In 1944 the aircraft carrier the USS Gambier Bay was sunk by
enemy fire off the coast of the Philippines, drifting to its murky
grave at the bottom of the ocean.
In 1944 the aircraft carrier the USS Gambier Bay was sunk by enemy fire off the coast of the Philippines, drifting to its murky grave at the bottom of the ocean.
Of the more than 900 crew members, a third of the men failed to survive the attack.
Sixty years later, one of the survivors, Hollister resident Albert Roth, has helped to resurrect the carrier to its original glory – but at a fraction of the size.
Roth built an exact replica model of the vanquished ship, which was presented to the USS Hornet Museum on Saturday in Alameda among a large group of family and friends.
Roth joined the Navy in 1942 at the age of 21 because Army life was too unappealing to the Denver, Colo. native.
“I didn’t want to sleep in a foxhole,” he said. “In the Navy, you’ve got your bed and your chow, and it’s a good clean life.”
Working as an airplane mechanic, he boarded the Gambier Bay’s 480-foot flight deck in May of 1944. Early on the morning of Oct. 25, 1944, a Japanese warship ambushed the lone carrier on a sneak attack that left it a “sitting duck,” Roth said.
Each carrier is supposed to have a destroyer or a destroyer escort with it, but the Gambier Bay was alone and suffered a total loss because of it – becoming the only carrier in naval history to be sunk by enemy gunfire.
“An aircraft carrier is not a fighting machine – it is the most vulnerable thing there is,” he said. “So you run like hell.”
The attack lasted about two and a half hours, succeeding in sinking the giant craft and submerging the survivors into the chilly waters.
After being struck in the leg with a piece of shrapnel, Roth hung onto a net made of one-inch-thick rope, held afloat by pieces of cork, called a floater. His entire body was submerged in the shark-infested waters for two full days and nights.
“It wore the nipples off the titties,” he said. “A lot of guys went crazy and took off their life jackets and went to get a drink and that was the end of them.”
The prospect of death never entered Roth’s mind, even after all he had witnessed and continued to witness as he bobbed, hour after hour, through the choppy waters.
“You don’t have time to be afraid. If you’re afraid, you’re gonna die,” he said. “I never did have any fear. I wasn’t afraid to die.”
What many people don’t realize is that when a person is floating in the ocean, they can’t see anything anywhere because of the waves, he said.
“It’s like a bunch of soup bowls tied together,” he said. “You’re at the bottom of this bowl, and when you look up it’s water, water, water. The only time you see anything is if you wash up over a wave into the next bowl.”
With a single thought resonating in his head – when are the rescue boats going to arrive? – Roth waited out the ordeal with the rest of his wafting shipmates. A Canadian patrol picked up the men on the 44th hour, sailing them to safety and medical attention.
Roth was stationed in Hollister after being skirted around from base to base for medical care. It was here that he met his wife Paula. After only eight months off a ship, he was ordered back out to sea in July of 1945 on the USS Hornet.
Soon after president Harry Truman dropped the atomic bombs and the war came to an end, in February of 1946 Roth left the Navy and set sail for a new adventure – marriage, college, a family and the rest of his life.
A lengthy career as a mechanical engineer and two grown sons later, Roth decided to build a model of his sunken ship almost 10 years ago at the insistence of his youngest son, Barry.
Barry got a copy of the ship’s original blueprints, and Roth built the model from scratch over a three-year period.
Being an avid wood-worker for much of his life, building a model of the destroyed carrier was just something enjoyable for him to do, he said.
“Why do you do things? Why do people climb mountains? Because they’re there,” he said. “And it was a lot of fun.”
For several years, Roth tried to have the model placed in a museum but to no avail. Eventually he lost interest in it, subjugating it to a steadfast place in his garage.
Finally, one of his former shipmates connected him with the president of the Escort Carrier Association and one of the docents at the USS Hornet, which is now a floating museum in Alameda.
The gentlemen visited Roth and asked his permission to include his model in the museum, which he gladly gave them.
Seeing his model sitting behind a fancy glass case onboard a venerable piece of history made him and his family proud, he said.
“I’m very pleased. Not only is the Gambier Bay my ship, but I also served on the Hornet,” he said. “So, that’s unusual as hell.”
