Fifty years ago, the United States became embroiled in another world war. In a yearlong series of weekly articles, the Deseret News is looking back on the major events of World War II with insight from Utahns who participated in them. If you have "war stories" you'd like to share, call Chuck Gates, Deseret News assignments editor, 237-2100.Fifty years ago, Ed Stark and James Van Ausdal were dodging bombs on the deck of the USS Lexington. Last weekend, they swapped war stories with other Lexington veterans at a reunion in Salt Lake City.
"You could talk to any two of us and get a different story of what happened on the Lexington's last voyage," said Stark, who lives in Marysville, Wash. "We could all talk for a lifetime, and you'd still never know the true story of what happened that day."The Lady Lex, as she is fondly nicknamed by those who served aboard her, was one of the first large aircraft carriers. She carried 90 aircraft, weighed 33,000 tons and had a maximum speed of 33 knots. She was sunk after the Battle of the Coral Sea on May 8, 1942.
"I wouldn't swap my experiences that day for a million dollars," Stark said, "but I wouldn't do it again for 2 million.
"I was in charge of handing shells to the loader of the 1.1 gun," he continued. "There were Japanese planes all over the sky. They told you not to look up, but with all that noise going on above your head, you had to look. I saw a bomb falling in my direction so I scrambled under the gun breach, but it was even worse there with all the spent ammunition raining down.
"I saw the funniest thing in my life that day and the saddest," Stark said. "The funniest thing was when a 100-pound bomb came down and caused a large chunk of teakwood to fly up in the air. There were two big Irish men loading the guns. They had their backs to each other. Well, this wood hit them both squarely on the head, and they both thought the other one had hit them. They turned round, glared at each other and almost started a brawl. That was the funniest thing that happened all day.
"The saddest thing that happened was when an engineer, who was blackened from the waist up, tried to climb up on deck. Another guy reached out to grab the burned man's hand and help him up, and the flesh just came off in the second guy's hand. I think the engineer died soon after that."
Van Ausdal, of Provo, also remembers the Lexington's final day well. "I was in charge of loading the planes when they came in," he said. "The day went kind of slow for us on the flight deck after the Japanese tore up the deck, and the planes couldn't land. No planes, no work."
According to the survivors, the battle lasted less than 15 minutes, and although the fire raged on the Lexington the whole day, she wasn't listing in the water. They thought they were heading back to port for repairs.
"We could hear explosions as the fire went from compartment to compartment. Some were big, and some were small. We thought everything was under control until the last big explosion," Van Ausdal said.
"I was straddling the front elevator, which lowers the planes down to the hangar deck, when there was this tremendous boom, and the elevator raised 18 inches to two feet in the air. It threw me back. We knew we were in trouble then. Shortly after that, we got the call to abandon ship."
Van Ausdal clambered down one of the ropes into the water and hung onto a life raft with 50 other survivors for the next 21/2 hours before being picked up by the USS Indianapolis.
Just around sundown on May 8, an American destroyer fired two torpedoes into the Lexington. She sank.
"There wasn't a dry eye anywhere," Stark said. "There were two task forces looking on, and everyone was crying as the grand, old lady went down."