By BILL McKINNEY
Morning News staff reporter
By the time Erie sailor Raleigh Conant reached the deadly waters of the Central Pacific, U.S. soldiers and Marines were just mopping up their Marshall Island campaign.
Conant enlisted in the U.S. Navy in August of
1943, trained at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Chicago, sailed through the Panama Canal to San Diego, Calif. and later arrived at Pearl Harbor for more training.
By late spring and early summer of 1944,
Conant was getting his initial taste of battle as a gunner's mate 2nd class aboard the destroyer, the USS Benham.
At war's end, the Benham would have the distinction of being one of the first five Allied vessels into
Tokyo Bay.
And Conant would have the distinct pleasure of still being alive to see, from a distance, the formal Japanese surrender aboard the battleship, USS Missouri.
Conant wasn't always confident he'd live to see that day.
His first major action came during the campaign for the Mariana Islands, a group that included the 25-mile-long island of Saipan and nearby Tinian.
The
amphibious assault on Saipan came only nine days after the D-Day invasion of Normandy and constituted the most massive offensive in the Pacific theater.
The land-based airfields that would later be established on
Saipan and Tinian put the Allies within striking distance of Japan itself.
A little over a year later a B-29 bomber named ""Enola Gay'' would take off from Tinian. Bound for Hiroshima, the bomber would
carry one of the two atomic bombs that ended World War II.
That was more than a year away.
As his destroyer patrolled along Saipan, Conant was more interested in the skies overhead and the seas beneath as the Benham
helped protect the fleet that was bombarding Japanese emplacements, preparing Saipan for invasion.
His destroyer was part of the Fifth Fleet, the ""fast fleet.''
The Fifth Fleet had the faster, newer ships
of the Navy, organized around the aircraft carriers. They used their mobility and hitting power to carry the war to the Japanese-held islands, and eventually to Japan itself.
The Fifth Fleet stood off from
Saipan to provide cover for the slower invasion fleet, although Conant said his destroyer took part in some of the pre-invasion bombardment, throwing phosphorous as well as regular shells into a Japanese-held valley.
""We only saw a few Japanese aircraft. I think they were nearing their end, no longer capable of putting as many planes in the air.''
That was especially true after U.S. Navy Hellcats, designed to
outperform the enemy Zero, hit planes taking off from Japanese aircraft carriers and nearby islands in an action that became known as the ""Great Marianas Turkey Shoot.''
Americans downed 346 enemy aircraft while losing only 15.
In the meantime, U.S. submarines and attack aircraft were sinking Japanese carriers.
Conant was part of a 40mm antiaircraft gun crew on the Benham, which
also carried 20mm and five-inch guns.
""I remember that we were attacked by a couple of enemy planes and our ship got one of them,'' he said.
Initially, he said, there was fear at coming under fire but he
said the fear quickly gave way to carrying out the actions that had been drilled into you. ""The fear was there but it didn't really last long. There was too much to do to think about anything.''
After Saipan came other dangers.
One of the ship's crew was killed and five others injured during a strafing run by a Japanese plane. Conant was lucky enough to be on the opposite side of the ship at the time
the plane attacked.
Another time he and other crewmen watched in awe as an enemy torpedo passed harmlessly under the Benham without hitting the vessel.
Then there was the typhoon of November 1944 in which three
American destroyers capsized.
""That was one bad storm. We came close to turning over ourselves. I think we recorded a list of 63 degrees one way and 62 degrees the other. The biggest list
I'd ever heard of was by a destroyer escort that leaned 67 degrees and still came back.''
Conant said his vessel helped pick up typhoon survivors from the other vessels.
The Benham also participated in retaking the
Phillipine Islands, again serving as protection for the invasion fleet, covering the aircraft carriers and bigger vessels that were, in turn, covering the shore-bound troops.
By the time the Benham, along with another
U.S. destroyer, a U.S. cruiser, a British destroyer and a British cruiser, entered Tokyo Bay, Conant and his shipmates had knocked out three enemy submarines and 13 enemy planes.
One of those 13, toward the very end
of the war, was piloted by a kamikaze trying to make a suicide crash with his explosives-filled plane into the Benham.
""We got him before he got us,'' Conant said simply.
Through it all, Conant remained unscathed.
""The closest I ever came to getting wounded was when a piece of shrapnel went through my pant leg and I think, even then, it was from one of our own rounds,'' he
said.
Discharged on Dec. 10, 1945, he was happy to be a civilian again, and still proud to have served.
