Machinist Mate Grant Gullickson was down in the forward engine room. The pipes were dripping wet, the turbines hissing steam. “Our job was to give the skipper [Lieutenant Commander Hoffman] whatever he asked for, full speed ahead, emergency astern. Overhead the guns roared.

“All of a sudden, the ship literally jumped out of the water! As the floor grates came loose, the lights went out and steam filled the space.” Corry had struck a mine amidships.

“It was total darkness with steam severely hot and choking,” Gullickson said. He was in what must be one of the most terrifying situations known to man, caught in the engine room with bursting turbines, boilers, and pipes in a sinking ship. The water was rising; within minutes it was up to his waist.

“At this time, there was another rumble from underneath the ship.” Corry had struck another mine and was all but cut in two. Hoffman headed out for sea by hand-steering his ship, but within minutes Corry lost all power and began to settle. At 0641 Hoffman ordered abandon ship.

Down in the forward engine room, “we grappled to open the hatch, which we did and began to evacuate,” Gullickson recounted. “By the time we got up on deck, the main deck was awash and ruptured clean across. It was obvious the Corry was dead.

“I noticed at this time that my life belt and shirt were missing. They had been ripped from my body by the explosion. I abandoned ship on the starboard side about midship. We didn’t jump off, we literally floated off because the ship was underwater.” Two hours later, he and others were picked up by USS Fitch, given coffee laced with the ship’s torpedo alcohol, and eventually transferred to a transport and taken back to a hospital in England.

“On this ship was Chief Ravinsky, the chief of the forward fire room. He had steam burns over 99 percent of his body. We tended to him and he could talk a little but the burns were too much; he passed away the next day.”²⁶

Seaman Joseph Dolan was stationed in the combat information center (CIC) of the Bayfield. “I still remember the urgent message that I copied from the Corry. It said Corry was hit and was sinking, and they had many casualties and needed help quickly. Most messages were coded, but this one was in the clear because of the urgency of the situation.”²⁷

Seaman A. R. Beyer of the Fitch was launched in a whaleboat to pick up survivors. He remembered that Corry’s stern stayed up to the last. He saw a man clinging to the top blade of the Corry’s propeller, but there were a great number of survivors clinging to debris or rafts and he picked them up first. By the time he turned back to Corry, the man on the propeller was gone. Fitch took 223 survivors on board in the course of the morning.²⁸

Ens. Doug Birch was on a subchaser off Utah Beach. When the Corry hit the mine, “many people were blown into the water and I had the experience of finding a sailor who had B-positive blood and helping him on a direct transfusion on our deck, after he was hauled aboard. When the pharmacist mate said, ‘He’s dead,’ I wasn’t sure if it was him or me.”²⁹

THE MINES WERE playing hell with the Allied vessels off Utah. PC 1261 struck a mine at 0542 and sank in four minutes. At 0547, LCT 597, directly astern of PC 1176, struck a mine. Lt. Vander Beek in LCC 60 saw her lifted out of the water by the powerful force of the mine. “We were but a few yards away and felt the explosion’s potent shock waves course through our craft.” LCT 597 went down instantly, taking the cargo of four DD tanks with her.

At about the same time, Vander Beek learned that his sister craft, LCC 80, had fouled her screw on a dan buoy and was out of commission. That left only Vander Beek’s LCC 60 as a guide for the LCTs and first wave of LCVPs at Omaha. It was an impossible task for one boat to do the work of three, made even worse by the offshore wind and strong tidal current. As Vander Beek guided the LCTs and LCVPs in to shore, he drifted to his left, so that when he signaled them to go on in, they were 500 to 1,000 meters southeast of their intended landing site. This proved to be fortuitous.³⁰

By 0600, the remaining LCTs had launched their DD tanks. As the tanks swam ashore they were hampered by the head wind and tidal current. The Higgins boats comprising the first and second waves passed through them, headed for shore.

AS THE LANDING craft moved in, the battleships and cruisers continued to fire. As they belted away they raised a continuous wall of sound, so immense it could be felt as well as heard. German batteries and the drumming of the engines of the bombers overhead added to it.

Nevada was anchored off Utah. Texas and Arkansas were off Omaha. They were at anchor because the swept area was too narrow to allow maneuvering, meaning the Navy regarded the mines as more dangerous than the German batteries. The transports were behind them, the destroyers and landing craft in front, headed toward shore in columns of Higgins boats, DUKWs, LCIs, and LCTs. Supporting the battleships were the cruisers.