Sherwin Goodman, 85, of Beachwood, recalls his service in the Pacific during World War II: A World at War

Email the author | Follow on Twitter
on July 11, 2009 at 8:35 PM, updated July 23, 2009 at 12:49 PM
Sherwin Goodman always said a prayer and carried a prayer book when he flew combat missions aboard a Navy torpedo bomber in World War II.
"There are no ordinary lives," Ken Burns said of those who served in a global cataclysm so momentous that the filmmaker entitled his 2007 documentary simply "The War."


Some took their stories with them.

But not this one.

Sherwin Goodman celebrated his 17th birthday on a date destined to "live in infamy," as President Franklin Roosevelt said.

Dec. 7, 1941, was the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, irrevocably changing the lives of Goodman and millions of Americans as the nation was suddenly thrust into World War II.

The Charleston, W.Va., native wound up as a gunner in the turret of a Navy torpedo bomber.

Sherwin Goodman, now 85, as a Navy gunner.
Facing backward in the TBM Avenger to defend against aircraft attacking from behind, Goodman had a 200 mph rearview window on war in the Pacific, armed with a .50-caliber machine gun that rattled the cramped confines of the turret. But in combat, as Goodman noted, whenever that gun roared, "it was a comforting sound."

During that time he nearly drowned when his plane rolled off the front of an aircraft carrier during takeoff and sank in the ocean. Was thrown through the air by the blast of a torpedo that crippled his ship. Dodged bullets and flying shrapnel from Japanese air attacks. Watched squadron buddies blown from the sky during bombing raids.

Yet Goodman can still recall it all nowadays in his Beachwood apartment with the smile of a 17-year-old who had never flown on a plane or sailed on a ship before joining the service.

The risks came from any direction, at any time, in moments of adrenaline-laced excitement that ranged from absolutely terrifying to strangely beautiful -- as in the tracer streaks and exploding fireworks of anti-aircraft fire.

Luck and happenstance played no small role in Goodman's survival. When a broken catapult failed to bring his plane to needed take-off speed on the carrier USS Independence and the plane dropped off the bow, Goodman barely survived an exhausting swim in heavy seas to the rescue destroyer.

He didn't realize just how lucky he had been until the next day, when another aircraft went into the water.

Sherwin Goodman sat in the cramped rear turret on an Avenger torpedo bomber like this one.
Both planes had been equipped with depth charges for anti-submarine patrols. When the second plane sank, the charges went off, killing the plane's three crewmen in the water.

His good fortune held on another mission when, as Goodman recalled, "we got caught in a lot of anti-aircraft [fire] and we had a whole bunch of holes on the plane and the tail but we weren't hurt -- although one of them went up through my turret and out the wind screen."

Once, when he was assigned to fly in a different plane, a Japanese fighter pounced on its tail. Goodman lined up for what he figured was an easy shot. "I fired and the gun jammed. Only one shot came out," he said. It was luck, again, that a nearby American fighter brought down the attacker.

Luck, or perhaps the metal-covered Jewish prayer book that Goodman carried on each mission, tucked in a pocket over his heart.

Danger was close even when he wasn't flying. During one of many air attacks on his ship -- when Japanese planes flew so close that Goodman could see the pilots' faces as antiaircraft fire punched holes through their flaming aircraft -- he joined a carrier gun crew to lend a hand.

Just then an explosion threw Goodman to the deck. He was suddenly engulfed in water. Thinking he had been blown overboard, "I was, like, swimming," he remembered. "Turns out it was the explosion of a torpedo, and all the water had come down."

The blast wiped out an entire section of antiaircraft guns no more than 30 yards away. Goodman staggered to a flight deck littered with dead and wounded. "I thought, 'Boy, this isn't real,' " he said.

Goodman got his chance to even the score during the Battle of the Leyte Gulf, the largest naval action of the war as Japan mobilized nearly all its combat naval vessels in a last-ditch attempt to overwhelm the American invasion of the Philippines in October 1944.

The gunner knew something big was imminent when flight crews were awakened to a breakfast of steak and eggs. It was, he said, an ominously special treat they had never gotten before, perhaps intended as potentially their last meal.

They spotted the Japanese fleet after three hours of flying, and Goodman's plane, flanked by four others from the USS Cowpens, lined up for an attack on what looked like the biggest battleship they had ever seen.

Goodwin rotated his turret for a forward look at the attack and saw the winking of hundreds of guns firing at them. Tracers streaked past in a fiery blur, like lights in a tunnel, he recalled.

The planes dropped their torpedoes and banked away, giving Goodman a chance to empty his gun at a cruiser that had moved to block the battleship from the attack. As three torpedoes struck the cruiser, Goodman watched bullets from the stricken ship march across the water toward them, following their escape.

"Break right," he called to the pilot, and the plane veered out of the line of fire. "Break left," he called again as the bullets followed their new course.

Five hours after leaving ship, they were safely back. Goodman said the pilot swore they landed on fumes. "I just heard the engine quit and I got out and I was so glad to touch the ground," he said. "I was so happy to get back."

He and the other aviators were later awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for their actions that resulted in the sinking of the cruiser Noshiro, the Japanese fleet's flagship.

After several subsequent bombing missions in the Philippines, Goodman was transferred back to the States for flight training as a pilot. During that time he married his high school sweetheart, whose family had moved to Cleveland.

After the war ended, he requested a discharge before completing his training. He and his wife, Shirley (who died three years ago), moved to Cleveland, where they raised two daughters.

Goodman thought of becoming a dentist, like his uncle, but when told he could spend more than two years on a waiting list for dental school, he became a CPA and retired just last month after a 59-year career.

Though he eventually got a pilot's license, his flying days were largely over. Power-boating became a lifelong passion.

A few years ago in an interview documenting his service for the national Veterans History Project, Goodman looked back on his war years and remarked: "It was a good experience. I'm glad I went through it. Wouldn't want to have to do it again. Know too much now. You'd be crazy. You'd be afraid of doing something."

Goodman thinks a lot about the war these days. "I have no idea why," he said. "I didn't for 50 years. But now I can remember every moment of it. Sometimes in bed I'll have a flashback of when I was in the water and almost drowned, and I wake up dreaming about it.

"But the rest of it," he added with the smile of a 17-year-old, "was damn exciting."