This is Jerry Weems. Today is the eighth day of
December 2001, and I am interviewing Alphonsus
Stockdale, Al Stockdale, or as he sometimes is
called, Stocky. And this interview is taking
place in Fredericksburg, Texas, adjacent to or
very near the National Museum of the Pacific War.
The interview is specifically in support of the
National Museum of the Pacific
Wars Center for War Studies for the
preservation of historical information
related to World War II. Mr. Stockdale, we want
to thank you very, very much for
taking the time to relate your experiences that
you underwent during
World War II and to share these with the museum
and with generations to come who
who will be studying this kind of information
for the benefit of their own edification and
for mankind, we hope.
To start with, I would like to ask you where
and when you were born.
I was born on the prairie back in North Dakota,
August 2, 1915. 1915.
In North Dakota.
It must have been a pretty wild country back
then still. Yeah.
We were dry land farmers.
Where were your parents born?
Do you remember?
Were they first generation?
My parents came from Ohio.
And on my mother's side, the Irishman, and on
my dad's side, there's a little bit of everything.
Mostly English, I guess.
Do you remember their names, your dad's name
and your mother's name?
My mother was Cecilia Harrington, her maiden
name, and my dad was Roy Stockdale.
Had they met in...
They met back in Ohio.
In Ohio and then moved to...
And moved to Dakota.
They went to Dakota for the, when the
government was giving land away, what do you
call it? Homestead.
Homestead, yeah.
They ended up with a little acreage, and it
wasn't enough to support any family, it didn't
have any water, and dry years just wiped them
out, wiped out the crops, and so they had
to give that up.
mother passed away when I was three years old.
Where did they move from when
you were three or actually I don't know they
might have moved before that but
in there you know they were homesteading in in
North Dakota didn't work out did
they remain there did you move south? Well like
I said my mother died when I
was three and the family broke up. Okay. I went
to live with my my mother's sister
of my Aunt Retta, who had married another
Stockdale, it was two boys married two girls.
And I lived with them for several years until I
got out of second grade of school, I guess.
Was that still in North Dakota?
In Billings, Montana.
In Billings? Yes.
And then I went back to Dakota.
My dad was working on a farm, and I stayed
there a couple of years with him and started
going away to school.
I was going away to the Catholic school down in
Bridgewater, South Dakota and Elkton, South Dakota.
I graduated from high school in Elkton, South
Dakota in 1933, and then a year later the
Depression was on and I was getting hungry, so
I joined the Navy.
So you joined the Navy in about 1933 or 1934?
I joined the Navy on July 15, 1934, Omaha, Nebraska.
Did you have any brothers and sisters?
No brothers.
I had four sisters.
Okay. So none of them probably were involved in
the war or in the services?
None of them were in the service, no.
Well, after you joined the Navy in Omaha,
and obviously you selected the Navy for one
reason or another,
it might have been because you were hungry,
but you could also have selected the Army.
How did you happen to select the Navy?
Well, it so happened that a friend of mine,
When I graduated from high school, one of my classmates,
his father had decided that his son was going
to go in the Navy.
And they got talking about it to me.
And I decided, well, maybe that's a pretty good deal.
So I went along with him, and we went in the
Navy together.
So you enlisted in the Navy, probably for a
four-year hitch
or something like that.
How old were you at that point?
You were 18?
I was nineteen at that time and enlisted for
four years, went to San Diego for boot camp,
and after that I went on destroyers for three years.
I spent my four years and I was sent over to
Europe when Franco was taken over Spain
and we were sent over to evacuate refugees from
different ports in Spain, and at that
That time I spent about three, three-and-a-half
years over there until Hitler invaded Poland
and then they sent us back to the States.
But I would transfer every year, they'd send
ships over just for one year and I was
in the admiral's staff and I would transfer
every year and stay over there until the war
started and then I had to come back.
So what was your rake out in the Navy?
You were on the Admiral's staff.
Yeah, I started out as a radioman. OK.
And I was radioman, well, you go from third class,
to second class, to first class, to chief.
I ended up chief.
I stayed in the Navy for 20 years.
You did a career in the Navy. Yes.
You've got to be pretty bright to be a radioman.
I've interviewed several, and I know what
they've shared with me, you know, what's required
in terms of your ability to read the code and
punch it out, and it's got a challenging position.
When you were, after the situation where you
were in Spain and then came back to the U.S.,
what ship were you assigned to or were you on
shore duty when you came back from...
Well, I got paid off in 1936, no, wait a minute
now, 1938.
And when you say paid off...
No, I extended my enlistment while I was over
in Europe for two years.
So in 1940 I got paid off on the East Coast,
and I decided I was going to get out of the
Navy, but after I'd been out for two weeks I
didn't have any job to go to, so I decided
I'd re-enlist.
At that time I was in Norfolk, Virginia, and I
went up to Washington, D.C. to the Bureau
of personnel and asked them for shore duty.
The yeoman that I talked to said, no, we don't
have any shore duty available for a second
class radium one, but we've got these small
boats that are just getting ready to go on
commission and they are so small they'll never
go to sea, so they should be pretty
good duty.
I said, okay, I'll take it.
About four years later, after spending time in
the Battle of Pearl Harbor, Midway, the
Solomon Islands and everything, traveling from
Pearl to Midway, for the Battle of Midway,
1,200 miles under our own power, I decided that
guy would give me a bunch of crap.
I decided that he was all wrong about them not
going to see him.
Well, yeah, you got this initial information in Washington.
And then were you sent to pick up your first PT boat?
Was that assigned in DC?
Or did you go to Pearl to pick that up?
No, no.
They were building Bayonne, New Jersey.
I was sent to the Brooklyn Navy Yard
to wait for the commissioning of the ships and
the boats.
And as they were built in Bayonne, we'd go get
them and take them to the Brooklyn Navy
Yard until we went overseas with them.
So were you involved in transporting them overseas?
Did they go over under their own power or were
they carried aboard a...
No, they were carried aboard transports.
We'd have four of them loaded on a transport.
So you had some experience with the PTs, you
know, as we moved into 1940 and then into 1941.
I mean, and how did you happen to find yourself
at Pearl aboard a PT?
Well, I was
The first the first squadron was squadron two
it was just an experimental squadron and
After we made a shakedown
To Cuba and came back and then they gave them
them boats away mostly to England. I think
yeah, and
And then I was reassigned
to Squadron 3, which was Lieutenant Buckley.
He was the squadron commander.
I stayed there about a week, and they were
ready to go overseas, they were going to the Philippines.
He said he didn't want any married men to go
with him, and I was married at the time,
so I got transferred.
I got transferred to Squadron 1, and he went to
the Philippines with Squadron 3.
And I-Squadron 1, we were loaded on a tanker
and ended up in Pearl Harbor.
How many PT boats were there in a squadron? Twelve.
Twelve boats in a squadron.
And so was your squadron actually assigned to
Pearl, or was that an intermediary stop
in route to some other? No, no, we were
assigned to Pearl. We were assigned to Pearl. Yeah,
most of the Pacific fleet, their home port at
that time was Pearl Harbor. And how many,
how many personnel usually, you know,
consisted, did the crew consist of on a PT?
About 10 men and two officers. Okay. Usually
they had 90-day wonders for our officers.
They were right out of school.
Out of college.
You go for 90 days and train to be naval officers.
And the chief had to show them how to run
everything, I know.
I was second class radium when the Japanese
invaded, or they made their attack on Pearl
and I got promoted to first class. I don't know
if there are some events you
might want to share with us leading up to that
day, but if not, and you're
welcome, we'd like to hear them if there are,
but if not, can you kind of share
with us, you know, what you remember of the
December 7th, 1941, where you were, any
any feelings that you might have had just due
to the day's events, as you recall them?
Yeah, well, it's pretty hazy now, sixty years
later, but it seems I just finished my breakfast.
We were alongside of a barge which we were
using for our galley on that night, and just
finish my breakfast, I was standing out on the
dock having a cigarette, and all of a
sudden I noticed these planes coming in, and I
looked up and there was a couple of us standing
there and said, look, they've got that red
Vaughn, I bet they're having fleet maneuvers again.
They would have fleet maneuvers in those days,
and they'd make one a blue fleet and the other
And me and another guy were saying, yeah,
that's probably what it is, and about that
time they started dropping bombs, and we knew
damn well that it wasn't maneuvers anymore,
it was the real thing.
I went over and manned my radio to see what I
could find out at the time, and we had our
gunners get in the twin 50s and they opened up
on them and one of our gunners
got credit for shooting down the first plane in
Pearl Harbor. That's some
distinction. Yes, as I had a my Tommy gun I
took a few shots at him but everybody
was anybody that had a gun was shooting it no
matter what kind it was they were
that close, they were coming over our head and
going for the big stuff and not paying
any attention to us, so we got to shoot at them
in pretty close range.
So, yeah, the PT boat remained moored, I mean,
it didn't attempt to get underway at that
point, or did it?
Not at first, and then we got orders to get
underway, oh, I can't remember, but it's maybe
Maybe an hour or two after the raid started,
first they told us to go out and pick up some
of the men off the battleships, and before we
got there they changed it and said, get
out of the harbor, and the Jap fleet may be
coming in, so get out there and intercept them.
Luckily, they didn't decide to come in.
They did not decide to come in.
So as you went through the day, and obviously
it was a horrific day for everyone, can you
describe some of what the rest of the day was like?
Well, it was a terrible thing as we went out of
the harbor to see men in the water, bodies,
and see the ships being blowed up.
We saw the USS Arizona turn over, it was a
horrible sight.
We didn't stick around in the harbor very long,
we were ordered to get outside.
Did you have your entire crew aboard when you
got underway?
As I remember, we were all aboard.
The funny thing about this, I was on the PT-27,
and I got a skin infection, and they sent
me to the hospital ship, USS Solis, which was
in port.
And this was prior to December 7th?
This was about a week or so prior to the 7th.
I don't remember how much time I spent on it.
It wasn't too long, and on the Friday, which
had been the 5th of December, they sent me
back to PT boats, but my ship, the 27, or my
boat, was loaded on a tanker, six boats
were loaded on a tanker getting ready to leave
the following Monday for the Philippines.
So because I had been absent, they didn't know
when I was coming back, they had put
another radioman on my PT-27 and signed me.
When I came back I was signed to the PT-24.
So they never made it to the Philippines, they
never made it out of the harbor.
Luckily the ship that they were loading on
wasn't sunk and they were taken off when
We later went to Midway, the whole 12 of us.
So after you exited the harbor that day, it
sort of tells us how you got from 27-24.
After you exited the harbor that day, you
remained outside the harbor for most of the
day or did you come back in?
We came back in that night, as I remember,
yeah, we came back in and then from then on
we would have, I think, out of the squadron of
twelve boats, we'd have four boats stay
outside the harbor every night.
We had a little place we called the Q Station,
which we would tie up at, and we were on alert
out there for anything that might happen, and
every night they'd put four different
boats on.
The squadron was divided up into three
divisions, four boats in a division.
And I guess while they were out there, they
weren't actively patrolling, but just there
in case they were needed, and had them outside
the harbor where they would be?
We would just go out there and sit and wait,
and we'd be in communications with the Pacific
Command and they would give us our orders in
case there was anything like a submarine,
they'd think there was a submarine, they'd tell
us and we'd go check it out.
What were your feelings that day?
I mean, obviously, they had an adrenaline rush.
My first feeling when I realized that it was a
Japanese attack
was that this is a war coming on,
and I'll never live through it on these PT boats.
Nobody had figured that.
They figured that we were such a small boat and
so vulnerable
that we'd never live through it.
But as it happened, we met the enemy many
times, and we always either outrun them or
outshot them or something.
We managed to get through.
And you were married at that point in time, I
mean, you were married before you went to Hawaii.
Yes, I was married.
Did you have children back in the States?
No, I didn't have any children.
You were single. No.
My wife at that time was in Newport, Rhode
Island, she was living there.
Any other recollections about the attack or
that day with regard to how it impacted you,
the role you played, whether it was with regard
to the P.T. or survivors or anything else
you would like to share about that specific day?
No, I can't really, I can't give you much of
anything on that, I don't think.
What about, I'm sorry, go ahead.
Well, like I told you, I just had the feeling
that I'd never survive the war.
And that had to be a frightening feeling in and
of itself. Yeah.
I don't know, I thought it was pretty cool, and
things didn't bother me too much.
But I guess that's why I got through the war
without a scratch.
Well, obviously you did a lot of things right.
While you were, you know, a bad day, and I
guess the days or months that followed,
how long did you remain in the Pearl Harbor area?
We stayed in Pearl Harbor until about the 1st
of June,
when our intelligence had broken the JAP code
We knew that the Japs were coming to Midway, so
we got orders to go to Midway under our
own power.
We could go about 400 miles on a tank of gas,
and they would have small fishing boats loaded
with 50-gallon drums of gasoline in a 400-mile area.
Every 400 miles, we'd stop at one of these islands
and refuel off these fishing boats off
50-gallon tanks.
We carried 3,000 gallons of gas, 100 octane gas
on our PT boat.
What was it like traversing, you know, Pearl
Harbor to Midway under your own power, open
waters and...
Well, luckily we had pretty good weather and it
wasn't bad, we had no problems.
In fact, we ran across a spool of tuna and I
got out, I think I had the only fishing
gear on the boat, and I got the fishing rod out
and caught a nice 15-pound tuna, which
was-the crew was happy because we didn't carry
much supplies as far as groceries were
concerned at that time.
Everything was canned and packaged, and I mean, nothing-
That's right.
Lots of spam, mostly spam.
Did the squadron go, the 12 boats, obviously
together or in some kind of close formation?
Was it more than one squadron making that trip?
No, we started out, like I said, we only had 12
boats in the squadron and there was only
one squadron.
One of the boats, the first day out, I forget
which number it was, but they broke down and
had to turn back.
So actually there was only 11 of us that were
in Midway when the Japanese attacked June 4th.
In transiting to Midway, I'm just curious,
because the PT is not a very big displacement
boat, but did you remain in sight of one
another continually, or was it just radio contact,
or how did you?
Oh, no.
We always cruised in formation right within a
hundred yards or so of each other.
And basically you were unescorted, you had no
destroyers or-
No, no.
The only other vessel we'd ever see was the
boats that we'd fuel on every four hundred
miles or so.
And you arrived in Midway just prior to the attack?
As I remember, we arrived on the 3rd of June,
and the Japanese attacked on the morning of
the 4th.
Can you relate anything about the, you know,
the attack and the role that you played?
Well, we all-
Say your feelings.
They just-we got orders to stay in the harbor
and-and use our machine guns on the-on
I don't know if we got credit for shooting
anything down, we did a lot of firing.
One thing we did was a Japanese plane shot down
one of our planes and the pilot bailed
out and he was coming down on a parachute, and
we spotted the Japanese plane turn around
and he was machine gunning our pilot, and we
all opened up on him, and he veered off
and the pilot was saved.
In fact, the pilot came aboard the boat and
thanked us for being in the right place at
the right time for him.
I guess at that point he didn't stay aboard
very long, I mean he wasn't, didn't become
part of the crew until you get him back to his carrier.
Oh no, right, right, we just came out on a
small boat.
How long were you at Midway?
Oh, well we got orders that night to go out and
find the Jap fleet on June the 4th.
So we got underway, eleven boats got underway,
and they gave us the last position.
The last position and the direction they were
going, and they told us where we would meet
the Jap fleet, and it turned out that the Jap
fleet had turned during the night and
turned north, and so luckily we didn't make any contact.
We went back to Midway.
So we stayed out all night, and we did have one incident.
Out there the sky is very clear, and every once
in a while the North Star will light
up like a flare.
And as we were cruising along this happened,
and we thought it was a plane dropping a flare.
We figured that maybe the Jap fleet was over
there, so we turned over and chased that flare
until it went out, and we found out that there
was nothing there.
But the Japanese, we didn't come close to the
Japanese fleet, because they had turned,
they decided that they didn't want to come into
Midway, thank God.
So you hung out, or you were around Midway for...
We just stayed there for a few days, maybe a
week, I guess, and then we went back to Pearl.
Going back, we got towed back.
Tankers, I forget what kind of ships they were
that towed us back, but they'd tow,
One ship would tow two boats, one would be on
the port and one would be on the starboard side.
They towed us about ten, twelve knots, I guess,
something like that, and that's the way we
got back.
We didn't try to come back on our own power.
So it was back to Pearl after Midway.
Back to Pearl, and then I got transferred, and
within a few days I got orders to go back
to the PT Boat Familiarization School, which
they had started in Melville, Rhode Island.
He went all the way back to the East Coast.
He went back to Melville and went through that
Familiarization School after being in
PT Boats for over a year.
They sent me back to get familiar with them,
and from there my next squadron was Squadron
Squadron 5, going to Solomon Islands, and we
were loaded on a tanker and landed in New Caledonia.
We were taken off the tanker and went on our
own power up to Guadalcanal, and we immediately
They started meeting the Tokyo Express, and
we'd come down this lot practically every
night and we'd send our boats out.
It was just about the end of the Guadalcanal
campaign when we got there.
I don't think we were there for more than a
month or two before they sent us up the
slot to Rendova.
We went to Rendova Island and made our base up
there, and that's where we really got
into the action, out practically every night,
either being attacked by planes or fighting
barges, once in a while a submarine, and that's
when Jack Kennedy got his in the 109.
At that time I was on the 107, like my-
Would that have been the same squadron,
perhaps, that he was?
The 109 had been in our squadron, and it broke
down, and they got it traded off for another one.
And when Kennedy came out, they had just got it
repaired and they gave it to him.
So we were out the night he got it.
It happened on my birthday.
He got blowed up, or his boat got cut in two on
my birthday, the 2nd of August, 1943.
Do you remember any specific, obviously you saw
a lot of activity up there, do you remember
any specific battles or actions that might be
interesting to someone reading and studying about?
Well, I suppose the night Kennedy got, well
there was another night when the squadron
and went into Vela Lavella.
And we were told by the Coast Watchers
that there wasn't any Japanese in there.
But I was on the 107, and I was the only one
of the division that had a radar,
so they wouldn't send us in.
We stayed outside the harbor.
And the other three boats went in, and there
was three divisions of us, I guess, and it
happened that three boats stayed outside the
ones with radars, because they didn't want
the Japanese to get a hold of the radars, you
know, in case we were captured.
But the rest of them got in, and they found out
immediately that somebody had to give
us bum dope again.
There was lots of Japanese in there, and they
just opened up and just riddled the hell out
of these boats.
The boats that went in were taking some Marines
in, too, that they were supposed to land.
They had to bring them all back out again.
I remember they loaded three of them on my
boat, I think.
One of them was already dead, and the other two
was badly wounded.
The boats that went in got shot up pretty bad,
and they had a lot of casualties.
That was probably the worst action that I saw
that happened to my squadron at that time.
And that was in 1943, so the last two years of
the war, did you remain in the Pacific?
Now after, I forget exactly what month, a few
months later, my jungle rot flared up
again and they had to evacuate me.
I was sent back to New Caledonia, went in the
hospital there, and I was supposed to
to go to New Zealand for rehabilitation and
that, but it so happened that the day before
I was supposed to go, they sent over word that
the old Matt Sonia was going back to
San Francisco with casualties and they had room
for 50 more, so they took 50 patients
out of the hospital and I happened to be one of
them, and I went back to San Francisco
then and I went to the Oak Knoll Hospital in
Oakland, did a little time there, and they
sent me down to Long Beach Hospital, and from
there I got my orders, I had seen the last
of the PT boats, I got orders to the USS
Missouri, so I went from the smallest thing in
the Navy
me to the biggest thing in the Navy. I put
Missouri in commission and went on a shakedown
for a few months. And when I come back, I got
orders to short duty in New Orleans. That
was before.
With the Missouri in commission? Yes.
And maybe I should know this but I don't, was
that 44 or was that still 43 when she
was commissioned? 44.
And then from there, after the shakedown
cruise, you got orders to New Orleans?
When I came back from the shakedown I got
orders to go to New Orleans, short duty,
and so I didn't go to the Pacific on the Missouri.
And that was the end of my war.
I spent the rest of the time on...
Were you at the Naval Air Station in New
Orleans, or were you...
No, I was at the communications, at the Federal Building.
They had taken over the Federal Building for
Navy communications.
I had 26 waves working for me.
What was that like?
Needless to say, I didn't know how to act.
Coming off of the PP boat, the PP Navy,
where you had been all men.
It was an experience.
And did you stay there until the end, until the
surrender then?
I left there in 1946, well I did a little time
in Orange, Texas a few months at the
end of my shore duty there and then I was
ordered to the Pacific again, I went to Pearl
Harbor, and from there I got ordered to China,
so I flew to Okinawa and into Shanghai and
up-I forget the name, I can't think of the name
of the place-anyway, they didn't
need me up there.
They sent me back to Shanghai, and I went to
the communications center that we had there
at the building there in Shanghai.
I stayed there a few months, and the chief
radio man came out from Peru to teach school,
to teach us about the new NTX system, we called
it, as when we were switching over from radio
to telegraph.
So he fell in love with a gal there that worked
in the office who was a Russian, Jewish-Russian,
and he wanted to stay, and he wanted to know if
anybody wanted to swap back to Pearl, and
I said, yeah, I'm ready.
And I went back to Pearl, I flew back to Pearl
and stayed there for another three years.
So you did you stay there until you got your
your discharge? No, I got orders
After my three years were up there I got orders
to the
USS Curtis
So I flew back to Mirror Island. Well
approximately what year would that have been
now? It had been
46. 46, okay. Later part of 46 maybe the first
part of 47
Because I got over to the Curtis and I went and
picked her up in Mirror Island and she
was loading atom bombs, so from there we went
out to the island of Inuitak for the atom
bomb test.
We set off, I think it was five atom bombs, and
then I came back, we came back to Mare Island.
I don't know where I went from there, where did
I go from there.
Well, that would have been about a forty-seven,
when did you leave the service, do you remember?
From the Curtis, from that job, I got ordered
to San Diego to the Catamount, it was an LSD.
And this was while the Korean War was on, and
we were heading for the Korean War, and
And the day before the ship was leaving for
Korea, I got orders to shore duty in Philadelphia.
My commanding officer immediately sent a
message back to Washington, saying, we cannot spare
this man, we can't transfer him at this time.
And a few hours later he got another message
back, it says, "'Carry out your orders.'"
That day I left for Philadelphia, where I spent
another two years, and it was in 1954.
I got orders to go over to Italy, the Seventh
Fleet was over in Italy, I guess at that time,
And I decided I didn't want to go.
My first daughter had just been born,
and I didn't feel like going over to see her,
and I had my 20 in, so I decided I'd get out.
I put in papers to go out and come back approved,
and I got out of the Navy March the 15th, 1954.
And that was the end of my career.
That's a long time ago.
What did you do as a civilian, then,
once you were out of the Navy?
Did you remain in the Philadelphia area
for quite a while?
No, I went to San Diego.
Well, my wife was from Denver, Colorado.
She pursued me to Denver with the baby.
And I came out and picked him up, and we went
to San Diego.
And I settled there for, well, I did, I guess,
25 years or so, I guess I was in St. Jude.
Yeah, that's a long time.
I finally went down to Phoenix, Arizona, and
that's where I live now.
Well, is there anything else?
I mean, we've talked about several things about
the PT boats and the war in the Pacific
and then subsequently about your other assignments.
Is there anything about Pearl Harbor Day
itself, December 7,
41, the events that followed that, as far as
your naval
career is concerned, or anything that you feel
might be of interest to historians
that we haven't talked about that you'd like to share?
Anything on your mind?
Gosh, I don't know.
I don't think I can help you there.
Can't help you?
just, I don't remember anything that would be
out of the ordinary. Well Al, I
want you to know that as a representative of
the museum that we
really appreciate your taking the time, you
know, to share this with us today. I
know that you've got a lot, you've got your
family here with you and that it's,
you know, you want to spend some time with them
and have you been through the
museum yet? Yes. Okay. There's quite a bit to
do here before you head
back to Phoenix and we want you to know we
appreciate it and thank you
very very much. It's a pleasure.