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to get it down to Okinawa. They didn't even have enough fuel to get back. This was a suicide, that's all it was. They made every effort to down a ship or something if they could. That was their objective and they didn't know how to fly enough I don't think they could have gotten back. They just had one good pilot lead them down to the slaughter and then he left. MR. MORRIS: It's got to be scary to face an enemy you know is that desperate. MR. REDLE: Oh, I tell you. Out of our squadron there were two squadrons of destroyers. With the task group you generally had two to three carriers in there and you might have had a couple of cruisers and maybe even a battle wagon, very seldom we had a battle wagon in there. We were screened for submarines and all kinds of stuff and we were sitting out far enough to pick up planes. Our objective was to try to pick off these planes before they got into the carriers because the loss of the carriers was pretty serious. We never lost a destroyer on screening duty. They didn't go after destroyers when we were screening carriers. They wanted bigger meat than that. We were with the PRINCETON when it was sunk, the LEXINGTON when she got hit. Regardless of how hard you tried and we had close calls with planes getting close to us and knocked them down but we had torpedoes go by both sides of the ship. It was just a case where everybody got so run down, you got so tired. You were at general quarters so much of the time and when you were at general quarters you didn't even go down to the mess hall. They just gave you sandwiches. I was gun captain on a 5-inch gun on the PRESTON and they had five 5-inch two forward and three aft. I was gun captain on number 3 gun and I never even went down below and slept in my bunk for I don't know how many months. I just had a hammock swung between the steps underneath and all I had to do was roll out of my hammock and roll up the hot shell chute and I'd be in the gun. They were there
day and night. MR. MORRIS: How did people handle this kind of stress? MR. REDLE: We had some that didn't and they just took them off and sent them off. A lot of times you never heard what happened. They never told you what was the matter even. They were just transferred was all you heard. You didn't know the reason until some of these guys just couldn't handle it at all. That's like the message we got from Halsey when the MC KEAN went down. "We commend you on all your loss and sorry
The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Richard Reedle. Reedle joined the Navy in January 1942. He served as a boatswain’s mate on the USS McKean (APD-5). Reedle describes how his ship landed Marine Raiders throughout the Solomon Islands. He also discusses being critically hit by an aerial torpedo and being the last man off before it sank. Reedle then joined the crew of the USS Preston (DD-795) and became a captain of one of the five-inch guns. He describes providing gunnery support at Okinawa and screening carrier task groups. Reedle also discusses kamikaze attacks and going through a typhoon. He left the service in November 1945.
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