Dick Ramsey was on board the usNevada off the coast of France in the course of the Allied invasion on D-Day, June 6, 1944 — 2½ years after the battleship practically sank in shallow water at Pearl Harbor in the course of the notorious assault by Japanese airplanes.
Painstaking restore work had positioned the sturdy Nevada, badly broken by bombs and a torpedo, again into motion. Ten 14-inch, .45-caliber weapons have been used within the Allies’ Operation Neptune on D-Day to bombard German artillery at Utah Seashore in addition to cannons and tanks miles inland, Ramsey mentioned.
Constructed simply earlier than World Struggle I, the usNevada was the one battleship to have fought on D-Day and was current at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii throughout Imperial Japan’s assault on Dec. 7, 1941, mentioned Ramsey, a resident of Lengthy Seashore, California.
‘It feels very lonely’
Now 80 years after D-Day, Ramsey, a former coxswain for the U.S. Navy, is likely one of the solely two dwelling crew members of the Nevada.
The opposite, Charles Sehe, 101, the one individual to serve on the Nevada each in the course of the Pearl Harbor assault and on D-Day, is in hospice care in Minnesota, he mentioned.
“It feels very lonely,” mentioned Ramsey, who at age 100 is talkative and spry. “We’re down to 2 individuals. We had many reunions.”
On Wednesday, at some point earlier than the eightieth anniversary, Ramsey arrived at Normandy — his third journey there to rejoice D-Day — for the primary of two days of ceremonies commemorating the assault in opposition to the German armed forces.
“As a result of there are a lot of fantastic ceremonies happening right here, it’s extremely emotional,” Ramsey mentioned in an electronic mail despatched by a good friend in France.
He famous that he visited museums and the Pegasus Bridge.
“There are a number of lovely locations right here,” Ramsey mentioned. “Even with the entire crowds, I used to be in a position to see individuals who I had met the earlier yr. And I proceed to fulfill pretty individuals. The youthful technology takes excellent care of us.”
The Pegasus Bridge, a well-known strategic crossing over the Caen Canal captured by British airborne troops, “paved the way in which for the Allied invasion of Europe” and “was the primary engagement of D-Day, the turning level of World Struggle II, ” wrote the late historian Stephen E. Ambrose in his 1988 ebook “ Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944.”
‘Honor of firing the primary shot’
Ramsey, who obtained the Overseas Legion of Honor award from France, mentioned he nonetheless has a replica of the letter despatched by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower telling troops how important the Allied landings have been.
“Eisenhower had requested some battleships with massive weapons,” Ramsey mentioned in an interview this week with Raleigh, North Carolina-based WNCN-TV Channel 17. “So that they despatched them the three oldest battleships within the Navy — the Arkansas, the Texas and the Nevada.”
Exterior Utah Seashore, U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Morton Deyo ordered the Nevada to open hearth, Ramsey informed the information station. “The Nevada had the respect of firing the primary shot,” Ramsey mentioned.
The Nevada was honored in April with the debut of a commemorative Nevada state license plate, referred to as “The Battle Born State’s Battleship,” designed by Las Vegas resident John Galloway, who’s head of the usNevada Remembrance Mission.
‘The place the soul of the ship is’
Galloway, requested concerning the significance of the license plate, solely the third U.S. battleship commemorated on a state license plate, cited what Sehe as soon as mentioned — that visiting the state of Nevada was extra vital than Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and the D-Day touchdown in France.
“That (state) is the place the soul of the ship is,” Galloway mentioned. “That’s the place the guts is.
“It’s a option to train,” he added. “The truth that the ship and the state are intertwined, I could make a educating second for our courageous ancestors.”
Galloway additionally designed, and coated the bills for, a plaque honoring the usNevada on the state’s memorial to the battleship in Carson Metropolis. It was mounted there in 2016, the a centesimal anniversary of the ship’s placement into energetic service. He additionally had one other plaque ready to rejoice the Nevada’s service for the a centesimal anniversary of the Pearl Harbor invasion in 2041.
For D-Day, Admiral Deyo selected the Nevada to function the “preventing flagship” the place the officer would command Operation Neptune and in addition be straight concerned by firing its weapons at German shoreline defenses as Allied troops landed at Utah Seashore, Galloway mentioned.
Throughout the shoreline battle, the Nevada’s weapons took out 71 German tanks with the assistance of inland spotter planes, in response to Galloway.
‘Many, many males shot down’
Ramsey mentioned that within the early morning of D-Day, airplanes from the one hundred and first and 82nd Airborne Divisions of the U.S. Army Air Corps dropped paratroopers behind enemy traces on France’s Normandy area with the Nevada coaching its naval weapons towards German targets.
“We turned the sector artillery for the one hundred and first and 82nd,” Ramsey mentioned. “We arrived at 1 a.m. within the morning. We might see all of the paratrooper planes coming and going.”
He witnessed within the darkness of that night time, amid German anti-aircraft hearth, the horror of planes, carrying models of paratroopers, exploding and crashing, Ramsey mentioned.
“It appeared like a large kaleidoscope. That sky was all lit up,” he mentioned. “There have been many, many males shot down who by no means obtained out of their planes.”
Aboard the Nevada, Ramsey was on the third-deck powder journal, passing out rounds of ammunition requested to be used within the ship’s weapons, together with armor-piercing rounds to hit German tanks and “star shells” that exploded within the air to light up targets at night time.
Eighty straight hours
Ramsey was considered one of greater than 2,000 sailors on the ship who would stay at their battle stations for 80 straight hours, whereas the Nevada’s 4 gun turrets fired lots of of salvos of 1,000-pound projectiles that might hit and destroy a German tank as much as 17 miles away, he mentioned.
Not solely was it exhausting, however the air circulation into the ship additionally needed to be shut off, by closing air ducts, each hour as a precaution to “keep watertight integrity” and stop water from flowing inside, Ramsey mentioned.
“It made it extremely popular,” he mentioned.
Pilots from spotter planes would fly inland, view German targets and radio within the coordinates from grids on maps to direct the ship’s cannon hearth and name in corrected coordinates when the shells missed the targets, Ramsey mentioned.
Whereas the ship fired at and destroyed seawalls and different German targets, with a 51 % accuracy fee — together with knocking out 90 German tanks general — “the usNevada was not hit in any respect” regardless of being a stationary goal, Ramsey mentioned.
The Nevada left Utah Seashore and turned to firing upon Omaha Seashore, the place the touchdown American troops “have been getting slaughtered” by German machine gunfire, he mentioned.
After the Allied invasion, which included American, British and Canadian armies, finally succeeded in France and took on the German military, Ramsey and the Nevada quickly shifted to the Japanese Theater of the struggle, taking over Japan on the bloody battle of Iwo Jima and the three-month siege at Okinawa, he mentioned.
“For 16 days we fired on Mount Suribachi (on Iwo Jima island),” he mentioned.
Ramsey served for 34 months on the battleship throughout World Struggle II.
On the finish of the struggle, Ramsey mentioned he turned down a suggestion to re-enlist within the Navy, deciding to return to his previous job on the Brooklyn Naval Yard, the place he labored on the plane provider USS Franklin and later turned a lithographer for a newspaper, he mentioned.
“Why me?” he mused of his survival. “Ah nicely, as they are saying in France, ‘C’est la vie.’ ”
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