Veterans DAY: Sailor Survives Japanese Kamikaze Attack, Saves Others

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by Kris Osborn – Warrior Maven

Pulling sailors from beneath fallen debris, dodging deadly flames and scrambling to find survivors, Dwight Vickers was fighting off shock after a Japanese kamikaze pilot smashed through the deck of the USS Saratoga, the plane exploding in the hanger.

As a machine mate, operating near a 140-degree boiler room, Vickers was accustomed to the rigors of warfare in the Pacific during World War II. But dealing with a plane exploding in your carrier hangar wasn’t something that was covered in the Navy manual.

“There were a lot of casualties, and he was right in the middle of it. He had to pull some guys out of the wreckage,” Vickers’ son, Kendall Vickers, told Warrior Maven upon recalling his father’s service.

The kamikaze attack occurred during the famous Iwo Jima amphibious assault in 1945. The venerable Saratoga, first commissioned in the late 1920s, was a battlecruiser- turned-carrier, and one of just a few U.S. pre-war carriers to serve all the way through World War II. Although the attack caused enough damage for the ship to return home for repairs, it survived, and was modified into a training carrier. Ultimately it was used to ferry troops back to the United States after the Japanese surrender.

While the elder Vickers did not speak much about the trauma of this particular kamikaze attack, he was known to tell his three sons — Kendall, Keith and Kyle — about the importance of serving the U.S. in wartime. He never made much of the difficult conditions in which he served, which included long shifts beneath the deck.