This week, still feeding out the story of the Japanese Kamikaze attacks in small doses, the Navy told how another carrier, the Ticonderoga, had been knocked out of action by suicide flyers. Among those who have sailed aboard the Ti is TIME Correspondent Robert Sherrod. This is his story of the ship, which was laid up for repairs for 59 days, is now back with the fleet:
The most distinctive thing about the carrier Ticonderoga was her skipper. Captain Dixie Kiefer* is a short, barrel-chested seaman and airman who ran his ship by procedures few men could or would use, and made them work.
Four or five times a day, Annapolisman Kiefer would get on the bullhorn and plead with his flight-deck crew to hurry up or "that admiral over there will give me hell." When the ship passed through the Canal Zone last fall, he saw to it that nearly all of his 3,000 men got shore liberty at the entrance or the exit. Some had to be carried aboard, but every man made it back to the ship. When the Ti set out from San Diego, only one man deserted.
It was a crew made up chiefly of kids from The Bronx, Brooklyn and South Boston, and Idaho-born Dixie Kiefer knew how to handle them. The Ti was ragged at first—she would sometimes zig when she was supposed to zag. Her stack often poured smoke. But she settled down. Soon she was breaking records for launching and recovering planes. The raw kids became sensationally good.
Four Nights Straight. The Ticonderoga, a big carrier of the Essex class, had been in action only a month when I went aboard her last December. She was my 23rd ship since Pearl Harbor, but I had seen none whose morale was higher. For one thing, she still had stateside provisions. Once we had steak four nights straight.
Kiefer, who wore a helmet with "Dixie" boldly stenciled on it, had been executive officer of the old Yorktown at the Coral Sea battle (where he won the D.S.M.), and at Midway (where the York sank and he got the Navy Cross for heroism). There he had jumped from the ship and shattered his right leg and ankle.
He was the most battered officer in the Navy—he had long ago busted his left ankle and split his kneecap playing football, and he had a sort of double elbow on his left arm from an old injury (a fellow pilot dove a seaplane at him and hit the arm with a wingtip float). On the Ti they used to say of Dixie: "He's got so much metal in him the ship's compass follows him when he walks across the deck."
Bald Captain Kiefer would yell excitedly at his men: "Above all, don't get excited." One day he would say: "I have such a good time on this ship I ought not to take money for running it." Next day: "I wouldn't take this job again at five times the pay." The crew loved him. The Captain had two distractions: his $200 guitar, on which he played (badly) such tunes as Ida and Wishing and Nobody's
Sweetheart Now, and his cribbage game, which he played intently with the sandy-haired gunnery officer, Commander Her bert S. Fulmer Jr.
"Jackson!" Dixie had two Negro mess attendants, both conveniently named Jackson. When the Captain ordered coffee sent to his sea cabin, as he did about 20 times a day, all he had to do was shout: "Jackson!"