by Rory Morgan
It was 1:30 in the morning of July 18,1943; a U.S. Navy vessel was chugging through the Blanche Channel, in the Pacific's Solomon Islands, carrying artillery shells and soldiers from the island of Guadalcanal (just months earlier the site of brutal, bloody fighting), to the smaller island of Rendova. Even though the waters of the area were known to be patrolled by Japanese submarines, no U.S. Navy protective escort vessels to accompanied her. Apparently none was available due to concerns about the weather.
Nevertheless, the Commanding Officer of the ship determined that the importance of the cargo dictated that the ship should take the risk of sailing alone. Unknown to men aboard the U. S. ship, a Japanese submarine (RO - 106) had been stalking it and was now preparing to launch a torpedo attack. A firing solution for the torpedo launch was being calculated; the solution was determined; the torpedos were launched.
The American ship was designated as LST-342. The acronym LST stood for “Landing Ship Tank”; sailors joked that it actually stood for “Large Slow Target”. The LSTs were about a football field long, had a crew of about 100, and were designed to carry tanks to the beach in amphibious landings. They were often used as cargo ships and were so utilitarian that the Navy didn’t even bother to name most of them; it simply referred to them by number.
The commanding officer of LST-342 was Lieutenant Edward S. McCluskey He had graduated from Easton High School in 1928, where he was the president of the senior class, captain of the debate team and an aspiring lawyer. Then it was on to Lafayette College, where he joined the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity and built a “brilliant debating record” as the captain of the College’s team. Following law school at the University of Pennsylvania, he was admitted to the bar in Northampton County in 1935. He opened a law office in the Northampton National Bank Building, became the City Solicitor for Easton and became the Chairman of the Northampton County Democratic Committee.
The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, changed everything for Ed, as it did for so many others. By late February, he had closed his law office and joined the Navy; the third of the McCluskey boys to enlist. (Brother Frank was in the Marine Corps; brother Donald was in the Army.) The Navy initially assigned Ed to do legal work in Philadelphia, but he wanted a combat assignment. His request was eventually fulfilled on December 31, 1942, he became the first commander of LST-342, which was fresh from the shipwrights at the Navy Yard at Norfolk, VA.
The Japanese torpedo hit the ship and exploded; the ship broke in half. The stern (the rear), where the crew’s quarters were located, sank immediately. Consequently, very few of the Navy men on board survived. The bow (the front), inexplicably, continued to float. Some of the soldiers who were on the ship's bow survived there and were eventually rescued. Eventually, the Navy towed the still-floating bow to a nearby island, beached it and stripped it of everything usable. It was then abandoned; it was still visible decades after the war ended.
On August 11, 1943, Northampton County Judge Frank McCluskey and his wife, Alice, received a telegram from the Navy, advising them that their son Edward was Missing in Action. His body was never recovered, but there is a memorial - a cenotaph - for him in Easton Cemetery.
Carved into it is a phrase that could be included on so many grave markers in Easton; indeed, on markers throughout the United States: “He loved his life, as we love ours, yet fought and died for those he never knew.” He is also memorialized by a beautiful stained-glass window at his family’s church, Trinity Episcopal, on Spring Garden Street.
Although nothing could bring back the lives lost in the sinking, some measure of retribution was earned a few months later, when the Japanese submarine RO-106 was sunk by the U.S. destroyer escort USS England - which, ironically, was built by a subsidiary of Bethlehem Steel.
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