Marine pilot remembers USS Franklin attack

Antipodean Andy · Nov 16, 2008

Pilot Bill Rogalski survived attack on USS Franklin in World War II - A World at War - Cleveland.com

Sometimes survival in war is not a matter of being a little quicker, smarter or steadier than the other guy.

Sometimes it's just being in the right place at the right time.

Lt. Bill Rogalski, a Marine fighter pilot, was standing outside the pilots' ready room aboard the USS Franklin on March 19, 1945, when two 500-pound bombs dropped by a Japanese plane ripped into the aircraft carrier.

The twin blasts detonated among 31 bombers and fighters that had been armed with 30 tons of rockets and bombs, topped off with 36,000 gallons of fuel, for an attack on Japan, 50 miles away.

The carrier erupted in sheets of fire and billowing smoke. Flying debris, including entire airplane engines, sliced through the deafening roar of exploding ordnance.

In a heartbeat, Rogalski's life balanced on the thin edge of flame and fortune.

And all he'd wanted to do was fly.

"When you're flying, you're on your own, you pretty much control your own destiny," said Rogalski, 87, of Olmsted Township.

Flying had been his dream while growing up in Cleveland. Soon after graduating from East Tech High School in 1939 he enlisted in the Navy, figuring it was wartime and that that would be a good place to become a pilot. He got his training and transferred to the Marines.

His four brothers in the family of 10 kids also went into the Navy and Army and safely returned from the war. But of his brothers, only he mastered the art of landing an airplane on an aircraft carrier.

"Hard?" Rogalski scoffed at the suggestion.

When you're at sea, flying over a world of water, that little floating runway looks mighty good, according to Rogalski. "It looks like home," he said.

By the time the Franklin became his home in late 1944, the carrier had already had several close calls in action at Iwo Jima, Peleliu, Okinawa and the Philippines.

One Japanese kamikaze plane had hit the ship but slid across the flight deck before dropping over the side and exploding in the water. Another suicide plane hit the ship two weeks later, causing extensive damage.

But the Franklin had inflicted far more serious wounds on its enemies. By March 1945, its aircraft had sunk 52 merchant ships and 12 warships and downed more than 100 Japanese aircraft.

Rogalski joined the carrier's Marine aviators flying Corsair fighters of the VMF452 "Sky Raiders" Squadron, just as American planes were attacking targets on the Japanese mainland.

He was in the pilots' ready room early in the morning of March 19 when a mechanic pulled him out to discuss a mechanical problem with Rogalski's airplane.

Then the bombs hit.

"The flame came right over us. Boom. That flame just shot out from the hangar deck, up and all around us," he recalled.

They tried going into the ready room but were turned back by black, choking clouds of smoke.

"If I'd been in there, I'd have been gone," Rogalski said.

He and the mechanic struggled to reach the flight deck.

"Everything was going up and blowing up. Fire and flames, bombs and gasoline, rockets and whatever shooting off," Rogalski said.

He recalled passing several fellow crewmen who were limping or lying down with damaged, "distorted" legs, injured by the concussion of the blast as it traveled through the decks.

The Franklin heeled over to one side as fires gutted its interior. The cruiser Santa Fe pulled close enough to take on wounded from the crippled carrier and its airmen who had been ordered to abandon ship.

The carrier managed to limp home after losing more than 700 men. Two crew members were subsequently awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism, including the only such honor bestowed on a chaplain during the war.

Both the Franklin and Rogalski were sent stateside after the attack. The aviator finished the war as a test pilot of new planes including a 28-cylinder F2G Corsair that could tear through the air at 420 mph.

But even faster aircraft awaited. Jets.

After the war, Rogalski served in the Marine Reserves when pilots were transitioning to the propellerless planes.

"We didn't have an instructor ride with us, but we had a good ground program," he said. "Then they'd set you in the cockpit and you'd just take it and go.

"Once you're rolling down the runway, you adjust real quick," he quipped.

Rogalski returned to action during the Korean War, flying photo-reconnaissance jets over enemy targets, before retiring as a lieutenant colonel after 26 years in the Marines.

He put in a sales career as the Cleveland rep for the Hager Hinge Co. of St. Louis but kept his eye on the skies, piloting a Cessna. He and his wife, Sylvia, have four children: John, Val, Mark and Jim.

He also keeps in touch with former "Sky Raiders," periodically attends their reunions and still shares some of that old Franklin spirit with them.

His wife recalled, "After 9/11 they were like, 'What can we do? We're ready to go.' "

The aviator said he never wondered if he was going to make it through the war.

"No, I never gave it a thought," he said. "Too busy thinking about the other things - about the aircraft, what your mission was going to be, how to perform it, the maneuverability of the aircraft, enjoying life in general, I think."

But that confidence was tempered by the knowledge, as he admitted, that "luck played a major part."

Just being in the right place at the right time.
Click to expand...

Log in or Sign up

Marine pilot remembers USS Franklin attack

Antipodean Andy New Member

Share This Page

Log in or Sign up

Marine pilot remembers USS Franklin attack

Thread Tools

Antipodean Andy New Member

Share This Page

Useful Searches