John Dolph Phillips

John Phillips enlisted in the Marine Corps just days after Pearl Harbor, and completed boot camp at San Diego. He volunteered for parachute training, earned his jump wings at Camp Gillespie, and deployed overseas with the Second Parachute Battalion – but by January 1943 was hospitalized in New Zealand, never to return to the Paramarines. Instead, in the summer of 1943, he was posted to the Marine detachment aboard the USS Saratoga as an anti-aircraft gunner.

While steaming off Iwo Jima on the afternoon of 21 February 1945, Saratoga’s radar picked up unidentified aircraft on an intercept course. The carrier went to General Quarters at 1652; at 1700, six Japanese aircraft dove out of the sky. In less than five minutes, Sara was hit by one bomb and five suicide strikes, wrecking her flight deck and causing chaos below. The last plane to hit careened into the starboard aircraft crane, released its bomb, and crashed over the port side. Its right wing tore off and fell on the antiaircraft gunners, causing an explosion and gasoline fire “completely wiping out the No. 1 gun gallery.”

As damage control raced to control the fires, a trio of “Betty” bombers appeared. Two were shot down clear of the ship, but the third dropped its bomb on the Sara before crashing over the port side. The explosion blew a hole in the flight deck, destroyed a 40mm ready room, and demolished both the No. 2 five-inch battery and the No. 6 40mm quad mount. Altogether, six 40mm quads and four five-inch guns were knocked out.

The final Marine casualty list included twelve killed in action, plus one officer (1Lt. David Steinberg) and three enlisted missing. Saratoga‘s medical report notes, “it appears that 25 men were blown into the sea as a result of explosions on board.” A total of 93 bodies were buried at sea; 32 of these were beyond recognition.

JD Phillips was likely killed at one of the anti-aircraft positions, but no definitive eyewitness accounts are known to exist.