Robert Applegate USN
Posted on 30 July, 2021 by in Veterans By Name, A
This biography of Robert Applegate USN is being written by Larry Martin in February 2020 from memory and some notes I took in 2014. As well as my DVD interview of Bob, he is on DVD from Jackson TV (JTV) in Jackson Michigan in a interview that JTV asked me to see if many of my Jackson WW II veterans would do a interview for JTV. This was completed in about 2017. I have the DVD copies of these four Veterans. The interviews were done professionally by JTV and they are very good. I am on the DVDs explaining how I met these men and kind of a overview of the War.
Bob was born in 1925. Bob was drafted but volunteered for the Navy in1943. His boot camp (basic training) was in Great Lakes Illinois. Bob and about 500 other sailor’s then went to Gulfport Missippi as a Naval Armed Guard for about 30 days of gunnery school. I had never heard of the Naval Armed Guard until I met Bob. These men were regular Navy men who were put aboard civilian ships as gunners on 5in guns. I assume that the ships had smaller guns also but much of this is being written from a small amount of notes and memory from 2014.
These civilian ships were about 200 ft by 50 ft. They carried all sorts of men and supplies all over the world. As I understand it they traveled alone or atleast the ship that Bob was on the SS Jean Nicolet was alone on 2 July 1944 when she was hit by a torpedo fired by the Japanese submarine #8. The Nicolet partially sunk but not completely. The crew was ordered to abandon ship. About 100 Navy men and possibly some of the civilian crewmen went into the water. The #8 surfaced and picked up the men, brought them aboard the #8. The Japanese then proceeded to kill about 77 of the men with swords and knives. The only reason all 100 of the men were not killed right there was that the submarine’s electronic equipment picked up that there was a airplane in the vicinity so they sounded a alarm so that the crew of the submarine went inside the sub and all of the sailor’s just floated away. Many of them dead and about twenty three alive. Bob tried for many hours to push a sailor who had no life vest on back toward the Nicolet but was getting no where because of the currants as well as exhaustion. Bob told the man who’s hands were still tied behind his back that he had to quit pushing him. The man did survive but would never speak to Bob again when they met at re-unions. I can not imagine being in the open Indian Ocean with no life preserver with my hands tied behind my back.
Bob also was put on Shore Patrol duty during the Detroit Race Riot’s of 1943. I do not remember now what Bob said about that. It is on the DVD interview.