Eric Otto Hildenbrand

Corporal Eric Hildenbrand and his unit were embarked on the USS McKean (APD-5), an old destroyer converted to a high-speed troop transport, en route from their camp at Guadalcanal to the fighting front at Bougainville.

At 0350 hours on 17 November 1943, just a few miles from Bougainville, a lone Japanese “Val” bomber wove through the convoy and launched a torpedo. McKean‘s batteries opened fire, splashing the attacker while the ship tried to maneuver out of danger. The torpedo hit the McKean’s starboard side, detonating a magazine and rupturing oil storage tanks. In less than a minute, “the entire ship aft of #1 stack was a complete mass of flames…. It was impossible to go aft of #1 stack, or for anyone aft of the stack to get forward.”

Troops in the forward part of the ship began leaping overboard. “Every person that jumped early was dragged into the burning oil slick by the motion of the ship,” noted the ship’s action report. “The greater part of the troops that were lost were burned to death in the oil slick.” Lieutenant Commander Ralph Ramey later commented that “Everybody forward of No. 1 stack was saved except 30 or 40 Marines who went over the side too soon and were washed back into the flaming oil which covered the sea.”

The McKean sank at 0418. Nearby destroyers plucked soaked, shocked survivors from the sea. Early reports showed that 64 members of the crew were dead or missing, along with 56 of the embarked Marines. Once all the wounded were tallied, the number of missing Marines stood at 39.

Hildenbrand’s Casualty Card states “It is believed that this man was so badly burned in the resulting oil fire that the body could not be recovered.”