Captain Dixie and the Ti

This week, still feeding out the story of the Japanese Kamikaze attacks in small doses, the Navy told how another carrier, the Ticonderoga, had been knocked out of action by suicide flyers. Among those who have sailed aboard the Ti is TIME Correspondent Robert Sherrod. This is his story of the ship, which was laid up for repairs for 59 days, is now back with the fleet:

The most distinctive thing about the carrier Ticonderoga was her skipper. Captain Dixie Kiefer* is a short, barrel-chested seaman and airman who ran his ship by procedures few men could or would use, and made them work.

Four or five times a day, Annapolisman Kiefer would get on the bullhorn and plead with his flight-deck crew to hurry up or "that admiral over there will give me hell." When the ship passed through the Canal Zone last fall, he saw to it that nearly all of his 3,000 men got shore liberty at the entrance or the exit. Some had to be carried aboard, but every man made it back to the ship. When the Ti set out from San Diego, only one man deserted.

It was a crew made up chiefly of kids from The Bronx, Brooklyn and South Boston, and Idaho-born Dixie Kiefer knew how to handle them. The Ti was ragged at first--she would sometimes zig when she was supposed to zag. Her stack often poured smoke. But she settled down. Soon she was breaking records for launching and recovering planes. The raw kids became sensationally good.

Four Nights Straight. The Ticonderoga, a big carrier of the Essex class, had been in action only a month when I went aboard her last December. She was my 23rd ship since Pearl Harbor, but I had seen none whose morale was higher. For one thing, she still had stateside provisions. Once we had steak four nights straight.

Kiefer, who wore a helmet with "Dixie" boldly stenciled on it, had been executive officer of the old Yorktown at the Coral Sea battle (where he won the D.S.M.), and at Midway (where the York sank and he got the Navy Cross for heroism). There he had jumped from the ship and shattered his right leg and ankle.

He was the most battered officer in the Navy--he had long ago busted his left ankle and split his kneecap playing football, and he had a sort of double elbow on his left arm from an old injury (a fellow pilot dove a seaplane at him and hit the arm with a wingtip float). On the Ti they used to say of Dixie: "He's got so much metal in him the ship's compass follows him when he walks across the deck."

Bald Captain Kiefer would yell excitedly at his men: "Above all, don't get excited." One day he would say: "I have such a good time on this ship I ought not to take money for running it." Next day: "I wouldn't take this job again at five times the pay." The crew loved him. The Captain had two distractions: his $200 guitar, on which he played (badly) such tunes as Ida and Wishing and Nobody's

Sweetheart Now, and his cribbage game, which he played intently with the sandy-haired gunnery officer, Commander Her bert S. Fulmer Jr.

"Jackson!" Dixie had two Negro mess attendants, both conveniently named Jackson. When the Captain ordered coffee sent to his sea cabin, as he did about 20 times a day, all he had to do was shout: "Jackson!"

During the November action the Ticonderoga planes helped litter Manila harbor with sunken Jap ships. In December, when I was aboard, the Third Fleet mostly ran into foul weather, but the carrier planes, including those from the Ticonderoga, left about 450 Jap planes wrecked on the air fields of Luzon, and others on Formosa, according to Halsey's reports.

For a while the great typhoon east of the Philippines on Dec. 18 seemed likely to wreck Halsey's whole fleet. But the Ti came through without losing a man or a plane. Dixie proudly read Rear Admiral Frederick Sherman's "well done" over the loudspeaker, and congratulated his crew for its safety record. About that time a sailor who had dozed off on the struts under the No. 2 elevator fell overboard. Angry Dixie flushed brick-red at the blot on the Ti's record. When a destroyer picked up the sailor and returned him, Dixie got on the loud speaker again: "If anyone wants to see that smart young fellow, you can find him in the brig on bread and water." But Dixie softened up and let the man out for Christmas.

To the Coast of Asia. In January, when the Third Fleet set out again, I left the Ticonderoga for the Essex, Admiral Sher man's group flagship. January 12 was a great day. By 10:30 in the morning the Ticonderoga had got its first "well done" from Admiral Sherman -- her planes had sighted a seven-ship convoy off French Indo-China, had sunk all. The fleet sank 41 ships totaling 127,000 tons that day. Said Sherman: "That Ticonderoga is a real ship." Three days later the Ti pilots shot down four Kamikaze planes headed for the Essex.

January 21 was partially overcast and we were southeast of Formosa. On the Essex we were eating noon chow. At 12:09 the 5-inch guns opened up, and the bell clanged for general quarters. Everybody rushed topside. The Ticonderoga was bil lowing black smoke 300 feet high. Seven planes had sneaked through. Six were shot down but the seventh crashed through the Ti's flight deck. She was badly hit.

Occasional Japs made for our task group, but the Combat Air Patrol or the antiaircraft guns shot them down.

"Here They Come." By noon, the fire on the Ti seemed to be dying down. At 12:53 more bogeys were reported on the starboard side. "Here they come," some body yelled. As I was watching the burn ing Ticonderoga, at 12:55, the antiaircraft guns on a dozen ships opened up at once. Five Japs fell flaming into the sea, three of them victims of the Ti's own guns, but the sixth, though he was burning in three places, plowed straight into the Ti's smoke pall.

As the Jap reached his target he was flying very low, and he seemed to pull up a bit in an effort to hit the bridge. From the blackness a huge ball of orange flame spouted heavenward. Now the Ti was in great trouble. "She is still shooting, but she is going to sink sure as hell," said an officer beside me.

Two things probably saved the Ti, her officers said: 1) a sailor in hangar-deck control, though he was knocked down, crawled through twisted steel and turned on the sprinkler system; 2) Dixie Kiefer ordered the ship's ballast shifted to make a 10-degree list to port -- so the flaming gasoline ran off the hangar deck into the sea; then he changed course so that the wind blew the flames away from the ship.

The Cost. The Ti had lost all communication, but finally a blinker signal came to the Essex: "Captain and executive officer seriously wounded. Air Officer Miller killed, Gunnery Officer Fulmer missing. Many other casualties. Cannot raise for ward elevator, signal bridge out. Hangar deck gutted from forward elevator to aft of deck-edge elevator."

The Ti had plenty of heroes. They worked like madmen with fog nozzles and hoses, flooded magazines, went into blistering compartments to rescue trapped men. Within an hour and a half the Ti was no longer dying -- she reported that the fires were under control.

A few days later, in port, I went aboard the Ticonderoga. She had lost 143 men killed or missing, 202 others wounded --the worst Kamikaze casualties up to that time. (Among the dead: the two Jacksons.) Dixie Kiefer, who stayed in command until late next day, had lain on a mattress on the bridge for eleven hours with his right arm mangled and his body punctured by 65 small-bomb-fragment wounds.

A severed artery in his neck was held together for a while by a seaman to whom Kiefer said: "I'm sorry I had to bust you." Dixie had reduced him to seaman from petty officer a few days before.

Even before she reached port, escorted by the cruisers Flint and Biloxi and three destroyers, the Ti perked up. Of the dead, 123 were committed to the deep. Crews repaired the flight deck, and the Ti began taking on planes again. The Biloxi radioed: "Ticonderoga doing splendidly with her damage repair. Will launch her own CAP today. We are proud to escort her." Before they carried the Captain to the hospital ship Samaritan, Dixie called for the bullhorn mike once more (see cut).

Said he: "I'm proud of you men of the Ticonderoga, you lived up to my fondest expectations." The crew cheered its Captain.

* Now Commodore Kiefer, commander at Quonset Point, R.I. and still in bandages.

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