When I enlisted, since I was 17, they said I would get about anything I wanted [branch of service]. I put down aviation. There were three different options you could select, and I put down all for aviation. And they [still] put me on a destroyer. I was shipped to San Francisco for training; [I was] based on Treasure Island in San Francisco for about six weeks before I went back to Washington again to wait until a brand new destroyer (the USS Rowan, DD782) was commissioned in March. So we spent a lot of time in Bellingham, Washington at Pacific Shipyards (where we were stationed) until the ship was completely done, loading and getting equipment on board on the bay there in Seattle, Washington.
We loaded ammo and all kinds of equipment (except the torpedoes, which we would load later). We went to sea for a little while in what they call a shake down, just off of San Francisco, where they did some target practice. I was what they call a trainer on a quad forty gun. A quad forty is pretty large, but not ultra large; it was then the next to largest gun we had on board. I was there on that quad forty while we worked [trained] down off the coast of Point Montero, which is actually off of Highway 101 down south of San Francisco.
We went down and fired onto the beach where they had big targets. We (our ship) had the small guns - a 20 millimeter (a small machine gun) and a forty millimeter. It (the twenty millimeter) would fire, and then we (the forty millimeter) would fire. The one we had, the forty milliliter, was four barrels, four different guns, and we fired all of those for training. Afterward, we went back to Seattle, where we loaded the torpedoes. Shortly after that, we left Seattle and went to sea.
The first stop was in Hawaii. Pearl Harbor was over when I got there, but the ships were there; some of them had been removed, but most of them were still there in the water (sunk and all different things). We were there for two days. We went on from the ship to the beach (which they called White City; [it was] actually a marine base) on a motor boat and then into Honolulu. We just fooled around there. I had a brother who was stationed there at Kaneohe Naval Air Station. I went over there to see him, to spend the night with him, but he was on duty, so I just got to visit with him. He was a bombardier instructor. His job was inside, in a building that had platforms that moved along on the concrete (with bombardiers-in-training on the platforms), and when they (the bombardier) thought they were where they were supposed to be; they would push a button and a bomb would release onto a little ship below on the concrete; they would hit it or they didn’t and that was the training for the bombardiers.
I went back to Honolulu then and spent the night in a USO; a big government building that had been changed over so we could stay there. The next night was spent on board ship. We loaded a bunch of stuff there (Honolulu). We went to sea out from Honolulu, (Pearl Harbor) and just stayed out there for a while. We didn’t know where we were going, and evidently the skipper didn’t know where we were going either at the time, until a Navy Blimp came over the ship from, (I suppose) Pearl Harbor, and dropped a rope down with a briefcase [attached]. That briefcase had our orders in it. The officers picked up that briefcase and the blimp went back (I suppose), to Honolulu. Our orders were then in that briefcase.
Then next day we found out we were headed for Japan. We were not in a hurry to get to Japan, but we were on our way to Japan to intercept other ships that we would escort for a while (like oilers or one that had fuel on board); occasionally we would refuel from those. There were several destroyers in a group; we were one of them (about five others). We would hook up with a convoy going over; escorting other ships carrying ammo or fuel or whatever (just in case subs were around or something like that).
There was a schedule [on board ship]; we had to fit those times. I would say ninety percent of the meals were powdered; dried (not very good meals). When we were anchored or when we were in San Diego, they would bring us fresh food and stuff every once in a while. It wasn’t very good [the food on board ship], but you were hungry enough and you ate it. And powdered ice cream; we had an ice cream maker and about once a month, we’d get ice cream.
We never worked with anything knowing what a torpedo looked like when it was fired at your ship. So we went through a training program to show us what it was like. A submarine came through and fired us with a dummy torpedo. We stood at the side of the ship and watch it go under the ship, just far enough below us that we could see it, but deeper than the ship so that it didn’t hit us. It would go on by, stop, and pop on up out of the war. The head would come up and a fire would light. It would bob up and down in the water, burning, and then after the sub came up out of the water; (which is eerie, seeing a submarine coming up out of the water). We would go over, pick up the torpedo and put it on our ship. When we went back in (shore), we would take the two torpedoes we had off and leave them at a marine base, where they would fix ‘em up and reuse them. Then we left there and headed more direct to Japan.
The war was still going on; but we were fortunate that it was just before they [the U.S.] dropped the atomic bombs (so we didn’t get involved with that). Then we went on, traveling slow; we were a fast destroyer; we just traveled slow (we could go about30-35 knots in the water; full speed would be in the 40’s). Our ship was 365 feet long, with a crew of approximately 350 people on board. Each one had a duty and mine happened to be on this gun crew with the quad forty. At the time we had two quad forties, two twin forties, and I couldn’t tell you right off how many twenty millimeters we had.
We went back [to a base] and had work done (they took all the stuff off, reloaded with all the ammo we had fired; we had fired quite a bit of ammo because for our training; they would fly a twin engine airplane towing a target that looked like a wind sock that you would see at an airport. They towed it on a cable, and then we would fire at it. The 20’s would fire, and see if they could hit it, and then we would fire at it, and try to hit it, and then the five inch would fire at it, and try to hit it. We had two sets of fives) and reloaded, but with torpedoes of our own.
We had two torpedo mounts, and each one had four torpedoes. So we were carrying eight torpedoes on board the ship. When we went into San Diego, they took one set of torpedoes back behind it off and added another five inch-38. Our ship had two smoke stacks; two engine rooms. One set of torpedoes was between the smoke shacks, and would rotate and fire off the side of the ship. They took one of the sets of torpedoes off and added another five inch-38. So then we had three five inches. Two forward, one aft. And so just beyond us [the quad forty gun crew]; we had a five inch that would fire as far around forward as possible - just so it wouldn’t hit the ship when it fired. Well, our quad forty was mount forty-two but when they would fire that five inch, there were times it was close enough that we would get hit with the cork that held the powder in. It was that close. We had no hearing protection of any kind, not even cotton. Most of us had hearing problems after that.
[Anecdote] Fact is I had an ID card when I was in the navy but because I was too young, I couldn’t go into a bar. So I got a new one that said I was two years older. One time in San Diego I decided I was going to get drunk. I didn’t know what to drink, so I drank whiskey and beer and mixed them all up, you know. I didn’t get drunk, but boy did I get sick. I was in a hurry to the bathroom and I threw up all over a sailor in the bathroom. He didn’t kill me but he said, “Sailor, you’d better get back to ship.” And I said, “I’m on my way.” And I caught a water taxi back to ship.
When headed back for Japan, the war was over, but the Japanese hadn’t signed the surrender yet, because it was done at Tokyo Bay on the Battleship Missouri. We went into the harbor on this Kyushu island hoped that they would let us go up to where they were signing, but they wouldn’t let us. We were too small, I guess. So we had duty there when there was a real bad hurricane.
There was a barge at sea that was loaded. We thought it was loaded with ammo, but we didn’t really know. We had to stand-by (because it had broken free) until a seagoing tug came and hooked on to it to take it in. Then we went back into the harbor. There was a Japanese battleship that had been sunk in the harbor, but there was still room for us to get by. We loaded up with a bunch of Japanese paint, and oil (and things like that -anything that was there that was Japanese, we could have). That’s what we used to paint our ship. Afterward, this typhoon came through; a real strong one - and we wanted to leave the port to go out to sea because we felt it would be safer out at sea (there were quite a few ships in this harbor; we called it Sasabo).
Some of the ships were just anchored [once]; we were anchored on the front and back, and then we had to run the engines to keep from being pushed around (because it would drag the anchors we had on the bottom). We had to watch a small ship, a minelayer, - with two anchors out and the engines going full speed; move back onto the beach and onto its side.
After that was over [the signing of the Japanese surrender], in February, we went back out to sea and to Pearl Harbor for one day to refuel and everything. (While we were at sea, we refueled from a tanker. They would throw a rope from the tanker to our ship and pull on this rope that had a round ball on it for weight, {the rope was probably about four or five inches around}. We’d pull that over to our ship and then we’d pick up a hose that was probably at least six inches around and stick it in a big hole that we had there; they’d turn on the fuel and transfer fuel from their ship to our ship. They would transfer personnel {medical personnel etc.}, in what they called the boson’s chair. We were close enough that we could keep it [the rope] pretty tight, but every once in a while, we’d get a big wave and it’d push us toward each other, and the guy would be headed toward the water. We never did drop one, but I don’t know that we’d have cared at the time). When we’d meet a ship for refueling, usually they were carrying our mail. So we’d get mail maybe once a month. You’d never know.
We then returned to Japan and picked up a lot of guns and things like that as souvenirs (I had one of those); we went into a real big Japanese storage area with barracks and everything, below which they (the Japanese) had stacks and stacks of guns. We picked up all these guns with the Japanese as labor and store and stack them (bayonets and scabbards for the bayonets and lots of things that they told us we wouldn’t get home with anyway…course I got home with two bayonets and a rifle).
We went into this one bay and with about ten scientists (of some kind), and anchored in this little harbor where there were a lot of fishing vessels; some sunk (the temperatures and pressures set off by the atomic bomb had traveled through an opening where this road went through to the fishing area. The explosion had gone through and set some [boats] on fire; they were all wooden - and sank some of them). So these scientists went into the area where the bomb had exploded and spent several days in there trying to figure out what had gone on.
We went over on the beach and went to some of the areas where they [the scientists] were. We didn’t have any idea about nuclear power. We didn’t know it would cause cancer or anything like that. We had no protection. Well, they found out [later] but we didn’t know [at the time]. It (the bomb) destroyed a lot of things [in Nagasaki] but there was this structure that they called Shinto Shrine that still stood. Everything around it was leveled, but this shrine stood there. Why, I don’t know, but it had withstood the pressures of that bomb.
Well, the bunks in our ship were stacked in threes and when you got to bed, you [would] let them down, one on top of the other. We stored our clothes underneath that bottom bunk; [in a space] not very big but big enough to hold the clothes we had. Some of the people had brought back pieces of rock from on the beach. It looked like glass – [but] it was highly radioactive molten sand; we didn’t know that and there it was, right below us.
After that we went back to the U.S.; Pearl Harbor first, then San Diego (we were going to have some work done). The captain of the ship was going to get off as soon as we docked and go play golf. As we were targeting alongside the dock, (to tie it up and leave the ship), we pulled up alongside this aircraft carrier. As we backed the ship (the captain controlled this) we’d back in between two ships. Well, we hit the aircraft carrier on their gun tab, which sticks out the side of the ship – (where they had their guns). We had quite a bit of damage to our radio room. He [our captain] was then transferred off the ship, and another came on. I don’t know what happened to our captain; we sure hated to lose him. But you don’t make mistakes like that. That was when they took the torpedoes off the back and put a twin fifty back there. When I was turned loose, it was in San Diego and they put us on a train back to Bellingham, where I was discharged.
After I left, the USS Rowan was decommissioned and sold to Taiwan. They were towing it to Taiwan to refurbish and reuse it. It sank – so [now] it is at the bottom of the ocean somewhere. I went home to Hillsborough [when I was discharged]. [I] lost track of a lot of the guys. We went home on a series of numbers. When they got to your number, then they discharged you. I was number 29. And I was the only one on the train that I knew as I went back to Hillsborough.
(War Cruise of USS Destroyer Rowan)
(Dave Tindle, Left)
Dave Tindle enlisted in the U.S. navy in 1944 in Portland, Oregon. He was stationed on the USS Destroyer Rowan until 1946, where he was honorably discharged in Bellingham, Washington. On the Rowan, Tindle traveled to Japan, Pearl Harbor, and the mainland U.S several times during World War II. Tindle was a seaman 1st class when discharged. This is his story.
(USS Destroyer Rowan)
After the war, Dave Tindle worked for a mining company before becoming a city policeman Hillsborough, then an Oregon State Policeman in McMinnville, where he trained for and received his private pilot’s certificate. Later Tindle received his flight instructor’s certification, becoming a pilot examiner for ROTC at Oregon State. One of his students flew a OV10 twin-engine airplane ‘the warthog’ in Korea before becoming a fighter pilot and flying an F-4; one of the top airplanes at the time. Tindle’s student, Bob Altus, returned to Korea (after training to become a fighter pilot) before getting a direct hit with a SAM missile and being listed as MIA. Bob Altus was the only pilot (that Tindle trained) that he lost. Tindle maintains that those men he taught were some of the sharpest young people he ever worked with. Dave Tindle has lived in Burns, Oregon for seventeen years.
(Tindle on board the Rowan)
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