Francis Alfred Patterson 1919-1998

Francis Patterson was born in 1919, and grew up and worked in New England.

From 1944 to 1946, he joined the Navy and served on the USS DeHaven DD-727 during this period. He was a machinists’s mate 3rd class, and worked in a room under the front gun turret of the ship.

While on the DeHaven in 1944, he experienced “Halsey’s Typhoon” in the Pacific first hand and told me about it. He was always quite bitter at Halsey because he thought Halsey knew the storm was there and could have avoided it. He remembered waves so huge- everything flying around the ship, having to chase barrels to tie them down, taking “green seawater” straight down the smokestack! He remembered the spinning propellers coming right out of the water… the ship was almost vertical at times.

Other memories he told me: when the mail was transferred between ships, if someone dropped it and the mail got wet, there would be a big fight afterwards with whoever dropped it. He also told me about scraping the barnacles off the hull in drydock. It was at this point he usually told me “this generation has completely forgotten the sacrifices we made during the war…” which is probably true.

My grandfather retired in the mid 1970’s, and had a nice long retirement until his death in 1998.