I ran across the street to the Prescott’s house after school on Monday. Mr. Prescott decided to do the interview in his downstairs living room, where it would be quiet. Considering that I have known Mr. Prescott since I was three years old, when my family moved in across the street, the atmosphere during the interview was very relaxed. After the interview, we spent another hour looking at pictures of him in the service, and I showed him the web pages I found about the Alaska.
Question: What is your name?
Charles Prescott: Charles Prescott
Question: In which branch of the service did you
serve?
Charles Prescott: United States Navy
Question: Did you pick the Navy?
Charles Prescott: Yes I did. I enlisted…I was not drafted.
Question: Was their a reason you picked the Navy
over the other branches?
Charles Prescott: I picked the Navy for several reasons. One thing was, I signed up for the D-12 program, because I was in college at the time, and they would send you back to college.
Question: When were you in the service?
Charles Prescott: I was called to active duty in July 1943…I was on active duty for three years… I got out of active duty in July 1946.
Question: How old were you when you signed up?
Charles Prescott: I really signed up in November 1942…When I signed up I was 18, but when I went out on active duty I was 19.
Question: What was your rank?
Charles Prescott: I ended up as Ensign, United States Naval Reserve.
Question: What places did you go?
Charles Prescott: First year and a half I was in college in Midshipman’s School. I received my Ensign commission in 1945. April 1945 to the end of July 1945, I was aboard the USS Alaska CB-1 in the Pacific for the battles of Leyte, in the Philippines, and Okinawa. We bombarded these seven Islands of Japan [Tokara Islands].
The war ended and I came back to the United States at the end of July. And at that time, I flew from Okinawa, to Guam, Johnson Island, Hawaii, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego in three days. We came back for special training for the Japanese Invasion.
Question: Which never actually happened.
Charles Prescott: Right. They dropped the atomic bomb and ended the war. See I was in a special united called the Naval Gun Fire Liaison. And we were to direct naval bombardments supporting landing invasions. And we would either go ashore with the Army, Marines, or with the overhead and direct the bombardment in front of the troops by the Naval ships.
Question: Are their any other dates or specific
events that jump out at you?
Charles Prescott: No, because most of ours was in the sea. And we would,… actually before the bombardment of southern part of Japan. But we were mainly to protect the Naval air carriers. That’s what Task Force 58 and 38 were. We had I think four or five carriers with us. We had four battleships.
Question:
You mentioned something about a canal. Was that the Panama Canal?
Charles Prescott: (Nods, Yes) After the war was over, I was transferred to the battleship Indiana. And I was on the Indiana in Havana, Cuba.
The battleship Indiana, I was on…and this is when we went out of Bremerton [Washington] for a shake-down cruise, in the winter of 1945, ‘46. Then I went from there to San Francisco. In April of 1946, in Tiburon, that’s San Francisco, I was on the LCI 1074, and we took that around to Charleston, South Carolina, and left there on June 21, 1946, and went home. [Went back to Notre Dame. Class of 1948] So they put me on it with two other officers to bring it from San Francisco around to Charleston, South Carolina, then decommission it.
…Honorable Discharge. I wasn’t released until 1953. I was still in the reserve, but I was not on active duty.
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Charles Prescott: We never got hit by the Kamikazes. We shot down some that were coming close to us, but we shot them down before they got to us.
You got pretty lonely. And you were on duty… everyone was on duty, generally four hours off, four hours on. Off and on like that. And at night time, it would get very lonely, dark.
Question:
What was your duty?
Charles Prescott: Mine was studying the armament, armor, the guns, and how to control them for a short bombardment.
Question:
Then you were one of the guys out there controlling the guns when the
Kamikazes were coming.
Charles Prescott: Well, on the Alaska… do you have the pictures there? I was the highest guy on the ship. Right here…see that? (Pointing to tower with the radar antennas) I sat on top of that, which the only thing above me was the radar.
Question:
How high up was it?
Charles Prescott: It was eleven stories. (Points to all the different guns and explains which battery controlled which.) …the twelve inch guns. We directed them, and we used computers, but they were hand computers.
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Charles Prescott: See we had four planes.
Question:
What were the planes for?
Charles Prescott: For observation. They were C-Planes. They were right there (Points). Between the forward mast and the after mast is the fight deck. And the hanger was underneath (points to an area underneath the masts). That’s the propeller (points between the two masts. Back in those days, the planes would fly and take off…They had a crane to pick up the plane and put it on the catapult. The catapult would go out depending on the way the ship was going and the direction of the wind. And I think it could go to either side. And when the planes came back, they don’t land on the ship.
C-planes, they land on the ocean. The ship would make a turn, and try to make a clear ocean for the plane to land. And then the crane would pick‘em up and put them back up here (points to hanger). None of the battleships had anything like that. And if you ever want to see a skipper get mad. The pilots were Marine pilots, and one of ‘em flew between the two masts one day. And I don’t know how long it was before he flew again.
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Charles Prescott: You take a ship like that; we could lob shells twenty miles. You couldn’t even see your target…. And the other thing is, you take a look at this, an airplane could come in, probably a kamikaze, and not just one wants to come in, probably five or six of them. And we had four destroyers, and four battleships, battle cruisers, five, aircraft destroyers, six, and then probably nine destroyers. Fifteen major ships together, and the ammunition we could put up in the sky was unbelievable. Nine 12’’, well, you never used those against a plane, but we had six 5’’ double barrel guns… And 40 mm is about that size (made circle with fingers), and they go Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom, they shoot that fast, and the whole sky would be black with shells. I was unbelievable! And if anybody could get through that (chuckles)…
I think it was an aircraft destroyer. I think its name was Atlanta, was all 5 inch…and the Japanese planes started coming in the back of the task force. That ship just turned sideways in the middle of the task force, fired, and left a complete circle of shells bursting around that airplane… and ‘fumph’ (made motion with hands of plane dropping from sky). The accuracy and so forth.
Air craft shells are made…three ways. One is to hit it and the shell would go off. Another one, was the 5 inch could be timed. They go so far and they’d explode because of timing. Then another way was what they call proximity. They’d get so close to something that they’d fire.
I wasn’t involved in any danger, except for planes coming in, but we shot them down before they got to us.
Question:
Was there ever a time that one just kept getting closer and you just
couldn’t seem to shoot it
down?
Charles Prescott: Well, that’s happened and sometimes wonder how they got through all those bomb shells going off in the air. And especially getting closer, with your 20mm and 40mm and they were it for direct hits. And they were putting out…probably 200 shells a minute, each one of them. And the 40mm were probably putting out 20 shells a minute. And you had 54 of them.
We tried to start firing on them 5 miles away. And if they got into 1 mile, that’s too damn close. We wanted them down by then. And some of them got through, and those where the unlucky ones that got hit with the Kamikazes. Some of them sunk; many of them sunk