‘You had to be willing to get in there and fight.”
This observation comes from retired Vice Adm. John Duncan Bulkeley, U.S. Navy, one of the first heroes in the bleak days of the Pacific war, when the United States was still reeling from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
“That was the problem we had, a lot of officers couldn’t make the transition from peacetime,” Bulkeley recently recalled during an interview at his Silver Spring, Md., home where he and his wife now live in retirement.
Then-Lt. Bulkeley quickly learned how to fight well. He commanded Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 3, charged with defending the Philippines’ Manila Bay on the island of Luzon. The squadron consisted of six PT boats–77-foot wooden speedboats with no armor protection of any sort, armed with four torpedo tubes and four .50 caliber machine guns (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
“I had six boats with me and we should have had 12; the other six never got there,” Bulkeley said. ” Hart was the commander out there and he wasn’t very much interested in the boats. I don’t even think he even knew they were coming, and it wasn’t until we went on several trial raids where we were undetected in penetrating his screen and were around the major ships … that at that time they began to prick their ears up there. This was something they didn’t expect. It woke everyone up, including Adm. Hart.”
The new-found appreciation for the wooden boats came none too soon. Four months after Squadron 3 arrived in the Philippines, hard-pressed American and Filipino forces on Luzon were ordered by Gen. Douglas MacArthur to retreat to the Bataan peninsula and fortified islands in Manila Bay, including Corregidor.
The retreat meant abandoning supplies, spare parts and several important bases, including the large Subic Bay Naval Station, which the Japanese Navy soon began to employ for its ships.
“When war came we started raiding into the Subic Bay. It was profitable, we got a couple ships there and we also got a lot of small stuff,” Bulkeley said. “We would sneak into the bay with our engines muffled and get in close and hit them. Those boats are only 4 1/2 feet off the water, you know. It’s hard to see them at night.
“When we were coming back from our raids, we started encountering many Japanese smallcraft with troops aboard and we sank them. This tipped us off that they were landing troops behind our lines and hiding them in caves so that when they would attack, these forces would come out and attack our guys from behind,” Bulkeley said. “From that point on became the primary target for the torpedo boats.
“This went on for quite some time … it wasn’t until March that we bailed out.”
‘No problem at all’
However, “bailed out” does not do justice to the feat of seamanship required to cross hundreds of miles of open ocean by dead-reckoning navigation with boats bereft of spare parts since the war began.
“I knew at that time that a plan had to be done for the evacuation of Gen. MacArthur and principal members of his staff. Capt. Ray and Adm. Rockwell asked me: Could I make a long-range raid about 500 miles to the south. And me being a young man flippantly answered, ‘Sure, no problem. No problem at all.’
“I didn’t have very good charts, but I had enough charts. In other words I was completely confident that I could do all this, and that confidence was seen by MacArthur and his people that this guy here thinks he knows it and he’s convinced us that he knows what he’s talking about.
“He knows his boats and he’s demonstrated it–that he can go from there to here to there and so forth at nighttime … all my operations were at nighttime and when we’d break out through … the minefield we’d go in a zigzag and you’ve got to be very careful you don’t get outside of those channels or you’re going to get in trouble.
“So the next thing that came: Adm. Rockwell told me, ‘Get ready.’
“We went from Corregidor all the way down to Cuyo Island, that’s about 600 miles. We refueled and headed down to Cagayan . Now the big secret was the Japanese thought we’d go down through the inland passage where there are calmer seas. … I’m a sailor, I went out to sea, way out to sea, and evaded them and came through right clean,” Bulkeley explained.
“Don’t misunderstand, all this was very desperate,” he added.
“We got through and I discharged my passengers, they were met by Sharp and taken up into the hills and flown down to Australia and I immediately got the hell out of there … so the Japanese wouldn’t figure out they’d made a breakout,” Bulkeley said.
The remaining boats continued to fight in the southern islands until the surrender of the Philippines. PT 41, the squadron flagship, was even taken up into the hills by the army for use as a lake gunboat.
The full tale of Squadron 3’s exploits is told in the book, “They Were Expendable,” which was later made into a movie starring John Wayne as the squadron’s executive officer, and Robert Montgomery as the renamed squadron commander, “Brickley.”
Honors and more honors
As the end approached in the Philippines, four officers of Squadron 3 were flown out to Australia, their expertise considered too valuable to lose. Bulkeley was one of them.
Upon return from the Pacific, Bulkeley was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Roosevelt. The list of medals bestowed on Bulkeley over his career makes him among the most decorated American fighting men ever and includes, apart from The Medal, a Navy Cross, Distinguished Service Cross with oak leaf cluster (for second award), Distinguished Service Medal with two oak leaf clusters (for second and third awards), Purple Heart with gold star (for second award), France’s Croix de Guerre (with second award) and France’s Legion of Honor-officer grade.
Following his hero’s welcome home, Bulkeley was tasked with recruiting men for the PT boats. One of them was a young man from Massachusetts named John Fitzgerald Kennedy who went on to command PT 109 and later became president.
“When we were at the White House said to my husband, ‘If it wasn’t for you, Bulkeley, I never would have become president,’ ” Alice Bulkeley said.
But recruiting duties weren’t the way this sailor would finish the war.
As 1944 drew on, preparations were made for the invasion of France at the Normandy beaches. During an invasion exercise, German motor torpedo boats, called E-boats by the Allies, bore in on the landing ships sinking two and damaging others. Many soldiers and sailors were lost.
Allied commander Gen. Dwight Eisenhower wanted to make sure that such an event couldn’t happen at the real landings. The word went out: Eisenhower wanted Bulkeley and American PT boats to escort the invasion forces and neutralize the German E-boat threat.
When the invasion fleet set out, it was preceded by Lt. Cmdr. Bulkeley’s force of PT boats and minesweepers–the minesweepers responsible for clearing the lanes through which the invasion would proceed. The German E-boats did not interfere.
“After we cleared the lanes, I didn’t do much exciting, just picked up men from the water,” Bulkeley said.
But it was an exciting event for the men plucked from the water. Fifty years later, at a D-Day memorial, a veteran with tears filling his eyes embraced Bulkeley and thanked him for saving his life. To this day Bulkeley receives letters from veterans who were saved by his boats.
After Normandy, Bulkeley assumed command of the destroyer U.S.S. Endicott in operations in the Mediterranean and at war’s end was headed to Japan. His thoughts on the war’s conclusion: “The war was ended. I had command of a destroyer and that was fine. At the end of the war I thought, well, I made it, I’ve survived.”
On to another hot spot
Bulkeley’s service didn’t end with the war though.
After a variety of post-war commands, Bulkeley became a rear admiral, commanding the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in the early 1960s.
When Cuban forces started shining floodlights into the American compound to blind the base’s marine sentries, the admiral was faced with a problem.
“I took care of that,” Bulkeley said.
“Anybody starts fooling around with my fence line and I’m going to get them. If they want to bust through my fence line I’ll get them too. I was ready for them. I had about 5,000 Marines down there and I was ready for a fight if they wanted to fight.”
Bright lights were dimmed when the admiral had navy Seabees construct an outsized U.S. Marine Corps globe and anchor emblem that would be illuminated any time the lights were shined into the compound.
For his hardnosed service as the commander of the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, the marines there named Bulkeley “a marine in ship’s clothing.”
Buckeley’s career, which began when he was a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy in 1929, didn’t end until 1988 when he retired.
And Bulkeley’s never far from his PT boat–he’s redone one of the bedroom’s in his house to simulate the cabin of his old PT boat, including his bunk bed.
As for being a hero, Bulkeley says: “You only have to answer to yourself. Medals don’t matter one way or the other. You just have to be satisfied that you did the best you could.”
For all his exploits and nearly 60 years of service, what would John Duncan Bulkeley, who turns 84 on Saturday, most like to be remembered for?
“I’d like to be forgotten,” he said, laughing.
