USS Spangler DE-696
- A BRIEF MEMOIR -
On
-Guy E. Thompson-

Guy served aboard the Spangler from 1944 to 1946, initially as an Ensign and later as a LTJG.  He remained in the service until his retirement as a Commander in 1961. The photo of the USS Spangler below was provided compliments of Guy and shows the ship as it appeared in 1946 following installation of the 5-inch gun mounts.

USS Spangler DE-696 (1946) -- Click Image To Enlarge

Guy enlisted in the US Naval Reserve in 1938 and later the NROTC at Northwestern University in 1944. During that time he had the good fortune of taking reserve cruises on the destroyer USS Laub DD-613 and the battleship USS Arkansas BB-33.  On graduation from Northwestern in 1944, he received an Ensign's commission in the U.S. Navy and was assigned to the Sub Chaser Training Center in Miami and to the ASW School in Key West.

His next assignment was to the USS WARD APD16 as the ship's ASW officer and as the boat division officer during first landings of return to Philippines in October 1944.  The USS Ward, as you may recall, is credited with firing the first shots of the Pacific war.  This was while she was operating outside the entrance to Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.  The first shots missed the conning tower of a Japanese submarine, but the second volley was on target and four depth chages doomed the submarine.

Three years later to the date, a kamikaze struck the ship's hull on Dec. 7, 1944, during an enemy air attack in Ormoc Bay, Philippines.  Unable to continue operation, the crew was ordered to abandon ship and the USS Ward was sunk by gunfire from USS O'Brien (DD-725). Guy says that when the ship went down, "I was aboard a nearby ship with my shipmates who had also sought refuge there.  I was on the bridge up till the time the captain gave the order 'abandon ship'.  Since I always try to oblige I then left the bridge and carried out my duties as boat officer (WARD was an APD and we had landed troops on Ormoc Beach that morning a couple of hours earlier).   So I was not aboard when she sank but I was sure as Hell aboard when she received the kamikaze. Talk about your uninvited guests crashing the party!"

Guy co-wrote the forward to a book written by Richard P. Klobucha, titled: "The Ward - An Operational History of the Ship That Fired the First American Shot of World War II."   You can read more on it by clicking here.

His next assignment was to the USS Spangler, first as Ensign (as mentioned earlier), then as a LTJG operating in the Marianas Islands in 1945, and later in China 1946 as a Division officer as First Lieutenant (1st Lt.)  Guy explains that "up until 1948 the 1st Lt. was the head of the hull department.  This covered all deck, boats, and damage control and ground tackle - in fact all the seamanship aspects.  In those days there was no operations department.   All that changed in 1948 when damage control went to engineering, hull went to gunnery, navigation and communication went to operations.  Navigation came out of that after the USS MISSOURI went aground and it was decided that the navigator needed direct access to the CO and not through the Ops Officer. So, 1st Lt. was not a rank but a position.  I was a LTJG when I was First Lieutenant on the Spangler."

Spangler Crew - January 1946
Guy is 10th on the front row, counting from right to left looking at the photo.
Click Image To Enlarge

Of his Spangler experiences, Guy writes, "when I reported aboard ship I met the several other ensigns in the wardroom.  They were delighted that there was someone junior to them.  Someone mentioned date of rank and Ensign O'Neal immediately started to pack his gear to move aft.  I was not the junior after all...We got under way and at dinner in the wardroom the chairs were lashed to the bulkhead and we ate catch as catch can.  I enjoyed a hearty meal and the Commodore remarked to the Captain-- in a disappointed tone -- 'Ensign Thompson didn't appear to be upset by the sea'.  At that time I hadn't mentioned to any of them that not only did I have my prewar Naval Reserve service including a cruise in a 4 piper in the Atlantic but I had skippered a fishing boat out of Gloucester one summer."  In other words, being bounced around at sea was nothing new to Guy!

He said, "the Spangler could be rough in a seaway and one evening I called CIC from my OOD station on the bridge to tell the JOOW that according to my math I was -- at bridge level -- traveling further from side to side than I was moving along the course.  I got word back from CIC that my announcement had caused the JOOW to rush out to the wing to be sick.  His sickness was something shared by many ship mates.  They never seemed to appreciate it when I gave them the recipe for a sure preventive for seasickness: Find an apple tree. Get under it and stay under it!"

Possibly by now you've read Guy's SeaTale story about the day LT Mountbatten, now Duke of Edinburgh, and husband of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, visited the Spangler.   If not, don't stop until you do, it's a facinating story.  Click here!   But be sure to use your browser's back button to return!

Guy authored a report on "Precise Ship Positioning" in 1959 for the Journal of The Institute of Navigation. Navigation continues to be a favorite topic: He says,

"I didn't do any navigation on the Spangler but have done a fair piece since. I was a fussy navigator -- I wouldn't use a standard #2 pencil in harbor navigating because the lead is too many yards wide -- at sea I used a black pencil on the plotting sheet for dead reckoning and proposed track, a red pencil for celestial observations, ands blue for electronic info, When I was CO of PCE897 we were running on a peace time allowance of four officers vice a war time complement of eight. So we doubled and I did the navigation. I never had a rated QM so had to have a sharp SN filling the billet. I had one named Strawmeier. One day he remarked on the interesting names the stars had. The next night on the bridge while shooting stars and calling out their altitude I called out one as "Alpha Strawmeirus'. He later told the bridge personnel who had heard this that the star in question (Sirius) had been discovered by his grandfather -- and several of them believed him -- partially because they knew that that bastard captain would never joke around. A year later my assistant was named Cotton and Canopus became Alpha Cottonine."

Other career assignments while in the Navy include:

• USS HOLDER DD819 1948-1950 as LTJG,
• Operations officer, Home port Newport RI and then Norfolk VA

• USN Postgraduate School 1950-1951 as Lieutenant, Communication course

• Staff, Commander Destroyer Flotilla SIX 1951-1953 as LT, Home port Newport, deployed Mediterranean, Communication Officer

• Staff, Commander Navy Section JUSMAG Greece, 1953-1955, as LT. and Lieutenant Commandeer Aide and Flag Lieutenant

• USS PICKING DD 685 1956-1957 as LCDR, Executive Officer -- home port Long Beach CA, deployed Far East

• Staff, Commander Task Group 7.3 as LCDR and Commander, Home office Washington DC. Deployed Eniwetok, Bikini for nuclear testing, Communication officer, Navigator for project in precise ship positioning.

  "When I was in DC after the atomic tests I walked by the desk of a CDR on our staff who was working up a seamanship exercise.  We figured that there were only about seven men in the WORLD who could accomplish the task and CDR Thurman was one and certainly the only man in the US Navy that could. I looked at the plan and said, 'Who you going to get to do the navigation?" "I don't know, Tommy, it's going to be tough to find one." "I'll do it." At that CDR Thurman jumped from his chair, grabbed my shirt front: "All right, Tommy, but if you F--- up I'll knock your block off." "I am pleased to report that he did not find it necessary to knock my block off. One of the interesting thing is that we did not give a damn where the bridge of the ship was.   We needed to know with a fine degree of accuracy where the stern chock was. We were dropping an anchor from there and its position -- in water over a mile deep -- was the information needed.  Since we were doing this on three ships in rapid succession so that the cables could be brought to the same buoy it was a fine exercise in seamanship -- and for me and my navigation team hopping from ship to ship a splendid experience.  I had on the team a QMC and he was useful for erasing the charts between runs.  My major assistant was a HMC who used his brain. Look at the scale we used and picture the consternation on the face of the conning officer -- skipper of a fleet tug.  At one point CDR Thruman took over from one of the COs and you cannot believe what he made that ship do.   A real seaman."

• USS TOPEKA CLG8 1960-1961 as CDR, commissioned NY then to Long Beach, Operations Officer