Texas Tower Disaster

By Wilbur Lee, MM2

TEXAS TOWER #4 JANUARY 1961

I read with great interest your article on the Texas Tower # 4 that went down during a storm in 1961 (Under The Waves, a reminder.... JULY 15 1999) [referring to the article in the Phila. Enquirer]

You see I was on one of the destroyers (USS Lloyd Thomas DDE 764) that was at the scene trying to rescue the people when the tower started to go down....

The Destroyer squadron was from Newport, RI. We were notified late in the day while we were at sea and in a very bad storm to go to our battle stations. While at those stations the Captain came on the intercom system and notified all that we were going to a early warning radar station and should arrive within the hour and that we were going to try to high-line people off the tower before it went down...as we all know we were to late...

I had friends that were in the sonar room at the time and I was told that there were tape recordings of the people in the tower sending messages by tapping on the walls of the tower to the surface ships. It was known that some of the people were alive after the tower had went below the surface....I never did find out how long sonar was able to hear the tapping....they used the signal "shave and a hair cut" which most every one knows...

The memory of this event is still very vivid in my mind...I was a young man at that time and the tower 4 had a life long effect on me....knowing there was nothing we could do... being so helpless....it still brings tears to my eyes after almost 40 years. You see that tower had an effect on more than just the people that were on it and the survivors... There were a lot of us that were out to sea that were stunned that night.

I would be grateful if you would let the families know that even if the government tried to forget what happened that night in 1961 there are a lot that did not forget and never will.

The Lloyd Thomas was retired in April, 1999

Wilbur Lee (MM2 USS Lloyd Thomas DD 764)
3902 Windsor
Deer Park, Texas 77536
281 478 0001
wilee@pdq.net