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During the November action the Ticonderoga planes helped litter Manila harbor with sunken Jap ships. In December, when I was aboard, the Third Fleet mostly ran into foul weather, but the carrier planes, including those from the Ticonderoga, left about 450 Jap planes wrecked on the air fields of Luzon, and others on Formosa, according to Halsey's reports.
For a while the great typhoon east of the Philippines on Dec. 18 seemed likely to wreck Halsey's whole fleet. But the Ti came through without losing a man or a plane. Dixie proudly read Rear Admiral Frederick Sherman's "well done" over the loudspeaker, and congratulated his crew for its safety record. About that time a sailor who had dozed off on the struts under the No. 2 elevator fell overboard. Angry Dixie flushed brick-red at the blot on the Ti's record. When a destroyer picked up the sailor and returned him, Dixie got on the loud speaker again: "If anyone wants to see that smart young fellow, you can find him in the brig on bread and water." But Dixie softened up and let the man out for Christmas.
To the Coast of Asia. In January, when the Third Fleet set out again, I left the Ticonderoga for the Essex, Admiral Sher man's group flagship. January 12 was a great day. By 10:30 in the morning the Ticonderoga had got its first "well done" from Admiral Sherman — her planes had sighted a seven-ship convoy off French Indo-China, had sunk all. The fleet sank 41 ships totaling 127,000 tons that day. Said Sherman: "That Ticonderoga is a real ship." Three days later the Ti pilots shot down four Kamikaze planes headed for the Essex.
January 21 was partially overcast and we were southeast of Formosa. On the Essex we were eating noon chow. At 12:09 the 5-inch guns opened up, and the bell clanged for general quarters. Everybody rushed topside. The Ticonderoga was bil lowing black smoke 300 feet high. Seven planes had sneaked through. Six were shot down but the seventh crashed through the Ti's flight deck. She was badly hit.
Occasional Japs made for our task group, but the Combat Air Patrol or the antiaircraft guns shot them down.
"Here They Come." By noon, the fire on the Ti seemed to be dying down. At 12:53 more bogeys were reported on the starboard side. "Here they come," some body yelled. As I was watching the burn ing Ticonderoga, at 12:55, the antiaircraft guns on a dozen ships opened up at once. Five Japs fell flaming into the sea, three of them victims of the Ti's own guns, but the sixth, though he was burning in three places, plowed straight into the Ti's smoke pall.
As the Jap reached his target he was flying very low, and he seemed to pull up a bit in an effort to hit the bridge. From the blackness a huge ball of orange flame spouted heavenward. Now the Ti was in great trouble. "She is still shooting, but she is going to sink sure as hell," said an officer beside me.
Two things probably saved the Ti, her officers said: 1) a sailor in hangar-deck control, though he was knocked down, crawled through twisted steel and turned on the sprinkler system; 2) Dixie Kiefer ordered the ship's ballast shifted to make a 10-degree list to port — so the flaming gasoline ran off the hangar deck into the sea; then he changed course so that the wind blew the flames away from the ship.