Franco
God
William F. Meyers Jr.
My dad lived in a little town in Pennsylvania called Easton. Easton is located in the Lehigh Valley at the confluence of the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers. If you were to drive by on Route 22, you may not even notice it, other than the highway signs marking the exit. But it is a historic place. It was one of three places where the Declaration of Independence was read aloud, along with Philadelphia and Trenton. Easton was a major commercial center during the canal and railroad days of the 1800’s. But I remember it as my dads’ home town. Pop, as I call him, was the first of five children born to William and Mary Meyers. He grew up in a little house on Chidsey Street. Pop would often talk about taking the train to New York to go see the Yankees play. He often spoke of watching Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio playing the game he loved. I remember looking through his High School yearbook as a young boy and being surprised to see him dressed in a baseball uniform, pitching for his school team. Many years later I asked pop about his playing days, pop said he had a fair fast ball, but he had really good control. I believe that playing baseball was his number second dream. His first dream was to join the navy. That was a dream pop didn’t think he would ever realize, as a child, pop and a couple of other boys were playing with matches.
Pop’s clothes caught on fire and he ended up with a severe burn on his upper thigh, he thought that would keep from passing the physical. But world events would have a say in that dream. Pop worked in a steel mill after he graduated high school, a crucial industry for the war effort. One summer day, on his way to work, pop tossed his lunch pail over a fence and hitch hiked to Philadelphia is search of the Navy recruiter. Once he passed the physical, he enlisted for 6 years. After boot camp and training, he got his first sea duty assignment. He was assigned to an aircraft carrier, the USS Cowpens. When her keel was laid at the New York Shipbuilding Company in Camden, New Jersey, they even had another name for her. She was to have been the light cruiser HUNTINGTON. But 14 months later when she was launched, the Navy had changed both her looks and her name. She had sprouted out into a flat-topped carrier. When her sponsor, Mrs. Margaret Halsey Spruance, daughter of Fleet Admiral William T. Halsey, broke the bottle of champagne over her bow, she had the name COWPENS and the hull-number designation CVL-25. They took the name Cowpens from a famous battle of the Revolutionary War, when we whipped the British at a town by that name near Spartanburg, South Carolina. The launching, on January 17, 1943, came exactly 162 years after the Battle of Cowpens. Rear Admiral Milo F. Draemel commissioned the COWPENS at the Philadelphia Navy Yard on May 28, 1943.The first skipper of the COWPENS was Captain Robert P. McConnell who had commanded the ill fated seaplane tender LANGLEY. The COWPENS made her trial run on Delaware Bay on June 20, and steamed into Chesapeake Bay for shakedown five days later. Her first air group landed aboard on July 3. This was Air Group 25, and that same day the COWPENS launched her first plane by catapult.
The bad luck that haunted the COWPENS in her early days was not long in coming. Putting into Norfolk, Virginia, on July 14, she ran afoul of the antisubmarine nets, and hung there like trapped fish. It cost her a day in dry dock.
Between July 21 and August 8, the COWPENS flexed her muscles on a training run to Port of Spain, Trinidad, and back to Philadelphia. She was still in the training phase when she left Philadelphia on August 26 to make the trip through the Panama Canal to the West Coast. But the pressure of war was getting stronger. The COWPENS stayed in San Diego only overnight before leaving for Pearl Harbor on September 13, 1943.
How the COWPENS got her nickname is not recorded for posterity. They called her "The Mighty Moo", from the association of sounds in her name. It was a strange mixture of pride and derision. Only a great ship could live with such a nickname; even take pride in the element of nonsense. If you weren’t a COWPENS man, you had to smile when you said it. In any case, "Mighty Moo" it was. The COWPENS newspaper carried it proudly on the masthead.
The trip to Pearl Harbor brought the meaning of war much closer. The COWPENS was still very new and altogether untried when she put in at the famous Hawaiian Islands anchorage in September 1943. The scars of war still showed on Pearl Harbor, and there were ships there that had slugged it out with the Japanese and knew what war was all about. The 1500 officers and men of the COWPENS had ten days to fit themselves into this pattern.
The COWPENS put to sea on her trial mission of war on September 29, 1943. She was a unit of Task Group 59.18; one of five carriers with the job of hitting storied Wake Island. They called that one a warm-up, and it was for everyone except the American pilots and the Japanese on the receiving end. Our planes smashed at the island defenses almost without let-up starting on October 5. It was some measure of revenge for what had happened to our Marines at Wake. There were no Japanese ships or planes to fight back, but their anti-aircraft fire on the island knocked down some of our planes. Our rescue submarines picked up some, but not all.
Back at Pearl Harbor more bad luck awaited the COWPENS. While exercising on October 17th, she was rammed in the starboard side aft by a destroyer. The gash was nine days healing in dry dock, and still another stroke of misfortune was in store. They were pumping gasoline out of the ship when a fire broke out for reasons unknown. Nobody got hurt, but it didn’t help. There was talk that the COWPENS was a jinx ship.
The next job for COWPENS was her first lesson in air support for ground forces. The Marines were going to land at Tarawa and the carriers got the job of softening up the defenses and seeing that the Japanese Fleet didn't interfere. They pounded most or the islands within range of Tarawa between November 20th and 24th with the COWPENS air group concentrating on Makin and Mille.
As soon as the landing was in the bag, the carriers moved up to the Marshall Islands. The Japanese were using these islands to stage planes for attacks on our forces in the Gilberts. COWPENS hit Kwajalein and Eniwetok on the 4th and 5th of December, where her fighters caught 11 Japanese torpedo planes on the ground and destroyed them.
Here the ship got its’ baptism of fire. Twice on the 4th the Japanese tried to sneak small groups of planes through to attack our carriers, and at night, they sent out 30 or more torpedo planes. Those that came in during daylight were shot down. The night attacks were colorful and exciting with the Japanese dropping flares. They got one torpedo hit on another carrier, but the only damage to the COWPENS was accidental. A plane from another carrier tried to land aboard crashed over the side and killed four Marine gunners. It was a tough break, but the fighting had put now confidence in everybody. The COWPENS had shaken off the jinx talk and began to operate -with the cool efficiency of a veteran.
My dad lived in a little town in Pennsylvania called Easton. Easton is located in the Lehigh Valley at the confluence of the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers. If you were to drive by on Route 22, you may not even notice it, other than the highway signs marking the exit. But it is a historic place. It was one of three places where the Declaration of Independence was read aloud, along with Philadelphia and Trenton. Easton was a major commercial center during the canal and railroad days of the 1800’s. But I remember it as my dads’ home town. Pop, as I call him, was the first of five children born to William and Mary Meyers. He grew up in a little house on Chidsey Street. Pop would often talk about taking the train to New York to go see the Yankees play. He often spoke of watching Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio playing the game he loved. I remember looking through his High School yearbook as a young boy and being surprised to see him dressed in a baseball uniform, pitching for his school team. Many years later I asked pop about his playing days, pop said he had a fair fast ball, but he had really good control. I believe that playing baseball was his number second dream. His first dream was to join the navy. That was a dream pop didn’t think he would ever realize, as a child, pop and a couple of other boys were playing with matches.
Pop’s clothes caught on fire and he ended up with a severe burn on his upper thigh, he thought that would keep from passing the physical. But world events would have a say in that dream. Pop worked in a steel mill after he graduated high school, a crucial industry for the war effort. One summer day, on his way to work, pop tossed his lunch pail over a fence and hitch hiked to Philadelphia is search of the Navy recruiter. Once he passed the physical, he enlisted for 6 years. After boot camp and training, he got his first sea duty assignment. He was assigned to an aircraft carrier, the USS Cowpens. When her keel was laid at the New York Shipbuilding Company in Camden, New Jersey, they even had another name for her. She was to have been the light cruiser HUNTINGTON. But 14 months later when she was launched, the Navy had changed both her looks and her name. She had sprouted out into a flat-topped carrier. When her sponsor, Mrs. Margaret Halsey Spruance, daughter of Fleet Admiral William T. Halsey, broke the bottle of champagne over her bow, she had the name COWPENS and the hull-number designation CVL-25. They took the name Cowpens from a famous battle of the Revolutionary War, when we whipped the British at a town by that name near Spartanburg, South Carolina. The launching, on January 17, 1943, came exactly 162 years after the Battle of Cowpens. Rear Admiral Milo F. Draemel commissioned the COWPENS at the Philadelphia Navy Yard on May 28, 1943.The first skipper of the COWPENS was Captain Robert P. McConnell who had commanded the ill fated seaplane tender LANGLEY. The COWPENS made her trial run on Delaware Bay on June 20, and steamed into Chesapeake Bay for shakedown five days later. Her first air group landed aboard on July 3. This was Air Group 25, and that same day the COWPENS launched her first plane by catapult.
The bad luck that haunted the COWPENS in her early days was not long in coming. Putting into Norfolk, Virginia, on July 14, she ran afoul of the antisubmarine nets, and hung there like trapped fish. It cost her a day in dry dock.
Between July 21 and August 8, the COWPENS flexed her muscles on a training run to Port of Spain, Trinidad, and back to Philadelphia. She was still in the training phase when she left Philadelphia on August 26 to make the trip through the Panama Canal to the West Coast. But the pressure of war was getting stronger. The COWPENS stayed in San Diego only overnight before leaving for Pearl Harbor on September 13, 1943.
How the COWPENS got her nickname is not recorded for posterity. They called her "The Mighty Moo", from the association of sounds in her name. It was a strange mixture of pride and derision. Only a great ship could live with such a nickname; even take pride in the element of nonsense. If you weren’t a COWPENS man, you had to smile when you said it. In any case, "Mighty Moo" it was. The COWPENS newspaper carried it proudly on the masthead.
The trip to Pearl Harbor brought the meaning of war much closer. The COWPENS was still very new and altogether untried when she put in at the famous Hawaiian Islands anchorage in September 1943. The scars of war still showed on Pearl Harbor, and there were ships there that had slugged it out with the Japanese and knew what war was all about. The 1500 officers and men of the COWPENS had ten days to fit themselves into this pattern.
The COWPENS put to sea on her trial mission of war on September 29, 1943. She was a unit of Task Group 59.18; one of five carriers with the job of hitting storied Wake Island. They called that one a warm-up, and it was for everyone except the American pilots and the Japanese on the receiving end. Our planes smashed at the island defenses almost without let-up starting on October 5. It was some measure of revenge for what had happened to our Marines at Wake. There were no Japanese ships or planes to fight back, but their anti-aircraft fire on the island knocked down some of our planes. Our rescue submarines picked up some, but not all.
Back at Pearl Harbor more bad luck awaited the COWPENS. While exercising on October 17th, she was rammed in the starboard side aft by a destroyer. The gash was nine days healing in dry dock, and still another stroke of misfortune was in store. They were pumping gasoline out of the ship when a fire broke out for reasons unknown. Nobody got hurt, but it didn’t help. There was talk that the COWPENS was a jinx ship.
The next job for COWPENS was her first lesson in air support for ground forces. The Marines were going to land at Tarawa and the carriers got the job of softening up the defenses and seeing that the Japanese Fleet didn't interfere. They pounded most or the islands within range of Tarawa between November 20th and 24th with the COWPENS air group concentrating on Makin and Mille.
As soon as the landing was in the bag, the carriers moved up to the Marshall Islands. The Japanese were using these islands to stage planes for attacks on our forces in the Gilberts. COWPENS hit Kwajalein and Eniwetok on the 4th and 5th of December, where her fighters caught 11 Japanese torpedo planes on the ground and destroyed them.
Here the ship got its’ baptism of fire. Twice on the 4th the Japanese tried to sneak small groups of planes through to attack our carriers, and at night, they sent out 30 or more torpedo planes. Those that came in during daylight were shot down. The night attacks were colorful and exciting with the Japanese dropping flares. They got one torpedo hit on another carrier, but the only damage to the COWPENS was accidental. A plane from another carrier tried to land aboard crashed over the side and killed four Marine gunners. It was a tough break, but the fighting had put now confidence in everybody. The COWPENS had shaken off the jinx talk and began to operate -with the cool efficiency of a veteran.
