Thank you for your service Mr. Thacker

The U.S. Navy describes the fight for Leyte Gulf as the last of the great sea battles. There is no rival in naval history, they say, both from the sheer destruction to the fact that every known weapon of naval war, except mines, was used.

Seventeen-year-old Robert Thacker had been on board the USS White Plains less than two months when it became the target of Japanese warships Oct. 25, 1944. His job was to provide ammunition for anti-aircraft gunners, bringing the large, heavy .20 and .40-caliber shells from the gun tubs.

Thacker’s ship, its crew of 800 men and surrounding escort ships, was part of an attempt by allied forces to land in the Philippines, which would hurt the enemy’s ability to communicate with their forces in the East Indies.

The following hail of bullets, bombs and kamikaze aircraft makes it improbable, Navy ship commanders would later report, that the White Plains would survive.

“This ship was not hit but it received so many straddles that by the laws of chance it should have been hit several times,” action reports from commanders read. “No accurate estimate of total number of rounds fired can be given but photographs taken from this ship show about 180 splashes...”

The White Plains lost only 13 men throughout its entire tour in World War II, Thacker told the Daily American Republic in 2017.

But the Seventh Fleet lost a total of five ships that day in an attempt to protect the White Plains. The last of these was the escort carrier USS St. Lo, sunk by a kamikaze plane meant for Thacker’s ship. This was the first time this type of attack was used to take down a major warship, according to the Navy.

“The luck and the unfairness of it all,” Thacker said at the time, shaking his head, as he looked over photographs in the kitchen of the Main Street home he and wife, Peggy, purchased in 1959.

Thacker graduated early from Poplar Bluff High School so he could join the U.S. Navy, following in the footsteps of his father, a World War I veteran.

He remembered the day, even the moment, he began planning his military carrier. Thacker was a 14-year-old, listening to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speech to the nation a day after the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor.

“Every class, everybody that was 18 years old, 17 years old, 16 years old, was figuring out when he could get it done,” Thacker said, echoing slogans used on posters created later by the War Production Board. “You wanted to be a part of it.”

A date that would live in infamy, Roosevelt told the nation that day, inspiring millions of young men to war, just a generation after the first World War.

“… I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us,” Roosevelt said. “Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.”

Thacker’s training started less than four months before the Battle of Leyte Gulf, at a naval base on the Great Lakes. He was only 16 when he arrived in June 1944, shortly after his high school graduation ceremony.

“They took us — at that time, (men) were pouring in so fast — but they didn’t want you to be actually in service,” Thacker said.

Soon after Thacker arrived, he was called into a room with 23 other young sailors.

“They had an officer and they said hold up your right hand and they swore us in,” Thacker said. “We were all 17 that day, the 5th of July. I thought all over the United States, all the naval bases, and the air bases and the army, they’re swearing in all the guys that are 17.”

War doesn’t happen the way it does in the movies, Thacker said. The scenes of long discussions, or moments to think, are ridiculous, he counters. Each man focuses on his job, the task for which he has trained. There is no time for anything else, he said.

The day of the first kamikaze plane attack against a warship also marked the last sea fight between battleships. Japanese forces pursued the White Planes and its escorts for 2 1/2 hours before breaking off pursuit, according to the Navy. After a 90-minute break, the enemy launched six aircraft in a final attempt to take down the ship.

With two kamikaze pilots targeting Thacker’s ship, anti-aircraft gunners were the final line of defense. Bullets struck the first of the pilots, but he managed to change course and strike a fatal blow to the St. Lo. The Hoel, Johnston, Samuel B. Roberts and Gambier Bay were also sunk that day from enemy fire.

Gunners brought down the second kamikaze plane just yards from the White Plains, Navy accounts say. It was so close, debris scattered across the deck of the ship. Two other members of the White Plains’ escort were also struck by kamikaze pilots, but not destroyed.

The White Plains was so damaged by this battle it was sent to a base in the South-Central Pacific for repairs. Thacker and his crewmates spent the rest of the war transporting aircraft between the U.S. and the western Pacific.

Thacker came home after the war and returned to a job in composition at the Daily American Republic. He raised six daughters with his wife and retired in 1992.

In 2017, shortly before his 90th birthday, Robert Thacker told us he continued to celebrate the good fortune and good life he came home to in Poplar Bluff. Evenings with friends, and time with family often filled his days.

Thacker passed away Sept. 23, surrounded by his family, at the age of 95.

We will miss seeing Mr. Thacker on the front porch of the Main Street home where he raised his family, reading a book under the U.S. and Navy flags that always flew proudly. But the mark he left on the DAR family, the community as a founding member of the Poplar Bluff Sports Hall of Fame and many other endeavors, and on the generations to come, including 11 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren, are lasting.

Thank you Mr. Thacker, for your service to country and home.