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Escort carrier Ommaney Bay on fire after crash by
kamikaze. Destroyer Patterson shown at right.
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Kamikaze Nightmare
by Ron Burt
Alfie Publishing, 1995, 218 pages
Thunder and unexpected noises triggered flashbacks of the
"kamikaze nightmare." Pete Burt would shout out "DUCK!" and
then dive under furniture. In the late 1950s, over a decade after going through
four kamikaze attacks, he had a nervous breakdown as he continued to experience
the kamikaze nightmare. Pete suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for
more than three decades after the war until he experienced his final flashback
in 1977. This book written by his younger brother, Ron Burt, tells the intense,
emotional story of Pete's survival and eventual recovery from a kamikaze attack
that left him unconscious for seven days and required fifty operations over two
years.
Ron Burt, who admits up front to not being
a professional writer, dedicated this book to his brother Pete and to his
shipmates on the escort carrier Ommaney Bay
and the light cruiser Columbia. Ron Burt
spent several years researching records and trying to contact eyewitnesses to
piece together what caused the kamikaze nightmare. The book starts with some of
their childhood experiences together. As a high school student, Pete enlists in
the Navy at 16 by altering his birth certificate to meet the minimum age
requirement of 17. He becomes a gunner on the escort carrier Ommaney Bay,
where he experiences his first battle engagements
in the fall of 1944 as his ship provides direct air support for the invasion of
Palau and Leyte.
On December 15, 1944, the Ommaney Bay's gunners shoot
down an approaching kamikaze plane, which crashes into the water near the ship.
On January 4, 1945, a Japanese Ki-43 Hayabusa (Oscar) hits the ship, and
both of the plane's bombs penetrate the flight deck with violent explosions
that set fire to fully-gassed planes on the hangar deck and that cause water
pressure, power, fuel oil pumps, and bridge communications to fail. The men
below deck have no warning of the incoming plane, and men soon begin to abandon
the blazing ship. Although nearby destroyers pick up over 800 men in the water,
92 men are killed or missing in the sinking of the Ommaney Bay.
Pete Burt survives the kamikaze attack on the Ommaney Bay,
and he next gets assigned as a lookout on the light cruiser Columbia. On
January 5, the day after being rescued from the water, he watches as kamikaze planes smash
into four other ships. On January 6, a kamikaze plane with an armor-piercing
bomb hits the Columbia, causing 41 deaths and 35 wounded. On the same
day, the ship's gunners shoot down three other oncoming Japanese planes after
this deadly attack, and another kamikaze plane nearly misses the ship, spraying
fuel all over the bridge. On January 9, the day the U.S. invades Luzon from the
Lingayen Gulf, a Zero with two 250-kg bombs crashes into the Columbia
only 25 feet from where Pete Burt is standing. He describes what happens next
(p. 135):
The explosion carries me thirty feet into a life line. My
body burns with hot shrapnel covering me from head to foot. My left arm is
practically blown to pieces. The muscle rips out from the elbow to my shoulder
exposing broken bones. Hanging halfway over the life line, I lay stunned as
numbness comes over my entire body.
Pete survives but loses consciousness for seven days. The Columbia
suffers 24 dead and 97 wounded from the attack. The last part of the book
covers Pete's long recovery from the kamikaze nightmare, and the final chapter
tells about the his brother Ron's search, starting in 1989, for information and
eyewitnesses about his brother's wartime experiences.
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