Pirates.

That’s what first interested retired Navy Cmdr. Harvey Lasell in the sea. Well, perhaps pirates and “The Thief of Baghdad,” the 1924 swashbuckler starring Douglas Fairbanks.

“I liked stories about pirates,” Lasell said, suddenly breaking into several stanzas of  a song his uncle sang to him in 1929 or ‘30.

Born in 1915 in  Williamstown, Vt., Lasell grew up spending  his summers working on a farm. He loved horses, and when he was 6 or 7, his uncle gave him a donkey. After a couple of years he moved up to a Shetland pony named Beauty. Lasell remembers working at a farm for a year during high school to get his own horse. It is a love of his that has lasted his whole life. Even today he has only to look out the windows of his north Whidbey Island home to see horses grazing in the pasture.

It was in 1935 that the course of Lasell’s life changed. He was appointed to the U.S. Naval Academy, graduating in 1939. Lasell was the guest speaker at the May 8 meeting of the Association of Naval Aviation and he also sat down with the Whidbey Crosswind to share his story.

“I wanted to fly so I asked to be assigned to the  USS Yorktown,” he said. “One of two of my roommates went with me. After six months, there was no question he was the best of those who applied for flight training and got it.”

Lasell’s dream of flight didn’t come to pass, but he found something at which he was fairly adept: he was a good shot. He even won the Secretary of the Navy’s pistol trophy, a feat at which he still shakes his head today.

“Out of 300 items, I usually got about 280 or 290,” he explained. “When I won, the weather was bad and it was hard to see, so I fired 265. That was my lowest score in three years, but it

still beat everyone else.”

Lasell was ordered to gunnery where he served as an Ensign and Fire Control Division Officer. His skills as a marksman were soon put to work.

The War Begins

Lasell was on leave participating in a fox hunt with his uncle’s riding club when he heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He immediately headed back to the Yorktown, which departed Norfolk on Dec. 16, 1941, headed to the Pacific. She arrived in San Diego on Dec. 30.

“Our first mission was to American Samoa,” Lasell recalled. “We left some Marines there. From there we went to the Marshall-Gilberts.”

After returning to Pearl Harbor briefly for replenishment, the Yorktown put to sea on Feb. 14, 1942 on a course to the Coral Sea, where she rendezvoused with Task Force 11 and the USS Lexington.

“We knew the Japanese were planning to set up headquarters in New Guinea and then attack Australia,” said Lasell. “Our job was to intercept them.”

“There was not a lot of hope for the success of this mission,” ANA member Dave Weisbrod explained during the meeting. “In the history of Japan, they hadn’t been defeated in 440 years.”

Lasell recounted criss-crossing the waters, heading east into the wind then going west, into the heat.

“At one point we got pretty close to the Japanese carriers,” he said. “The planes had flown over us, but they didn’t see us because they had no radar.”

Battle of the Coral Sea

On May 3-4, the Japanese invaded Tulagi, in the southeastern Solomon Islands, even though the Yorktown had managed to sink and damage several of the Japanese supporting warships. Because they now knew there were U.S. carriers in the area, Japanese carriers entered the Coral Sea intent on finding and destroying Allied naval forces.

Starting May 7, carrier forces from both sides conducted air strikes for two days. Lasell remembers watching three planes approach the Yorktown (CV-5).

“The three planes circled and we figured they must be ours,” he said.

“They made a landing attempt – they got close, pulled up and circled again. ‘Those aren’t our planes. You’d better let me shoot at ‘em,’ I told them.

“I finally convinced them when I told them our planes don’t have an amber tail light. So, they let me shoot ‘em,” Lasell said matter-of-factly.

The Yorktown managed to successfully dodge eight torpedoes and evaded all but one bomb, which went through the flight deck and exploded below decks. More than 65 sailors were killed or seriously injured.

The Lexington didn’t fare as well. Hit several times, damage control parties were able to bring the fires under control and flight operations continued, despite the damage. However, gasoline vapors below decks ignited, tearing apart the inside of the vessel. The Lexington was abandoned before being sunk by the USS Phelps.

“We got a bomb hit, but the Lexington got hit and she started blowing up inside,” Lasell described. “But they didn’t lose too many people.”

The Battle of the Coral Sea was the first battle in which aircraft carriers engaged each other, but neither side’s ships fired directly upon each other. Aircraft from both sides were responsible for the damage and both sides suffered heavy losses. The Japanese and U.S. fleets left the area. However, the battle was a strategic win for the U.S., because it was the first time the Allies had been able to turn Japanese forces back and two Japanese Fleet carriers, the Shokaku and Zuikaku, were unable to take part in the Battle of Midway just a month later.

“Stopping Japan at sea was a big deal,” said Weisbrod. “After this battle, it was downhill for them. It was the beginning of the end.”

The Yorktown headed back to Pearl Harbor for repairs.

The Battle of Midway

Damage on board the Yorktown was extensive enough that repairs were estimated to take three months. Obviously, there wasn’t that much time. Allied Intelligence discovered the Japanese  were planning a major operation aimed at a low coral atoll known as Midway.

The Yorktown arrived in Pearl Harbor on May 27, 1942. Working round the clock on repairs, the carrier was able to put to sea again on May 30.

“We could almost go full speed,” said Lasell. “We’d gone to dry dock, they’d patched the hole, and we went to Midway. We had a scramble there.”

Simple words to describe a battle that changed the course of the war and ultimately ended in the destruction of the Yorktown.

The Yorktown launched a patrol group of 10 Dauntless aircraft at dawn on June 4. They found nothing to the north and returned to the ship. PBYs from Midway, however, saw the Japanese approaching and the alarm was sounded. Yorktown launched its attack group, but the American torpedo planes didn’t  fare well in the early stages of the attack. Japanese aircraft attacked the American fleet.

“They were flying in formation,” Lasell said. “I saw two planes, but they were in line with a destroyer. I didn’t want to fire at them and accidentally hit our destroyer.”

The first hit to the Yorktown was on the starboard side, near the number two elevator. A second hit on the port side and third on the starboard side slowed the Yorktown to an eventual stop.

An hour later she was ready to go again and began refueling its fighters. But there were more Japanese fighters incoming, according to the ship’s radar. The Yorktown was able to avoid a minimum of two torpedoes before she was struck twice more on the port side.

“The ship had listed 20 to 25 degrees. The captain ordered the ship abandoned,” said Lasell. “Hell, she wouldn’t have capsized.”

Following orders, Lasell abandoned ship.

“I’d been wounded and I’d given my life jacket away,” he said. “I took one off a dead Marine. I had my 45 in my shirt – I was going to save that.”

Lasell described going over the side of the ship, and swimming towards the nearest destroyer. Once hauled aboard, he sent his gun away to be dried off. And, his instincts were right – the Yorktown never capsized.

“Two days after the Yorktown was abandoned, still afloat, a salvage crew had prepared her for towing,” he said. “The Destroyer Hammann (DD-412) was alongside providing electric power for the salvage.

“A Japanese sub fired torpedoes from six miles away, one of which hit the destroyer,” Lasell continued. “The destroyer sank and her depth charges went off at 35 feet.  Those depth charges put a hole in the Yorktown, which was probably the cause of her sinking.”

Life after Midway

After his experiences on the Yorktown, Lasell went on to serve as the assistant gunnery officer on board the USS Essex (CV-9) and as the gunnery officer on the USS Randolph (CV-15). After retiring from the Navy, he went on to work at Boeing. He retired from Boeing in 1982. He and his late wife Elizabeth had five children.