Like A Mosquito In The Rain: The Unsinkable USS Plunkett

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At Navy Federal Credit Union our members are the mission insured by NCUA. This is Lee Habib and this is our American stories and we tell stories about everything here on this show. In the second world war the U.S. possessed 164 destroyers. One of those destroyers was the USS Plunkett. James Sullivan's great uncle John Gallagher served on the Plunkett and inspired by a story John's brother Eddie would tell wrote a book on the Plunkett and the men who served on her called Unsinkable Five Men and the Indomitable Run of the USS Plunkett. Here is James with the story. When I was a kid growing up in Quincy, Massachusetts just outside Boston my great uncle Frank Gallagher used to talk or tell this one story more than any other story from the war. Frank was one of four Gallagher brothers there were five in all four of them went away to the second world war and coincidentally Frank met two of his brothers on on two different occasions over there. On this one occasion it was just before the allies went into Anzio was the fourth amphibious landing of the war in the European theater and Frank who was a medic in the army in the fifth army he was getting ready to go in and his brother John who was a water tender or a boiler man in the navy but who manned a 20 millimeter gun at general quarters at his battle stations when they were in combat he knew that his brother Frank's ship a destroyer the USS Plunkett was in the harbor in Naples and so Frank stole away from his unit they were making preparations to get underway they were told there was typhus in Naples they weren't allowed to go in there but that never stopped Frank and he made his way into Naples with a five gallon jerry can half filled with Italian red wine and knowing Frank he was hauling off it on the way in and he was a little bit glorious with the wine and he he went to the the Biscayne which was the flagship of the task force that would head up to Anzio and he he called up to the the sailors on deck he says I'm looking for the Plunkett is it out here and they wouldn't tell him where it was but they told him it was in the area and that was all he needed so Frank you know he's walking along I mean the the the docks and the piers in Naples now they're getting ready for an invasion and it's just it's mayhem down there but he gets down to this little terrace in the the seaside neighborhood of Santa Lucia and he he jumps into a bum boat a little wooden boat manned by an Italian boatman and he he asked the guy to row him out into the harbor and this guy you know who's this American soldier jumping into his boat he doesn't want any part of it and and Frank is now like I said he's got the wine in him so he makes this guy row him out and the guy does he rows him out and Frank is is is rowed out now among this this fleet of ships in Naples harbor you've got Mount Vesuvius up to the off one end of the bay and it's it's actually coughing smoke now because you know it's it's about to erupt it would erupt just a couple of months later and and you've got you know dozens of of ships getting ready for this invasion and Frank is now on the lookout for a destroyer it's a two-stack ship it's about as long as a football field plus most of its end zones and he's he knows that the hull number the the number on the bow of the ship that identifies which destroyer it is he knows the plunket is 431 and he's looking for that and don't you think he found the plunket so he has the the boatman row him up to the fantail which was because the ship was weighted with about 265 men plus a dozen officers and all their fuel and everything else it sat really low in the water the fantail was about four and a half to five feet above the water line and Frank with his five gallon can of of red wine manages to climb up onto the fantail you know observes no protocol right you know you're supposed to go up a you know ask for permission to come aboard but Frank's in the army he doesn't pay attention to either he climbs up they grab him right away of course coincidentally the ship is called to general quarters because it's dusk now and at dawn and at dusk those were the most perilous times for an allied ship during the war because that's when the enemy bombers would come in out of the sun and try to get the ship so they call the ship to general quarters and Frank now they've also called the captain down to the to the fantail because who's this wayward you know soldier that's just climbed up onto the ship they call the captain down and the captain is Eddie Burke he's 36 years old grew up just outside Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania was an all-American football player at the U.S.

Naval Academy and he was a boxer too he lost the title boat as a light heavyweight in 1928 so Burke comes down a real imposing figure you know six foot tall 185 pounds and he starts laying into Frank who's all of five foot eight five foot nine and 150 pounds and Frank is there getting dressed down and one of the sailors that's on the ship they're all watching you know from where they are with their battle stations one of them is looking at the fantail and he's looking and he's looking and he thinks that looks like my my brother and he realizes it's his brother so he he jumps out of his gun tub and he runs back to the the fantail and addresses captain Burke and says that in fact yes this this man is my brother so Frank told that story his whole life and he died at the age of 99 in 2012 and that story languished a little bit for a couple of years you know Frank's nieces and nephews his children grandchildren each of us had heard it so many times the story of that reunion that you know you could have sat us down in front of one of Ken Burns's cameras and we could have told the story the way Frank had so you know after he he passed I was on the verge of a family trip to Italy my wife and our two kids were were heading over and we originally had Pompeii on our itinerary but when we got down to the logistics of it and realized just how big of a day it would be to to to get to Pompeii my wife vetoed all that and and all of a sudden there's Anzio and we decided to go to Anzio and when we decided to go to Anzio it hit me then I wonder if any of the men who were still who were on the ship at Anzio are still living and that's how this whole thing began because I jumped on the phone and and started calling frantically almost as if I've been waiting my whole life to start making these calls and you've been listening to James Sullivan and by the way you can pick up James's book Unsinkable Five Men in the Indomitable Run of the USS Plunkett in Amazon or any other place where books are sold when we come back more of James Sullivan's story of the USS Plunkett the Battle of Anzio and more here on Our American Story. Folks if you love the stories we tell about this great country and especially the stories of America's rich past know that all of our stories about American history from war to innovation culture and faith are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College a place where students study all the things that are beautiful in life and all the things that are good in life and if you can't get to Hillsdale Hillsdale will come to you with their free and terrific online courses go to hillsdale.edu to learn more. Who doesn't love the good things in life even though I enjoy a little luxury it doesn't mean I can always afford it until I discovered Quince. Quince is my go-to for luxury essentials at affordable prices. Quince offers a range of high quality items at prices within reach like 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters from $50 washable silk tops and dresses organic cotton sweaters and 14 karat gold jewelry and Quince only works with factories that use safe and responsible manufacturing practices.

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Try them out and actually feel the difference today. Visit symbiotica.com and use code iHeart for 15% off plus free shipping on your subscription order. Again that's 15% off plus free shipping on your subscription order. Go to symbiotica.com that's c-y-m-b-i-o-t-i-k-a.com And we return to our American stories and our story on the USS Plunkett a Navy destroyer in World War II. When we last left off James Sullivan fresh from a trip to Italy where the Plunkett had served during the war was making calls to surviving veterans who had served on the ship during the time his great uncle John was on board. Let's continue with the story. I started to think you know wouldn't it be miraculous if there was still a man it's all the way 2016 70 years after the war's over wouldn't it be something if I could connect with a man who had been on the Plunkett at Enzio and so it began there the first man that I connected with they had had reunions the Plunkett sailors did from 1982 all the way up till 2011 and I found a web page about that last reunion and there was a man's phone number at the bottom of that page. I phoned that man and the number worked and he was you know in his 90s and and I told him that I was trying to connect with someone who'd been on the ship at Enzio he had not this man Ted Mueller had come on to the Plunkett after Enzio but he said you know there's this one man that lives just outside St. Louis who was on the ship at Enzio real nice fella and I'm sure he'd talk to you so he gave me his phone numbers he had a home phone and a cell number which I thought was just great here's here's another guy in his 90s but he's got a cell phone and I called him one morning a Saturday morning and he was at a home show and I thought that was great too not only is he carrying a smartphone in his pocket but he said at a home show what could he be doing there you know shopping tile for a new backsplash or something this is a guy that doesn't give up so I talked to him for for some time about the Plunkett and he began to you know some of these old guys they've got they've got their stories and you know once you touch that they begin to talk to you about about some of their experience if they do in fact talk about it so Jim started to talk to me about that and he said look I I would love to talk to you more about this but I'm I'm out right now can you give me a call in the morning on my home phone I said I would and then before I let him go I told him my uncle's name John J Gallagher and there's silence on the other end of the phone and I know he's rummaging around it's 70 years you know and there were 300 men on this destroyer and and I'm thinking the silence is he does not want to disappoint me I began to feel bad because I had put him on the spot and I know he didn't want to disappoint and then I think the calls dropped and I remember pulling my phone away to look to see if the connection was still live and it was and then I heard his voice come back to me and in his voice there was a smile as big as the moon and he said Johnny Gallagher was a very good buddy of mine and so it was at that moment that I realized you know this is a story I think I'm gonna have to tell I didn't have a sense of the plunkets place in the history of World War II in the European theater in the discovery of these men's stories I bumped into a navy some navy documents toward the end of the war in which different navy commanders would reference the fact that in the history of the of the conflict in the European theater they could not recall a battle so relentless and so savage as the one that Plunkett had endured at Anzio the Plunkett story was the story of the most harrowing engagement of a US navy ship in the German Luftwaffe during World War II mostly during the amphibious landings in Europe at Salerno in Sicily or before Anzio the German bombers the dive bombers the torpedo bombers they would sweep in over the roadstead the anchorage where you know the the ships with the landing craft would take the men into the beaches and the Germans were opportunists and whatever whatever ship came in their sights that's that's where they released their stick of bombs most of these engagements you know were a matter of just you know two or three minutes sometimes five minutes but what the Plunkett endured because the Germans changed strategy in early 1944 they were they had decided not to to conduct these sweeps over the roadsets but they were going to begin to focus on a single ship and for some reason in the late afternoon light of of January 24th 1944 what what the officers in the navy believes is that they had misidentified the Plunkett as a larger ship the the cruiser the Brooklyn because the profiles when you're looking at them from from way up high are similar and so you had you had a dozen there were there were 12 or 14 the accounts are not exact on this but you had from 12 to 14 German bombers focus on the Plunkett and and they they stayed on the ship they gripped that ship for 25 minutes which is just an eternity and so through this this ship which is is as much drama as you can imagine you had torpedo bombers you had dive bombers and you had radio controlled bombs coming at the the the ship from high flying bombers you know you have that going on for 25 minutes and you had captain Burke on the bridge navigating like a mosquito in the rain these bombs that were falling on his ships and meanwhile dodging torpedoes that were coming at him as as the as the torpedo bombers dropped the eggs from that from their bellies and and so it was just an incredible spectacle and and what Burke achieved you know would earn him the the navy cross and what that whole what the men on that ship did that day was well I call it the most harrowing but it was it was the most dramatic naval episode that I'd ever encountered a book in my research of of ships at war in the European theater but you've got in the midst of all this tumult you've got this one man on the wheel he was an enlisted man a seaman his name was R.L.

Klein and they called him Skunky because you know you miss a shower now and then and you get a nickname in the navy and and so Skunky got that and he said that you know through that 25 minutes Burke you know it was as noisy as all get out you know 27 percent of all the 20 millimeter ammunition fired by the plunkets gunners during the war were fired at Anzio the five-inch guns you know they were pounding continuously for for 25 minutes the ship had a 1.1 inch gun and so it was as noisy as all get out and Burke is striding back and forth on across the bridge from one wing you could go outside the bridge on one side of the ship and then go cross it and on the other side and he's on the lookout you know with his lookouts for torpedoes and he's trying to process all of this information in the midst of this barrel this battle it's almost like an algorithm he's got so many things to factor and what Skunky remembered most about Burke was that when he gave an order it was at conversational volume I mean if ever there were a situation in which you know you might you might let some urgency creep into your voice it was it was this one but Burke was as unflappable as you'd want in a commander what Skunky remembers he says I can still hear him you know hard right hard left I mean that's that's what the plunket was doing you know in the midst of this battle while Ken Brown was coordinating the ship's gun battery to to try to bring down these bombers that were were harassing the ship so so that's what Burke was doing Ken Brown and and Captain Burke these were two men both Naval Academy graduates who came from different worlds I mean Ken grew up in in the suburb of Chicago called Glen Ellen and really had no ambitions for the Navy as a young man he came from his father was a royal typewriter salesman they were fairly well off so Ken had his own car he used to drive the wheels off that thing he used to say all over you know going down to champagne to watch this high school basketball game he was is trying to wring as much fun and humor out of his life as possible and you can see that I have pictures of him as a teenager and as a young man and you can see that you know that he was a really well-humored guy and and and you know lived for that sort of lifestyle Burke on the other hand was was as grim as his guns you know a Navy All-American on the football team he was the grandson of a coal miner and and kind of looked like a you know a guy who just dug himself out of the mine rudely forged features and and hard bitten and you don't quite see a smile on Burke's face he looked as grim as his guns and and then you've got Ken you know happy galucky he's the he's the gunnery officer um and and they got off on the wrong foot uh those two and you're listening to James Sullivan tell the story of the USS Plunkett by the way he's also telling the story of the battle of Enzio and this was no little battle in movies we've captured the Pacific and certainly the European theater but what gets overlooked often is the African and then the Italian campaigns more of the story of the USS Plunkett on our American story from simple settings anyone can understand automatic updates with the latest features and much more Roku TV is more than a smart TV it's a better TV. Learn more today at Roku.com. Happy streaming. Had enough of those supplements that leave you feeling nothing? Symbionica is your solution.

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Let's continue with the story and the look into the lives of these men. Ken was all about a joke, and admittedly, admitted as much, and Burke was all business. And so those two guys started butting heads as soon as Burke got on the ship in February of 43, and they butt heads all the way to Anzio, and then everything changed between them. My sense is that on Plunkett, these men became galvanized by their experiences at Salerno and on Sicily during those first two amphibious landings, and they learned how to work together. Whenever Ken Brown talked about what happened to them at Anzio, he was always talking, you know, using metaphors from sports about the teamwork. And he looked at several different men on that ship and would reference the fact that he saved the ship.

And I thought, well, I thought you said the other guy saved the ship. But he credited so many people for having done what Jim Feltz always talked about as his job. You know, we were all just doing our jobs. Jim was really insistent on that fact, because I think when we look at it, it's just so easy for us to see these men as emissaries of the greatest generation. And we think that there was something superhuman about what they had done. And Jim and Ken especially, you know, would go to great lengths to insist on the fact that what they did on the ship was work. They were doing their job and they did it together. And I think that the pride that they felt was in their ability to work together as a team.

They began to read and understand each other. No one, perhaps more so than Burke, who had to understand what was happening with his four or five inch guns in the midst of battle and his 1.1 inch and the independent organization of the six men on the 20 millimeter guns on the ship's perimeter. So he's anticipating all of that and factoring that in the ship speed. And he knows what he can get out of the men in the engine room. And not only he knows what he can get out of the men in the engine room, but he knows what he can get out of his men who are in the fire room making the steam that's going to drive the ship's engines. And so he was able to conduct or wield that ship almost like a man with a sword. I mean, it all sort of at the end, in my mind, boils down to what Eddie Burke was able to do with his ship on the bridge. And Ken would say the same thing.

You know, Ken, who always referred to him as Burke, you know, had the utmost respect for what Burke did. You know, he would receive the Navy Cross, which may not have been quite enough, you know, when you look at the entirety of what happened during that battle. But it all boiled down for many of them into what Burke was able to do, the way he was able to harness all those disparate men, hundreds of men, to harness, to know their capabilities, to know them intimately and to wield that, you know, as he went toe to toe with a dozen German bombers. You know, in the Army, you know, those guys that were on the front lines or in the forward ranks, you know, the guys on patrol, walking point, you know, it was a little more hairy for them than for anybody else in their company. But on a Navy ship, they were all walking point. You know, when a ship was hit, you know, it wasn't just the guys who were topside. In fact, it was probably more perilous for the guys in the fire rooms and the engine rooms below decks who didn't have a chance to get out. So they were all walking point. That's the thing about a destroyer.

It's right out there. It's kind of like the Minuteman behind the Stonewall, the grunt on point in the jungle. You know, and when they got hit, you know, at Jela, the Maddox was hit and 202 men went down. At Salerno, the Rowan was hit by a torpedo, 211 men in offices went down. So it was dangerous enterprise.

That battle went on for 25 minutes, but the ship was hit at Enzio and terrible loss of life. And John was in that gun tub, but he survived the blast. And he was carried up to the ward room. They had two battle stations, dressing stations. One of them was the ward room, which is where the officers met for dinner. And they had him on a table. It was a doctor, Dr. Wesley Knop was there and they had a number of men in there.

I don't know exactly how many, but it's likely there was room for five, five or six men on tables in the ward room. And he had been riddled with shrapnel in the back from the explosion. And one of the ship's gun captains who would have been in one of the five inch gun turrets, the gun mounts, his name was Jim McManus. He was from Fall River, Massachusetts, and he had been wounded. And he came up to try to get some help from the doctor. And the doctor had no time for Jim. You know, it was a triage situation. And so many of the men were in desperate straits and Jim got up there and he quickly realized that, you know, he wasn't getting any help there. And he recognized Gallagher over on one of the tables. And he had an IV and Jim could see that he had stuff coming in and he could see, you know, that there was more blood on the floor beneath the stretcher than there was, you know, coming into John. And he says to John, John, what the hell are you doing here? And he says, John looked at him and he just grinned. And he said, those Germans can't kill me. I'm a tough Irishman. And he was a tough Irishman, but there wasn't enough blood.

And at 0100 that night, Dr. Wesley Canop lifted his wrist and that was it for John. So the Germans got him in the end, but we haven't forgotten him. You know, each of the men was going to process their experience on the plunket in different ways. I think of Jim Feltz for a year and a half. He bunked in the engineering department, in the bunk right below John Gallagher. And he said, you know, we just, we became really good friends.

And you get to know somebody. He says, you know, I could identify him by the way he breathed at night. I could identify him by the impression that he made in the springs of the bunk above me.

You know, if you put somebody else in that bunk, I'd have known it wasn't John Gallagher. So the men had this, just this intimate relationship. I mean, they're on this relatively small ship, thrown together in these perilous circumstances.

And they develop a camaraderie that you can't replicate outside the circumstances of a war. When they got into Brooklyn, a third of the men who had been on the plunket requested transfers, because if you've been on a ship that's been hit, it's almost like bad luck or, you know, they were traumatized, there's no question about that. And I think about the plunket, you know, that word, the invocation of that word has always been holy in the halls of my family. You know, we would say the word when we were kids, there was an oil portrait of John on the parlor wall of the Victorian home in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood that he had grown up on. There was upstairs in the second floor hallway, his purple heart that hung in a small shadow box beside a black and white picture of the ship on the back of which there were 93 signatures of his shipmates.

He collected their names, their ranks and hometowns. You've got the legacy of all that. This ship is representative of this Herculean effort that we had made as a country back in the forties. And you're listening to James Sullivan telling the story of the USS Plunket. And by the way, a destroyer, well, any of you who have played Battleship know what a destroyer is, but in real life, my goodness, the responsibility of a destroyer, you can't make it up. They're basically in charge of protecting the convoy, the fleet, no small job. And it's why the Germans wanted to get that destroyer. In the end, you get the destroyer, you get the fleet, you get the convoy.

The story of the unsinkable USS Plunket here on Our American Stories. Thank you so much. Thank you. Looking for a smaller or bigger screen? Vizio offers unbeatable prices on all V-Series 4K smart TVs. Head to walmart.com today and score the 4K TV you've been waiting for. Plus, at these prices, you're burning rubber, not cash. Keep your ride or die live at ebaymotors.com. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply.