Published Nov. 3, 2003
Hendersonville Times-News

http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20031103/NEWS/311030324/0/search

A decision based on job security turned into way of life

By Jennie Jones Giles
A young man searching for a job joined the Navy during the Great Depression, never dreaming he would spend the next 20 years circling the globe and participating in a war with the Germans and Japanese.
Jobs were scarce in 1937 when Craig Pace received his diploma from Hendersonville High School. The people of Henderson County, just as the rest of the nation, were suffering during the Depression.
“I just loafed,” said the son of the late Leroy and Myrtle Stepp Pace. “There was nothing to do. I was delivering papers around here for the Times-News. I made $1.25 a week and delivered six days a week. I wore out more shoes than that. I decided I was tired of loafing and went over to Asheville where the Navy recruiter was.”
About the same time Pace was hired for a summer job in 1938 with the Reaben Oil Co., he received a letter from the Navy telling him to report for duty.
The 83-year-old Hendersonville resident said in the Navy he earned $21 a month, including room and board, which was good money in 1938.
He arrived in Norfolk, Va., about 6 or 7 p.m. and went straight to the chow hall.
“We had weenies and beans and some kind of bread,” Pace said. “It was the first time I had ever had that and I thought, `Hey, this is pretty good.'”
Pace was selected to attend electrical school in December 1938. After 16 weeks of studying, he was assigned to the USS Ranger aircraft carrier, the first U.S. carrier built from start as an aircraft carrier.
He spent the next few years sailing to ports at Guantanamo Bay, the Virgin Islands, Bermuda, Puerto Rico and Charleston, S.C., even docking in New York City during the World’s Fair, where he saw an exhibit demonstrating the new invention of television.
In 1941, he was discharged and in October got a job at the Naval Yard in Norfolk. On Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
The 21-year-old received a postcard telling him to report to the draft board in Hendersonville.
“The Ranger was in port and I went to talk to my old officer,” Pace said.
He came home to Hendersonville, got his discharge papers and uniform, returned to Norfolk, went past “all those Marines on guard,” and re-enlisted onboard the Ranger.
“The duty commander swore me in,” Pace said.

North Africa

“I thought we were going to take on the Japanese,” Pace said. “But we went to Bermuda. The German subs were pretty thick out there in the Atlantic Ocean.”
From Bermuda, the Ranger, the only large carrier in the Atlantic Fleet, sailed to Quonset Point, R.I., and was loaded with P-40 Army fighter planes. The planes were taken to the Gold Coast of Africa, where they were flown off the carrier, heading for the China-Burma-India Theater of the war. The same trip was made a second time.
Pace was assigned to the electrical division of the carrier.
“I did whatever had to be done to keep the electrical system operating,” he said.
On the third trip heading for Africa, the carrier was loaded with fighter planes, bombers and torpedo planes. With the carrier underway in the Atlantic, Pace went topside and looked out.
“There must have been 500 ships surrounding us,” he said.
Pace was part of Operation Torch, the American-British landing on the coast of North Africa, which was under the control of the Germans and their French supporters. The ships leaving from the United States were carrying 35,000 Americans to French Morocco. Another 39,000 Americans had left England for western Algeria. A third group of 10,000 Americans and 23,000 British were sailing toward the Algerian capital of Algiers.
“Up to that moment no government had ever attempted to carry out an overseas expedition involving a journey of thousands of miles from its bases and terminating in a major attack,” said then Gen. Dwight Eisenhower.
On Nov. 8, 1942, 11 months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, more than 800 war vessels and transports assembled along the North African coast from Morocco to Algeria. Pace, aboard the Ranger, was 30 miles northwest of Casablanca, Morocco. Planes from the Ranger flew 496 combat sorties during the three-day operation. The only serious fighting, according to historians, was in Oran and Casablanca, where French naval vessels shelled the attackers until put out of action by bombing. With the Allies in control of the ports at Morocco and Algeria, and the soldiers, who would continue the fight, ashore, Pace and the Ranger headed back to Norfolk.
Pace, now a first class petty officer, volunteered to be a part of the crew on a new aircraft carrier under construction, the USS Bunker Hill.

The Pacific

In May 1943, Pace and the crew went aboard the newly built USS Bunker Hill. They soon left Boston, where the carrier was constructed, to Trinidad for the shake-down, where the ship and crew train to make sure everything works properly and the crew becomes familiar with the carrier, Pace said.
Pace and the carrier left for the Pacific in August 1943. A stop was made in San Diego to load the Hellcat Squadron of VF-17s and VF-18s and about 3,000 Marines. The Marines were off-loaded at Pearl Harbor and the carrier headed for the Solomon Islands to support the Marines fighting the Japanese.
Chief Petty Officer Pace’s battle station was the repair party in electrical engineering.
“If the carrier gets damage, we do what we can to contain it,” he said. “I was in charge of electrical repairs to the main elevators, the bomb elevators and the steering gear.”
On Nov. 11, 1943, the Navy planes on the carrier were sent to “knock out the Japanese airplanes and ships,” Pace said. “We were there to help the Marines out there on those islands.
“The Japanese did send some planes out after us,” Pace said. “They sent about 120 planes after us, up in two waves, but we had a good skipper who knew how to dodge torpedoes and dive bombers. There was a lot of zig-zagging going on. When the ship is under attack, we were to lie down on the deck, coiled up, to get off our feet.”
After a period of recuperation, the carrier then headed for the Gilbert Islands to support the Marines at Tarawa. Pace said the carrier was always about 50 miles offshore.
“You don’t want to put a carrier too close in,” he said. “In all the operations I was in, someone else was doing the fighting and bleeding. We didn’t worry about the Japanese planes and subs, we had our work to do to help those Marines.”
Later, the carrier headed for the Marshall Islands campaign.
“I’m cheering those boys on you might say,” Pace said. “I’m just one of about 5,000 people manning that ship. We know our boys want those planes up there above them. Me and my boys, I had about 25 helping me, had to keep the power on.
“My biggest worry was trying to keep cool,” he said. “The heat and humidity was terrible. There was no air conditioning in those days.”
Pace’s ship took part in the battles at Truk and for Saipan, Tinian and Guam. Pace and the Bunker Hill were in the Battle of the Philippine Sea when the Japanese planes flew out to challenge Task Force 58 of the 5th Fleet.
In the spring of 1944, the Japanese fleet assembled planes and pilots to replace those lost in the fighting at Rabaul in the Solomon Islands. On June 19, 1944, they sent out air strikes against the American fleet. American radar gave off sufficient warning for the fighter planes to get up and American bombers flew to attack Guam.
The battle became known as the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot because it was so one-sided. Within a few hours, the Japanese lost 346 planes and only 10 American aircraft were downed. The damage to American ships was minimal, with one battleship hit by a bomb. The Battle of the Philippine Sea, considered the greatest carrier battle of the war, left the Japanese with only 35 planes to fly from carriers. The Japanese carrier forces were never a threat again.
“I was on the hangar deck and walked over to the rail,” Pace said. “I saw battleships on the horizon throwing out anti-aircraft fire. I looked up at the sky and there was a plane and all of a sudden it dropped something. I saw the explosion alongside the ship and decided I better get back to my battle station. I had just gotten there when a bomb went off alongside the ship.”
The wires operating the elevator had to be fixed, Pace said. The compartment had filled with water, so the water had to be removed with pumps. Pace had to go down and fix the electrical problem.
“I had my hands on the volt meter and my fingers on the naked leads when I realized I was about to get electrocuted,” Pace said. “I was wet from the waist down and realized I was going to be carrying a current in all directions. I threw that volt meter across the machinery room. We found out we had power and it almost welded me to the deck.”
More than 80 men were wounded and two killed from the shrapnel when the bomb exploded, Pace said.
Soon after the battle, Pace was assigned to duty aboard another ship and sent back to the United States for re-assignment. The USS Bunker Hill, which was known as the Holiday Express for conducting so many raids during the Christmas and New Year holidays, went on to participate in the invasion of Okinawa, where it was hit by a kamikaze. Almost 400 officers and men died. The carrier was awarded 12 battle stars for the fighting in the Pacific.
“I was awarded seven battle stars for the time I was onboard,” Pace said.

Back to the Atlantic

Now a warrant officer, Pace was assigned to the USS Lake Champlain, which was being readied for commission.
“That was one of the best things to ever happen to me,” he said.
Pace received 20 days leave and it took nine months to get the ship ready. Toward the end of the nine-month wait, Pace was diagnosed with the mumps and placed in the Naval Hospital at Baltimore.
“The war in Europe ended while I was in the hospital,” he said.
As soon as he was released from the hospital, the carrier left port for its shake-down at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Upon arriving at Norfolk after the shake-down, Pace, who had the nickname Sparky, was approached by a fellow sailor.
“He yelled, `Hey, Sparky, did you hear what happened? They dropped an A-bomb on Japan,'” Pace said. “I said, `Great. I hope this ends the war.'”
When Japan surrendered, Pace was on leave visiting friends in the Georgia countryside.
Pace and the USS Lake Champlain spent the next few months hauling troops back to America from Europe.
He remained in the Navy, serving on various ships, including the USS Tarawa during the Korean War.
The last ship he served aboard before retiring was a newly built ship named after one of the first ships on which he served, the USS Ranger.
Pace retired in 1958 as a chief warrant officer. He married Jewel Watkins of Hendersonville. They have three children, Gail, Teresa and Jeff, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. He has worked at various jobs, mainly farming, he said, and raised his family in Hendersonville.