Jon Street
The Blaze
2/10/2015
He was there when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and his ashes will likely be placed inside the memorial honoring the hundreds of shipmates whose deaths he witnessed that fateful morning.
Joseph Langdell, the last known surviving officer of the USS Arizona, died last week. He was 100.
At the time of the Pearl Harbor bombing, Langdell was sleeping at a military base near the Arizona. Four-fifths of the ship’s crew – 1,177 men – died during the attack.
In the nine minutes between when the ship was struck and when it sank, the 27-year-old rushed inside to try to save those onboard.
“I felt absolutely helpless as I watched the attack. If I had been aboard, I would have been killed in that No. 2 [gun] turret. That was the one that blew up. It was my luck to be assigned off the ship that day,” Langdell told the Associated Press on the 56th anniversary of the bombing…
…“He was 100 years, three months and 24 days old. A long-time listener to classical music, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, the ‘Eroica’ played him off this life’s stage,” Langdell’s son wrote. ”His skills ranged from the use of wood stoves and outhouses in cold, New Hampshire winters, milking cows in his father’s barn, guiding horse-drawn buggies and driving early motor cars, building crystal radio sets and cranking party-line, operator-connected telephones, to using cell phones, e-mailing and surfing the Internet.”…
The complete article, with video, is at The Blaze.
