Editor's note: This is part of a weekly series published each Monday between Memorial Day and Veterans Day honoring local veterans.
By RAYMOND L. SMITH
Tribune Chronicle
MINERAL RIDGE - After working three years with the Civilian Conservation Corps., 19-year-old Edward J. Ryan decided he needed to do something different with his life.
So, on July 10, 1940, the 107-pound Niles resident and a friend joined the U.S. Navy. He signed up for six years.
"I had to eat a lot of bananas because they wanted recruits to weigh at least 110 pounds," Ryan said. "I volunteered because I needed to work and there was nothing around here to do."
Now, the 87-year-old RMI Titanium retiree looks back with amazement at his six years he spent patrolling the Pacific on a refueling ship during World War II as some of the most frightening and most invigorating times of his life.
"We did not have any indication that the U.S. would be joining the war effort when the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred," Ryan said. "I was assigned to the USS Cimarron, and the ship was two days off the coast of South Africa when the news reached us."
The Cimarron carried about 180 people; he was an apprentice seaman when the war broke out.
Within a few days, the then state-of-the art refueling and surplus vessel left Capetown, South Africa, heading back to Norfolk, Va., where it would receive its new orders.
On their way back, the ship ran into an Atlantic storm so severe that its bow buckled.
"Ours was a working ship," Ryan said. "We were to supply the warships with fuel and with whatever else they may have needed. Without us, they would not have been able to move."
At the time, the Cimarron was two-years old and was better equipped with guns and armament than some of the destroyers it was assigned to refuel.
The ship then was sent through the Panama Canal to join the Pacific war effort.
It arrived in time to join the first U.S. attack on Japan led by James "Jimmy" Doolittle in April 1942.
The Cimarron was sent to participate in the battle of Midway in June 1942, refueling the taskforce units for about 15 days. It was that successful U.S. battle in which the U.S. Navy was able to take repel an attack on the Midway Atoll.
"I think the battle of Midway, at which we had four carrier groups when the Japanese thought we only had two, that began the turnaround in the war of the Pacific theater in our favor," Ryan said.
As a refueling ship, the Cimarron's mission was to make sure all the destroyers and carriers had the fuel they needed to operate. Sometimes, they were refueling ships while they were under attack or during heavy storms. It was reported to have fueled more ships than any other oiler in the Navy; travelling more than 360,000 miles during the war.
"We were in danger because there always were enemy torpedoes whizzing by our ship," he said.
While in the Pacific, the Cimarron picked up the crew of the USS O'Brien when it was damaged and stuck near the Samoa Islands.
"The O'Brien was struck by Japanese bombs during a battle its crew was brought onto the Cimarron," Ryan said of the warship.
"After we picked up their crew, there were so many people on our ship that anyone who left their bunk soon found someone else was in my sleeping on it."
Ryan said the Cimarron always traveled the with fleet.
"Every day we were out, we were in danger because we were with the fleet of destroyers and carriers," he said. "We got our fuel from merchant ships from the islands. The Japanese would have loved to get our fueling ships, because without us our navy would have been stuck."
And although enemies, Ryan was impressed with the quality of Japanese sailors.
"They had one heck of a navy," he said.
After the U.S. bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Ryan was among the U.S. military personnel able to land on the Japanese islands.
"The people were glad the war was over," he said. "They knew what kind of damage we could do."
