Interview with Stephen Puttera [1/14/2002]

Thomas Swope:

This is the oral history of World War II Veteran Stephen Puttera. Mr. Puttera served with the U.S. Navy, he was a flight deck director on the aircraft carrier Enterprise and he served in the Pacific theater. There was a slight technical problem with this recording. There is strong RF interference in Mr. Puttera's neighborhood and my microphone cord was picking up some noise. It's just a little buzz, and if I hadn't mentioned it you might not have noticed it. You should still be able to hear what Stephen has to say. I'm Tom Swope and this recording was made at Mr. Puttera's home in Brecksville, Ohio on January 14th, 2002. Stephen was 82 at the time of this recording.

Thomas Swope:

When did you go into the Navy?

Stephen Puttera:

Well, I signed up in August of 1940.

Thomas Swope:

Where did you train?

Stephen Puttera:

And from there I went to Great Lakes, trained at Great Lakes. From Great Lakes, I went aboard the USS Enterprise in Bremerton, Washington and that was in December of '40. I stayed aboard the Enterprise from December '40 to the last weekend of November of '44.

Thomas Swope:

When was the Enterprise commissioned?

Stephen Puttera:

She was commissioned in 1938. At Norfolk, Norfolk News, I believe it was.

Thomas Swope:

What were you trained for?

Stephen Puttera:

Well, when I -- when I went to Bremerton, we were given the opportunity to pick the ship we wanted, and once we picked the ship that we wanted, if we got it, we were then allowed to designate where we might want to work on the ship and what branch of the service we might want to do, and of course I liked aviation so I picked the flight deck, and fortunately, I was given an opportunity to go aboard the Enterprise, and also went up to the flight deck so that's where I started my naval career.

Thomas Swope:

So what did your job become then?

Stephen Puttera:

Well, at first I was just the boot seaman and they put me up on Number 1, I can't think now, it's been so long ago, it was called Fly 1, it was a radio contact from where I was stationed at the flight deck, at the fore end of the flight deck to the bridge.

Thomas Swope:

Boot. What's a boot seaman?

Stephen Puttera:

Boot -- he don't know nothing, he's a greenhorn, he's a brand new service person so to speak.

Thomas Swope:

He just does odd, menial --

Stephen Puttera:

Well, a boot didn't have any stripes. You were a boot and then you became a third class, second class, first class, and chief, those were the steps that you had to take. Of course you had to take an examination for each one and you had to pass and you had to have pretty decent grades or you didn't pass. I was lucky there, too.

Thomas Swope:

So when you were first on the aircraft carrier in 1940, '41, what was the job of the aircraft carrier at that point before --

Stephen Puttera:

Well, training, we were just mostly doing training, flight operations, it's a carrier and everything operated around the flight deck and flight deck operations, and when things weren't too busy, at one time in fact, and I watched them do this, they made a movie, that was called "Dive Bomber", and the scenes in that film, in that movie, were taken off the Enterprise, and I saw all that, so I enjoyed that. I had a chance to meet Errol Flynn and Ralph Bellamy, and who else? There was a couple others there, and being that I was on the flight deck of course I had a good chance to talk to them, and I did. It was fun, it was enjoyable.

Thomas Swope:

Do we catch a glimpse of you at all in that movie?

Stephen Puttera:

No, no, no, no, not at all. There's very few, very few of the Enterprise personnel that were in it. There were a few, there's a couple of plane handlers that were around the plane, they left them there, but I was standing on the catwalk watching them do it. I wasn't in it.

Thomas Swope:

Were you in the Pacific the whole time?

Stephen Puttera:

Yeah, mm-hmm.

Thomas Swope:

Where was your home base?

Stephen Puttera:

Pearl Harbor, yeah.

Thomas Swope:

So what was the feeling in 1941? Obviously you knew war was coming?

Stephen Puttera:

Yes, in '41, we were increasing flight operations, although we weren't operating with armed aircraft. We didn't do that until -- well, in December, in fact just before Pearl Harbor, we took some fighters to Wake Island, and of course Admiral Halsey was on our ship, he was our admiral most all the time that I remember out there, and in fact when I was still a seaman, I talked to Halsey personally on the flight deck. I happened to have the duty one day, and the deed officer says, the admiral wants a chair, take a chair up to him, so he was up on the flight deck looking out and I brought him the chair and he talked to me just like you and I are talking, I was surprised. He says, son, what are your plans, you know, how do you like the Navy, and here he is worrying about a war coming because we were close to it and I knew he knew it, but he talked to me like that, and it was very impressive, you know, you know.

Thomas Swope:

So in the months, the days leading up before Pearl Harbor --

Stephen Puttera:

Oh, I was going to tell you, we took planes to Wake, so after we dropped the planes off, on our way back, it was then that we had orders to arm all our aircraft, and even our guns, we were ready, we were on ready alert on the way back to Pearl. And we were supposed to be at Pearl on December 7th, and docked, in fact the Japanese had an X marked where they figured we would be moored, but rough seas and refueling tin cans, destroyers, we called them tin cans, made us a day late, so call it what you will, but we were a day late and so we missed it. But we weren't so late that we -- in fact we were about 150, 60 miles out, when the Japanese were hitting Pearl, and as was our custom, we had sent five planes in, five or six planes in to arrange for a berth, and it was only then that we realized or learned that Pearl was under attack, because our pilots radioed back to our ship. Up until then, there was radio silence, they didn't tell us anything so we had no idea they were under attack. Maybe they didn't even have a chance to tell us because they were busy. So anyway, that's when we first found out, and of course there was the misfortune, the ground forces there at Pearl shot down three that I know of of our planes and maybe a fourth, but -- and immediately one of our planes also shot down a Japanese airplane, so that was our first encounter with the Japanese. Although we on the ship didn't see any action, we were away from it. The only ones that saw it were the pilots and the SBDs that we had sent in.

Thomas Swope:

What was the reaction on the ship when you heard Pearl Harbor was under attack?

Stephen Puttera:

Oh, betting, lot of betting, some of them were betting it was a drill and some were betting it was real. I had a hunch it was real and it was, you know, you know.

Thomas Swope:

So then when did you get into Pearl Harbor?

Stephen Puttera:

Well, we were out hunting the Japanese and then we didn't go in until nightfall and of course that's when I saw everything that had happened, and they're lined up along the sides of the bank because we're not that far from the bank, maybe a couple hundred feet and they say, where were you, where were you, why weren't you here, and all that, well, we didn't know anything about it. They could have broken radio silence, why they didn't, I don't know, they were under attack, they might as well have broken it. But we didn't know it until our pilots told us, at least that's from where I stood anyway, and I was on the flight deck and we were getting firsthand information.

Thomas Swope:

There was some frustration from them because the carriers hadn't been there?

Stephen Puttera:

Well, I guess so, you know, they had no help, they were -- it was a surprise attack and none of them expected it, and then of course they turn around and blame us for not being there to help them, but it was just a natural, normal reaction, I guess. I don't know, they might have just been saying it, you know, not really meaning it, where were you, you know, you could just say that, well, where were you guys, you know, why weren't you here, you know, you do that every day sometimes, about something.

Thomas Swope:

What were your thoughts when you saw the devastation?

Stephen Puttera:

Well, it wasn't -- it was ... It's hard to describe. You don't want to believe what you're looking at, I guess, you know, but here again, they put us to work, we had to refuel, and reload, rearm and right back out. So we were only in there a few hours, come daybreak we were back out to sea and from then on we were hunting subs, ships, whatever we could find. And of course that started our action against the different islands and the Marshalls, Gilberts were one of the first ones we hit. And of course after we hit them, on our way back they tried to get us but we were lucky, and that gave our gunners the first chance to fire at enemy aircraft, and they did shoot down a couple, but we weren't hit. We were closely hit, but we, close but not close enough to hurt anybody. We might have lost one man I think, I don't -- something like that, from shrapnel from a bomb that, you know, exploded close to the ship.

Thomas Swope:

When was the Marshalls engagement?

Stephen Puttera:

Well, that was, that was in early '42, where were we? I don't remember exactly, I don't go back into all that, I've got so much information here, but you know, I -- it just sat on the shelves for years and years, now I'm bringing a lot of it out because there seems to be a lot of interest in what took place in '42, Second World War.

Thomas Swope:

Backtracking a bit to talk about Pearl Harbor, you were out there looking for the Japanese fleet I assume when you went back out, right?

Stephen Puttera:

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Thomas Swope:

Where, did they think they were headed for the mainland?

Stephen Puttera:

Well, there was some talk and of course we watched that area but they weren't near there at all. By that time, we were sending planes all over, so we knew, we didn't think the West Coast was in any harm, but there was pros and cons and they didn't know, nobody knew where they were, and it wasn't until later I guess that they realized where they'd come from, you know.

Thomas Swope:

Any other memories of the Marshalls engagement?

Stephen Puttera:

Not really, no, I remember seeing them bombers coming in and dropping on us and one almost hit the ship as it went in the water, but, there wasn't much to it, it was a job, we were doing a job, and we were just going along with the program, I guess, about the only way I can explain it.

Thomas Swope:

Tell me as much as you can about the Doolittle raid.

Stephen Puttera:

Well, the Doolittle raid, of course, we were on our way to -- where did the Lex go down, do you remember? Coral Sea battle, all right, see, I can't -- you know, my memory, we were on our way to the Coral Sea battle, and the Yorktown, and the -- what did I say?

Thomas Swope:

Lexington?

Stephen Puttera:

Lexington, yeah, were the only two carriers there, and of course they engaged the Japanese and the battle was over before we got -- might have got halfway there, and then we were called off, so we came back to Pearl, and reprovisioned and everything and all that, and it was then that they decided that the Japanese were going to hit again and they were going to hit at Midway. Of course there's a lot of history about that in movies and they're pretty close as to what happened. I've seen these movies and of course I was out there, so some of the movies were pretty good. "Tora Tora Tora" I think is one of the best films that was ever produced to show exactly how we must have acted, all the top brass and everything, and that's so close to what really happened, that, you know, I know that that is -- they came so close it's not even funny, and a lot of top brass should have been hit instead of some of the people that were, probably, although I think that the opinion of everyone was that, who are these Japs, you know, they're not going to hurt us, we're not going to worry about them that much, and I think that they were a little lax in being on the ball. So now I got to go back to your question again, what was it?

Thomas Swope:

The Doolittle raid.

Stephen Puttera:

Oh, yeah, well, here again, it was just another day, as far as we were concerned, we didn't want to get hit and we weren't going to try to get hit, we were going to do our best to hit them first, but here again, we didn't know where they were for a while, and it was like, like the movie that was made up of Midway, it's close, as close as they could get with the information they could get because everything was classified even while -- it was still classified when the movie was made. But I saw the Yorktown get -- it was at a distance but we could see when they got hit, but other than just plain operations we didn't know anything else, we didn't see any of the Jap carriers or nothing because we were maybe 150, 175 miles away from them, so we're just on board ship and doing what we have to. When the planes come in we hurried up and reloaded them, respotted them, got them back up in the air and we just kept doing that all the time except for the time we were waiting to hit them. And I can't go into exact details on that because I don't remember that to the minute anymore. But it was just, just normal operations. For us, normal operations was landing, launching, respotting from maybe 3 or 4:00 in the morning to maybe 8, 9:00 at night, and sometimes even later.

Thomas Swope:

We're talking about Midway again?

Stephen Puttera:

Yeah. Well, all the action, but even Midway, yes, oh, yes.

Thomas Swope:

What was your job, this would be -- Midway was June --

Stephen Puttera:

Well, I was a first class aviation machinist then, and -- no, I was second only, I don't think I was first class at Midway, wasn't till later, so -- but I was a yellow shirt, a flight deck director they were called, and in fact we were the ones that were in charge of landing, launching, and respotting aircraft.

Thomas Swope:

So that you were physically out there directing them to --

Stephen Puttera:

Directing planes, yeah, directing the plane handlers to move the planes wherever we wanted them to be moved, because I used to even go up to the Fly 1, or flight operations, and show them how to land, how to respot aircraft, they used to take my word for it, too. In fact, I don't want to brag too much, but after I made chief, we broke a couple flight records on landing, launching, and respotting. But I was called up one time, there was one incident but it was not during Midway -- well, going back to Midway, after the second day of battle, the 4 -- the 5th, we went after a battleship, I think, or a heavy cruiser, and then that was the last action and we hit it, but we knew that we had sunk the four carriers, we had the information from our pilots, so of course that made us feel good. You know.

Thomas Swope:

Respotting, what's that mean?

Stephen Puttera:

Well, the planes have to land, then once they land, we may have one squadron, two, maybe three, so we could have maybe three or four airplanes in the air or maybe we could have 40 or 50 in the air. So what we would do, we would -- the planes would land, the arresting gear hook would engage, the arresting gear cable and of course one of the crew on the plane handler crew would unhook the wire and then of course we had plane directors all along the flight deck to bring the planes into the spots up forward. So the flight deck was long enough to land all our planes, some we would send down one of the elevators if they weren't covered up and we had three of those, one up forward, one on mid ships and one aft, and once the planes were landed, they were then refueled, rearmed, and respotted, in other words, respotting was put them back on the after end of the flight deck again so that they were ready to take off, and we always had them in perfect position. They were packed in there so close that the wing tips would maybe be four to six inches from the prop of the plane beside it or in front of it, which was dangerous for the men that were going to the ships because one of our crew -- see, we had orders to have our helmets buckled and we just had cloth helmets then, and this particular rear seat man, he was a radio man and a gunner both on the SBDs, he had a pilot and a rear seat man, and apparently he hadn't buckled his helmet. And from what somebody saw, his helmet blew off and he instinctively reached for it, got his arm caught in the prop and it just made hamburger out of him, that's what it was. So here I am in charge of what's going on, we can't waste no time because we're hitting someplace and I don't remember what we were hitting, I'd have to go way back in my history and all the books to remember when, who we were hitting, but it was -- it was in latter part of '43 or early part of '44, but the pilot whose prop hit this kid, he kind of -- this didn't happen very often but this pilot was really shook up, and he kept shaking his head no when the plane director wanted him to move and he wasn't going to take off. So he had to pull him off to the side. Well, that only took three or four seconds, maybe five because everything has to be, you know, (snapping fingers) right now, you're always on time, so maybe it was 10 or 15 seconds, couldn't have been more than that, but to them up on the bridge, that's a lot of time, and they're hollering on the bullhorn, you know, get -- what's going on, let's get the plane on, so I hurried up and had the plane pull off to the side and we continued the launch. And then they called me up and when we explained what had happened, then I was commended for doing it so quickly. But I do remember this poor kid, we had a kind of, the after end of the flight deck, there was a little rail that stood up, and a lot of him was pushed up against there and I even picture in my mind, I won't forget it, some of the corps men with bag, bag or basket, something like that and they were shoveling him up and putting him in it, I remember that, those things.

Thomas Swope:

Now, was April of '42, that was when you were part of the Doolittle, the task force for Doolittle?

Stephen Puttera:

I think what was it, May 3rd and 4th and 5th I think.

Thomas Swope:

Is that when they actually --

Stephen Puttera:

Yeah.

Thomas Swope:

Now did you know when you were part of that task force that that was where you were headed for?

Stephen Puttera:

Oh, yeah, we knew what we were going to do, we knew we were waiting for the Japs to hit Midway and we were going to catch them. Oh, yeah, we knew what we --

Thomas Swope:

That would be -- when you were part of the raid on Tokyo, you were part of the task force that --

Stephen Puttera:

Oh, the Doolittle?

Thomas Swope:

Right.

Stephen Puttera:

Well, we were out to sea, and then they told us, yeah. We didn't know till we went out to sea.

Thomas Swope:

Right.

Stephen Puttera:

Right.

Thomas Swope:

What do you remember about that?

Stephen Puttera:

I saw every plane take off, every one of them. Yeah. See, they weren't that far away, and we -- the seas were rough, it was really rough, and we weren't supposed to launch them then, but I also saw the ship that we sank. We didn't, one of the destroyers, light cruiser, sunk it. But then Admiral Halsey decided that, hey, instead of coming in 400 miles, they're about 600 miles I think out, and it was too far but they -- it's like the movie shows, that's what they apparently did. I wasn't on the Hornet, but I know what they did, they did take extra cans of gasoline and they took off, we watched them take off and we cheered, you know, when they took off because we knew where they were going, but we were the ones that provided the fighter escort and the search ships that went out, so that we wouldn't run into anything. So we were -- we're the ones that escorted them. All the Hornet did, they get a lot of credit and they did a good job, all they did was ferry the planes out to -- till they were launched, but we were doing all the work. Not that we want the credit, it was just everyday work, I'm not -- we're not looking for the credit for that, but we took them out there. We were experienced and the Hornet wasn't. Although when the Hornet was built and commissioned, she came out and joined us and she was with our task force until she was sunk, you know.

Thomas Swope:

So you didn't have any face-to-face encounters with Doolittle or anything, did you?

Stephen Puttera:

No, no, never. Never. No.

Thomas Swope:

Now what was the thought, you said you were cheering when they took off but --

Stephen Puttera:

Because the planes took off, yeah, well, we cheered too just like they cheered.

Thomas Swope:

But you knew they were --

Stephen Puttera:

We knew they were going -- huh?

Thomas Swope:

You knew they were being launched a little too far away, right?

Stephen Puttera:

Yeah, we knew they weren't supposed to be launched that day but they told us over the bullhorn too, well, we decided we're going to launch them, they got a couple hundred more miles to go, yeah. So we were ready, we went into the wind when we were getting ready, getting into the wind and all that, you know, they're telling us these things so we knew, yeah. They didn't keep us in the dark. If they could tell us something, they did, which was good. It helped the crew and made them do their job better, I think.

Thomas Swope:

So when did you find out that the raid had been successful?

Stephen Puttera:

That, we heard, I don't know, it wasn't -- probably that same day or the next day, we knew that they had hit some places, and some of them had -- were down, but details, no. Hey, we had other things to do. We're getting ready to hit somewhere else, so that was past history, and we didn't think about it, at least I didn't.

Thomas Swope:

What was life like onboard an aircraft carrier like that?

Stephen Puttera:

Well, it wasn't really bad, I don't suppose. Well, we always had fresh food and fresh water except we were out for I think seven or eight months once, six months, not sure. I'd have to check your records, before we come back to hit Pearl, and -- or to dock at Pearl I should say, and they gave us hard tack, they broke open boxes of hard, you know, cookies and stuff, so I remember that. But there was days when we didn't have any rest and we just slept on the flight deck and ready for action all the time. There was one engagement, I'm not sure if it was Midway or not, I don't think it was, we almost landed a Jap airplane. It was at night and we were landing our planes and he was lost and I saw -- I saw their red ball go right by the ship on the flight deck and I'm watching it go right by, and he went in the drink somewhere, I guess, you know.

Thomas Swope:

So was the food pretty decent when you were out there?

Stephen Puttera:

Oh, we're going back to -- food was good, it was decent, yeah, but it wasn't like the poor guy that was on the ground, you know, that's one of the reasons why I think I joined the Navy when I did, because I figured we were going to be in a war eventually and I wanted to know what was going on. I didn't want to, like I say in my tape, I didn't want to be a greenhorn which I use that word a lot, and so I joined the Navy early enough to get some training in case something happened, but I didn't want to be a foot solder. So here again, when you ask me how is life on a carrier, I got to say it's got to be real good compared to a foot soldier who's got to lay in the mud, maybe not get anything to eat or drink, and he's got to hike, you know, and they don't show how really gruesome it can be in the movies that they show, although they do a pretty decent job in some of them, but I'll tell you, I would not want to be a foot soldier. You got to give him an awful lot of credit. So we had it good in comparison there. However, if somebody's coming in to dive bomb on you, you got nowhere to go. Now, we were hit one time, and I was only about 30 feet from a bomb that blasted off, and I can show you pictures in one of the books, and another time, we're being under attack, and of course plane directors, we don't have a gun position, they're already taken care of, we have our job to do, and if we're not moving planes, we just got to see what's going on, we watch what's going on. And I remember laying on my belly, and about two foot away from me is a piece of shrapnel, about that long, jagged and just laying there. I was never hit by any Jap shrapnel or bullets, I was lucky there, I was knocked overboard once. I was hit with a cross neck pendent once which is the cable that engages the arresting hook of the plane, and I showed you that crane, all right, this cable hit the crane and I was just the other side of the crane, it hit me in the shoulder, I have marks from the front of my chest to the back, my shoulder blade. It hit me so hard that they say I was knocked four feet in the air, that bounce -- bounced up. I was in good shape. But I was up the next day, powdered with dusk, put sulfur powder on, I'm back up the flight deck operating, didn't bother me.

Thomas Swope:

The cable had snapped?

Stephen Puttera:

The cable had snapped, and it whipped around like a rubber band, it hit the island structure of the ship, this part here, because it broke loose here, this end was attached, it broke loose here on the starboard side and whipped around, lied four guys, scalped one, hit me in the shoulder, one guy got it in the knees, there was one other one, I think he was -- I'm not sure if he was killed or not, I don't remember, I don't remember if there was one killed in that or not. But the guy that was scalped, his name was Osborn, I remember the name, and he was at our reunion here couple years ago so I talked to him, he's okay.

Thomas Swope:

What do you mean by scalped?

Stephen Puttera:

The cable had hit the top of his head and just took the top of his head and hair off, but they had pulled it back and sewed it so that you could see the scar but he had some hair and everything, he was still not bad, yeah, so that's our way of talking, we didn't care, scalped, so he was scalped.

Thomas Swope:

Well, that's exactly what happened.

Stephen Puttera:

That's exactly what happened, yeah, he was scalped. Not funny, but hey, it was part of the game, part of the game.

Thomas Swope:

Tell me about the time you were knocked overboard.

Stephen Puttera:

Well, that was stupid. I -- this was at the after gun mount, way back -- back here, and I'm standing here, the gun mount's down below and there was a shield around the gun mount, quarter-inch or half-inch, steel, armor plating, and I'm leaning over listening to the bullhorn because that bullhorn's all along there and here I'm, this one the closest and I'm leaning over, you know, to hear what's going on over there because the pilots are talking to each other, so it's nice to hear that, see, you know, you're interested in hearing that, and I heard the plane handler say, hard starboard, well, I might have turned my head to look and about that time the tail of that plane hit me in the side so I wasn't knocked over by no bomb, by one of my own planes, all right, it knocked me over the 5-inch gun mount. While I'm going through the air I'm wondering, this all going in my mind, through my mind, I know I'm not going to land inside the gun mounts, it hit me pretty hard and the flight deck's that high so that, you know, you're, what would you call it, the trajectory of your body moving, so I figure my only hope is hit the gun mount, or the gun shield, and if I can hit it, if I can grab it, will my hands hold out, all this went through my mind that split second. Well, sure enough, I went down like that, I cut my thigh, right to the bone, my right thigh, and I was going over. As I was going over, I reached over my head and I grabbed the gun shield, and sure enough I'm hanging on to the gun shield. About that time, four or five guys are grabbing my arms, you know, and I says, I'm okay, I'm okay, pull myself back in and went back to work, thought nothing of it, except I had to be dusted with dust powder. Funny things. Another time I almost got hit with a prop, if you want to hear that one.

Thomas Swope:

Sure.

Stephen Puttera:

(Coughing) I got a bad throat, it's dry, I keep saying that when I was in the hospital for an operation, that tube wasn't greased, and every time I swallowed, it made a scab and now it bothers me, I suffer with that now for about 20 years.

Thomas Swope:

You want to get something to drink?

Stephen Puttera:

Huh?

Thomas Swope:

You want to go get something to drink?

Stephen Puttera:

No, I'm okay. So anyway, we're landing airplanes, and I want these planes to be in the right spot so the number one plane director has the number one most important spot to handle, so I'm the last one to handle the airplane to put him exactly where I want tight, so I can get them all in, get them all aboard. Now, the pilot has to do exactly what the plane director wants right to the second, he don't hesitate. In this particular case I'm bringing this guy up, I had looked around, I know where the other plane I had just dropped off, but the prop's still turning, but I know how long it takes for a prop to stop, okay. Only it don't happen this time, this prop just don't never stop, for a long time, but I don't know that because I know it's supposed to stop after just so many revolutions so I don't look back no more. And I'm bringing this guy up and he got his foot on the brake and he ain't moving so you all of a sudden go like that, come on, you know, we're in a hurry, and he's shaking his head like this real slow, I'm doing it one more time and I'm now getting pissed, and he's shaking his head real slow, so something tells me, hey, something ain't right, and I didn't turn my body or I'd have gotten my shoulder cut off, I just turned my head and here that prop is spinning around like that. Who this pilot was, I will never know, I never got a chance to talk to him, we're busy, we were attacking somewhere, and it was just a normal thing anyway, and so I got to thank him for my life I guess, guardian angel was there, but I didn't -- I didn't get touched by that one. I did get hit in the back with a fighter wing once. We were bringing planes forward, it's about 3:00 in the morning, we were getting ready to attack someplace, and I'm walking along with the planes and one of the flight deck officers and all of a sudden this fighter wing swings out and hits me, knocks me up into the back of this flight deck officer, I busted my nose and the wing hit me in the back and broke the third lumbar vertebrae in my back which laid me on the flight deck. I crawled to the island structure, and I guess they wondered where I was but they landed, they launched the aircraft and everything, somebody probably told them where I was eventually, but I was immobilized. So this was in '44, latter part of '44, it was just after I had made chief in fact, and I was in sick bay for a whole month, and when I got back up on the flight deck, I resumed operations, I got a letter my dad was in the hospital, and so I figured, well, I'm going to try to get off the ship. And I was pretty well liked I guess, and all that, and Commander Hamilton, he used to watch us work out and stuff, and we were pretty friendly, and in fact he's the one that made me chief, because I jumped him once, I says, here I am acting chief as first class, I says, if I'm going to be flight deck chief, I should be flight deck chief, and he says, well, and he called me by my first name and they didn't do that much, but Tom Hamilton said, Steve, you know, and he says, no, you got to wait four months, well, I made chief in three months and eleven -- three years and eleven months, he says you got to wait four years, and I made it in three years and eleven months, I was made chief. So this was after I had made chief, and I was laid up for a month, so then because I was laid up, my argument was, well, you did without me for a whole month, so you must be able to do without me, you know, give me my transfer, and they did. So I was transferred to Memphis, Tennessee, where I was in charge of the line maintenance school there. Another -- another thing I turned down I didn't tell you about, I could have been a fighter pilot. There were two of us, myself and a fella by the name of McGowan that passed all the tests to go to flight training in Pensacola, and this was in '43. And he went to flight training in Pensacola and I come home on leave instead and that's why in my pictures in '43, I'm home on leave, I wouldn't have had them, I'd have been in Pensacola. Well, after I got transferred off the ship to Memphis, Tennessee, there's McGowan with his wings and I could have had them, too. Because you know, when we flew with the pilots, they'd let you have the stick, we could handle an airplane, you know, from the rear seat, because there were sticks in the front seat and stick in the rear seat, all your instruments were, practically all of them, not all of them, were in both seats, you could fly the plane from the rear seat if you wanted to.

Thomas Swope:

So why didn't you want to be a pilot?

Stephen Puttera:

Well, I remember I said, hey, I'm not going to fly in the rear of no carrier, you know, I says, I'm not going to be a pilot. I don't know, I didn't care. I wanted to be a pilot and I took the test, and then somehow I says, well, no, I'll go home on leave instead, and so I declined to go, and of course it wasn't compulsory, I passed the test, yes, I was eligible to go, but I didn't have to go, so I didn't. I come home on leave, then I went back out on the ship again and there I stayed till -- well, latter part of November, first of December and then I left the ship in Ulithi Harbor, flew to Guam, from Guam to Pearl, from Pearl to San Diego. San Diego I flew to Chicago and that's when I lost my flight, what do you call it, eligibility, and I had to take a train from Chicago to Cleveland, but I flew all the way from Ulithi Harbor to Chicago.

Thomas Swope:

Now you said you rode with the pilots on occasion, were those on recons?

Stephen Puttera:

Four times, that's why I have air crewman wings, yes.

Thomas Swope:

Was that -- you were assigned to do that?

Stephen Puttera:

Well, if you wanted your flight skins, which was extra pay which I was, managed to be eligible for, then you had to fly or you wouldn't get your flight pay. So when things weren't too -- after we'd hit an island two or three times or whatever, things were reasonably quiet, and I had a good pull with the, you know, hey, they let me go, and I flew, I didn't think nothing of it. So I have landed on a carrier in an SBD, looking forward, in a TBF looking backward because twin 50s in a TBF, they came out after the Midway battle, so there, you had to have your back forward, you were looking aft all the time when you were landing in that plane, that was orders, that's the way you had to do it.

Thomas Swope:

So obviously you were trained as a gunner in case you ran into --

Stephen Puttera:

Oh, yes, not that much but I got by, I bluffed my way through. No, we fired, you know, we fired but I never shot nobody down. Never had an occasion, no plane never came near our ship enough, our plane enough, give me a chance to do any shooting. But we had the test drive runs is when -- we'd do that, test drive runs always.

Thomas Swope:

Did you get close to any pilots, have any buddies that were pilots?

Stephen Puttera:

Well, not real close. We knew them because we saw them every day, you know, and time and all this and that, few words here, but just normal stuff. No, I never really got friendly with any pilot. They had their own crew, although some of the rear crewmen, you know, the rear seat men were pretty close to some of their pilots and they fraternized a little bit maybe ashore, but we'd see them ashore and maybe have a drink or something but not really, never made no friends, no, not really.

Thomas Swope:

How about your other shipmates, you have any close buddies?

Stephen Puttera:

Yeah, I had quite a few, they're gone, most all of them are gone, yeah.

Thomas Swope:

You showed me briefly you had entertainment onboard the ship, probably before the war.

Stephen Puttera:

That was before the war, yeah, they used to bring, you know, for morale sake, I guess, yeah, they'd do that on the handy deck, they'd raise Number 2 elevator which was the middle elevator, they'd raise it up about four, five feet for a stage and then they'd perform on that stage for the crew, yeah.

Thomas Swope:

You remember anything about any of those shows?

Stephen Puttera:

Yeah, I remember them, hula dancers and stuff like that, they'd have singers and performers, nothing special.

Thomas Swope:

No big names that you remember?

Stephen Puttera:

Not -- well, no, might have some in the scrapbook but I can't -- not offhand I can't tell you, no, that's a long time ago. Some things I can remember just like that, some things I can't think about because I never did think about it so it didn't stay with me. Yeah. And they used to have wrestling matches and stuff like that and boxing matches we used to do, you know, but then after the war you didn't have time, so it was a different story after the war broke out.

Thomas Swope:

Letters from home?

Stephen Puttera:

Yeah. I would get letters from home, not too often but I would, mostly from my mother, and I kept trying to write her as best as I could, and I always sent her money, every month, she automatically, they would send her some money, I did that. She wrote me one letter once that I read, you see, to be close to the flight deck, we had two catapults, port and starboard catapults, and I slept in the starboard catapult, I slept there and the catapult operator slept there, I don't think we had anybody else, maybe in first class in chief, in charge of the flight deck, you know, I could do what I wanted, sleep when I wanted, and so I slept there. And one -- this funny story. The one particular night I heard somebody out in the water calling my name, agonizing voice, help me, help me, you know, and so I sat up in the bunk and I says, hey, wait a minute, I says, is somebody out there calling my name, I says somebody's overboard and they're calling me to help him, well, go to sleep, war nerves, war nerves, go to sleep, I hadn't slept at the time that I heard that. But anyway, after one of the engagements when we got back to Pearl, later, month, two, maybe three, I don't know, I get a letter from my mother, and she said that she got notice or somebody, but anyway, we had a club called the El Gauchos and Bob Berth was one of the El Gauchos and we were good, good buddies, real good buddies, this is before the war. So when I joined the Navy, because I joined the Navy and had been out at Pearl, he went and joined the Navy. Well, he was on a tin can in the Atlantic, that's where they stationed him, so they were dropping death charges on a sub, and somehow he was knocked overboard and never found. And when she -- in the letter when she said when they -- the date that they said this happened, I thought back and it was exactly the time that I heard him. It's a funny (second file on CD) funny thing, but exactly, it's a funny thing. So you wonder sometimes. Anyway, I don't know.

Thomas Swope:

I forgot what I was going to ask you now.

Stephen Puttera:

Well, but you know, that's funny, I've never forgotten that, and I said, there are some things, some kind of telepathic thing that can go on, you know, we got our guardian angels I'm sure and everything, so I don't know.

Thomas Swope:

Well, 16 battle stars, any other vivid memories of other engagements?

Stephen Puttera:

Vivid, no, because you see, the only action we get into is when we're being attacked, which was seven or eight times. We were hit I think 15 or 16 times by Japanese aircraft, bombs, and after I made chief, there were two bombs, one hit and wiped out the whole crew that was there when I was knocked over that gun mount, wiped them all out. Because I remember the next day I walked on the flight deck, walked back there, and nobody's supposed to be there but they can't stop me, see, I'm a bigshot, so anyway, I'm looking down there and what's vivid in my mind as long as you mentioned it ... most of the guys already, most of the guys already were examined, and the only way they could tell who they were, they were black from the bomb explosion and all the powder magazines that were there ready to be used had all blown up, set fire. So their mouths, this way and this way and this way and this way, was red, and that's vivid in my mind. So for action to see people hurt, I've seen some hit with propellers and I've seen some blown up, and I've seen them after the explosions when they're checking them out and I remember these, this is how they cut them so they could pull the lips open and check their teeth, and sitting in the gun mount with only half a person or something like that, yeah, I've seen all that.

Thomas Swope:

So do you have any other memories of when you were under attack?

Stephen Puttera:

Other than watching guys running back and forth and everything and trying to not get hit, or watching our gunners shooting at them, hey, we'd stand, all -- we'd just stand there watch them shooting at them, but, I don't know what else to tell you other than that. It was, in a way it was a show, it was a scary show, but we stood there and watched, and if there was anything we could do to help in different cases, we did. We did whatever we had to do.

Thomas Swope:

So as in charge of the flight deck then you were responsible for everything that happened there on the flight deck?

Stephen Puttera:

As far as, as far as landing, launching, and respotting aircraft and then if anything else happened, well, we always jumped in to help. If there were fires we'd handle the hoses or this or that or whatever we had to do. If there was a plane crash, help them get out of the plane or this or that, whatever. There's some pictures in some of these books that I remember seeing, we had one flight deck officer that plane's on fire over the catwalk and he's running up there to get the pilot out. Nobody cared about themselves. That's one thing on our ship, nobody ever cared about himself or didn't seem to. He thought of the other guy, and that's why I think we stayed afloat. There was camaraderie on that ship that was on no other ship that we ever knew of. Lot of it on a lot of ships, but I think we had the greatest. We really do, think we had the greatest. That's why she stayed afloat I think, yeah.

Thomas Swope:

You have to deal with any kamikazes or is that happening a little later?

Stephen Puttera:

We saw the start, yeah, but none of them ever hit us, we got them, but a kamikaze knocked Number 1 elevator out of her after I was gone in April of '45, I was in Memphis. And you see, they had transferred so many men that they didn't have the best gun men anymore, lot of new kids, and this one plane, he come in and put that ship out of commission by blowing Number 1 elevator out, well, if you blow Number 1 elevator out, your catapults are probably shot, you got a hole in the middle of the flight deck, you can't launch aircraft, so that was her last fight. But we had so many carriers out there then they really didn't need her. But you know, she went through the start of the war and would have went through the whole thing had they shot that one Jap plane down, and how he got through all that gunfire, all I can say, and who am I to judge maybe, but I got to figure that some of these kids just weren't leading that plane properly and should have shot it down, one plane with all the guns they had on that ship, we shot down 69 planes one day, yeah.

Thomas Swope:

What engagement was that?

Stephen Puttera:

Santa Cruz I think it was, I'm not positive. Yeah. But we had our original gunners then, it wasn't till later on that they started transferring real heavy because they were building carriers so fast, that they needed, you know, men to train, to train these new kids that they were bringing aboard. And of course when you left, they had to bring a greenhorn in to replace you and that's what they did, because the boot camps were going crazy and they were training them as fast as they could, and shipping them out as fast as they could. They had to. But call it whatever you want, we had good luck, some bad luck, but all in all, we must have had some good luck because even with 15 or 16 bomb hits, they never sunk us. Now one time, I don't remember what battle it was, and I -- I've got it in my -- in the stuff here, but I'd have to find it, one that hit at and it could have been Santa Cruz, but it knocked our steering out of commission, and here we are going in a circle. If there had been a Jap around, sub, or any more Jap planes come in, we were going around in a circle, a half a mile circle, three quarter of a mile circle, and we were doing that for maybe 20 minutes, something like that, half hour, not positive, not positive again. And I'm seeing it, I said, hey, man, nobody better come around, we're helpless, when are we going to get straightened out. But anyway, I think it was the chief down below decks that somehow got it fixed and we were steering again, so he was the hero. He had to be decorated, you know. So I don't know, other than that, we were lucky all the time. But then, I can show you pictures where there's a lot of ack-ack up overhead so you know we were under a lot of -- they were shooting, doing a lot of shooting and there was a lot of planes up there, but we were lucky, we were lucky. Oh, I had just made chief and I started to tell you before, the one plane that wiped out the gun crew, the other bomb went through the flight deck, through the hangar deck, through the munitions area, and into the chief's quarters, and I had no more chief's quarters, so I didn't have any quarters, mine were emergency quarters after I made chief. But at first, before this attack, I did have some chief's quarters, we had good food. I guess it was powdered milk, but we had milk, good scrambled eggs, not the kind you get in the chow line, you know, and we had fruit and stuff like that, chiefs ate good. The chiefs' mess on the Enterprise probably was the best in the whole Navy, yeah, they were good. Old Halsey took care of his men.

Thomas Swope:

One elevator was the furthest forward?

Stephen Puttera:

Forward, yeah, Number 1, Number 1's up here, Number 2 is right across from the crane, Number 3 is back here.

Thomas Swope:

Catapults at each end so you could take off in either direction?

Stephen Puttera:

No, no, one catapult on the starboard side and one on the port.

Thomas Swope:

Oh, okay, okay, got it. See, I just had to turn it around and face into the wind.

Stephen Puttera:

Always. You always had to face into the wind to launch, or almost into the wind, you know. All the carriers had to do that, Japs had to do it, that's why we got them at Midway, they had to turn, go into the wind, and while they were doing all that, we just slaughtered them. One of our pilots, dive bomber pilots, is still living and he's the one, I can't think of his name now, he's instrumental in sinking one of the ships, his bomb did the most damage to sink that ship. And he was telling us about it at our reunion that we had in Eugene, whatever the name is, it's a different place every two years. But it's getting smaller now and it's not like it used to be, and your buddies are gone, most of them, so I didn't even go -- St. Louis, I could have driven down there, I didn't even go to that one. Well, the reason I didn't go is because I had relatives from Oklahoma, hadn't seen for 30 years, she was visiting me so I couldn't do two things, I didn't care to go to St. Louis anyway.

Thomas Swope:

How many do you think were on the ship?

Stephen Puttera:

Well, she was built for 1900, at peace time with squadrons aboard, maybe 2300. During war time, though, we had a lot more than that, we had maybe 25, 2600, and one time I think they told me that there was close to 2900 people on that ship at one time. We had a lot of men, lot of squadrons, stuff like that on board, but she was really only built for just under 2,000. Now the new carrier, the new Enterprise has got about 5,000, 5,500 people on it, there's no, the Nimitz (ph) 67, she's not quite as big as the Enterprise but she's nuclear, same amount of crew. Now they're building -- I think they're building another real big one that I think is going to be nuclear. Nuclear is the way to go. That's the way to go, of course the oil companies don't like it, that's too bad. But nuclear's the way to go, that ship can go out for a year and not come back, as long as it's got provisions.

Thomas Swope:

Have any trouble adjusting to civilian life when you came back?

Stephen Puttera:

Not really. Not really. I took everything with a grain of salt, seems like. No, I had to find work, I went pumping gas for Standard Oil, went to their school, they had a special school, at that time, you know, you had to be an actor, you had to come out, you know, and greet the guy real cheerfully and wipe his stupid windshield and check his tires, check his oil, you know, you had to be a salesman. And now you got to do everything yourself, everything's switched around. Just like the Bible says, those that think they're going to be first will be last, those that are last are going to be first, well, you're doing it at the gas pumps, I always think of that because they say, hey, you do it at the gas pumps. Yeah. No, I -- and then I did house wiring for Vestra (ph) Electric, Jack Tully, he's gone now, and I did that and pumped gas, and I was a part-time policeman in '47, I got out in '46, '47 I'm pumping gas, doing -- wiring houses and part-time policeman, and then in '48 I became a full-time policeman and I was there for 48 years, and two months.

Thomas Swope:

Any other strong memories of your war time experiences come to mind?

Stephen Puttera:

In what way would you --

Thomas Swope:

Well, just anything that we want to -- jog your memory at all?

Stephen Puttera:

Not anything I don't think anybody'd be interested in. We had a lot of good shorely memories.

Thomas Swope:

Well, let's hear some of those.

Stephen Puttera:

(Laughing) I had a little guy named Jonesy, worked for me on the flight deck and one day we went ashore and he had to stick with me and of course I could drink and he couldn't. So we went into this one place and we had, oh, I can't think of what it was, they warned you you could only drink one or maybe we would only sell you two or something like that, Zombies, and so I think we had three of them, and I remember I throwed him over my shoulder and walked up that big gangplank, saluted the colors and the flight deck officer and took him down below decks on my shoulder, never thought nothing of it. Now I can't hardly get up out of a chair. I remember that one. Another time -- he's still living. Marlow, Merlin Marlow, big, six-foot-six, he used to do atlas training, hard as a rock, and of course I worked out with barbells, I had weights at Number 3 elevator onboard carrier, I brought my own weights aboard, I used to work out, I put 250 over my head like nothing, now I can't pick up a five-pound bag of sugar. Anyway, we're ashore, and we were drinking, and we each had half-pints and I think we damn near downed a whole half-pint at one time, anyway, some guys said something and we said something back, they didn't like what we said back, I guess, and laid into us. Marlow pushes me aside, the three of them, and three swings and all three were out like a light. But we did crazy things, too, you know, we did crazy things. Lot of things we shouldn't talk about. Lot of pretty girls, lot of pretty girls, lot of pretty girls.

Thomas Swope:

That was in Hawaii?

Stephen Puttera:

In Hawaii, lot in Memphis, Tennessee, too. Oh, yeah, and then when VJ day, when VJ day, no, what --

Thomas Swope:

In May it was VE day.

Stephen Puttera:

VE day, yeah, well, Memphis went crazy, you had a bottle under one arm, a girl under another, and we'd just go down the streets and we'd grab a girl and she'd go right with you, go wherever you want, do whatever you want, so there's a lot of good stories there, too, but I won't tell them.

Thomas Swope:

Do you have memories of VJ day?

Stephen Puttera:

Same way, same way. Same way. They went crazy. Yeah. Memories. Big memories. Big memories. I used to drink heavy and thought I could handle it and then I did, I never became an alcoholic, and I could drink anybody under the table. In Memphis we had the duty once every three weeks, the chiefs, and whenever I had the duty, my job was to shoot pool with an old Marine sergeant and drink beer, as much as we could, so from 7:00 to 11:00, how much beer do you think we drank?

Thomas Swope:

A lot.

Stephen Puttera:

I had the guy count one time, he says 29 bottles. And we went to our barracks sober, you say no, you thought you were, well, hey, we didn't stagger and we were talking and having a good time and didn't seem to bother us. I can't do that no more either.

Thomas Swope:

Do you remember your reaction when you heard they dropped the atomic bomb?

Stephen Puttera:

Yeah. But here again, we figured, well, hey, it's about time, and good, maybe they'll quit now, and they did. That was our -- that was my -- most of us, that was it, you know, we -- we were going to go in there to get them anyway but they'd have wiped a lot of us out because they were suicidal, period, they were going to die no other way. That was, that was their -- that was their religion, and they'd have killed a lot of us. To go, to have a land invasion on Tokyo itself and all them surrounding islands would have been worse than Tarawa and Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima all put together, would have been worse. So I think Truman did the right thing there and I think everyone in the service at least did and maybe some other people didn't. They're trying to turn around and say now, well, we shouldn't have done it. Well, I'll tell you something, war is war, there's nothing easy about war, and I'll tell you, how you get killed, you know, it don't matter, you're going to -- you're dead. So why let a lot of us get killed if we thought we didn't have to allow it. I think Truman did a good thing, that's the only good thing that -- I don't know much about it, but that's one of the best things he ever did. He didn't save our ship though, I don't, you know, (laughing), like to kid about that.

Thomas Swope:

You think that covers it?

Stephen Puttera:

Well, no, there's a million things, but you know, I can't think back. I -- like I told you before, I've done more here in the last two or three years about what we did then that I had forgotten for 30 or 40 years, never even thought of, but now they're getting me involved and, you know, I guess I got to be thankful that I'm still here and I can do it, I never dreamed I would. I got a tape I'll show you if you want to see it.

Thomas Swope:

I'd like to see that.

Stephen Puttera:

It's just bragging again, but I'm not bragging. I'm lucky, I really am, and I know I'm lucky that I'm still -- I don't know why I'm here, the good Lord's got me for something else yet, I don't know what it is. Or I wouldn't be here. There's something, he didn't say, he's giving me a chance to straighten up yet, I guess. I don't know. I'll let you look at that picture, now that's a painting but it's a picture, it's a painting of a photograph that was taken by someone on one of the cruisers that saw the Number 1 elevator get blown out of the ship, and it went over 400 feet in the air.

Thomas Swope:

Yeah.

Stephen Puttera:

You see -- the elevator's on pistons and of course when the plane went down and the bomb exploded and it ruined the elevator, the pressure just was so great that the piston, even though it was locked down, had stops, busted the whole thing, that elevator went over 400 feet in the air.

Thomas Swope:

It's amazing.

Stephen Puttera:

So that was the last of that. She never saw action anymore. From then on, then she went to Europe and all over and brought home troops. That's when I think they had 31, 3200 people on it. They loaded her down real good, not very many planes of course because they were just -- they weren't -- they did fix the elevator and they could have launched planes, but after that they didn't need her and they used her for transporting troops, stuff like that. And then in '61, '60, well, I don't know when she went to New York, but I think '61 was when they finally completely demolished her. That's the end of her, yeah. No more. Now her stern plate is somewhere, we had, we had -- we built an elevator at Annapolis that's got our plaque at the bottom of it, we've got a tremendous museum in Pensacola, people should see. And OshKosh, is it Missouri?

Thomas Swope:

Wisconsin?

Stephen Puttera:

Wisconsin, yeah, I was partially involved, not much, I didn't do much, in building a model of the Enterprise, and that's encased in glass there, and that's something to see. It is built right to the T, it took them three years to build that, I've got pictures of it here somewhere I might be able to show you before you go. And other than that, I've got all kinds of pictures, I've gone to about 15 or 18 reunions and I usually go to Helriggles (ph) Pearl Harbor day on December 7th, I used to go to pretty near all of them after I found out about it, which is I think in '60 or '61, and so I used to go to them but of course she's gone on, Bill Kuchever (ph) passed away and his wife decided not to do it anymore, but then she sold the business and the new owners are doing it again and that's why I went there last year, the year before I didn't go. So they're doing -- they took that over again, so it's nice that they're doing that. People got to -- you know, you've got to be prepared, you can't be caught asleep anymore, and we've had presidents that have hurt us terribly by cutting our armed forces. Now I think we're going to build back a little bit and we better build back a little bit more. So, I don't know. I tried to tell you things that came to my mind. Now sure, there was a lot, I was on that ship for four years, you know, and a lot of things, but I -- you got to ask me for me to think back, if I think back I can remember some of them pretty good, some of them, not so good, you know, I just didn't pay no attention, you know.

Thomas Swope:

Yeah, it's hard for me to think of specific questions.

Stephen Puttera:

Well, I don't know how you do as good as you do, you do pretty good, you've had a little practice probably.

Thomas Swope:

Little.

Stephen Puttera:

Me, I was never a talker, I did write a speech for Memorial Day. That's the only speech I ever really made and I had to read most of that. I'll show you that if you want to see it.

Thomas Swope:

Sure.

Stephen Puttera:

But I was never much, I was always -- I was in the background. Now when I had a job to do and I knew what I was doing, sure, then I was in the foreground and I made sure they did what I said. Now, you know, when you're on board a carrier, you talk pretty loud and I think I talk loud now, at least my daughters tell me that I talk too loud. But when you're hollering for someone to do -- move that plane or do this or do that, and you're -- you have to shout above the whir of the engines, it sometimes sounds like you're pretty mean rotten dog, and I think I made an enemy or two because I think someone pulled that pin on that fighter wing because they don't swing open unless you pull the pin. So I think someone was trying to get rid of me, so I'll tell you that one, too.

Thomas Swope:

Interesting.

Stephen Puttera:

I don't know. I don't know. But there might be someone alive yet today that knows, I don't blame the guy, hey, he shouldn't have done it, he had his reasons, he must have thought I hollered at him too much one time, I don't know. But I loved all those guys, and my -- if I hollered at them, it was because I loved them, but I wanted them to do the job and to do it right, but it wasn't nothing personal. Now I remember one kid, he was a green kid, plane handler, and we were moving planes up forward, and he jumps on the wing and he's hanging onto this wing and the wing is over the catwalk and he could have fallen off into the water, well, I chewed him out upside down and inside out and to this day he'll thank me for it, and he loves me. And I've got a tape that was taken in Pensacola, I think -- no, it was taken in -- oh, just north of Fort Lauderdale, you can't name all them cities. Anyway --

Thomas Swope:

Jacksonville?

Stephen Puttera:

He has me stand up, and he tells that whole gang what he thought of me and that made me feel good.

Thomas Swope:

Yeah.

Stephen Puttera:

So here, you know, there's a different reaction, he knew I was right, and he knew he was wrong. But he said I straightened him out, and he says that's the best thing I could have done for him, because he was kind of a little wiseacre kid at the time, that's the way he come aboard, but when he left, he left a good sailor, you know.