Fights 18 Battles On Flat Top
Machinist’s Mate Garvin Returns from South Pacific Services
An average of a battle a month for 18 months is part of the record established by Aviation Machinists Mate Kenneth M. Garvin, who recently returned home after covering more than 120,000 miles on a small aircraft carrier in the South Pacific.
There were plenty of thrills in those months. There was the time a Jap submarine came to the surface alongside the aircraft carrier – so close that the sub could not launch its torpedoes. The crew of the submarine was as surprised as the American sailors at the closeness of the two ships and the Jap ship submerged immediately.
Depth charges were dropped from the flat top, but no further trace of the Jap ship was seen. Members of the American crew believe the sub was sunk.
There was another big thrill the time the flat top sailed to within 350 miles of the mainland of Japan and launched its aircraft to attack a Jap outpost. The carrier was under bombing attacks several times.
“But the thing which gave us the big thrill was the knowledge that we were so close to the Jap mainland,” Garvin says, “Jap planes, surface ships and submarines do everything in their power to destroy our aircraft carriers, but we managed to get through in spite of the worst they could do.”
Garvin’s carrier took part in 18 battles in 19 months. The engagement in which he participated includes Wake Island, Guam, Truk the Gilberts, the Marshall, New Guinea and Saipan. He wears nine stars on his campaign ribbon.
Married four years ago, Garvin came back to Sioux City to celebrate his first wedding anniversary at home in two years. He will be assigned to a shore station in this country at the end of his leave. “And that is alright with me,” he says. “I covered 120,000 miles of water in the South Pacific – and that should be enough water for anybody.”
Source: The Sioux City Journal, August 27, 1944 (photo included)
