By Laurie DuPaul

Special contributor

In January 1942 when Jack Shangraw boarded the U.S.S. New Orleans, he had no idea that the ship he was boarding would be listed in Ripley’s Believe It or Not. For many, the U.S.S. New Orleans was known as the “No Boat.”

“At 17, I came out of high school and I wanted to be an engineer and my father couldn’t afford to send me to Penn State so I joined the Navy. I went to boot camp in Guam and transferred to San Diego to electrical school. While I was in school, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. I finished school and picked up the ship in San Francisco. I think the first big battle was the battle at Coral Sea when the Lexington was sunk. We picked up 580 survivors off the Lexington,” said Shangraw.

Later, 15 miles from the “Lady Lex,” a large explosion was felt by those on the New Orleans, and a destroyer notified the captain that the ship had exploded and sank.

“Let me tell you a story. I was up in Rockwood, Maine, fishing and I came into a little store. I heard this guy making a lot of noise about being in the last World War and he was bragging, ‘I was sunk in the Coral Sea on the Lexington.’ So I walked over to him and said, Who picked you up? What ship picked you up? He said the U.S.S. New Orleans. I shook his hand and said, I was one of those guys that picked you up,”  Shangraw said. “We stopped, right there, dead in the water while the ship was sinking to pick those boys up. If the Japanese submarines would have been there, we all would have been dead. I’ll never forget that.”

On Nov. 30, 1942, the Japanese were attempting to reinforce their troops at Guadalcanal.

“We got word that the Japanese were going to land troops behind our boys in Guadalcanal. We intercepted the convoy and the fleet of Japanese ships. We were so close to the islands that the ships couldn’t get in there so the admiral told the destroyers to stay out and sent the cruisers in,” said Shangraw.

That night, the U.S.S. New Orleans was accompanied by the Northampton, the Minneapolis, the Pensacola and the Honolulu. The Northampton sank while the Minneapolis, the Pensacola, and the New Orleans were badly damaged.

When the Minneapolis was hit by a torpedo, the New Orleans swerved to avoid a collision. The ship ran into the path of a torpedo that hit where the aviation gasoline and powder room were located.

“The torpedo ripped the whole front of the ship off and that stayed afloat long enough to go around and ram a hole in the back end. That’s how it got into ‘Ripley’s Believe It or Not;’ the only ship in the history of the American Navy to ram itself,” said Shangraw. “I was not hurt but scared to death. I will never forget the guy that was with me down there. His name was John Richards from Cincinnati, Ohio. I looked over at him to see how he was doing and his eyes appeared to be that big. I bet I looked scared to him too,” said Shangraw measuring the distance with his thumb and forefinger as he chuckled. 

That night when Shangraw came up on deck, it was about two hours after the torpedo hit. “When the bow hit the back of the ship, we thought we would have to abandon that area and we closed things down and then went up above. We realized that if you walked up towards the front, there was no ship to walk on. You would walk right into the sea. Terrible,” Shangraw said.

That night 180 men were killed instantly and a number wounded.

With a fifth of the ship gone and sinking, the captain limped the New Orleans to closeby Tulagi Island and ran the ship onto the shore. During the next two weeks, the crew rallied for fear that the Japanese would discover their presence. They pumped out the water from the ship, removed the heavy metal from the front including the main 8-inch guns and relocated them to the back of the ship. The weight of the guns and metal raised the front of the ship to make it seaworthy and freed it from the beach. Coconut trees were cut to shore up the bulkheads. The limbs and leaves were used to camouflage the ship. The ship being seaworthy was ready for its voyage to Sidney, Australia 1,700 miles away.

“What I remember about going down to Australia, we didn’t go forward, we went backwards. We had to go backwards because the pressure of the ship going forward would have caved in the bulkheads up front,” said Shangraw. “It took two weeks I figured, the reason why I can remember is that we were torpedoed on the 30th of November and we got into Sidney, Australia on Christmas Eve.”

Many articles retelling the battle speak of the sense of humor the men had aboard the New Orleans. 

“We found this out when we got to Australia. They sent a British destroyer out to escort us. When we got to Australia, we met some of the English sailors and they were betting even money we would sink. Take that for a sense of humor,” said Shangraw.

Over the years Shangraw kept in touch with many friends he made on board the U.S.S. New Orleans.

He now resides in Kennebunk with his wife, Beverly.