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Former resident shares WWII stories
Ray Jones was just 19 years old when he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. The 1942 Sylva Central High School graduate – and older brother of Allen and Marion Jones – went to basic training in Jacksonville, Fla., before landing on the USS Hornet, an aircraft carrier, in December 1943.
During Ray’s time aboard, the ship took part in 10 Pacific Theater battles, including the First and Second Battles of the Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf. Ray and the Hornet also participated in the invasion of the Marianas Islands, Formosa, Okinawa, Iwo Jima, Chichi Jima and New Guinea.
Ray, who has lived in Easley, S.C., for almost 50 years, wrote down his WWII memories with the help of a newspaper writer there. His brother Allen dropped a copy by The Herald office a month or two ago so we’d have it in plenty of time to use on Veterans Day.
As an aviation ordinance man, Ray’s job was to keep the six machine guns on each fighter in good firing order and load bombs, rockets and ammunition. When a plane came back from a bombing raid, Ray and his partner reloaded its ammunition and checked its guns. If one of their planes was shot down, they were assigned another one, he said. The Hornet had guns, but they were mostly for defense, and Ray said most of the battles took place out of sight of him and other crew members.
One incident Ray describes was during a battle with the Japanese Navy.
“One of our pilots used a No. 21 fighter to shoot down six Zeroes (Japanese fighter planes) on one load of ammunition. When the pilot came back, I asked him how his guns had fired. He said, ‘Not too good.’ I checked his guns out and discovered he had one round left. Evidently he was so overwhelmed by the action, he didn’t realize how good his guns were firing.”
Ray also describes the repeated efforts Japanese fighters made to penetrate U.S. defenses.
“The Japanese snuck in many times, trying to bomb us, but we either shot them down or scared them off,” he said.
Ray does remember one time when a Japanese plane could have done real damage to the Hornet.
“He dropped two bombs, but one fell on one side of the ship, and the other on the other side.”
Kamikaze pilots targeted the Hornet, too, but they were always shot down, Ray said.
Ray found out after the war that another Jackson County boy was on the Hornet.
“He was a Woods from down at Qualla, but I don’t remember his first name,” Ray said during a telephone interview earlier this week. “I went to school with him, but he was younger.”
Ray also had wartime contact with Roy Patterson of Barkers Creek, who was stationed on an oil tanker in the Pacific. Ray would talk to him over the telephone sometimes while the Hornet was being refueled, he said.
And after he moved to Easley, Ray met someone who’d been watching out for him during the Pacific battles. Carl Stone, another member of Easley’s First Baptist Church, served on a destroyer that was assigned to protect Ray’s ship.
Though the Hornet survived major battles, she was caught in a typhoon in June 1945 that collapsed some 25 feet of her forward flight deck.
Ray remembers that waves washed up on the 70-foot high flight deck. He said they “rode it out” and that he “prayed every once in awhile.”
Ray also helped with information for this week’s Then and Now feature on page 8C. It turns out that he worked for Jack Allison after he came back from World War II. Ray went with Allison to East Hartford, Conn., where he learned rubber welding and helped Allison sell recapping supplies.
For his service during the war, Ray earned a number of citations and commendations, including the Presidential Unit Citation, the Navy Meritorious Unit Citation, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign medal, the World War II Victory medal, and a Bronze Star.
We appreciate Ray’s willingness to share his story on the eve of Veterans Day, which was still known as Armistice Day when Ray came home from the Pacific six decades ago.
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