The Pacific War in 1945 had entered its most desperate and terrifying phase for both sides as American forces closed in on the Japanese home islands and the Japanese military resorted to increasingly radical tactics to try to stop what seemed like inevitable defeat. Among these desperate measures was the widespread deployment of kamicazi attacks, suicide missions where Japanese pilots would deliberately crash their aircraft loaded with explosives into American ships, trading their lives for the chance to sink or vessels that represented America’s overwhelming naval superiority.
The word kamicazi meant divine wind in Japanese, referring to the legendary typhoons that had destroyed Mongol invasion fleets in the 13th century. And the Japanese military hoped that these modern divine winds in the form of suicide pilots would similarly destroy the American invasion forces and save Japan from conquest. For American sailors serving on ships in the Pacific, kamicazi attacks represented a uniquely terrifying threat. Because unlike conventional attacks that could be evaded or shot down, kamicazis only needed to get close enough to crash into a ship.
And even if a pilot was killed, his aircraft would continue on its trajectory and could still hit the target. Meaning that stopping kamicazis required destroying them completely at distance rather than just damaging them or driving them away. The USS Bunker Hill was one of the US Navy’s Essexclass aircraft carriers. Massive ships displacing over 27,000 tons and carrying air. Wings of nearly 100 aircraft that could project American power across vast distances of the Pacific. Ocean commissioned in May 1943.
The Bunker Hill had participated in numerous major operations, including the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the invasion of the Philippines, and the assault on Ewima, earning a reputation as an effective and well-run ship with experienced crew and a combat record that included shooting down dozens of enemy aircraft and supporting countless amphibious operations. By May 1945, the Bunker Hill was operating off Okinawa as part of Task Force 58, the main American carrier striking force that was providing air support for the invasion of that strategic island, while also defending against the massive kamicazi attacks that the Japanese
were launching in waves of hundreds of aircraft in operations called Kikosui or floating chrosanthemums that were designed to overwhelm American defenses through sheer numbers and sacrifice. ice. On the morning of May 11th, 1945, the Bunker Hill was conducting flight operations about 70 mi off the coast of Okinawa, launching and recovering aircraft in support of ground operations on the island, and flying combat air patrols to defend the fleet against Japanese air attacks. The ship’s crew was at general quarters, meaning all combat stations were manned, and everyone was ready for action because kamicazi attacks had been coming regularly for weeks, and vigilance was necessary at all times.
The carrier’s combat air patrol, fighter aircraft circling above the fleet to intercept incoming Japanese planes, was maintaining its station, and the ship’s radar operators were monitoring their screens for any sign of enemy aircraft approaching the task force. It seemed like it would be another routine day of combat operations in a war that was clearly winding down, but that remained deadly dangerous for everyone involved. At approximately 10 A.M., a single Japanese Zero Fighter aircraft emerged from cloud cover at high altitude and dove toward the bunker hill at tremendous speed, evading the combat air patrol and approaching so rapidly that the carrier’s anti-aircraft gunners had only seconds to react.
The Zero was piloted by a kamicazi volunteer who had been specifically targeting American carriers, knowing that sinking or crippling one of these massive ships would be a significant blow to American operations and a worthy sacrifice of his life in service to the emperor. The carrier’s 40 mill and 20 anti-aircraft guns opened fire, filling the sky with tracers and explosive shells, hitting the Zero multiple times and setting it on fire. But the aircraft continued its dive and crashed into the Bunker Hills flight deck just after of the forward elevator, smashing through the wooden deck and exploding inside the hangar bay where numerous aircraft were being fueled and armed for the next strike mission.
The explosion was catastrophic, detonating aviation fuel and ordinance that had been loaded onto aircraft in the hangar bay, creating a massive fireball that swept through the enclosed space, killing dozens of men instantly and igniting fires throughout the forward section of the ship. But the disaster was just beginning because less than 30 seconds after the first zero hit, a second kamicazi aircraft, a duty dive bomber that had followed the Zero down using the same cloud cover crashed into the Bunker Hills flight deck near the base of the island superructure.
The command and control center of the ship. This second impact and explosion killed or wounded virtually everyone in the carrier’s primary flight control station, knocked out critical communications equipment, ignited more fires on the flight deck where numerous aircraft were parked waiting to launch, and created a second raging inferno that began spreading rapidly through the ship’s superructure. Within minutes of the two impacts, the USS Bunker Hill was transformed from an efficient fighting ship into a floating catastrophe with massive fires raging both in the hangar bay and on the flight deck with hundreds of men dead or
wounded with command and control severely disrupted as senior officers were killed or incapacitated with thick black smoke pouring from the ship that was visible for dozens of miles and with the very real possibility that the fires would spread to the ship. magazines where bombs and torpedoes were stored or would reach the aviation fuel tanks or would compromise the structural integrity of the ship to the point where it would capsize or break apart in sink. The two kamicazi hits had killed 346 men immediately and wounded another 264, making this one of the most deadly single attacks on an American ship during the entire Pacific War.
And as the fires continued to spread and intensify, it seemed entirely possible that the casualty count would rise dramatically higher. as the ship was consumed by flames and either sank or had to be abandoned in the chaos and confusion following the kamicazi strikes. As damage control parties rushed to fight the fires and as wounded men were evacuated to areas of the ship that were still safe and as officers tried to assess the damage and coordinate response efforts, the situation deteriorated rapidly in ways that threatened the ship’s survival.
The fires in the hangar bay were being fed by aviation fuel that was pouring from ruptured fuel lines and from damaged aircraft, creating pools of burning liquid that spread across the hangar deck and dripped down into lower levels of the ship, igniting new fires in compartments below the hangar bay. The fires on the flight deck were being fed by the wooden deck itself, which despite being treated with fire retardant materials, was still combustible and by the numerous aircraft parked on deck that contained fuel and ammunition and that exploded periodically as the fires reached their fuel
tanks or ordinance, sending shrapnel and burning debris across the deck and into the air and starting new fires wherever this debris landed. The ship’s firefighting systems were partially disabled by the explosions and fires with water manes ruptured and pumps damaged and hoses burned through, making it difficult to get adequate water pressure to the areas where fires were raging most intensely. The thick smoke that filled many compartments made it impossible for damage control parties to see what they were doing or to breathe without protective equipment that was in short supply.
And the extreme heat from the fires made it difficult to approach close enough to actually fight the flames effectively. Men were passing out from smoke inhalation or heat exhaustion. Equipment was melting or catching fire, and every minute that passed seemed to make the situation worse rather than better as fires spread faster than they could be contained. Among the hundreds of sailors fighting desperately to save their ship was Seaman Firstclass Joseph McAffrey, a 21-year-old from Pittsburgh who had been serving on the bunker hill for 18 months and who had survived the kamicazi attacks because he had been in a damage control locker below the hangar deck when the planes hit.
McAffrey was not an officer or a damage control specialist or anyone with particular authority or expertise, just an ordinary sailor assigned to a damage control party whose job was to follow orders and help fight fires or repair damage wherever he was sent. In the immediate aftermath of the kamicazi hits, Maccaffry’s damage control party had been ordered to the hangar bay to fight the fires there. But when they arrived, they found the situation so chaotic and the fires so intense that their efforts seemed feudal, like trying to put out a volcano with garden hoses.
And several men in the party were overcome by smoke or driven back by heat before they could accomplish anything meaningful. As McAffrey and his shipmates struggled to fight fires in the Hanker Bay, they became aware of a new and potentially catastrophic problem that was developing in one of the ship’s lower compartments. Water was accumulating at an alarming rate in one of the forward storage spaces below the water line, several decks down from where the fires were raging, and this water was creating a serious list as the ship began to tilt to one side under the weight of hundreds of tons of seawater.
The source of the water was not immediately clear. could have been from ruptured fire manes or from hull damage caused by the explosions or from seawater that had been used to fight fires and had drained down into lower compartments through damaged hatches and passages. But regardless of the source, the effect was extremely dangerous because if the list became too severe, the ship would become unstable and could capsize, particularly if water continued to accumulate on one side while fires burned through structural supports on the other side.
The standard procedure for dealing with flooding in ship compartments was to pump the water out using the ship’s pumping systems. But many of these systems were damaged or disabled by the kamicazi attacks and fires, and the pumps that were still working were overwhelmed by the volume of water that needed to be moved and by the number of different areas that were flooding simultaneously. Engineers reported that even with all available pumps running at maximum capacity, they could not keep up with the water accumulation in the forward storage space, that the list was continuing to worsen, and
that if something was not done soon to either stop the water from entering or to remove it faster than it was accumulating, the ship would likely capsize within the next few hours, sending over 3,000 men into the ocean and adding the bunker hill to the growing list of American carriers that had been sunk by Japanese attacks. Officers and senior enlisted men desperately tried to figure out solutions to the flooding problem, discussing technical options like sealing off compartments or rerouting pumping systems or deliberately flooding spaces on the opposite side of the ship to counteract the list.
But every proposal seemed to have serious drawbacks or would take too much time to implement or required equipment and uh personnel that were not available because they were already committed to fighting the fires that remained the ship’s most immediate threat. As these discussions continued and as the ship’s list continued to worsen, Joseph McAffrey, who had been listening to the officers talk while continuing to work on firefighting efforts, made a suggestion that seemed so simple and so obvious that at first everyone assumed it could not possibly work and dismissed it as the desperate idea of someone who did not understand the scale of the problem.
McAffry’s idea was this. organized bucket brigades to manually bail out the flooded compartment. Using buckets passed handto hand by lines of sailors to move water from the flooded space up through several decks and out through doors or hatches where it could be dumped overboard. It was a method that had been used on sailing ships centuries earlier when mechanical pumps did not exist or had failed. a technique so primitive and seemingly inadequate that using it on a modern aircraft carrier seemed absurd, like trying to empty a swimming pool with a teaspoon.
The officers who heard McAffry’s suggestion initially responded with dismissive comments about how bucket brigades were not a solution for serious flooding on a ship this size. How there was far too much water for manual bailing to make any difference. How they needed engineering solutions, not manual labor solutions. and McAffrey was told to focus on his assigned firefighting duties and leave the flooding problem to people who understood ship damage control. But McAffrey persisted in arguing for his idea, pointing out that while mechanical pumps were theoretically more efficient, they were not available or not working properly, that something was better than nothing.
that even if bucket brigades could not completely solve the flooding problem, they might be able to slow the water accumulation enough to buy time for engineers to get more pumps working or to implement other solutions. And that there were hundreds of sailors on the ship who were not currently engaged in critical tasks and who could be organized into bucket brigade lines if officers would just give the order. His persistence was annoying to officers who were dealing with multiple crises simultaneously and who did not have time to argue with a junior enlisted man about impractical suggestions.
But one officer, Lieutenant Commander Robert Williams, who was coordinating damage control efforts in that section of the ship, decided that McAffry’s idea might be worth trying simply because no one had any better immediate solutions and because the flooding situation was becoming so desperate that even a improbable solution was worth attempting. and Williams organized several bucket brigades using sailors who had been evacuated from their normal duty stations because of fires or who were waiting for equipment or orders or who were simply available and willing to help save their ship.
Lines of men were formed from the flooded compartment up through passageways and ladders to weather decks where water could be dumped overboard with buckets being passed hand to hand from man to man in a continuous chain. filled buckets moving up and empty buckets moving down in opposite directions. It was exhausting physical labor, requiring each man to receive a full bucket, pass it to the next man, receive an empty bucket coming back down, pass that to the next man, and repeat this process hundreds or thousands of times without rest.
But the sailors threw themselves into the work with desperate energy because they understood that their ship and their lives depended on it. To everyone’s surprise, including Lieutenant Commander Williams, who had authorized the bucket brigades more in desperation than an expectation that they would actually work. The system began to show results within the first hour. The water level in the flooded compartment stopped rising as rapidly, suggesting that the bucket brigades were removing water faster than it was accumulating, and the ship’s list stabilized and then actually began to decrease slightly as water was removed.
and the weight distribution became more balanced. Engineering reports confirmed that the combination of the few working mechanical pumps plus the manual bucket brigades was actually keeping pace with the flooding, removing enough water that the immediate danger of capsizing was reduced. Even though the situation remained critical and required constant effort to maintain, word spread quickly through the ship that bucket brigades were helping to control the flooding. And more sailors volunteered to join the lines or to relieve exhausted men who had been passing buckets continuously for hours.
The bucket brigade system expanded to include hundreds of men working in rotating shifts with some lines focused on removing water from the flooded forward compartment while other lines were established to remove water from other areas where firefighting efforts had created accumulations. The simple act of passing buckets became a unifying activity that gave sailors who were not firefighters or technical specialists a way to actively contribute to saving their ship, transforming feelings of helplessness and fear into purposeful action that produced visible results.
Joseph McAffrey became something of a hero among his shipmates. The ordinary sailor whose idiotic idea of using bucket brigades had turned out to be a crucial element in the ship’s survival. and officers who had initially dismissed his suggestion began to recognize that sometimes simple solutions could be more effective than complex technical fixes, especially when complex systems were damaged and unavailable, McAffrey himself continued working in the bucket lines for over 12 hours straight, passing buckets until his hands were blistered and his muscles were cramping.
refusing relief because he felt responsible for making sure his idea worked and because he could not ask other men to do work that he was unwilling to do himself. The combination of firefighting efforts that gradually brought the fires under control and the bucket brigades that managed the flooding allowed the USS Bunker Hill to survive the critical first 24 hours after the kamicazi attacks, the period when the ship was most likely to sink or have to be abandoned.
By the morning of May 12th, approximately 26 hours after the attacks, the fires were largely extinguished, though some hotspots remained that required monitoring. Flooding was under control with mechanical pumps now handling most of the water removal, though bucket brigades continued in some areas, and the ship was stable enough that it could be taken under tow by other vessels and moved away from the combat zone to a location where more extensive repairs could be attempted. The human cost of saving the bunker hill was staggering.
The final casualty count was 346 killed and 264 wounded out of a crew of approximately 3,000, making this one of the deadliest attacks on any single American ship during World War II. Among the dead were many of the ships senior officers, including the air group commander and numerous pilots and air crew who had been on the flight deck or in the hangar bay when the kamicazis hit. The wounded included men with severe burns, blast injuries, smoke inhalation damage, and various other trauma from the explosions and fires.
The ship itself was so heavily damaged that it would never return to combat, requiring months of repairs in port and ultimately being relegated to training duties rather than frontline operations for the remainder of the war. But the Bunker Hill survived and most of its crew survived. And while many factors contributed to this survival, including the bravery of firefighters and the skill of damage control parties and the determination of officers who refused to give up on their ship, the bucket brigades organized in response to Joseph McAffry’s suggestion played a measurable role in preventing the flooding that could have capsized.
the carrier during those critical first hours when the ship’s fate hung in the balance. The idea that seemed idiotic when first proposed, that seemed impossibly primitive and inadequate for the scale of the problem, turned out to be exactly what was needed in a situation where sophisticated systems were unavailable and where human effort and determination could substitute for mechanical efficiency. The story of the bucket brigades on the bunker hill became wellknown in the Navy and was used in damage control training and in discussions about creative problem solving under crisis conditions.
The lesson drawn was not that bucket brigades should replace mechanical pumps or that primitive methods were superior to modern systems, but rather that in emergencies when normal systems fail, it is important to consider all available options, including simple manual methods that might seem inadequate, but that can make crucial differences when nothing else is available. Naval damage control doctrine was modified to include procedures for organizing bucket brigades and other manual systems as backup methods when mechanical systems were disabled.
Recognizing that on a ship during combat, anything that moves water or fights, fires, or repairs damage can be valuable regardless of how simple or old-fashioned the method might be. Joseph McAffrey was awarded the Navy Cross for his actions during the kamicazi attack and the subsequent damage control efforts. A recognition that went beyond just the bucket brigade idea to acknowledge his sustained physical courage and his refusal to give up even when the situation seemed hopeless. The citation praised his extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty, and noted that his suggestion to use bucket brigades, contributed materially to saving the ship at a time when all normal damage control methods had failed or were inadequate.
McAffrey was promoted and later attended training to become a damage control specialist and he remained in the Navy after the war, eventually retiring after 20 years of service with the lasting reputation as the man whose supposedly idiotic idea had saved one of America’s aircraft carriers. The broader significance of the Bunker Hill incident and McAffrey’s bucket brigade solution extends to questions about innovation under pressure, about the value of listening to ideas from unexpected sources regardless of rank or position, about the importance of maintaining historical knowledge of traditional methods even as technology advances and about the relationship between sophisticated technical systems and simple human effort in accomplishing difficult tasks.
The bucket brigades worked not because they were better than mechanical pumps, but because they were available when pumps were not. Because they could be organized and implemented immediately using resources that were present on the ship. Because they transformed the crisis from a technical problem that specialists needed to solve, into a collective effort that anyone could contribute to regardless of their technical expertise. The incident also highlighted how quickly situations can change in naval combat and how damage can cascade from one system failure to another, creating emergencies that exceed the capacity of any single system or method to address.
The kamicazi attacks created fires that disabled firefighting systems. The firefighting efforts created flooding that overwhelmed pumping systems. The flooding threatened to capsize the ship, which would have negated all firefighting efforts, creating a cycle of cascading failures that required multiple simultaneous solutions rather than any single technical fix. In this complex crisis environment, the bucket brigade served not as the sole solution, but as one element in a comprehensive response that included firefighting and pumping and structural repairs and medical treatment and command decision-making, all of which had to work together for the ship to survive.
The USS Bunker Hill eventually returned to the United States for repairs and was still under repair when the war ended in August 1945. The ship never returned to combat and was decommissioned in 1947, having served for just four years, but having participated in numerous major operations and having survived an attack that would have sunk a less well-built ship or a ship with a less determined crew. The carrier was eventually sold for scrap in 1973, but its legacy lived on in the lessons learned about damage control and about the importance of considering all available methods, no matter how simple or primitive they might seem.
And in the story of Joseph McAffrey, whose willingness to make a suggestion that others thought was idiotic ended up contributing to saving over 2,000 lives in one of America’s most valuable military assets. The kamicazi threat that nearly destroyed the Bunker Hill continued for the remainder of the war. With over 3,000 kamicazi sordies flown against American ships during the Battle of Okinawa alone, sinking dozens of vessels and damaging hundreds more. The psychological impact of facing suicide attacks was enormous, creating stress and fear among American sailors that was different from the stress of conventional combat.
Because there was no way to discourage or deter an enemy who was already planning to die. No way to negotiate or show mercy that might make the enemy less aggressive. The only defense was to destroy every kamicazi aircraft before it could reach its target. And even with sophisticated radar and massive anti-aircraft firepower, American ships were hit regularly because stopping every single plane in a mass attack was essentially impossible. The development of effective counter measures against kamicazis became a priority for the US Navy, leading to improvements in radar directed anti-aircraft fire, better combat air patrol procedures,
the deployment of picket ships to provide early warning and to draw attacks away from high-v value targets like carriers and better damage control training and equipment to help ships survive hits that could not be prevented. But throughout the final months of the war, the kamicazi threat remained serious and deadly. A manifestation of Japanese desperation and determination that killed thousands of American sailors and demonstrated the effectiveness of suicide tactics in naval warfare. A lesson that would have implications for future conflicts and for military thinking about asymmetric warfare where technologically inferior forces could still inflict significant damage through willingness to accept certain death.
The story of Joseph McAffrey and his bucket brigade solution to the flooding on the bunker hill stands as a reminder that in crisis solutions can come from unexpected sources and can take unexpected forms. that rank and position do not confer a monopoly on good ideas, that simple methods can sometimes accomplish what complex systems cannot, and that listening to all suggestions, even from junior personnel, can occasionally lead to insights that save lives and accomplish missions that would otherwise fail.
Maccaffry’s story is also a reminder that heroism in warfare is not just about fighting the enemy, but about solving problems, about refusing to give up when situations seem hopeless, about trying things that others dismiss as impossible or idiotic, and about the power of collective human effort to accomplish tasks that mechanical systems alone cannot achieve. The image of hundreds of sailors passing buckets handto hand through the smoke-filled passages of a burning aircraft carrier, fighting to save their ship through sheer determination and physical labor, represents something essential about the human element in warfare that no amount of technology can replace or make obsolete.