Vet’s Victory at Sea: Finding Lost Ship

Larry Tunks spent 55 years trying to forget the horror of World War II until the recurring image of his sunken Navy ship forced him to confront it.

Tunks was lured back to the North Pacific in an effort to find the U.S. minesweeper Perry, sunk off Palau by a Japanese mine. Others--experts armed with maps and wreck-diving experience--had tried to locate the warship for years. Tunks, equipped with his memory of the sinking, found it.

“Something just told me I had to go back,” said Tunks, 78. “I’m a guy whose ship got sunk 55 years ago. Fifty-five years later, I went back and found it. I tried not to think about the war until this urge creeped up on me. It turns out WWII and the Perry have always been a part of me.”

Although Tunks did not plan it this way, finding the Perry is a fitting Memorial Day tribute to his eight shipmates who died in the mine explosion, he said.

Tunks, a Huntington Harbour resident, set out April 27 to find his ship after about two years of planning. Never mind that others who make a living by finding and exploring World War II wrecks had spent decades and thousands of dollars looking for the Perry.

The ship, a destroyer converted to a minesweeper, is the only U.S. warship lost in the vicinity of Palau, where the bloody battle of Peleliu was fought in 1944 by U.S. ground forces. It rests on the sea bottom along with 38 Japanese ships sunk by the Americans in the battle for Palau, a nation of islands southeast of the Philippines.

Tunks found the Perry on May 1, the day before his birthday. It lies 240 feet down, about 700 yards offshore from Anguar, the southernmost island of Palau.

Tunks plotted the wreck’s location over several months, drawing from U.S. Navy records of the sinking and a hazy recollection of events. Too old to dive that deep, he paid two divers to go down and find it while he waited anxiously above.

“There’s no question it’s the Perry. It’s clearly an American ship and a destroyer,” said Sam Scott, an Olympia, Wash., native who has been diving in Palau since 1983 and owns a dive shop there.

Scott and underwater photographer Kevin Davidson have made two subsequent dives to the Perry. Davidson, originally from Illinois, also lives on Palau. Since the ship’s discovery, four divers who make a living taking thrill-seekers down to explore Palau’s underwater wrecks have dived to the ship and affirmed its authenticity. An expedition of stateside divers is being formed to examine the Perry in June or July.

Combination of Luck, Something to Go on

Tunks’ finding is significant, said diver Bill Remick, who grew up on Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands and tried to find the Perry five years ago. Remick, an Arizona state hydrologist, said he and other divers “have known only disappointment in our search for the Perry.”

“I spent a small fortune looking for the ship,” he said. “When you’re looking for something that’s 300 feet long and 45 feet wide, you need something to go on or a lot of luck. Sounds like Tunks had a little of both.”

Tunks said the search for the Perry cost about $10,000, which was paid by him and three fishing buddies who wanted to share his adventure.

Redding resident Dan E. Bailey, who wrote “World War II Wrecks of Palau,” a picture book about Japanese ship and plane wrecks in the nation’s lagoons, said he also searched for the Perry last year.

“It’s one of very few U.S. warships that didn’t go down in deep water,” said Bailey, a longtime diver. “It’s rare in the diving community to find one you can reach.”

Part of the problem in searching for the Perry was that most divers were going by the Navy’s coordinates for the spot where it sank. Tunks used his own calculations and memory of where the ship was in relation to the island when the mine exploded to determine that the Navy’s coordinates were off by about 2,000 yards.

The Perry was moored at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, but escaped Japanese bombs. It steamed out of the harbor, and its gun crews were credited with downing a Japanese plane, according to the “Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.”

The ship’s Pearl Harbor ties make it alluring to divers who explore World War II wrecks. The Perry lies at the limit of a safe tank dive, but it can be reached, Remick said.

Finding the ship unleashed a torrent of memories for Tunks. It was also a moment for rejoicing. When the two divers he hired surfaced with thumbs up, Tunks said he tore his clothes off and jumped in the water between them in celebration.

Like many World War II veterans, Tunks put the war out of his mind when he returned in 1945 to his Lincoln, Neb., home. Eventually, he settled in Southern California, where he worked as a mechanical engineer. He seldom gave his old ship, on which he had served for three years, a thought.

But Tunks said that changed in 1998, when he read “The Greatest Generation,” a book by NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw about ordinary Americans who preserved democracy by fighting fascism in World War II at home and on the battlefield.

“It was Brokaw’s book that got me thinking about finding my ship,” Tunks said. “Reading it gave me a new understanding of what my generation did. Many of us were poor but patriotic. [Brokaw’s] right. We may just have saved the world.”

The old sailor gets emotional when he talks about Sept. 13, 1944, the day that his ship went down. The Perry, a flush-deck destroyer commissioned in 1922, had been sweeping the water for mines in preparation for the upcoming Peleliu invasion.

“It was frightening,” Tunks said. “The mine exploded under the boilers, sending steam and hot oil gushing throughout. I saw a man walk out of the engine room with melting skin. An awful, awful sight.”

Two minutes after the mine tore an 8-foot hole in the hull, the Perry’s captain gave the order to abandon ship. Tunks, a member of a 3-inch-gun crew, jumped over the side with the rest of the men.

The 120 or so surviving crew members--their heads bobbing in the water--were unwitting targets for Japanese riflemen on Anguar. Fortunately, none was hit. They were picked up by two other ships that came to the rescue.

An after-action report of the incident dated Sept. 23, 1944, says the crew reacted coolly “and in accordance with the highest Navy traditions.” Although the ship was listing 30 degrees to port and in danger of rolling over, crew members managed to scoop up “service records, pay accounts, ship’s service funds, registered publications and navigation records” before abandoning ship, the report says.

A Navy spokesman in Hawaii said the Perry is still Navy property and is considered a grave site. However, no decision has been made about how to proceed with identifying it, he said.

It was happenstance that Tunks ended up on the Perry, the only ship on which he served.

He was in the U.S. Army’s 35th Infantry Division in Arkansas when he was ordered to change services. Tunks was discharged from the Army on Oct. 25, 1941, and told to report to the Navy.

“I was the only one from my unit who was sent to the Navy,” Tunks said. “One day I was in Arkansas, a couple of weeks later I was in San Diego. I never asked why. I just did as I was ordered. That’s how things were in those days. You did as you were told.”