U.S. Navy veteran Harvey Levine, a navigator on the battleship the USS South Dakota, fought in 13 battles in the Pacific during World War II.
Levine, 17 at the time, had to talk his mom into signing papers so he could enlist — and there was no doubt about which branch of service he'd select.
“My dad used to take me deep-sea fishing, and I always loved the ocean,” he said. “When the war started, I couldn't wait to join the Navy.”
Levine, stationed on the bridge of the battleship, reviewed information — including nautical charting — sent to the ship by the Coast Geodetic Survey.
“We still had to keep the charts current at all times,” he said. “We did a lot of the junior officers’ work. I really enjoyed it.”
The Battle of Santa Cruz, which began Oct. 26, 1942, was Levine’s first combat engagement.
“During the battle, we shot down approximately 32 enemy planes,” he said. “We took two bomb hits, and, at the same time, the skipper was badly wounded,” with shrapnel in his neck..”
The injured skipper, with shrapnel in his neck, was saved when one of the men held the artery until the doctor arrived, Levine said.
One of Levine’s favorite memories was when he and his navigator buddies were on a short leave on one of the South Pacific Islands.
Leaving the ship, all of the men were handed brews.
“We were allowed three cans of beer,” Levine said. “But since we had the smallest division on the ship, the chaplain turned around and gave us three cases — for three guys!”
Clutching their cache of Acme beer, “we ran into the jungle and we got drunker than hell,” he said, laughing.
“The natives stole our clothes,” he added. “I ended up with my skivvies on.”
In November 1942, the battleship sailed to Guadalcanal.
“We were supposed to go in to take the Japanese trying to save Henderson Field (an airfield),” he said.
Expecting to just see small, Japanese troop ships around the island, the fleet encountered a much bigger nemesis.
“We didn’t see troop ships, we . We saw Japanese navy ships,” he said.
The battle was on.
During combat, the South Dakota sank three destroyers and the . The USS Washington sank a Japanese battleship.
“We lost four of our destroyers,” Levine said. “They were sunk within a minute-and-a-half. We were damaged so badly, we couldn’t go to Pearl Harbor or Australia for repairs because they were full. We had to go back through the Panama Canal and to the Brooklyn Navy Yard for repairs.”
After about a month, the battleship was on its way again, headed across the Atlantic.
“We were sent to Scapa Flow, Scotland,” he said. “We were supposed to help the Brits take on the (German battleships) the Scharnhorst and the Tirpitz.
“They were in the fjord in Norway, but they never came out, so we turned around and headed back to the Pacific,” he said.
When the USS South Dakota was bombarding the island of Iwo Jima, Levine had a close call during a Japanese air attack.
“We had kamikazes coming at us,” he said. “I was running for my station on the bridge,” as the enemy plane was coming down, he said. “I dove behind a 5-inch mount (40 mm guns). They opened-up fire on the plane,” and shot it down.
“It blew me from one side of the deck to the other,” he said.
Levine temporarily lost his hearing and vision.
“The guns sounded like, ‘poof, poof, poof,’ until I got my hearing back,” he said.
To Levine, that incident was much less memorable than the one that’s burnished into his memory for all time.
“In Guadalcanal, we took 8-inch shells that landed around our bridge area,” he said. “To this day, I’ve never known what two men were in the stairwell,” when a bomb hit.
He paused before adding, “We were scraping parts off the bulkhead in knee-deep water that was bloody,” he said. “That is something I’ll never forget. I won’t forget. I can’t forget.”
