[Where was the Helena during Pearl Harbor?]

Right alongside 10-10 dock, just aft of the dry dock where the Cassin and Downes were bombed and the ship we were in got hit. . . . I was officer of the deck . . . that Sunday morning. There was a signalman named Flood who was an old China-hand. He had the duty up on the signal bridge. I was standing on the quarterdeck. . . . He called down and said that there were Japanese planes overhead. He could see the "meatball" and he recognized them because he had seen them bomb Shanghai. I watched and, as the first plane went into a dive, my first thought was that he was pulling a mock attack. Then I saw a bomb come off, going toward Ford Island.

. . . I ran in there and announced something to the effect that "Japanese planes are bombing Pearl Harbor! Man your battle stations!" I didn't say, "This is no drill." But I did say, "Break out service ammunition."

. . . Immediately after I made the announcement, a torpedo hit . . . in the forward engine room. . . . One thing I distinctly remember was seeing a torpedo plane go across our ship towards battleship row. The cockpit in the plane was open and the pilot was leaning out first one side and then the other, sighting-up. He couldn't have been over fifty feet in the air. My recollection is that I fired my forty-five automatic at him, but that might be colored by what I wished I had done.

By this time, there were a lot of burned people coming up on deck. ction on the East Coast. This was the USS Cleveland (CL-55), which was the first of its class.