La Quinta resident Norman Fox served in the Navy aboard the USS Hancock during World War II. / The Desert Sun
Norman Fox served in the Navy aboard the USS Hancock during World War II. / Submitted photo
Norman Fox
Age: 82
Hometown: Hammond, Ind.
Residence: La Quinta
Military branch: U.S. Navy
Ship: USS Hancock CV-19, CASU 33
Years served: March 22, 1945 - July 10, 1946
Rank: Fire controlman third class
Family: Wife Lorraine (deceased); three children; five grandchildren; five great-grandchildren
About this series
Staff writer Denise Goolsby will profile desert veterans from World War II from Wednesdays to Sundays through the end of 2010 — the 65th anniversary of the end of the war. Contact her at (760) 778-4587 or via e-mail at denise.goolsby@thedesertsun.com.
Coming tomorrow
U.S. Navy veteran and Pearl Harbor Survivor John Durst of Palm Springs.
More
Norman Fox's inspiration to join the military began on Dec. 7, 1941, when he was 14 years old and living in Hammond, Ind.
“(It was) on a Sunday,” he said. “You could go to the movies in Hammond for 10 cents — five cents for admission, five cents for popcorn. I'll never forget coming out of that movie house and the news boys screaming the headlines, ‘Extra, extra, Japs bomb Pearl Harbor,'” Fox said.
The startling announcement didn't make much sense to the young man, who said he didn't know at the time where Pearl Harbor was or who was being accused of the bombing.
Soon after returning home, the picture became clearer.
“Listening on the radio, you understood the significance of it,” Fox said.
A few years later, he was eager to fight for his country.
“I tried to join when I was 16,” he said. “I begged my parents to go in the Navy.”
To Fox's great disappointment, they wouldn't sign off.
“They said, ‘Wait until you're 17, son,'” Fox said.
When he turned 17, he enlisted in the Navy, went to boot camp in San Diego and was sent to Los Alamitos, an auxiliary Naval air base.
“It was very small,” he said. “They practiced takeoffs and landings” on a short runway.
The abbreviated runway was meant to simulate aircraft carrier flight decks, which have very short runways.
In Los Alamitos, Fox was assigned to an FU Corsair. His duties as plane captain — small “c,” he noted, explaining that captain in this case was not a ranking but a job assignment — included keeping the plane neat, clean and tied down and ready to go at a moment's notice for the pilot.
One of his most memorable experiences during that time was being invited by one of the dive bomber pilots to go on a practice bombing mission off the coast of Santa Barbara.
“I was young and foolish,” Fox said, laughing.
He took a seat behind the pilot and pulled the canopy closed above his head.
“The pilot said, ‘Be sure to strap yourself in good,'” Fox said. “When we started diving, there was a little slack in the straps. I slipped down a little. I felt like I was going to fall out of the plane. That scared the beegeebers out of me.”
But serenity followed the initial shock.
“When we came out of that dive (and leveled off), it was like you were in heaven — it was quiet and peaceful.”
Fox was eventually assigned to the USS Hancock.
“At that time, it was the largest aircraft carrier in the Navy,” Fox said.
The carrier delivered new aircraft to major battle zones, including Guam, Saipan and Tinian, and brought old aircraft back to the states.
Aboard the carrier, he was transferred out of his plane captain duties to a new assignment — fire controlman in the ship's gunnery division.
“The put me down in plot,” he said. “A very interesting room practically in the bottom of the ship.”
From the ship's bowels, Fox operated the controls of the fore and aft gun mounts.
Coordinates would be radioed down to Fox, who would “crank in” the settings and hit the “fire” button that would launch 5-inch shells during target practice.
“The only time I ever shot the 20-millimeter (guns)” was to shoot unoccupied, floating lifeboats that had been left around the Pacific Ocean at the time, he said.
“We must have wasted thousands of dollars of ammunition trying to sink those,” Fox said.
On the USS Hancock, Fox was part of the “Magic Carpet Fleet,” that brought 5,000 weary soldiers back from the Philippines to the U.S.
These men had served in Italy, Germany and France and, once the war was over in Europe, were sent directly to the Pacific to fight the Japanese.
“Why they didn't give those guys leave,” he'll never know, he said.
The thousands of men sprawled out wherever they could find room on the ship, sleeping on their duffel bags at night.
“They were the most subdued group of men I had ever seen” coming back home, he said. “They were just staring into space.”
The carrier, with at least 7,000 men aboard, headed for San Francisco.
On the way across the Pacific, the ship encountered a typhoon.
“I was standing on the hangar deck and the waves were so big and I looked over to the fantail and saw the fantail flapping in the breeze,” Fox said.
But despite the battering it took, the ship didn't come apart.
He immediately thought of the workers, including Rosie the Riveter — the cultural icon that represented the women who built aircraft, ships and other materials during World War II.
“It was a credit to them that they put it together so beautifully,” he said.
