Warship's Voyage Nears End

Wednesday, January 10th 2001, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

MOBILE, Ala. (AP) â€” A rusting warship with a crew of mostly 70-somethings and no safety equipment sailed into Mobile Bay on Wednesday, completing a trans-Atlantic journey that defied Coast Guard warnings.

Waiting relatives and friends wore sweat shirts that listed the 29 crew members, most of them veterans of World War II and the Korean War, who want to make the hulking ship into a floating museum.

``Bravery is ageless,'' said Bill Shannon, a veteran from Fort Worth, Texas.

A large welcoming ceremony was planned at the Alabama State Docks near downtown.

The veterans found the nameless, dilapidated LST-325, or landing ship tank ship, in Greece.

About 150 sailors from a nearby U.S. Navy base helped fix it up, and it sailed on Nov. 17, but it suffered engine trouble in the Mediterranean, and the Coast Guard warned the crew not to go farther, at least not during winter. The crew persisted, however, and left Gibraltar on Dec. 12 for its 4,350-mile voyage.

A mechanical problem forced the crew to steer the LST manually, roaches infested the deck house, and malfunctioning toilets also complicated the passage, according to the captain's log.

Still, the journey was pretty smooth, said Capt. Robert Jornlin, of Earlville, Ill., who at 61 was one of the youngest crew members.

The trip brought back memories of World War II for veterans. John Chooljian, 75, of Carlstadt, N.J., recalled the English Channel crossings for D-Day and the beachhead landings of the LSTs in the Pacific and Mediterranean.

``I don't think the war would have been won without LSTs,'' said Chooljian, who had to pull out of the mission because of illness.

The salvaged LST was used in Normandy as well as North Africa, Salerno and Sicily during World War II. It was lent to Greece in the 1960s and was about to be decommissioned when the veterans acquired it. Crew members paid their own way to Greece and donated $2,000 to help cover expenses.

The privately operated USS LST Ship Memorial Inc. will conduct fund-raisers to keep the ship operating as a museum that would eventually travel from port to port.

``I kind of thought they were crazy to do this,'' said Irene McCandrew, whose 69-year-old husband, James McCandrew of Sebastian, Fla., is a crew member. ``I never thought it would materialize.''

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On the Net:

LST Association: http://www.uslst.org

Log of the return voyage: http://www.palosverdes.com/lst887/lst325.html