74 Years ago today, these Devils would probably rather be back home over an open fire than on a sandy beach.
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Caption: The Marines Land. Marines hit three feet of rough water as they leave their LST to take the beach at Cape Gloucester, December 26, 1943
50 years ago today: Official Christmas card from the “Big Red One” U.S. Army 1st Infantry Division, 1967, then in the Republic of Vietnam.
After an epic two-week battle for the remote island outpost of Wake, 449 Marines, 68 U.S. Navy personnel, and 5 U.S. Army soldiers, as well as a force of civilian contractors, surrendered to a 2,500-man force of Japanese infantry backed up by a 19-ship armada on this day in 1941– two days before Christmas.
While transiting the area, Navy aircraft fly conducted a heritage flight off the coast of Wake Island in the western Pacific Ocean, in October from the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt.
Three Navy CVW-17 birds (NA tail flash), the top two F-18E/F’s from VFA’s 94 and 113, while the bottom is an EF-18G Growler from the Cougars of VAQ-139, over Wake. (Navy photo by Lt. Aaron B. Hicks)
A Marine flight consisted of four F-18C’s from VMFA-312, a unit that first saw combat during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945 and was credited with 59.5 Japanese kills during the war, also participated. As the “Checkerboards” C-model Hornets are a bit long in the tooth when compared with more current E-series Super Hornets, they are a good analogy to VMF-211’s F4F-3 Wildcats flown at Wake back in 1941.
PACIFIC OCEAN (Oct. 26, 2017) Four F/A-18C Hornets, assigned to the Checkerboards of Marine Strike Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 312, fly in formation over Wake Island and the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) during a U.S. Navy Heritage event for the crew. Theodore Roosevelt is currently underway for a regularly scheduled deployment in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations in support of maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Anthony J. Rivera/Released)
The flying service, which is purchasing 130,000 of the new Sig P320 variants, is testing the Army’s Modular Handgun System’s capability to resist damage during the demanding act of ejecting from a moving aircraft.
The Air Force released a number of images of the MHS contract winner, designated the M17 by the military, undergoing testing at a facility at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, earlier this month. The photos show a full-scale anthropomorphic dummy clad in a survival vest and flight gear strapped to a simulated stand-mounted ejection seat. On the dummy’s chest are a pair of M17 pistols, one oriented for a left-hand draw, another for a right, alternating flush-fit and extended magazines.
U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 46598
Crewmen of USS K-6 (Submarine # 37) paddle their dory to victory with coal shovels, during a race with the crew of USS Margaret (SP-527) at Horta, Fayal, Azores, on Christmas Day, 25 December 1917, during the Great War. Photographed by Raymond D. Borden.
K-6, back when the Navy didn’t even bother to name the “pig boats” of the early diesel-submarine force, was a 521-ton K-class submarine built at Fore River under a subcontract from Electric Boat. According to DANFS, she “arrived Ponta Delgada, Azores, 27 October [1917] in company with three other K -class submarines. For more than a year they patrolled the surrounding ocean, searching for German submarines and surface raiders and preventing them from using the islands as a haven.” She decommissioned in 1924 and was scrapped by 1930.
The very fine steam yacht Margaret, a 176-foot narrow-beamed beauty from John Roach’s esteemed yard, was last owned by Isaac Emerson, the CEO of Bromo-Seltzer, and sold to the Navy in August 1917. Skippered by no less a person than LCDR Frank Jack Fletcher, the badly top-heavy ship set forth for the Azores with five other armed yachts and the supply ship USS Hannibal in November 1917 and spent the rest of her military career there as she was in poor health.
“Fletcher eventually prevailed in getting a survey made of Margaret to assess her condition. The survey, conducted in the Azores, found that her deck leaked, her condenser was irreparable, her steam drums were badly worn down and could generate less than half the steam pressure they were supposed to, her crew quarters were uninhabitable, and living conditions were very bad. The Commander, Azores Detachment, A. W. Osterhaus, judged Margaret as unsuited for further service as a patrol vessel and as “nothing more than a piece of junk.”
USS S-28 (SS-133) Photographed during the 1920s or 1930s. U.S. Submarine, S-28. NH 42689
An S-1 class submarine missing since 1944 has been located.
Commissioned 13 December 1923, S-28 spent much of her career on the West Coast and, when war came in 1941, moved to Alaskan waters where she was very active, completing several war patrols in the hazardous waters of the Bering Sea. Then came an ordinary day in July…
According to DANFS:
On J3 July, she began training operations off Oahu with the Coast Guard cutter Reliance, The antisubmarine warfare exercises continued into the evening of the 4th. At 1730, the day’s concluding exercise began. Contact between the two became sporadic and, at 1820, the last, brief contact with S-28 was made and lost. All attempts to establish communications failed. Assistance arrived from Pearl Harbor, but a thorough search of the area failed to locate the submarine. Two days later, a diesel oil slick appeared in the area where she had been operating, but the extreme depth exceeded the range of available equipment. A Court of Inquiry was unable to determine the cause of the loss of S-28.
S-28 was awarded one battle star for her services in World War II and has been marked on eternal patrol since then.
However, according to The Lost 52 Project (named after the 52 missing U.S. submarines from WWII), they have found her in the very deep regions of the Pacific’s cold embrace.
On September 20th, 2017, a team led by noted award-winning explorer Tim Taylor, supported by STEP Ventures LLC and carrying Explorers Club Flag #80, discovered the remains of the WWII submarine lost in over 2600 meters (8500 feet) of water off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii.
Based on preliminary video and other documentation, the team currently speculates that the sub suffered a hull failure that resulted in the eventual separation of the bow, causing a near-instant loss. She is the final resting place of 49 US sailors.
AE-1
HMAS AE-1, an the E-Class submarine manned by the Royal Australian Navy was the first submarine to serve in the RAN but was lost at sea with all the crew near East New Britain, Papua New Guinea on the 14th September 1914, after less than seven months in service. The cause of the loss has remained a mystery.
Since 1976, 13 search missions have attempted to locate the wreck. The submarine has finally been found near the Duke of York Islands. The men of AE1 are commemorated in the “Book of Remembrance” kept in the Submarine Memorial Chapel in Fort Blockhouse.
The names of the crew are listed in the “Area of Remembrance” at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport. There is also a small dedicated memorial to the Australian Submarines AE1 & AE2 (the latter a Warship Wednesday alum) in the Fieldhouse Building at the Submarine Museum.
However, as noted by the Australian Department of Defense, AE-1 is lost no more after 103-years.
“The Royal Australian Navy teamed up with a range of search groups in this latest expedition, funded by the Commonwealth Government and the Silentworld Foundation, with assistance from the Submarine Institute of Australia, the Australian National Maritime Museum, Fugro Survey and the Papua New Guinea Government. The expedition was embarked on the survey ship Fugro Equator which is equipped with advanced search technology.”
More on AE-1 here.
Beginning on 6 May 1965, the U.S. Coast Guard began ordering the first cutters and men to the U.S. 7th Fleet AOR to participate in the Vietnam conflict, namely as part of Operation Market Time.
Over a half-decade later, the participation came to an end when the last of over 30 cutters large and small had been transferred to the South Vietnamese Navy, on this day in 1971.
USCGC Cook Inlet (WHEC-384/AVP-36) conducts a close fire support mission off the coast of Vietnam in 1971 with her 5″/38 DP. She was the last cutter transferred to the RVN that December, and ended the Coast Guard’s 6 1/2 year involvement in Vietnam
From Adm. Chester R. Bender, then Commandant of the service:
TURNOVER R212250Z DEC 71
FM COMDT COGARD
TO ALDIST
BT
UNCLAS
COMDT NOTE 5700
FROM C
VESSEL SQUADRON THREE TURNOVER
ON 21 DECEMBER 1971 THE CASTLE ROCK AND COOK INLET WILL BE TURNED OVER TO THE REP OF VIETNAM NAVY. THIS WILL END OUR PARTICIPATION IN SEVENTH FLEET SOUTHEAST ASIA OPERATIONS AFTER SIX AND ONE HALF YEARS OF ASSISTING THE NAVY IN OPERATION MARKET TIME. DURING THESE YEARS 31 HECS AND 26 82-FT PATROL BOATS AND A NUMBER OF SPECIALIZED UNITS HAVE SEEN VIETNAM SERVICE. THEY HAVE COMPILED AN ENVIABLE RECORD. COAST GUARDSMEN BOARDED OR INSPECTED OVER 510,000 BOATS IN PERFORMANCE OF THEIR PATROL MISSION. THEY TOOK PART IN NEARLY 6,OOO NGFS MISSIONS IN SUPPORT OF ARMY AND MARINE CORPS TROOPS ASHORE. THE CUTTERS CRUISED NEARLY 5.5 MILLION MILES SINCE 1965. WE LOST SEVEN OF OUR BRAVE MEN WHILE 59 WERE WOUNDED. OVER 500 PERSONAL DECORATIONS WERE AWARDED TO COAST GUARDSMEN FOR VIETNAM SERVICE. AND DURING ALL THIS TIME I KNOW FIRST HAND THAT OUR MEN, TRUE TO THEIR HUMANITARIAN IDEALS, DID NOT FORGET THEIR FELLOW MAN. THIS IS EVIDENCED BY THE MANY CIVIC ACTION PROJECTS, MEDICAL MISSIONS, AND SEARCH AND RESCUE CASES. NOT TO MENTION THE PRIVIATE ASSISTANCE MADE TO CHARITABLE WORKS SUCH AS THE SAIGON SCHOOL FOR BLIND GIRLS. THE COAST GUARD RECORD IN VIETNAM IS A RECORD OF WHICH YOU ALL CAN BE JUSTLY PROUD. TO THE LAST MEN LEAVING SQUADRON THREE GO WITH MY BEST WISHES FOR A SPEEDY RETURN HOME. TO ALL OF YOU WHO HAVE SERVED YOUR COUNTRY IN VIETNAM GO MY SINCERE THANKS AND ADMIRATION.
ADMIRAL BENDER, SENDS
BT
With that ole solstice hitting and even colder nights ahead, remember to bundle up and/or keep warm by any means.
Plus this gives me a reason to share these great Molotov images, used to keep random Panzer crews warm while in the grip of General Winter on the road to Moscow during the Great Patriotic War. Warm hugs from the CCCP.
–In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
I give you, the winner of Destroyer Division 601’s Christmas lighting competition, December 1961:
USS John R. Perry (DE-1034) Christmas lighting aboard ship while at Key West Naval Station Annex, Key West, Florida.
She was a Claud Jones-class destroyer escort built at Avondale in New Orleans and commissioned 5 May 1959. The 1,750-ton, 312-footer was lightly armed, even more so than DE’s of WWII, with just 2 3″/50 caliber Mk 33 guns, 6 324mm ASW torpedo tubes, and two Hedgehog projectors.
Slow and more of an offshore patrol vessel than a destroyer, they were unpopular ships for the Navy and soon on the chopping block when the new and much more capable ASROC/5-inch gun/DASH drone-equipped Knox-class (DE-1052/FF-1052), capable of 27+ knots, began showing up on the scene in 1969.
Perry was decommissioned in 1973 after just 14 years service and warm transferred to Indonesia, (along with all three of her sisters: Jones, Barry, and McMorris) where she served as the KRI Samadikun (341) until 2003.
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2017: Not just a figurehead
LOC Photo
Here we see the one-of-a-kind full-rigged sail training ship Joseph Conrad in her career as a U.S. Merchant Marine schoolship during World War II where she minted enough new bluejackets to man a veritable fleet. Like her namesake, she has been around the world and sailed the seven seas.
“There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea,” said Polish-born British author and longtime seaman Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) in the first paragraph of chapter two of his 1900 novel, Lord Jim, which revolves around the abandonment of a stricken ship in distress.
Our ship was crafted in 1882, four years after Conrad, born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, joined the British merchant marine. Our subject vessel, of course, wasn’t named for Conrad from the start– at the time he was but a lowly second-mate on the old barque Palestine— which he later immortalized as Judea in his short story “Youth.”
No, our vessel was built by Burmeister & Wain, København, Denmark, specifically for the Stiftelsen Georg Stages Minde foundation (which is still around) to be employed as a sailing schoolship. Founded the same year by wealthy shipowner Frederik Stage to train youth for a life at sea, the foundation and their flagship were named for their son, Georg, who had died from tuberculosis two years prior.
Some 100-feet long (111-oal) with a displacement of just 400 tons, Georg Stages was a small ship for high seas mercantile service to be sure, but she was very accommodating and perfect for use in training as many as 80 cadets at a time, stretching 10,000 sq. ft. of sail as she went.
She was generally a happy vessel. From 1882 until 1934, a period that covered the Great War, during which Denmark walked a thin and often dangerous line of neutrality, Stages reportedly trained more than 4,000 young men in the art of working aloft, on deck, and below while underway.
She also survived an accidental collision with the English steamship Ancona in Hollænderdybet. The collision resulted in Georg Stage sinking, causing the deaths of 22 cadet sailors.
Sold in agreement with the Handelsradet (Danish Board of Trade) to one Capt. Alan Villiers and company, she was renamed Joseph Conrad and registered with Lloyds under a British flag.
Villers, an Australian-born author (of at least 44 published books) mariner (CDR in the RNVR during WWII after first going to sea on a merchantman at age 15), and overall adventurer, he gave the aging ship– which had been destined for the breakers– a quick refit and signed a 32-strong amateur crew of lads to sail her around the world on an epic voyage that took nearly two years and rounded both Cape Horn one way and the Cape of Good Hope the other.
Conrad figurehead installed by Villiers, Photograph by Alan Villiers via the Greenwich National Maritime Museum. The Danes kept the figurehead for the Georg Stage, and it has been sailing on a new ship of the same name for the Foundation since 1934, though it has recently been reconditioned.
Three-masted ship JOSEPH CONRAD was underway in December 1935 during her round-the-world cruise. This photo is part of the Australian National Maritime Museum’s William Hall collection.
JOSEPH CONRAD at anchor, Sydney Harbor December 1935. This photo is part of the Australian National Maritime Museum’s William Hall collection.
JOSEPH CONRAD in Sydney Harbor Dec 1935. This photo is part of the Australian National Maritime Museum’s William Hall collection.
Three-masted ship JOSEPH CONRAD leaving Sydney Harbor Dec 18, 1935. This photo is part of the Australian National Maritime Museum’s William Hall collection.
Three-masted ship JOSEPH CONRAD leaving Sydney Harbor Dec 18, 1935. This photo is part of the Australian National Maritime Museum’s William Hall collection.
When he was done, Villiers wrote two books about the 57,000-mile cruise– Cruise of the Conrad and Stormalong, both classics of maritime lit.
Moving on to other adventures in Arabia, in 1936 a bankrupt Villiers sold Joseph Conrad to George Huntington Hartford, the 25-year-old heir to the A&P supermarket fortune. Hartford converted the ship to an American-flagged yacht, added a diesel engine (“iron topsail”), and sailed her until the beginning of World War II.
Hartford, a different kind of patriot that what is afloat these days in the business world, promptly donated Conrad to the U.S. Maritime Commission for use as they saw fit, sought out a commission in the Coast Guard and later commanded a Mister Roberts-style Army supply ship— FS-179 — during the Pacific War.
Conrad would be used to train seamen for the merchant service. From the United States Maritime Commission Report to Congress for the Period Ended October 25, 1939:
There, at St. Petersburg’s Coast Guard wharf, USMSTS Joseph Conrad became the centerpiece of the brand new U.S. Maritime Service Training Station, arriving in November to later be joined by the old white-hulled training ship Tusitala (which maintained the school for cooks and bakers), the tugs Tickfaw and Morganza for training coal-burning firemen, SS Vigil for enginemen, and American Sailor for advanced training.
Conrad held school in basic training and schools that lasted up to eight weeks in good old Division 01-style deck work.
US Navy SNJ Texan training aircraft making a low-level pass near a three-masted sailing ship Joseph Conrad, photo taken in 1942.
Apprentice seamen in the United States Maritime Service manning the yards on the square-rigged training ship Joseph Conrad via LOC
Saint Petersburg, Florida. Trainees walking the anchor up of the training ship Joseph Conrad at the United States Maritime Service training station, 1943. LOC
Saint Petersburg, Florida. Enrollees march to class at the masts of the training ship Joseph Conrad in the background. LOC
Apprentice seamen in the United States Maritime Service manning the yards on the square-rigged training ship Joseph Conrad. LOC
Trainees at the United States Maritime Service training station handling a lifeboat in an abandon ship drill– note the Joseph Conrad. NARA
In all, more than 25,000 merchant seamen learned their trade at St. Petersburg’s Bayboro Harbor between 1939 and 1945, with most of them at one point or another walking Conrad‘s decks. Today, the facility is incorporated into the University of South Florida.
For Conrad, VJ Day looked like the end was once more upon her. She had spent 52 years working for the Danes, sailed around the world with a scratch crew, was a young yachtsman’s pride and joy, and spent 6 more years working for Uncle Sam.
However, Mystic Seaport, one of the nation’s leading maritime museums, reached out to add the hard-used Conrad to their extensive collection. In July 1947, the 80th Congress agreed with the caveat that St. Petersburg get the ship back if they couldn’t handle her.
Today, Mystic Seaport still has both the old girl’s records and her, and, though she does not sail anymore, Conrad remains very much in use as a training ship for the Mystic Mariner Program, and the Museum’s educational programs.
Joseph-Conrad via Mystic Seaport Museum
According to the museum, since 1949, the Joseph Conrad Summer Sailing Camp has been the overnight summer camp of choice for more than 350 campers annually.
Mr. Conrad would likely be proud.
Specs:
Length 30.7 m (100.8 ft.)
Beam 7.7 m (25.2 ft.)
Draft 3.3 m (11.0 ft.)
GRT 203
NRT 149
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