DECEMBER 7, 1941

Returning from twenty one days of submerged patrolling around Midway Island, I rated a seventy two hour liberty pass when we returned to Pearl Harbor. I went to Wheeler Field to visit an Army friend of mine. On December 6th, I returned to Honolulu and continued my liberty until the morning of the 7th., then returned to the good ship Tautog.

Sitting topside, aft of the conning tower and drinking black coffee the next day I was thinking about going back on the beach to finish my liberty pass. When all at once, three planes came sweeping down over the Receiving Station right off our stern and dropped what we at first thought was the Army Air Force giving us a practice run by dropping flour sacks to mark their targets. But, low and behold those flour sacks exploded

Tautog was given credit for shooting down one plane after firing about 4,000 rounds through one fifty caliber machine gun, I don't really know if we did or not.

On the afternoon of the 7th, Jo Jo Holland and myself were manning the fifty caliber gun which was mounted on the after cigarette deck when it started to rain. A piece of tarpaulin was sent topside so we could cover the gun. I raised the magazine cover on the gun to prevent it from firing while Jo Jo grabbed one end of the tarp and me the other. Jo Jo was up by the barrel and when we put the tarp over the gun, the magazine cover came down and one round went off. The tarp had a hole in it so big that it slid right over the whole gun mount and Jo Jo screamed "you S. 0. B., you shot me". After he got his eardrums healed up we were good shipmates again. But that one shot triggered a lot of other people to start firing at nothing.

I was a disgrace to the Mighty Tautog and sent back to diving in the bilge's never again to handle a gun until I went on board the (Imperial Japanese Navy) I.J.N. submarine the I-400 as a prize crewman. Sad times had fallen upon me. And so ends the carrier of Warner C. Cross as a Gunner's Mate.

(Eventually Warner Cross was to make five additional war patrols on board the U.S.S. Tinosa.)