Eyewitness: Shaken out of recovery

James Everette Lynch

USS Shaw

Recovering from a case of the flu “that Sunday morning, I managed to remove several days’ growth of beard and eat a little breakfast,” Lynch said. “Feeling a little weak, I decided to climb back in the bunk. No sooner had my head hit the pillow … whammy. I felt an explosion.”

The USS Shaw was in dry dock. “A plane circled overhead, just seconds after I reached topside,” Lynch said. “I watched as it circled and launched the torpedo that struck the USS West Virginia. I knew then and there that someone wasn’t playing around. So I took off for my assigned battle station, which was the radio shack. There, as other radiomen gathered, the message started coming through from CINCPAC (Commander in Chief of Pacific Forces): ‘Pearl Harbor is being attacked. This is no drill.’”

Lynch said the message was repeated several times. “Our 50-caliber machine guns opened fire. … This was the only ammunition we had aboard” due to a policy to remove most ammunition while in dry dock for repairs. Then, following an explosion of bombs, “smoke and fire was boiling up and word was received to abandon ship.”

“The fire was so intense … that it was necessary to swim away off of the floating dry dock.”