Page 29 - Gold Star Sons of Georgetown Prep

ENSIGN JOHN T. BATTAILE ’37
CONTINUED
These photos of the rifle club in 1941, give a good sense of the kind of activities engaged in by John and his teammates during the 1936-37 school year.
on their successful completion of the 8-month course at the U.S. Naval Reserve Midshipmen’s School.
John finished the program, was commissioned an ensign, and was then sent to the Norfolk Air Station for training.
He wrote playful notes to his youngest brothers, Joe and Andrew, describing the bustling activity and continuous noise created by warships firing for practice and the nearly constant overflights of numerous and different types of planes. “They have more ships and air planes here than you can shake a stick at,” he quipped.
Ensign Battaile, standing 6’1” and weighing 160 lbs, was assigned in February 1945 to the aircraft carrier Yorktown that was participating in operations against the Japanese as American forces moved ever closer to the Japanese home islands. The carrier, commissioned in April 1943, bore the name of the earlier Yorktown that had been sunk at the Battle of Midway in June 1942.
John thrived on the Yorktown. The captain of the
warship would later observe that John established himself as a “conscientious and efficient officer . . . universally admired for his courteous and gentlemanly manner” and respected for his “broad engineering knowledge.” In a letter of March 7, 1945, John confided to his mother, whom he affectionately called “Mugs,” that he was happier out on the carrier than
he had been for years. He attributed this to having “some responsibility, which I have never had before, and because
I have a definite job which keeps giving me a feeling of accomplishment.” He noted that he had grown in self- confidence as a result of “handling about fifty men” engaged in a common mission. The experience, he ventured, more than offset any risk involved.
He frankly acknowledged, however, that he was simply talking about his own personal experience up to that point, and hastened to add that when he looked at the larger
picture of the death, injuries, destruction, suffering, grief,
and economic ruin caused by the war, and the reality that his brothers might be drawn into it, he recognized “how senseless and horrible war is” and that he was “at present . . . probably over optimistic.” He expressed his hope that “if we all keep praying and working and stick together, we should come out on top of the pile.”
John was indeed too optimistic. Within weeks, he and the crew of the Yorktown would endure an excruciating ordeal off the coast of Okinawa that would put to the test any crewman’s optimism. Beginning on March 30, the Yorktown and other carriers in her task force focused on Okinawa and surrounding islets. When American assault troops landed
on Okinawa on April 1, planes from the Yorktown provided tactical support. They also defended the Yorktown against Japanese kamikaze planes bent on sinking as many American ships – especially aircraft carriers and battleships — as possible. The Yorktown’s pilots, flying the Navy’s F6F Hellcat fighter, included a squadron known as “the flying circus,” which downed 50 Japanese planes during the battle and were known as “the most successful combat team in Navy history.”
The Yorktown operated off the coast of Okinawa for 61 days during which she steamed over 35,000 miles. On 29
of those days, the ship came under kamikaze attack. During the Battle of Okinawa, the Japanese suicide pilots inflicted the greatest losses on the U. S. Navy in its history, including 5,000 dead American sailors, 33 ships sunk, and more than 300 damaged. John, and the rest of the crew of the Yorktown,
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