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Night
Vision
My dad didn't have
much to say about his wartime experiences. He
didn't keep in touch with the men who
formed a Block
Island (CVE-106)
association. In 1992, I think it was, I
phoned him in Hot Springs, Arkansas,
and told him his ship was having a reunion in Memphis, Tennessee
that month.
His reply was, "I
wasn't on the ship that long." "Holy
Cow", I thought. He was only on
that ship for the "big show," as I call it. During
the six months he was a pilot assigned
to squadron VMF-511, the ship took part in, and survived, the Battle of
Okinawa
in 1945. That says a lot considering the
fact that a lot of the ships that were there were hit by Kamikaze
suicide
planes. Somehow he felt that since he was not aboard for a long period
of time,
six months, he didn't have strong ties to the ship.
I think I know why. He was a
Marine pilot on a navy ship. Block Island was special. It
was one of only three aircraft carriers with
exclusively Marine
pilots and plane crews. Even so, perhaps
Marines don't have the same attachment to a ship that a sailor does.
As I said before, dad didn't have many stories to tell.
This one I can relate to because I was aboard
my own ship, in another war. As he told
it the ship was blacked out at night. In
fact all the ships were blacked out at night. It
was wartime. Any showing
of
light would have invited a torpedo. The Block Island crew had already experienced being
torpedoed. The first Block Island
(CVE-21) had been torpedoed in the Atlantic. Many, if not most of the crewmen of the first Block Island were on the second
ship of the
same name. They respected a blackout, and how.
As for myself, I was on a barracks ship, up the Mekong River,
during the Vietnam war. We were blacked out at night.
Only in our case we weren't worried about
being torpedoed. We were anchored in the
river only a few hundred yards from the riverbank.
If we showed any light at night it invited
small arms fire, rockets, and recoilless rifle rounds.
Yes, I understand a blackout. On
our ship, and I imagine it was pretty much
the same on Block Island, twenty
three years
earlier.
On our
ship, all porthole covers were dogged tight at night.
No light there. Inside the
ship the lights were never turned
off, as you would in your home. A sailor
had to be able to see where he was going. There
were always sailors on watch, twenty four hours a
day. Even in the berthing (sleeping) areas
there
were red lights left on all night. After
dark there were only red lights showing in the passageways. To a
non-sailor
that would be a hallway. On our ship all
outside hatches (doors) had light traps you had to weave around to exit
onto
the deck. No white lights showing at
night. In interior working spaces, such
as the officer's wardroom and mess decks there were white lights. They did not show to the outside.
The ship's bridge and adjoining spaces were
also lit with dimmed red lights.
Avoiding being torpedoed, or as in my ship, avoiding rocket and small
arms fire was not the only reason for the red lights.
Night vision was, and still is, crucial to
ship operations at night. You have to be
able to see at night. Any white light
destroys your night vision. Having dim red
lights on the ship’s bridge, and on deck in certain areas,
allows sailors to use their night vision, and see at night. At sea there are no white lights shown on a
navy ship at sea during wartime.
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My dad flew one of the
F6F(N) Hellcat night fighters. I can't imagine flying a plane off the
postage
stamp sized flight deck of an escort carrier in daylight. To do so at
night
took a special sort of pilot. Dad was
one of those.
On a night dad was
scheduled to fly, he put on a pair of red-lensed
goggles an hour or so before a flight. That
was to give his eyes a chance to acclimatize to
the darkness of the
night. He wore them inside the ship because there were areas where
white lights
were being used. Any white light before
his flight, getting ready to climb into the cockpit, or while flying
would destroy
his night vision. That would, in effect,
temporarily blind him.
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He said that
once he
and his radar equipped F6F was catapulted into the air it was like
flying the
inside of an ink bottle. It was like
that from the time his wheels cleared the bow of the ship until his
tail hook snagged
the wire upon landing, after a flight.
The goggles were a nightly routine
to dad. I think if I had done it once you
would not
have been able to drag me back into the cockpit of that plane at night
again. Not so dad.
Eventually the time came to make his way to the darkened flight deck.
There he could take off his night goggles. His
eyes were prepared for the darkness. He
had his night vision. He
climbed into the cockpit of his plane. Got
strapped in. Got ready to crank up the 2000
horsepower, eighteen
cylinder, Wright Cyclone engine. Show
time.
As far as I know what happened
next occurred only once. I sincerely hope
so. The plane captain climbed up onto the
wing as
usual. He looked down into the cockpit
to make sure dad was ready to go. For
some unknown reason, at least in this case, he did something quite
unexpected. Sure enough, he shined a
white flashlight in dad's eyes, destroying his night vision. Shortly
after that
dad was launched into the black of the night.
As for the rest of the story.
Dad made it back to the ship safely. There
is no story of a plane captain mysteriously
disappearing over the
side in the middle of the night. An
honest mistake, but a potentially disastrous one. It
was, however, a mistake dad never forgot.
Tom Sparkman
October 21, 2006
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