Jim Toothman: After torpedo hit, a frantic swim for survival at Midway

By Chris Rosenblum

Dead in the water, the giant aircraft carrier was dying. It listed to the port side, ever closer to sliding three miles down to its grave.

Ensign Jim Toothman wasn't about to go with it. He made his way to one of the ropes dangling into the sea.

Most of the crew had abandoned the ship after two Japanese bombs and a pair of aerial torpedoes struck it June 4, 1942. One long descent, and Toothman's part in the Battle of Midway -- an epic clash widely considered to be the turning point of the Pacific War -- would end with a swim.

But first, he had to get there.

"It was almost impossible to walk across the flight deck be cause of the slant," he said.

Toothman, now 89 and a resident of the Village at Penn State, was a long way from the West Virginia coal-mining town of his youth.

For that matter, his prewar naval reserve days and his stateside training as a radar plot officer -- when he learned with tricycles placed on a runway to simulate planes -- were distant memories.

Here, witness to two historic carrier battles, he stood on the crippled ship. At Coral Sea a month earlier, as a Japanese invasion force was stopped attempting landings near Port Moresby, New Guinea, a bomb pierced the flight deck of the USS Yorktown, passed through a hangar and exploded in a squadron ready room.

Toothman, at his station near the bridge in the island tower, overheard a seaman in the room calling to report the damage.

"There were 36 men in the space at the time," Toothman said. "Killed all of them."

That evening, he watched three dozen canvas coffins slip into the ship's wake. Unlike the USS Lexington, the Yorktown survived the battle of the Coral Sea to steam into action near the island of Midway. There, the Navy would sink four Japanese carriers turn the tide of the war in the Pacific.

The Yorktown paid the price. About noon, under attack from dive bombers and maneuvering violently, the ship was hit twice. One bomb ravaged several anti-aircraft gun batteries. The other dropped down a smokestack and detonated in the boiler room, where the explosion blew out the fires and stopped the engines.

By midafternoon, repairs had the Yorktown moving slowly again. Just then, Japanese torpedo planes appeared.

"Two of them dropped through the anti-aircraft screen, and both of them scored hits," Toothman said.

Water rushed into a huge gash in the port side. Fuel tanks exploded. The vibration shook Toothman, who was off duty and observing planes landing and refueling on the flight deck.

"The torpedoes made a horrible jar that was felt throughout the whole ship," he said.

Almost immediately, the carrier heeled over at 30 degrees. The call to abandon ship sounded. Toothman had earlier given his life jacket to a young seaman whose own had been stolen. Wearing a spattered replacement scrounged from a paint locker, he heard the order and headed across the sloping deck.

Eventually, he reached a midship line. Far below him bobbed hundreds of heads. Calmly, almost 3,000 men had slid down the ropes and were swimming as fast as they could for waiting destroyers.

Toothman, waiting for all the enlisted men to go, was one of the last on board.

"I'm sorry to say I lost my grip about two-thirds of the way down, and I had the rope burns to show for it for the next several days," he said.

More than his stinging hands, Toothman worried about being picked up. Destroyers, responding to reported enemy aircraft sightings, hastily left the area.

When they returned, Toothman wasted no time. Already shoeless, he unbuckled his belt and swam out of his pants for more speed.

After 45 minutes in the water, clad only in his skivvies and an oil-stained shirt, he was hauled onto the destroyer USS Anderson. The Yorktown remained afloat for two more days.

Salvage efforts ended when a Japanese submarine's torpedoes slammed into the hull June 6. It sank at dawn the next day.

Toothman went on to join the USS Altamaha, a small "jeep carrier" made from a freighter, and the full-size carrier USS Princeton. He worked in combat information centers, formed by the Navy as it recognized the tactical importance of new radar technology.

On the Altamaha, he helped deliver 70 P-51 fighters to the China-Burma-India theater. During his short stint on the Princeton, he took part in one of the greatest air battles of the war June 19, 1944.

Known as the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot," it resulted in more than 300 Japanese planes being shot down.

Two weeks after Toothman left the ship, it was sunk off the Philippine Islands. Had he stayed, perhaps he wouldn't have gone on to be a lieutenant commander in the reserves. He wouldn't have married, earned a master's degree and gone into the frozen food business before finally retiring with Penn State Cooperative Extension in 1981.

And he wouldn't be able to say he lived through Midway, one of the Navy's finest moments.

"It was an historic occasion to be present at," he said. "But all credit should go to the Navy pilots, particularly the dive bombers who scored the hits that sank the Japanese carriers."

Chris Rosenblum can be reached at 231-4620.