One Who Survived (June 1956 | Volume: 7, Issue: 4)

One Who Survived

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Historic Era: Era 8: The Great Depression and World War II (1929-1945)

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June 1956 | Volume 7, Issue 4

Of all the men who have gone down to the sea in ships, none has clung to life with more tenacity, or lived to tell a more graphic story, than Allen Clifton Heyn, gunner’s mate second class, one of the ten survivors of more than seven hundred men aboard the U.S. light cruiser Juneau. AMERICAN HERITAGE is indebted to the Navy Department, and to the director of naval history, Rear Admiral John B. Heffernan, USN (Ret.), for this transcript of a recorded wartime interview between Heyn and a naval interrogator. Save for a few cuts to remove repetition or digressions, and for a few slight alterations in wording in the interests of clarity, nothing has been changed. This is a tale which loses nothing from the elementary English of the teller.

Heyn was a seaman aboard the Juneau when she took part in the complicated series of night and day actions which are lumped together as the Battle of Guadalcanal, from November 12 through 15, 1942. In this decisive struggle for the Solomon Islands, American surface and air forces succeeded in reinforcing their ground troops on Guadalcanal while largely preventing the Japanese from doing the same thing. But victory was accomplished at a terrific cost, littering the floor of the narrow seas between Guadalcanal, Savo, and Florida Islands with so many sunken U.S. ships that the Navy christened those waters “Ironbottom Sound.”

The Juneau fought in the cruiser night surface action of Friday, November 13. A U.S. force of five cruisers and eight destroyers under Rear Admiral Daniel J. Callaghan was steaming northwest toward a larger Japanese bombardment group coming directly at them between Savo and Guadalcanal, hoping to shell our troops and airfield ashore. The American advantage of surprise was lost before fire opened at 0145, and both forces were soon intermingled in a bloody melee. Heyn’s story starts as, in the black of the midwatch, the Juneau finds herself picking her way across a hopeless checkerboard of mingled friendly and enemy ships.

 

 

LT. PORTER:

Heyn, you were on the Juneau in the Guadalcanal action, that was 13 November 1942, wasn’t it?

ALLEN HEYN:

Yes.

LT. PORTER:

What was your battle station?

 

 

HEYN:

 

I was on the 1.1 on the fantail. [A light gun at the stern.]

 

LT. PORTER:

 

What did you see of the action that night?

HEYN:

We were in a column of ships and we went in, in between these Japanese ships, and we got word down from the bridge to stand by, that they would challenge the enemy. And it wasn’t but a few minutes when everything just broke loose, flames and shots and gunfire all over. And they sent word all around to all the minor batteries like 1.1’s and 20 millimeters [antiaircraft machine guns] not to fire because the tracers would give away our positions.

So, we held our fire until the enemy knew where we were and the star shells [fired to illuminate