldn’t stand the attrition rate.”
Mercer’s first war-time cruise (January to March 1942) was to Australia which had been at war since 1939. Under constant threat of Japanese invasion, the Australians were grateful to see their first American warship after many years. The local ladies welcomed the young American sailors as the nation’s young men were away fighting with the British 8th Army in North Africa.
There were parades, free drinks and invitations to dinner in private homes. A photographer selected him and three of his shipmates to have their pictures taken at the zoo in Brisbane with koalas. The newspaper publicity led to the invitation to join an Australian family, also named Mercer, at their home for dinner.
In April, the Salt Lake City was part of Task Force 16 that launched the daring Doolittle Raid. We asked Art what he thought was the proudest accomplishment of his life, to which he replied, “I believe [it was] being part of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo. Cause the people, in the United States, back here…their morale was boosted up considerably. So was ours, on the ship. I think that was my highlight.”
That summer, the Salt Lake City sailed to Wellington, New Zealand, where it joined the task force that delivered the First Marine Division to Guadalcanal, the battle which began the long road to Tokyo and victory in the Pacific.
Luckily for Art, the Salt Lake City was elsewhere when the Navy suffered its greatest defeat in history at the Battle of Savo Island (August 8-9). Mercer was present, however, when the Navy exacted a measure of revenge at the Battle of Cape Esperance (October 11-12). Salt Lake City and eight other ships, closed to within 1,000 yards of the Japanese fleet, at night, and took them by surprise. Art remembers that the concussion of the 8-inch guns was so strong that he had to wrap his pant legs with string, lest the force rip the bottoms of his pants. “If you knew you were going into battle, you had to remove all the light bulbs,” otherwise the concussion would blow them out. The Salt Lake City lost only seven men while sinking one Japanese light and one heavy cruiser.
In November 1942, Art traveled to Miami, Florida where he received “two or three weeks of training for depth charges,” and then assigned to oversee the construction of his next ship the USS SC-1043. This 110-foot long wooden submarine chaser, with a crew of only three officers and twenty-four enlisted men, could not have been more different from his last ship. “We crossed the Atlantic on its power in March 1943.”
After making ports-of-call in North Africa, SC-1043 joined Operation Avalanche, the invasion of the Italian mainland at Salerno in September 1943. “We had plenty of action,” recalls Mercer, but he never saw a German U-Boat the entire time he was in the Mediterranean. The barrels of the ship’s 40mm, 20mm and 50-caliber anti-aircraft guns blazed white hot, however. In one fourteen day period, SC-1043 survived twenty-nine separate raids by the Luftwaffe.
At Salerno, the soldiers and sailors of Mercer’s task force witnessed the dawn of a new era in modern warfare. Between September 11 and 13, German high-altitude bombers dropped at least three Fritz-X radio-controlled bombs over the Allied fleet. His Majesty’s Transport Rohna was sunk by this new Nazi weapon. Two days later, the light-cruiser USS Savannah (CL-42) was heavily damaged by another glide-bomb. A near miss lightly damaged Savannah’s sister, the USS Philadelphia (CL-41).
On duty in the Mediterranean until December, Art returned to the States on a Liberty Ship, landing in Baltimore on Christmas Eve 1943. He remembered clearly that dinner consisted of “Vienna sausages as the main entrée, and … pumpkin pie.” After a short leave where he “went back to visit the folks at home on the old farm,” Art attended Electrical-Hydraulic School in Washington D.C. Once trained on the most modern 6-inch gun technology he was transferred to the light cruiser USS Pasadena (CL-65). The brand-new Pasadena (Commissioned June 8, 1944) had twelve sophisticated 6-inch/55-caliber Mark 16 in four-triple turrets.
Sent to the Pacific via the Panama Canal, the Pasadena fought “a lot of smaller actions with the big [carrier task] forces like Task Force 58 and 38.” Mercer took part in the Battle of the Philippine Sea (19-20 June 1944), better known as the ‘Great Marianas Turkey Shoot’ where the American’s completely decimated Japan’s remaining air force. “That’s where supposedly the Japanese lost about 350 planes in one day. The number may not be exact, but it was a huge number,” Art remembers.
Christmas 1944 found the Pasadena rolling in the monstrous Typhoon Cobra off Leyte Gulf in the Philippines. Also known as Halsey’s Typhoon, “we lost three destroyers; the Hull, the Spence, and the Monaghan, with the loss of about seven or eight hundred officers and men.” Retreating below decks, Art and his friends had to hold on to their [playing] cards when the shipped rolled to 40-degrees lest they lose them. When asked if he was ever scared during his time in the Navy, Art answered, “Well, at our age you don’t get scared. That’s the thing. Nothing could happen to you, Man, I’m eight-foot-tall, 10-foot-wide, or whatever. But it was a very exciting time.”
After the war ended, Art transferred to the heavy-cruiser USS Oregon City (CA-122), where he stayed for three years. Next, the Navy assigned him to the Naval Training Station in San Diego where he was an instructor from 1948 and 1949.
“I got back to sea duty again, on the USS Henrico (APA-45).” Mercer’s ship was on its way to Pt. Barrow, Alaska when he learned the Korean War had begun (June 25, 1950). Henrico then “loaded parts of the First Marine Division and took them to Pusan, South Korea. They repelled the North Koreans. Pushed ’em back.” In September of the same year, United Nations forces landed at Inchon. It was “a very successful invasion because nobody thought it could happen” referring to the twenty-seven-foot tidal sway, “the second highest, in the world.”
After Korea, Mercer did another tour at the Naval Training Center, San Diego, as Commander of Companies No. 172 and No. 326 in 1953 and 1954. Art finished his Navy career with two sea tours, the first aboard the USS Bayfield (APA-33), and the last aboard the Fire Support Ship-1, USS Carronade.
Art married Elise Mae (“Betty”) Dobbs of Somerset, Kentucky, on August 20, 1945. They had two children, a son, and a daughter before Art retired from the Navy on December 3, 1959. They remained in San Diego, and he worked for the City twenty-five years. Until his death on August 21, 2016, Art lived in a suburb of San Diego. He will be missed by his son, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, whom he enjoyed babysitting. He said in 2012, “I’m probably the oldest babysitter in Santee, California … I look forward to it. Lot of free popcorn.”
Edgar Klugman – Holocaust Survivor – G.I.
Edgar Klugman grew up Jewish in Nuremberg in the 1930’s and experienced the violence of Kristallnacht in his own home. He escaped on the last Kindertransport to England, and once he made it to America, he became an American soldier serving in World War II.
This interview is ready for transcription, please contact us if you would like to volunteer to transcribe this interview: info (at) ww2historyproject.org
Date of Interview: December 28, 2014; January 11, 2015; June 7, 2015; ongoing.
Interviewer: Heather Steele
Format: High Definition Video
Length: 420+ minutes
Captain David Render – Normandy – Sherwood Rangers
David Render served in the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry Tank Regiment during the European campaign.
This interview is currently being transcribed.
Dates of Interview: April 29, 2012; May 3, 2012.
Interviewer: Heather Steele
Format: Standard Definition Video
Length: 148 minutes
Major John Semken- El Alamein – Normandy – Sherwood Rangers
John Semken was a tank commander in the Sherwood Rangers Tank Regiment and served in the African and European campaigns. He came in on Gold Beach on D-Day, and earned Britain’s Military Cross.
This interview has been transcribed.
Date of Interview: May 2, 2012.
Interviewer: Heather Steele
Format: Standard Definition Video
Length: 114 minutes
Stan Cox – Normandy – Sherwood Rangers
by Zoe Hume
Stan Cox served with the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, landing with his squadron on Gold Beach, one of five beaches the Allies stormed during the Normandy landings of June 6th, 1944.
After joining the Army in 1943, Stan trained on Cromwell tanks before receiving instruction on the M4 Sherman tank, which had just started to pour into Europe from America. The Shermans had more speed and a faster rate of fire than German tanks, but the Panzers had better accuracy, range, and armoring. Particularly distressing, the Shermans had a tendency to catch on fire easily, earning them the nickname “Ronson lighters.” Still, the Sherman tanks were reliable, and, with well-trained crews manning them, they could hold their own in a fight. Following six weeks of training on the Sherman, Stan joined A Squadron of the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry.
Stan found life with the Sherwood Rangers to be almost the polar opposite of his previous experience with Army life. Everyone, even the Sergeant Major, went by their first name, and the Regiment seemed like one big happy family. Just returned from Africa where they had left their equipment, the Sherwood Rangers had no tanks to work with initially, so Stan and the rest of his new mates spent a lot of time playing different sports and sleeping in.
Once the tanks arrived from America activity ratcheted up quickly, and the Regiment was kept busy with unpacking weapons and tools while the tanks were readied for service. The moment the tanks were ready, the Sherwood Rangers conducted training exercises in them until their orders came through. Stan’s A Squadron was sent to the village of Sway to waterproof their tanks and practice beach landings.
At the beginning of June 1944, A Squadron was moved to Southampton where they boarded their Landing Craft Tanks (LCT), which carried their three tanks and two supply trucks. On June 4th, they anchored off the off coast of the Isle of Wight ready to head to France, but due to bad weather the landings were cancelled. The men were forced to wait aboard their LCTs for the weather to clear.
They set sail late June 5th. As Stan and the others sailed through the night in the open LCT, they sought shelter wherever they could, some in the tanks themselves and others on the bow of the LCT, but the harsh rain and constant rocking was exhausting. The deck became covered in water and vomit as soldiers succumbed to seasickness. Sleep was virtually impossible.
When the dawn broke, they found themselves surrounded by dozens of ships of every kind imaginable, and the sky was filled with Allied aircraft. As they neared the coast, the Sherwood Rangers prepared to land. Stan could see the fighting on the beach and knew he would soon be in the thick of it.
To get the tanks onto the beach, they had to lay out coconut matting in front of the LCT so the tanks could gain traction on the sand. Stan was chosen to help roll out the matting, but a strong tide and heavy sea pulled the matting and the attached LCT back out to sea. Stan landed in the rough water and was forced to swim towards shore along with the others who had been trying to get the matting straight. While the LCT made a second attempt at landing, Stan and his mates crawled up Gold Beach under fire and quickly sought the cover of the seawall.
The LCT’s second attempt was successful, and as soon as his tank was firmly on the beach Stan ran to join the rest of his crew. Their tank was taken over by their officer, and they then began pressing inland toward Bayeux in the lead. Instead of capturing the city during the night, the Sherwood Rangers lost their infantry support and were forced to pull back to an apple orchard for the night.
After taking the town the next morning, they moved out towards Tilly-sur-Seulles. A few days later while near Tilly, Stan’s tank was hit by German artillery and caught fire. As the gunner, Stan worked the Sherman’s cannon around so that all the other crew members could bail out of their hatches. Once they had, he was the last out of the flaming tank. Just outside, by the tracks, Stan had a narrow miss with another round and was sprayed with shrapnel, throwing him to the ground. As Stan lay next to the tank and watched it moving at an angle, giving the impression of wanting to roll over on him. Luckily, it stopped, and Stan was carried to shelter by other crew members. The abandoned tank soon was consumed by the flames.
Stan was sent back to hospital in England, where he spent nine months recovering from his injuries. In March of 1945, Stan was discharged with paralyzed left arm and a brace on one of his legs. Eventually, he recovered fully but carried the heavy scars as reminders of his short, but eventful, time in combat.
Date of Interview: April 29, 2012
Interviewer: Heather Steele
Format: Standard Definition Video
Length: 54 minutes
Bert Jenkins – Swimming DD Tanks Gold Beach – Sherwood Rangers
Bert came in to Gold Beach on a Sherman swimming DD tank that didn’t swim very well.
This interview is ready for transcription, please contact us if you would like to volunteer to transcribe this interview: info (at) ww2historyproject.org
Date of Interview: May 6, 2012
Interviewer: Heather Steele
Format: Standard Definition Video
Length: 174 minutes
Wing Commander Ken Wallis – Wellington Bomber Pilot and Autogyro Inventor
by Zoe Hume and Heather Steele
Wing Commander Ken Wallis was a skilled inventor and passionate aviator, who flew well into his 90’s. From a young age, he was determined to fly despite being turned down by the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve due to a defect in his right eye. Ken’s impaired vision did not stop him from earning his private pilot’s license in a quick 12 hours and 10 minutes. In 1939, he succeeded in successfully joined the Royal Air Force after cheating on his eye exam, reading the letters off the chart with his left eye while the doctor’s back was turned.
Despite his bad eye, Ken was an excellent pilot and flew 36 missions over Germany and Italy during the war. He flew in Wellingtons – the twin-engine, medium-range bomber with the unique spiral geodesic airframe structure designed by his cousin, Barnes Wallis. Its ability to withstand a great deal of punishment was to save Ken’s life on multiple occasions
Ken flew his first tour of duty with No. 103 Squadron, a night bomber unit which carried out missions over Germany and other areas of German-occupied Europe for the entire war. After completing one tour of duty, Ken returned to front-line duty with No. 37 Squadron in Italy, also flying Wellingtons. Both units suffered terrible losses through the war. Although Ken’s luck and skill as a pilot saw him through several potentially fatal plane crashes, his first captain and five of his subsequent second pilots were killed in action.
In his first brush with death, Ken was returning from a mission when a massive fog bank rolled in over England. All returning planes were ordered to Scotland, but as Ken’s Wellington did not have enough fuel to make it there, he and his crew bailed out. As the last one out, Ken was about to lower himself through the escape hatch when he found his parachute snagged on a lever on the pilot’s seat. If he had jumped then, he would have been caught dangling under the doomed bomber. Luckily, he was able to untangle the parachute and jump with just enough height to unfurl it before hitting the ground and injuring his back. While he languished in pain until morning in a noble estate in the area, left both hungry and thirsty, his crew were entertained heartily by local workers in their cottages until the sun came up and they returned to their base.
During his next close call, Ken flew his Wellington into one of the many barrage balloons tethered above English towns to protect them from enemy bombers, but which instead, in the typically British miserable weather and low visibility, managed to bring down more British planes than German ones. Already down one engine at the end of their mission, the Wellington’s wing and fuel lines were cut by balloon’s steel cable, nearly causing the plane to stall. The cable miraculously released just in time to allow Ken to crash his bomber feet from the edge a convenient nearby cliff. Fortunately, the plane did not catch fire. During the herculean efforts to land his plane safely in the blacked-out darkness, Ken’s fingers were sliced by the throttle cables and his face smashed into the windshield, adding significant lifelong hand injuries to his permanent back and eye problems.
In another hair-raising escape, a stray reconnaissance flare meant to lay a path for following bombers on a mission to Bremen became trapped inside his Wellington, which was carrying an incendiary bomb load. Ken’s crew quickly advised him to jettison the load, which had started to burn. Although he quickly pulled the release lever, sending the bombs through his bomb bay doors, the resulting flames ate away at the body of the plane on the return trip to England. The fire burned the skin of the plane and melted many integral parts of its skeleton, but the unique geodesic design of the Wellington provided enough structural integrity for Ken and his crew to return safely over the Channel.
During his RAF career, Ken also worked in weapons testing and development, an area of fascination for him. For a short while, he shared an office with Harold J. Turpin, one of the men who had designed the STEN gun, a crude but effective British submachine gun that was easy and inexpensive to make. Ken took the opportunity to show Turpin his pride and joy, three tiny miniature working pistols he had fashioned by hand, along with the near-microscopic ammunition that accompanied them.
After the war, Ken spent two years in America with the U.S. Strategic Air Command flying B-36’s, the largest piston-fired plane ever made . He completed his service in the Royal Air Force in 1964, though his career as both a pilot and an inventor was far from over.
In his retirement, Wallis turned his attention to inventing a new sort of open-air, personal aircraft in 1961, the Wallis autogyro. The aircraft featured in the James Bond film You Only Live Twice, and Ken was pleased to fly it on set as a stunt double for Sean Connery., He then went on to set 34 world records for speed in the autogryo (17 of which he still held at the time of his death).
When interviewed for the World War II History Project at the age of 96, he was still flying his “harem” of autogyros around his estate and neighborhood. He passed away a little over a year later on September 1st, 2013.
Date of Interview: May 12, 2012.
Interviewer: Heather Steele
Format: Standard Definition Video
Length: 53 minutes
Hans “Tom” Tuch – 101st Airborne – Ritchie Boy – Holocaust Survivor
Hans “Tom” Tuch and his family fled the Nazis and settled in America. During the war, Tom served in the 101st Airborne Paratroopers and as a translator. After the war, he joined the diplomatic service where he was posted in West Germany and the Soviet Union.
This interview is ready for transcription, please contact us if you would like to volunteer to transcribe this interview: info (at) ww2historyproject.org
Date of Interview: March 16, 2015
Interviewer: Heather Steele
Format: Audio
Length: 144 minutes
Commander Willis “Bill” Hardy – VF-17 Ace in a Day over Okinawa
Bill Hardy served as a Hellcat pilot in the VF-17 fighter group. His first action was over Iwo Jima, taking out artillery positions on Mt. Suribachi that were firing on the incoming Marines. Over Okinawa he shot down five kamikazes in one day on April 6, 1945 and took down two more Japanese planes later. He is a Navy Cross holder.
Dates of Interview: Multiple between 2011 and 2015
Interviewer: Heather Steele
Affiliation: Old Bold Pilots Oceanside
Format: Standard Definition Video
Length: 362 minutes
Transcribed: Yes