Near La Neuveville, France. 25 October, 1944. Official wartime caption: “Infantrymen relieved from combat for rest, await removal to a rest camp.” 314th Infantry Regiment, 79th Infantry Division. Left to right: Pfc. Arthur H. Muth, Allentown, Pa.; Sgt. Carmine H. Sileo, Brooklyn, N.Y., and Sgt. Kelly C. Lasalle, Jeanette, Pa.
Signal Corps Archive. SC 195623-S
Note the mix of M1 Carbine (Muth) and M1 Garands (Sileo and Lasalle) along with camo-netted M1 helmets and E-tools. Also note the NCO (Lasalle) has binos and a map case, as befitting his role.
The men are likely of 1st Bn, 314th, who are noted to have bedded down in after the regiment captured three 88mm guns, three 75mms, five 20mms, four half-tracks, four sedans, a 10.5 cm leFH 18 (Sf.) auf Geschützwagen 39H(f), a C&R, car, and a 1/2 ton truck earlier than day– a fair sampling of the enemy’s ordnance.
As part of Patton’s 3rd Army, the 314th Inf Rgt was the first across the Seine River and helped liberate France, having landed in Normandy at Utah Beach on D+8 with its parent 79th “Cross of Lorraine” Inf Div and helped push the Kriegsmarine out of Cherbourg. Then came the Battle of the Bulge and the push into the Rhineland where they occupied Dortmund on 13 April 1945 before pushing into Czechoslovakia.
You are now entering Germany, courtesy of the 79th Inf. Div
In all, they spent 329 days on the Continent during the war, with 262 of those in combat. They suffered 5,057 casualties in that period (862 killed, 4139 WIA, 59 missing), against an authorized strength of 3,118 officers and men– a casualty rate of 162 percent. In exchange, they accounted for 11,822 enemy POWs and earned two MoHs, 3 DSCs, 282 Silver Stars, and 757 Bronze Stars, among other decorations.
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Warship Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024: A Tough Little Wolf
Nationalmuseet, Danmark, asset THM-3367
Above, we see the Danish Soridderen (Sea Knight) class torpedobåden patrol boat Søulven(Sea Wolf)—also cited in the West as Soloven, Soeulven, and Søulv —as she passed near the Trekroner Søfort at the entrance to the Copenhagen harbor before 1920.
A small boat with a fearsome name, her skipper and crew proved all-heart during the Great War, and a noteworthy British admiral doubtlessly owed his life to her pluck.
The Søridderen trio
Between 1879, when Hajen, Torpedobaad Nr.4, joined the fleet through Svaerdfisken, which entered service in May 1913, the Royal Danish Navy fielded 40 assorted torpedo boats across several different classes to include designs from British (Samuel White, Yarrow, Thornycroft), French (Forges & Chantiers), German (F. Schichau) and domestic (Burmeister & Wain, Orlogsvaerftet) yards. No less than 17 of these were still in service by the time Gaviro Princep caught up to Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, and set the world alight.
In 1911, a program of three new German Schichau-designed boats and a matching set of three British Yarrow-designed boats were ordered. The lead ship would be built overseas in each case, and the two follow-on units would be constructed domestically. This led to the Schichau-designed and built 250-ton Tumleren (and Orlogsvaerftet-constructed sisters Vindhunden and Spaekhuggeren) and the 230-ton Yarrow-designed and built Søridderen (accompanied by the Burmeister & Wain-constructedFlyvefisken and Soulven).
The ships were competing designs of similar size, armament, and capability with the Tumlerens running 250 tons, 186 feet long, 18 feet on the beam, and with a 6-foot draft while the Søridderen went 181x18x6 feet.
The German-built Danish torpedobåden Tumleren. Note her trainable torpedo tubes. THM-3340
Both classes were coal-fired steam turbine-driven and fast (27.5 knots), as well as armed with five 18-inch torpedo tubes (one fixed in bow and four trainable on deck) and two 12-pounder 3″/52 M.07 QF guns.
Danish Torpedobåden Tumleren i Svanemøllebugten, 1915, by Christian Benjamin Olsen. These boats were notoriously smokey especially when using the thrifty Danish navy’s (preferred) cheap coal to stretch training dollars.
The Søridderens went a bit faster than designed on trails, hitting 28.3 knots.
Søridderen class member Flyvefisken, seen in a color period postcard. THM-30779
Søridderen member Flyvefisken, the port view seen underway. THM-4490
Jane’s 1914 listing for the Søridderen class.
The British-designed ships were also seen as more seaworthy than the German-designed boats. However, the events of 1914 precluded further orders.
Meet Soulven
Our subject carried a traditional Danish navy moniker and repeated one used by one of the Scandinavian country’s first batch of torpedo boats, a little 95-footer built in France that remained in service until 1911.
Photo showing the first torpedo boat Søulven, Torpedobaad Nr.5, launched in 1880 at anchor in Copenhagen. The picture also shows the visiting German armored battery ship Heligoland and the French cruiser Chateau Renault. Photographed Sep 8, 1891. THM-9524
The second Danish torpedo boat Soulven joined the fleet in 1911, likely recycling most of the crew of her namesake which was decommissioned at the same time.
Note her forward bow tube and trainable singles.
She would spend her first three years as a training ship, and there are some great images of her pier side conducting training with Madsen light machine guns complete with massive 40-round detachable box magazines. A treat for any gun nerd!
Soluven crew at Flådens Leje with Madsen LMGs THM-6173
Soulven note bridge and Madsens THM-6175
THM-6175 inset
War!
When the Great War began in August 1914, Denmark armed-up to protect her neutrality, having just fought Germany in 1864 and the Brits in 1807. This meant mobilizing 52,000 reserves and new drafts to add to the professional 13,000-man Army and building the 23 km-long Tunestillingen line of defenses outside of Copenhagen. Likewise, the Danish Navy dusted off its guns and torpedo tubes and began to actively patrol its waters.
With that, Soulven left her training duties behind and became the flagship of 1. Torpedobådsflotille, assigned to patrol in the Oresund, the strait that separates Denmark and Sweden.
Torpedo inspection on board Soulven 1914 THM-4687
Her skipper at this time, and dual-hatted commander of the 1st TBF, was Kapt. Eduard Haack, 43, a career regular with 28 years of service on his seabag that included tours in the Danish West Indies (Virgin Islands) on the old steam frigate Jylland, Med cruises on the gunboat St. Thomas and cruiser Hejmdal, a stint as an officer instructor at the service’s NCO academy, service aboard the coastal battleships Iver Hvitfeldt and Herluf Trolle, command of a section of the naval mine corps (Søminekorpsets), and command of the icebreaker/OPV (inspektionsskibet) Absalon on the Greeland-Iceland-Faeroes beat.
Haack was a professional.
Haack, on Iver Hvitfeldt before he war. THM-4745
The E-13 Affair
It was during this time that the British started sending small E-class submarines through the Skagerrak and the Kattegat around Jutland then through the Oresund and across the Baltic to the Tsarist port of Revel in the Gulf of Finland. HMS E-1 and E-9 made it by October 1914, while E-11 turned back. They would soon be joined by HMS E-8, E-18, and E-19. One of their less fortunate sisters was HMS E-13.
Around 2300 on 17 August 1915, while E13 was attempting to make the passage through the Oresund to join the other British Submarines operating with the Tsar’s Navy, she experienced a gyro compass failure and ran aground in the mud on the Danish Island of Saltholm, her hull surrounded by nine feet of water.
English submarine E13 grounded on Saltholm THM-12243.
Spotted by the old (circa 1888) Danish Thornycroft-built torpedo boat Narvalen at 0500 on the morning of 18 August, the Dane dutifully notified E13 they had 24 hours to get unstuck or be interned for the duration. LCDR Geoffrey Layton, RN replied that he understood and would work to free his boat. His executive officer, LT Paul Leathley Eddis, was sent ashore to see if he could arrange a tug.
Soon after, at 0620, two German S90-class large torpedo boats on patrol, SMS G132, and G134, likewise spotted the disabled British sub, with her crew resting atop E13’s casing. The 215-foot S90s were really more destroyer than TB, and ran large at 535 tons, carrying an 88mm gun, two 2″/40 guns, and three torpedo tubes.
S90-class Hochsee-Torpedoboot SMS S-125, a good representative of her class. Photographed by A. Renard of Kiel, probably before 1911. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command NH 45400
To guard the beached sub, flotilla leader Søulven arrived on the scene at 0845 with Narvalen’s sister Støren. The Danish bathtub battleship Peder Skram, armed with 9.4-inch guns and swathed in as much as 8 inches of armor, was just over the horizon and making steam for the area.
With the greenlight from RADM Robert Mischke, head of the Küstenschutzdivision der Ostsee, by radio, at 1028 the German torpedo boats went on the offensive.
Signaling “Abandon Ship Immediately,” G132 and G134 heeled over and made maximum revolutions for the grounded E13, sailing into Danish coastal waters with their guns blazing. Some 15 British submariners were killed outright.
English leave E13 after the shelling, 19 Aug. 1915 THM-4679
Despite being outgunned by the two larger German boats, Søulven’s skipper, Kapt. Haack gave the order to move his boat directly between E13 and the German guns to shield the British, with the Dane calling on the Germans to halt. The maneuver worked and at 1035, the German boats turned away and left Danish waters, having closed to within 300 yards of the submarine. Haack noted that the German commander of G132 raised an arm in the air as a sign that the protest was accepted.
The Danes soon went to work rescuing the survivors of E13, including Storen’s boatswain, one AFP Olsen, who reportedly dived into the frigid water and pulled a wounded Tar, Leading Seaman Herbert Lincoln, off the bottom. Olsen would be awarded an Albert Medal by the British government for his action, but not allowed by the Danish Foreign Ministry to accept it.
The wounded were passed on to Peder Skram, who would take them to Copenhagen. The recovered bodies of 14 of the 15 men lost were loaded aboard Søulven’s sister Søridderen and brought to Lynettehavnen. The 15th was later recovered and joined his shipmates.
The reaction in the British and Scandinavian press to the German violation of neutrality was understandable.
What occurred over the next several days in Denmark was an outpouring of mourning for the British submariners who were killed in their waters. This included some 200 Danish sailors providing an honor guard for the recovered bodies during a funeral procession in Copenhagen where the survivors of E13, clad in Danish dress uniforms, were assisted in carrying their shipmate’s coffins to the refrains of Handel’s Dead March. The proceedings were well-attended by the international legations.
Photos from the event show Haack and his men prominently.
THM-3427
Note the Remington falling block 1867s with sword bayonets. THM-3426
THM-3421
While most foreign bodies recovered in Danish waters during the war– such as Jutland sailors buried at Frederikshavn cemetery– were simply interred in Danish soil with military honors, London approved a Danish ship to carry the E13 crew remains to return speedily to England.
This led the procession solemnly to the Det Forenetede Dampskibsselskab (DFDS) steamer SS Vidar (1,493 tons) while a crowd of thousands of Danes stood by to observe in procession, with Dannebrogs lowered at half-mast across the country.
Vidar carried the remains to Hull, accompanied by the Danish torpedo boats Springeren and Støren as escorts. Vidar carried a Danish Ministry of the Navy’s representative, CDR Rørd Regnar Johannes Hammer, a Knight Commander Dannebrogorden, with 39 years of service on his record, who was responsible for the steamer’s grim cargo. Most were later interred at the Haslar Royal Naval Cemetery. CWGC in Hampshire.
The British consul in Denmark, Robert Erskine, commended the Danish authorities for the dignity and efficiency with which the handling of the dead was conducted.
As for the survivors, interned for the duration of the war under international law, they were put up at the Copenhagen Naval Yard under very loose custody– referred to by the Danes as engelske orlogsgaster (“English military guests”)– and allowed to travel around the city on their own recognizance.
The crew of the English submarine E13 before leaving for Russia in 1915. Half of these men would perish in Danish waters and the other half would cool their heels in Copenhagen for the duration. Had it not been for Soulven, their story would have been likely very different. THM-4680
The Danes likewise “entertained” assorted German naval personnel as well during the war, such as the crew of Zeppelin L.3.
German Navy zeppelin LZ-24 (Luftschiff.3) participated in 24 reconnaissance missions over the North Sea, including the first raid on England on 20 January 1915. She was scuttled by her crew after a forced landing caused by an engine failure during a snowstorm on Fanø Island, Denmark on 17 February 1915. The crew were interned. Remnants of the zeppelin are displayed in a museum in Tonder, Denmark.
Rather than enjoy this comfortable prison, E13‘s skipper, LCDR Layton, accompanied by his No. 1, LT Paul Leathley Eddis, released himself from polite custody/parole, leaving a note behind to explain his actions, and made his way back to England via Sweden three months later.
The rest of E13’s crew remained in Denmark until after the Armistice. The sub’s third officer, Sub-LT William Garriock, RNR, was left behind to command these marooned submariners.
Largely to prevent the Germans from attempting to do so, the Danes recovered E13 and towed it to Copenhagen.
E13 grounded at Saltholm, 1915 THM-6768
Shell-wrecked English submarine, E13, beached at Saltholm THM-12244
Salvage work on English submarine E13 at Saltholm THM-12245
English submarine E 13 under tow between pontoons and salvage steamers Odin and Thor. 1915. THM-4482
Her shell and shrapnel-ridden hull were on public display for the world to see.
English submarine E13 at Copenhagen harbour THM-12255
As were recovered relics including her pierced periscope and a shot-up prayer book.
The sub was put in drydock at Orlogsvaerftet, with her interned sailors allowed to come and claim personal property and mementos. Several even reportedly helped in the ultimately futile three-year effort to repair the vessel and place it in Danish service.
Ultimately, E13 was refloated and tied up alongside the Danish submarine tender Helka in 1918, used for training purposes.
U-bådsstationen, Cophenhangen. Petty officers aboard the Danish submarine tender Hekla in 1918. The group was photographed on deck in front of the ship’s stack. To the right is the tower of the salvaged HMS E13. THM-3494
In February 1919, after the Danish Navy washed their hands of the hulk, the British sold it to a local Danish company for its scrap value.
But back to our Søulven.
Continued Service
Søulven, returning to her role in protecting Denmark’s territorial sea, conducted several rescues and police actions in the Oresund before the end of the war, including capturing Swedish smugglers on two different occasions.
Photo showing the bridge of a torpedo boat with her bow 3″/52. To the left of the picture is the torpedo boat Soulven underway, seen from the front to port. Taken in the 1920s. THM-22312
Transferred to the reserves in 1929, along with her two sisters, Søridderen and Flyvefisken, and the three rival Tumlerens, they were collectively stricken in 1935-1937 and disposed of after they were replaced by the new and very strongly armed torpedo boats of the Dragen and Glenten classes.
Their hulls were stripped of anything usable and scrapped, with their 3″/52s recycled for use as coastal artillery around the Danish littoral for another decade.
Danish Den næstnordligste 7,5 cm kanon i Hørhaven from old torpedo boats
Epilogue
Of our cast of characters, Soulven’s skipper and commander of the 1st TBF during the Great War, Eduard Haack, finished the war as head of coastal defense for Northern Denmark. He retired from the Navy in 1920, with his last post as inspector of lighthouses. He became chief ship inspector at Statens Skibstilsyn, the Danish Shipping Authority, the next year, and remained in that post until 1936. He then helped organize the Icelandic Shipping Authority and received, among other things, a knighthood in the Icelandic Falcon Order (Islandske Falkeorden) and was made a commander of the Dannebrogordenen order. Capt. Haack passed in 1956 and is buried at St. Olai cemetery in Kalundborg, aged 85.
The German admiral who gave the go-ahead for the attack on E13, Mischke, would end the war as a vizeadmiral and pass in 1932. His family is the owner of Lahneck Castle, which he purchased in 1907.
The two torpedo boats used in the attack on E13, G132, and G134, at the end of the war were disarmed and served as minesweepers out of Cuxhaven. Retained briefly by the Reichsmarine they were scrapped in 1921.
E13’s skipper went on to be known as ADM Sir Geoffrey Layton, GBE, KCB, KCMG, DSO. After returning to England via Sweden in time for Christmas in 1915, he was given command of the experimental steam submarine HMS S-1. Transitioning to capital ships in the 1930s, he started WWII as commander of the 1st Battle Squadron, consisting of the battleships HMS Barham, HMS Warspite, and HMS Malaya. Sent to command the ill-fated China Station in September 1940, he handed it over to Tom Phillips just before the Japanese went ham in the Pacific in December 1941. He went on to command British forces in Ceylon through 1945. Retiring in 1947 as head of Portsmouth, he passed in 1964.
ADM Layton
Layton’s XO, LT Paul Eddis, survived continued submarine service in the Great War only to be killed when his boat, HMS L24, was tragically lost with all hands in a collision with the battleship HMS Resolution off Portland on 10 January 1924. Subs are a dangerous game even in peacetime.
Speaking of which, the funeral transport for E13’s 15 recovered sailors, the Danish steamer Vidar, was herself sent to the bottom during WWII while traveling from Grimsby to Esbjerg via the Tyne with coal and general cargo, torpedoed by the German submarine U-21 (Kptlt. Wolf-Harro Stiebler) in the North Sea in January 1940– four months before Germany invaded neutral Denmark. In tragic irony, she carried 15 of her crew to the bottom.
The very well-marked Vidar. Photo courtesy of Danish Maritime Museum, Elsinore
The Danes would recycle the name of Soulven for use with a new class of fast torpedo boats ordered in the early 1960s from Britain (heard that before?). This Danish third torpedo boat Soulven (P 515) would serve from 1967 to 1990.
Danish Sea Lion Class Vosper PT boat MTB P 515 Søulven (The Sea Wolf)
Ships are more than steel and wood And heart of burning coal, For those who sail upon them know That some ships have a soul.
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Warship Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024: Skill and Perseverance
Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-272783
Above we see, some 80 years ago this week, the Cleveland-class light cruiser, USS Houston (CL-81), making like a submarine with her decks nearly awash. This is not an optical illusion. She is seen under tow on 17 October 1944, after she had been torpedoed twice by Japanese aircraft during operations off Formosa. The first torpedo hit Houston amidships on 14 October. The second struck the cruiser’s starboard quarter just 43 hours later while she was limping away.
A ship with a standard design displacement of 11,744 long tons, it was later estimated that, in the above image, she was so full of water that she was at some 20,900 tons.
The Clevelands
When the U.S. Navy took off the shackles of the London Naval Treaty and moved to make a series of new light cruisers, they based the design on the last “treaty” limited 10,000-ton Brooklyn-class light cruiser, USS Helena (CL-50), which was commissioned in 1939 (and was torpedoed and sunk in the Battle of Kula Gulf in 1943).
The resulting Cleveland class was stood up fast, with the first ship laid down in July 1940. Soon, four East Coast shipyards were filling their ways with their hulls.
The Cleveland class, via ONI 54R, 1943
The changes to the design were mostly in the armament, with the new light cruisers carrying a dozen 6″/47 Mark 16 guns in four triple turrets– rather than the 15 guns arranged in five turrets in Helena as the latter’s No. 3 gun turret was deleted.
The modification allowed for a stronger secondary armament (6 dual 5″/38 mounts and as many as 28 40mm Bofors and 20 20mm Oerlikon guns) as well as some strengthening in the hull. Notably, the latter may have worked as one of the class, USS Miami (CL-89), lost her bow to Typhoon Cobra but lived to tell the tale.
Much overloaded at more than 14,000 tons when fully loaded, these ships were cramped and top-heavy, which led to many further mods such as deleting catapults, aircraft, and rangefinders as the conflict went on to keep them from rolling dangerously.
Although 52 hulls were planned, only 27 made it to the fleet as cruisers while nine were completed while on the craving dock to Independence-class light carriers. A further baker’s dozen (of which only two were completed, and those too late for WWII service) were reordered as Fargo-class cruisers, which was basically a Cleveland with a single funnel and a redesigned, more compact, superstructure.
Remarkably, although the Clevelands saw much hard service in WWII, none were lost in action. No other cruiser design in history has seen so many units sail off to war and all return home.
The Cleveland class in the 1946 edition of Jane’s.
Meet Houston
Our subject is the third U.S. Navy warship to carry the name of the Lone Star State’s city which itself is named in honor of Sam Houston.
Originally slated to be named USS Vicksburg, CL-81 was renamed on the ways to honor the sacrifice of the Northampton-class heavy cruiser USS Houston (CL/CA-30)which was tragically lost in a storm of Japanese torpedoes during the Battle of Sunda Strait on 1 March 1942, a vessel whose legacy is cherished in her home state. That ship’s 1,000-man crew all either perished or were “rescued” from the sea by the Japanese and sent to hellish POW camps.
That doomed cruiser had a special link to her “hometown” and would visit it three times between 1930 and 1939, collecting a special Silver Service donated from public subscription from city leaders.
USS Houston (CA-30) view taken at Houston, Texas, in late 1930, when the ship visited the city after which she had been named. Courtesy of Captain Henri H. Smith-Hutton USN ret., 1976 NH 85177
Two months after CA-30 was lost, 1,000 young men, the “Houston Volunteers,” mustered for service to replace those lost on the cruiser and, sworn in by RADM William A. Glassford before a local crowd of 150,000, unveiled a 60-foot model of the vessel before leaving directly for Naval Training Center San Diego aboard five special trains.
Likewise, the Harris County War Bond Drive raised over $85 million, enough to not only replace the USS Houston but also to build the light carrier USS San Jacinto (CVL-30). Don’t mess with Texas, indeed.
30 May 1942. Caption: “1000 men of Houston, Texas are sworn into U.S. Navy in a mass enlistment ceremony to replace 1,000 lost on cruiser ‘Houston’.” University of Houston Libraries Special Collections. do8941zg26p
Building the new USS Houston (CL 81) at Norfolk Navy Yard, Norfolk, Virginia, for launching on June 19, 1943. Workmen lifting a steel deck plate weighing many hundreds of pounds into place. Photograph released May 31, 1943. 80-G-68627
Building the new USS Houston (CL 81) at Norfolk Navy Yard, Norfolk, Virginia, for launching on June 19, 1943. Looking through the huge anchor-eye are John W. Jackson and Wilson Majors, both steamfitters. 80-G-68632
When it came time to find a sponsor for this new cruiser, Mrs. Claud Hamill, who led the campaign to raise funds for the second cruiser Houston, was the logical choice. She led a group of 20 Houstonians to the event and christened the vessel “on behalf of the people of Houston who ensured the perpetuation of a beloved American name in a great fighting ship!”
“Norfolk, Va., 19 June 1943– Mrs. Claude Hammill, of Houston, Texas, smashes a bottle of champagne against the bow of the new cruiser, Houston, as the ship starts down the ways at her launching 19 June 1943 at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co., Newport News, Va. In the picture reading from the extreme left are Senator Tom Connally, of Texas, Governor Coke Stevenson, of Texas, Jesse Jones, Secretary of Commerce, Mayor Otis Massey, of Houston, Lieutenant Commander Wilson Starbuck, Public Relations Officer of the Fifth Naval District, and (front) Rear Admiral O.L. Cox, Supervisor of Shipbuilding at the Yard.” University of Houston Libraries Special Collections. do9829b816n
Future USS Houston (CL-81) Being christened by Mrs. Claude Hamill at Newport News, Virginia, 19 June 1943. 19-N-47116
USS Houston (CL-81) launched, at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company shipyard, Newport News, Virginia, 19 June 1943. 19-N-47114
Commissioned on 20 December 1943, she would spend the next four months conducting shakedown and training cruises ranging from Boston to the Caribbean.
Her first skipper was Capt. William Wohlsen Behrens, a 45-year-old Mustang who had served during the Great War as an enlisted man on submarine patrol off the Atlantic Coast later picked up his butter bar after attending Temple University.
And his cruiser was beautiful!
USS Houston (CL-81) off the Norfolk Navy Yard, Virginia, 11 January 1944. She is painted in Camouflage Measure 32, Design 1d. Photograph from the Bureau of Ships Collection in the U.S. National Archives. 19-N-60240
Same as the above. Note her extensive radar fit including SG, SK-2, Mk 13, and twin Mk 25 radars. 19-N-60241
Same as the above. Just a great example of Measure 32, Design 1d for modelers. 19-N-60239
USS Houston (CL-81) vertical photograph of the ship underway off Norfolk, Virginia, 12 January 1944. This gives a fantastic view of her dozen 6″/47s, dozen 5″38s, 24 40mm Bofors, and 21 Oerlikons as well as her twin stern cats. 80-G-214194
USS Houston (CL-81) off Norfolk, Virginia, 12 January 1944. She is painted in Camouflage Measure 32, Design 1d. 80-G-214200
USS Houston (CL-81) underway off the U.S. East Coast, on 26 January 1944 on shakedown. NH 50219
War!
Catching orders to head to the Pacific, Houston arrived at Pearl Harbor on 6 May 1944 via the Panama Canal and San Diego and by the end of the month would join VADM Marc Mitscher’s fast carrier Task Force 58 at Majuro Atoll.
Her baptism of fire would occur in June as she screened those flattops on their raids of the Marianas and the Bonins— losing one of her Kingfishers to an accident on the 12th– before turning to Saipan for the Marianas campaign by mid-month.
After spending two weeks screening TF 58 as its carries haunted Saipan from 90 miles offshore during “The Marianas Turkey Shoot,” Houston was dispatched on 27 June, along with sister USS Miami (CL-89) and six escorting destroyers, as a surface action group with orders to shell Japanese-occupied Guam and Rota.
Houston let her big guns sing for the first time, delivering 542 6″/47 HC shells and 313 of 5″/38 AA Common. Her spotting planes reported her guns to have knocked out a dozen aircraft on the ground and set alight a factory building and three large fuel storage tanks.
Of this action, Behrens noted that “While the expenditure of ammunition was high for the results obtained on targets other than the airfield, I consider it well spent, in view of the experience gained by all hands. Firing at the radio or radar stations at Rota and Guam eliminated the nervousness apparent in firing at these first targets on both islands. The performance of all personnel was most satisfactory.”
Early September found her on another sortie with USS Miami, this time joined by sister USS Vincennes (CL-64), to plaster Japanese positions on Angaur, Peleliu, Ngesebus, and Palau. This time she spent 884 6-inch and 661 5-inch shells. Miami narrowly beat her, ripping off 900 of each.
Houston then rejoined her carrier task force and screened it during airfield reduction strikes in the Philippines before returning to Peleliu to support the forces landing there in mid-September.
October saw her weather a 60-knot tropical storm at Ulithi Atoll on the 3rd before standing out against Nasei Shoto and Formosa as part of Task Group 38.2– the fleet carriers USS Bunker Hill, Intrepid, and Hancock; the light carriers USS Independence (loaded with night fighters) and Cabot; the battlewagons USS Iowa and New Jersey; and the anti-aircraft cruisers USS San Diego and Oakland. By the 10th, the TG was sending aircraft on raids against Okinawa.
On 11 October, Houston’s deck log noted “several enemy snoopers” probing the TG’s boundary and at least one unidentified submarine was spotted.
Behrens noted, “It does not appear that tomorrow’s strike on Formosa will be a complete surprise to the Japanese.”
Indeed, 12 October saw much excitement, with Houston splashing four Japanese land-based torpedo bombers while filling the air with 5,000 rounds of AAA and suffering two men with shrapnel wounds. The aircraft included new radar-equipped Mitsubishi Type 4 Ki-67 Hiryu (flying dragon)(“Peggy”) Army twin-engine heavy bombers of Imperial Army Air Force (IJAAF) Air Combat Group (Hiko Sentai) 98.
Houston helped repel another attack the next day, in which the brand-new Baltimore-class heavy cruiser USS Canberra (CA-70) suffered damage. The leviathan, part of nearby Task Group 38.2, was holed by a Type 91, Mod. 3 torpedo that hit below her armor belt at the engineering spaces and blew a jagged hole in her side, killing 23 men outright. Due to the location of the wound, a whopping 4,500 tons of water flooded her after fireroom and both engine rooms, leaving the cruiser dead in the water and had to be taken under tow by the cruiser USS Wichita (CA-45).
With Houston ordered to take the limping Canberra’s spot on the screen the next day, just after sunset on the 14th, the flying dragons of Hiko Sentai 98 caught up to her as night fell. She struck down three of the attackers but caught a tough-to-fight torpedo directly under her hull.
USS Houston (CL-81) view looking aft, showing damage to the ship’s stern area resulting from a torpedo hit amidships received off Formosa on 14 October 1944. This photo was taken while Houston was under tow, but prior to the second torpedo hit on 16 October. Note the OS2U floatplane that had been jarred off the port catapult, breaking its wing on impact with the aircraft crane. 19-N-106304
From Behrens’ report:
The Excruciating Limp
As with the stricken Canberra, which was being slowly pulled away from Formosa by Wichita, a heavy cruiser, USS Boston (CA-69), came to the stricken Houston’s aid and took her under tow on the morning of the 15th. By midnight both Canberra and Houston were under tow to Ulithi for repairs at a stately 5 knots.
Houston transferred no less than 776 of her officers and men to escorting destroyers while a force of 450 remained behind to attempt to save their home. The radio room was ordered to destroy most of the ship’s codes and ciphers in case she had to be abandoned.
A destroyer alongside the damaged USS Houston (CL-81) (right) on 15 October 1944, removing excess crewmen after she was torpedoed by Japanese aircraft off Formosa. Photographed from USS Boston (CA-69). Note OS2U floatplane on Boston’s port catapult. 80-G-272781
Her men waged war against the sea and their home’s own warren of twisted steel and buried their found dead in the briny embrace of the warm and unforgiving blue Pacific. Among the dead was her engineering officer, CDR William H. Potts (USNA 1927), killed when Main Engine No. 1 was wrecked. Two other men trapped in the after fire room had been killed by fatal burns.
USS Houston (CL-81). Burial at sea for crewmen killed when the ship was torpedoed off Formosa on 14 October 1944. Photographed while Houston was under tow on 15 October. 19-N-110835.
With an 8-degree starboard list and a draft of 34 feet (against a normal mean maximum of 25 feet), Behrens ordered the cruiser’s port anchor jettisoned and her port chain payed out to 90 fathoms to keep the ship as even as possible.
Everything quickly got primitive as the ship was flooded to the third deck and the heat of the tropics set in:
The fleet tugs USS Munsee (ATF-107) and Pawnee (ATF-74) assumed the tows of Canberra and Houston on 16 October.
Then, that afternoon, the Japanese caught up to Houston once again and she soon caught another torpedo that wrecked her hangar and flooded her steering compartment.
Japanese aerial torpedo explodes against the ship’s starboard quarter, during the afternoon of 16 October 1944. Houston had been torpedoed amidships on 14 October, while off Formosa, and was under tow by USS Pawnee (ATF-74) when enemy torpedo planes hit her again. USS Canberra (CA-70), also torpedoed off Formosa, is under tow in the distance. The original photograph is in the USS Santa Fe (CL-60) Log, a very large photo album held by the Navy Department Library. NH 98825
Behrens noted that, “In the midst of the action, our towing vessel, Pawnee, sent us a very encouraging message saying, ‘We’ll hold on,’ and continued to make the usual 5 knots in the right direction.”
Later that afternoon, Behrens ordered more of his crew taken off by escorting destroyers. By dusk, there only remained 48 officers and 152 men left on board– with six of them too gravely wounded to risk moving. With sick bay in the dark and with no ventilation, the cruiser’s guest cabin was converted to a hospital, and the wounded were brought on deck whenever conditions permitted.
On the 17th, assisted by four gasoline-driven pumps sent over by Pawnee, Houston decreased her draft to 32.5 feet and her list to 6 degrees.
This slow parade continued for days, with the Diver-class rescue and salvage ship USS Current (ARS-22) arriving alongside and sending over experts and the fleet tug USS Zuni (AT-95) taking Houston in tandem tow with Pawnee.
With almost zero reserve buoyancy left, the days were spent lowering–by hand, block, and rope– 130-pound 6″/47 shells from the shell decks of the four main turrets to the lower handling rooms to help shift the cruiser’s center of gravity.
Armored doors were unbolted and, wrestled above deck, were cast overboard. Searchlight and gun director platforms were torched off and either used for patching material or thrown over the side as were many 20mm and 40mm guns. Abovedeck ammo stores were tossed. Anything too vital to Deep Six was transferred to LCVPs and whaleboats to give to escorting destroyers to store. Rank didn’t exist and officers worked on the repair parties alongside ratings.
Luckily, fresh water had been stored in forward voids as ballast and was siphoned off for cleaning and drinking. Behrens observed, “It had a strong paint and rust taste but did much to quench the thirst.”
On the morning of 27 October, with the help of several tugs, a still very wet and soggy Houston slipped through the Mugai Channel and moored alongside the repair ship and floating workshop USS Hector (AR-7) at Ulithi Atoll, wrapping a 1,250nm mile tow that took 13 days, at an average rate of 4 knots.
Behrens finished with this observation:
USS Houston (CL-81) alongside USS Hector (AR-7) at Ulithi Atoll, 1 November 1944. She was under repair after being hit by two Japanese aerial torpedoes on 14 and 16 October, during operations off Formosa. An LCM is passing by in the foreground. 80-G-373678
After temporary repairs, Houston proceeded to Manus on 14 December under tow by the tugs USS Lipan and Arapaho and escorted by a screen of three destroyer escorts and a coastal minesweeper. Making 6.5 knots, the little convoy (Task Unit 30.9.14) made Manus six days later.
The advantage of having a forward-deployed Advanced Base Sectional DryDock (ABSD) became readily apparent. After waiting in Seeadler Harbor over the Christmas holidays, Houston entered ABSD No. 2. after USS Reno (CL-96) floated out on 7 January 1945.
Overhauls of two light cruisers at a Pacific Base inside ABSD, circa 1944-45. USS Reno (CL-96) and USS Houston (CL-81) 80-G-K-2963
USS Houston (CL-81) damage to the ship’s hull, amidships, from a Japanese aerial torpedo hit received off Formosa on 14 October 1944. The torpedo struck the ship on her bottom, inboard of the starboard bilge keel, while she was in a turn, producing the inward displacement of bottom plating seen here. Photographed in an ABSD floating drydock at Ulithi Atoll while Houston was under repair, circa November 1944. 19-N-105803
After three weeks in dry dock, Houston floated out on Valentine’s Day 1945 and, with only No. 2 and 3 main engines and Nos. 1, 2, and 4 boilers available, she was able to operate under her own steam for the first time in four months and logged a remarkable speed of 23.4 knots.
By 16 February, along with the wounded but patched up Reno and the tin can USS Bowers (DE-637), Houston and company left Manus for Pearl Harbor, zig-zagging at 16 knots. Arriving in Hawaii on 24 February, after a three-day port call and much-needed libo, Reno and Houston set course for San Pedro, California on 27 February.
Crossing through “The Ditch” a much different cruiser than when she passed just 10 months prior, Houston eventually steamed to the New York Navy Yard, arriving on 24 March 1945. Reno followed her almost the whole way, only peeling off at Charleston three days prior.
Six months later, with an extensive rebuilding almost complete, the war ended with Houston still in New York.
Houston received three battle stars for World War II service.
Capt. Behrens was relieved and was assigned duty as Commander, Naval Training Center Bainbridge, Maryland, and served there in the rank of Commodore.
Peacetime Showboat
Her repairs complete, our subject visited her namesake city just after VJ Day to show the flag and line the decks for Navy Week in October 1945. Besides, she needed to show the taxpayers and Bond buyers what they paid for back in 1942.
Crowd on shoreline along the Houston Ship Channel to welcome the USS Houston (CL-81) light cruiser during Navy Week, October 1945. University of Houston Libraries Special Collections. do66558f697
Civilians along the Houston Ship Channel welcome the USS Houston (CL-81) light cruiser during Navy Week, October 1945. Sailors in uniform line the decks. University of Houston Libraries Special Collections do26967446b
Civilians along the Houston Ship Channel welcome the USS Houston (CL-81) light cruiser during Navy Week. Sailors in uniform line the decks. The cruiser carries two new Curtiss SC-1 Seahawk floatplanes– a type that only entered service in October 1944– with their wings folded. University of Houston Libraries Special Collections do5460qs96s
From April to December 1946, Houston was sent on a European and Mediterranean cruise, visiting cities in Scandinavia, Portugal, Italy, and Egypt.
Stockholm. Ships include the elderly (circa 1915) 6,700-ton Swedish coastal battleship (Pansarskeppet) HSwMS Sverige along with the light cruiser sisters USS Houston and USS Little Rock (CL-92), while the new Gearing class destroyers USS Perry (DD-844), Glennon (DD-840), Warrington (DD-843) and Cone (DD-866) are arrayed at pier side and in the distance, along with Swedish jageren (destroyers). Eskaderbild.eskader på Stockholms Ström 11. Juli 1946. Sjöhistoriska museet. Fo219541
Following a second Med cruise with Cruiser Division 12 in 1947, upon returning to Philadelphia, Houston decommissioned 15 December 1947.
Placed in reserve, she swayed on Philly’s redlead row until, stricken from the Navy List on 1 March 1959, she was sold for scrap to Boston Metals on 1 June 1961 and scrapped.
Epilogue
The Clevelands, always overloaded and top-heavy despite their hard service and dependability, were poor choices for post-war service and most were laid up directly after VJ Day with only one, USS Manchester (CL-83), still in service as an all-gun cruiser past 1950, lingering until 1956 and seeing much Korean War duty, successfully completing three combat tours with no major battle damage.
Six went on to see further service as Galveston and Providence-class missile slingers after an extensive topside rebuild and remained in service through the 1970s. One of these, USS Little Rock (CL-92/CLG-4/CG-4) has been preserved at the Buffalo Naval & Military Park, the only Cleveland currently above water.
The third USS Houston has a marker at the National Museum of the Pacific War.
She is remembered in maritime art and scale models.
That Houston survived two torpedo hits which produced a precarious stability condition, extensive flooding, serious loss of structural strength amidships and a severe gasoline fire is due for the most part to the intelligent approach of her personnel to the damage control problems with which they were confronted and the skill and perseverance with which they carried out the control measures initiated.
USS Houston (CL-81) Plate I, Torpedo Damage. Formosa. 14-16 Oct. 1944. Profile of Vessel Heeled 30° to Port
As for her wartime skipper, RADM Behrens retired from the Navy in 1947, capping a 30-year career across two World Wars. Not bad for a Mustang.
He earned a Navy Cross for his time on Houston:
“For extraordinary heroism as Commanding Officer of the USS Houston, during action against enemy Japanese forces off Formosa on October 14, 1944. With his ship dead in the water and listing violently in the heavy seas following an enemy aerial attack, Commodore (then Captain) Behrens remained steadfast and calm, efficiently directing damage control measures and the removal of personnel to other ships in the formation before his crippled ship was taken in tow by another cruiser. With his ship again under attack by hostile aircraft two days later, he inspired his officers and men to heroic effort, maintaining control and contributing in large measure to his ship’s successful return to a friendly port. By his valiant leadership, determination, and grave concern for the safety of his ship and her crew. Commodore Behrens upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.”
His son, VADM William Wholsen Behrens, Jr. (USNA 1943), survived WWII service in the Submarine Force with six war patrols and a Silver Star to prove it then was involved in 28 amphibious operations during Vietnam. He capped his service as the first head of the newly organized National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 1972 and passed in 1986. He is also in Arlington. Good genes in that family.
The fourth USS Houston (SSN-713) was an early Flight I Los Angeles class hunter killer. Launched in 1981, this submarine was christened by Barbara Bush, wife of then Vice President George Bush which was appropriate as, while a Navy Avenger pilot (of a plane he named “Barbara”) in WWII, Bush crashed in the Pacific and was rescued by a submarine. The luckiest of her namesakes, she served a long career (33 years, 11 months, and 1 day) without loss and was decommissioned in 2016.
USS Houston (SSN-713) port quarter view of the nuclear-powered attack submarine USS Houston (SSN-713), foreground, and the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kenney (CV-67), background, departing Hampton Roads for a patrol. August 17, 1982. DN-ST-89-01391
The Navy desperately needs a fifth Houston, and maybe a first USS Behrens.
Ships are more than steel and wood And heart of burning coal, For those who sail upon them know That some ships have a soul.
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An unusual sight in North Carolina’s Hurricane Helene devastated areas are volunteer mule teams.
With hundreds of miles of roads washed out and no guarantee of helicopter LZs in some places, folks like the Mountain Mule Packer Ranch are stepping up.
If you think that a few mule trains can’t help, remember how much baby formula, insulin, med packs, diapers, and other critical items can be crammed into those big packs. At least it’s a band-aid until the more large-scale operations get ramped up.
Above we see the business end of the Surprise class three-masted canonnière de station, Zéléein her gleaming white tropical service livery, before 1915.
Some 110 years ago this week, this humble colonial gunboat stood up to a pair of German armored cruisers that outclassed her in every way, and in the end, forced them to retire empty-handed.
The Surprise class
Built for colonial service, the three sisters of the 680-ton Surprise class– Suprise, Décidée (Decided), and Zelee (Zealous)– were compact steam-powered gunboats/station ships, running just 184 feet overall length and 26 of beam with a mean draught of just over 10 feet.
They were one of the last designs by noted French naval architect and engineer Jacques-Augustin Normand, who built the country’s first steamship.
Composite construction, they were wooden framed with a hull of hardened steel plates sheathed in copper below the waterline. The hull was segmented via nine waterproof bulkheads. A small generator provided electric lighting topside and belowdecks as well as a powering a large searchlight atop the wheelhouse. Radio sets would be retrofitted later.
Using a pair of Niclausse boilers (Surprise had cylindrical boilers) to supply steam to a horizontal triple expansion engine of 900 horses, they had a maximum speed of 13.4 knots and a steaming radius, on 75 tons of mid-grade coal, of 2,700nm at 10 knots. They carried three masts and were rigged as a barkentine, reportedly able to make six knots under canvas to stretch that endurance.
Armament was a pair of Mle 1891 3.9″/45 guns, fore and aft with limited firing arcs, four Mle 1891 2.6″/50 9-pounders on the beam, and six M1885 37mm 1-pounder Hotchkiss rapid fire guns including one in the fighting tops of each mast and two on the bridge wings.
No shell hoists meant chain gangs to reload from an amidships below deck magazine. While torpedo tubes would have been ideal for these slow gunboats, there seems to have been no thought to adding them.
Crew would be a mix of six officers and 80-ish ratings including space for a small det of marines (Fusiliers marins), to be able to land a platoon-sized light infantry force to rough it up with the locals if needed. Speaking of the locals, in line with American and British overseas gunboats of the era, when deployed to the Far East these craft typically ran hybrid crews with most service and many deck rates recruited from Indochina and Polynesia, which had the side bonus of having pidgin translators among the complement.
Meet Zelee
Our gunboat was the second in French naval service to carry the name. The first was a trim 103-foot Chevrette-class corvette built at Toulon for the Napoleonic fleet and commissioned in 1812. Armed with a pair of 4-pounder cannon and 12-pounder carronades, she saw extensive service in the Spanish Civil War in 1823, was on the Madagascar Expedition in 1830, and later, after conversion to steam power in 1853, was used as a station ship in assorted French African colonies for a decade then, recalled to Lorient, spent another 20 years as an accommodation ship and powder hulk before she was finally disposed of in 1887 after a long 71-year career.
She is probably best known for taking part in Jules Dumont d’Urville’s second polar expedition to Antarctica together with the corvette Astrolabe, a successful four-year voyage that filled reams of books with new observations and charts. The report on the expedition (Voyage au pole sud et dans l’Océanie sur les corvettes l’Astrolabe et la Zélée exécuté par ordre du roi pendant les années 1837-1838-1839-1840) spans 10 volumes alone.
The expedition discovered what is known as Adélie Land, which endures as France’s Antarctic territory and base for their Dumont d’Urville Station. Zelee’s skipper on the voyage was LT (later VADM) Charles Hector Jacquinot, a noted French polar explorer in his own right who went on to be a big wheel in the Crimean War.
The Corvettes Astrolabe and Zélée in the ice, likely near the coast of Antarctica, 9 February 1838. By Auguste-Etienne-François Mayer c. 1850, via the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Our second Zelee was the third of her class and laid down at Arsenal de Rochefort in April 1898, built in the same slip that sister Décidée had just departed. Of note, Surprise was constructed by Normand at Le Havre and completed in 1896.
As completed, she originally carried a black hull. Her first of eight skippers was LT Louis Rémy Antoine Exelmans.
French gunboat Zélée, fitting out near the aviso Mésange, in 1899 at Rochefort.
Canonnière Zélée sur la Charente, 1900, soon after delivery.
Same as the above.
Quiet Antebellum Service
Soon after delivery, class leader Surprise was later joined by sisters Décidée and Zelee caught orders for the Far East.
Painted white and given a lot of leeway in appearance, they roamed, typically separately, from Indochina to China where they served on the Yangtze and as station ships in Nanchang, to Japan, New Caledonia, and Polynesia.
Décidée Saigon
French Canonnière de station Surprise, Haiphong, with canvas covering her decks and her laundry aloft. Surprise would later be moved to Africa, where she would remain until 1916.
The gunboat Zélée in Hanavave Bay, Baie des Vierges, Fatu Hiva Island, 1910. Collection: The Marquesas Islands
Zelee while visiting Australia. Australian National Maritime Museum. Samuel J. Hood Studio ~ Object № 00035067
French Zélée gunboat Papeete Tahiti
In December 1913, Lieutenant de Vaisseau Maxime Francois Emile Destremau (Ecole Navale 1892) arrived to take command of Zelee, then stationed in the backwater Tahitian capital of Papeete.
While ostensibly a “French” colony since 1880, at the time the little harbor only had 280 French residents along with over 350 British and Commonwealth, 215 Chinese, 100 Americans, 50 Japanese, and some 30 or so Germans as well as a few Greeks, Swedes, and Spaniards. The truth was you were far more likely at the time to hear English on the narrow palm-lined streets of Papeete than French.
The colony had big plans. It was even slated to receive, sometime in 1915, a station de téléphonie sans (TFS) wireless station. Until then, it had to rely on semi-regular mail services from France, typically a six-week trip at its most rapid.
As for Destremau, the 37-year-old lieutenant had seen over 20 years of sea service including on the avisoes Scorff and Eure, the cruiser Eclaireur, and the early submarines Narval, Gustave-Zéde and Pluviose. His mission in French Oceania consisted mainly of showing the Tricolor from island to island and doing the old “hearts and minds” thing that goes back to the Romans.
Destremau, who had spent his career largely at Toulon and Brest, seemed to enjoy his Pacific deployment, creeping his shallow-draft gunboat into atolls that rarely saw the Navy.
Since yesterday we have been sailing in a truly strange way. We have crossed a large lagoon of about sixty kilometers, of which there is no map and which is full of submerged rocks. You can distinguish them by the change in color of the water and you avoid them as best you can. After four hours of this exercise under a blazing sun, we are very happy to arrive at the anchorage, where I find a charming little village hidden in the coconut trees. As the Zélée had never been there, we were given a real ovation. A meeting on the water’s edge of the entire population in full dress; gifts of coconuts and chickens, and organization of songs for the evening. Ravishing choirs, extremely accurate voices, and harmonies of a truly astonishing modernism. Just ten men and ten women are enough to compose an ensemble in at least six parts, with solo calls, an ensemble in at least six parts, with solo calls, admirable rhythm, and measure!
Postcards exist of her idyllic time in Polynesia.
gunboat Zélée (left) and the armored cruiser Montcalm in Tahiti in 1914
Tahiti Papeete Harbor– Arrival of Australian and American Couriers, Zelee is in the center background, with a giant Tricolor
Tahiti. – Pirogues ornées, 14 Juillet 1914, et Zelee
War!
In early August 1914, the entire armada under the command of RADM Albert Louis Marie Huguet’s Division navale d’Extreme-Orient— a force whose area of operation spanned from the Bay of Bengal to the Yangtze to Noumea to Tahiti– was not very impressive and, worse, was thinly spread.
His flag was on the cruiser Montcalm (9,177 tons, 21 knots, 2×7.6″, 8×6.4″, circa 1902), then steaming to New Caledonia after a rare visit to Polynesia. Another old cruiser, Dupleix (7,432 tons, 20 knots, 8×6.4″, circa 1903), was in Chinese waters. The dispatch vessel Kersaint (1,276 tons, 16 knots, 1×5.5″, 5×3.9″, circa 1897) was laid up at Noumea but was soon to be rearmed. Décidée was in Saigon. And in Polynesia was Zelee.
That’s it.
When the news hit that France and Germany were at war on 6 August– three days after the fact– Zelee was visiting the island of Raiatea, about 150 miles west of Tahiti. Immediately, the 36-year-old artist Joseph Ange Léon Octave Morillot, a naval officer who had resigned his commission in 1906 while on Polynesian station to go native, paint local topless women, and smoke opium, presented himself to Destremau and voluntarily returned to duty as a reserve ensign.
Setting out for Papeete with the news and an extra officer, Zelee arrived on the 7th.
By that time the colony was in full panic mode, with the belief that the German Bussard-class unprotected cruisers SMS Geierand Cormoran(1900t, 15 knots, 8×4.1″/35 guns, 2 tt) were typically in Samoa, just a five-day steam away from Tahiti. As Tahiti was a coaling station for the French fleet, some 5,000 tons of good Cardiff coal was on hand, which would make a valuable prize indeed.
As far as coastal defenses at Tahiti, as early as 1880, the French Navy had built a fort equipped with nine muzzle-loading black powder cannons to protect the entrance to Papeete but it had fallen into disrepair, its garrison removed in 1905 and its guns dismounted. As noted, by 1914, “the artillery pieces were lying limply on the ground among the flowers and moss. The gun carriages, covered with climbing plants, were firmly secured by a tangle of perennial vines of the most beautiful effect. In short, the tropical forest, exuberant, had reclaimed its rights and buried the battery.”
The island’s Army garrison consisted of a Corsican lieutenant by the name of Lorenzi and 25 Troupes Coloniales. When the Tahitian gendarmes were mobilized, they added another 20 locals and a French adjutant. Soon the word got around and reservists stumbled forward until Lorenzi commanded a mixed force of 60 rifles, who were soon drilling 12 hours a day.
French reservists also come running. each of whom is assigned a post. From the bush, we see emerging, with long beards and tanned skin, Frenchmen steeped in the land of Tahiti and who have become more Maori than the Maoris themselves, men who live, love, and think in Tahitian. At first, they hesitate a little to speak the beautiful language of France, but very quickly they find it again in their heads the marching songs that they sang every day during the field service hikes, so hard under the tropical sun.
With the possibility that two German cruisers, capable of landing a 150-man force, could be inbound, and with the likelihood that Zelee could survive a gun battle with either, the decision was made to write off the gunboat and move most of her men and guns ashore to make a dedicated land-based defense.
Destremau had a small wardroom– Ensign 1c PTJ Barnaud as XO, Ensign LSM Barbier, Ensign RJ Charron, Midshipman H. Dyevre, Midshipman 2c JA Morier, and Asst. Surgeon (Medecin de 2e classe, Medecin-major) C. Hederer. Meanwhile, his crew numbered 90.
Using sweat, yardarm hoists, and jacks, the crew dismounted the stern 3.9-incher (for which there were only 38 shells), all four 2.6-inchers, and all six 37mm 1-pounder Hotchkiss guns. They left the forward 3.9 mount and 10 shells.
Rigging a line from the harbor to the top of the 100-meter hill overlooking it, a roadcrew was formed to slowly muscle up the five large guns to the top. Meanwhile, the six Hotchkiss guns were mounted on as many requisitioned Ford trucks from a local copra concern– primitive mobile artillery– led by Ensign Dyevre. Ensign Barnaud formed a group of 42 riflemen who, with Dyevre’s gun trucks, formed a mobile reserve.
Destremau (center, with cap) and his staff in Tahiti: Ensigns Barbier and Barnaud, midshipmen Dyèvre and Le Breton, colonial infantry LT Lorenzi.
One of the ship’s engineers formed a section of dispatch riders mounted on proffered bicycles. The signalers formed a series of semaphore stations at the top of the hill battery visible to the old fort 18 km to the east, and the end of the lagoon five km to the west. Bonfires were built to signal at night. Within days, telephone lines connected the whole affair. Two old bronze cannons were mounted at the hilltop semaphore station and Pic Rouge in the distance, ready to fire as signal guns. Gunners mined the channel markers, ready to blow when needed. Likewise, plans were made to burn the coal depot.
The colony’s resident Germans as well as the Teutonic members of the captured Walküre’s crew, were interned and moved to the island of Motu-Uta in the harbor. In deference to their neighbors, they were not placed under guard, simply left in their own tiny penal colony in the middle of paradise.
The painter Morillot, taking it upon himself to become a one-man recruiting officer, made daily trips to the island’s interior in search of warm bodies. Soon there were more volunteers than there were rifles or positions on the gun crews.
With the whole island in a state of tense pre-invasion alarm, on 12 August the British-built German Rhederei line cargo steamer Walküre(3932 GRT) appeared offshore. Loaded with a cargo of phosphates from Chile and headed to Australia, she was unaware of the state of war.
Ensign Barbier, racing to Zelee with a skeleton crew, managed to raise steam and, with 10 shells quickly returned to the gunboat by Dyevre for its sole remaining 3.9-incher, soon set off to pursue the German steamer.
With Dyevre leading the boarding crew, pistols in hand, Walküre was captured without a shot. Impounding the vessel– with the support of her mixed British and Russian crew– our gunboat and her prize returned to Papeete to the reported wild cheers of her colonists.
By 20 August, the colony was as ready as it was going to get, with the five large guns of the ersatz battery commanding the harbor and pass, trenches dug, observation posts manned, 150 armed if somewhat motley irregular infantry, and six 37mm gun trucks, all there was to do was wait.
They had a month to stew.
Enter Von Spee
While Geier and Cormoran never made it to Tahiti, Admiral Maximillian Von Spee’s two mightiest ships in the Pacific, the 11,400-ton twin armored cruisers SMS Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, did.
Scharnhorst and her sister were very distinctive with their four large funnels.
With a mission to seize the port and its desperately needed coal supply, and with no Allied warships within several days of the isolated colony other than our tiny (and largely toothless Zelee), it should have been a cakewalk.
With each of the big German cruisers packing eight 8.2-inch and another six 5.9-inch guns, and able to put a battalion size landing force ashore, the sight of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau appearing like a phantom from the sea smoke just 2,000 meters off the reef at Papeete at 0630 on 22 September 1914 was a shock to Destremau.
The signal cannon fired and the phones rang. Soon, Papeete became a desert as its inhabitants, long ready to bug out, took to the interior.
Orders came quick.
Barbier was ordered to rush to Zelee with 10 men and light her boilers, to ram the German cruiser closest to the pass once she had enough steam. The coal yard was set alight. The channel beacons went up in a flash of light and smoke. A crew on Walküre rushed to open her seacocks and she soon began settling on the bottom of the harbor.
Ensign Charron, in charge of the battery, was ordered to hold his fire until small boats began to gather for a landing which was logical as the popguns wouldn’t have done much to the German cruisers but could play god with a cluster of packed whaleboats.
By 0740, after a 70-minute wait, after steaming slowly in three circles just off the reef, first Scharnhorst and then Gneisenau opened up on the town and as retribution for the billowing smoke from the prized coal yard and the sinking Walküre.
By 0800, the fire shifted to Zelee, whose funnel was making smoke.
By 0820, the wrecked gunboat was filling with water, Barbier and his men moving to abandon their little warship– the crew in the end finished the job of the Germans by opening Zelee’s water intakes to the harbor.
Some accounts list 14 shots of 8.2-inch and another 35 of 5.9-inch fired by the German cruisers by 0900, others put the total count higher to 80 shells. Von Spee, afraid the harbor could be mined, retired, his plan to fuel his ships with French coal spoiled. He would miss those irreplaceable shells at the Falklands in December.
Two residents of the colony, a Polynesian child and a Japanese expat, were killed as well as several injured.
Estimates that as much as half of Papeete was destroyed in the bombardment.
The bombardment of Papeete, capital of Tahiti, a French possession in the Pacific. Showing a panoramic view of Papeete, capital of Tahiti, after being shelled by the German cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. The numbers indicate: 1. German prisoners under an armed guard, after having been compelled to assist in clearing away the debris resulting from the bombardment. 2. The market where all perishable food (…?) 3. Ruins of the back premises of Messrs A B Donald Ltd., with the Roman Catholic Cathedral in the background and the signal station on the hill to the right. Supplement to the Auckland Weekly News, 22 October 1914, p.43. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections AWNS-19141022-43-01
Divers went down to Zelee just hours after the Germans steamed away, and recovered the ship’s tricolor. It was presented to Destremau.
German propagandists remembered the raid in spectacular fashion, complete with incoming fire from shore batteries and the ships coming in far closer to the harbor.
Die Kreuzer Scharnhorst and Gneisenau beschießen Papeete, die Hautpstadt von Tahiti, by Willy Moralt, via the Illustrierte Geschichte des Weltkrieges 1914.
Epilogue
Zelee would be partially salvaged in 1925 but remains a well-known dive site in the Tahiti area.
Her on-shore 3.9-inch gun is preserved at Bougainville Park in Papeete.
Décidée survived the conflict and went to the breakers in 1922.
The French navy recycled Zelee’s name once again in 1924 on the 285-ton remorqueur-patrouilleur Zelee (ex-Lakeside) which served into 1950.
As for the German freighter Walküre, she was salvaged and repaired, then sold to an American company and would remain in service until 1925.
The painter Morillot hung up his uniform after the bombardment and returned to his painting, opium, and women, passing in 1931.
Denigrated by the governor general of Tahiti– who hid in a church during the bombardment while Destremau handled the defense– our gunboat skipper was ordered back to France to face an inquiry board. Given interim command of the destroyer Boutefeu while the board hemmed and hawed about meeting, Destremau died in Toulon of illness on 7 March 1915, aged but 39.
His decorations came posthumously.
He was cited in the order of the army nine months after passing (JO 9 Dec. 1915, p. 8.998):
Lieutenant Destremau, commanding the gunboat La Zélée and the troops in Papeete, was able, during the day of 22 September 1914, to take the most judicious measures to ensure the defense of the port of Papeete against the attack of the German cruisers Sharnorst and Gneisenau. Demonstrated in the conduct of the defense operations the greatest personal bravery and first-rate military qualities which resulted in preserving the port of Papeete and causing the enemy cruisers to move away.
After the war, he was awarded the Legion of Honor in March 1919.
The colony’s newest station ship/gunboat, the 262-foot Teriieroo a Teriierooiterai (P780) arrived at Papeete in May after a two-month transit from France.
The more things change…
Ships are more than steel and wood And heart of burning coal, For those who sail upon them know That some ships have a soul.
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Capping a 37-year career, Lt. Colonel John “Karl” Marks retired last month and hung up the title of the A-10 Thunderbolt pilot with the most flight time.
Kansas-born Marks entered the Air Force in 1987 and then went on to fly the big “Warthog” in combat for the first time in the 1991 Gulf War, chalking up 23 Iraqi tanks over three missions shared with his flight lead Capt. Eric “Fish” Solomonson.
Then-1st Lt. John Marks, poses with an A-10 Thunderbolt II at King Fahd Air Base, Saudi Arabia, during Desert Storm in February 1991. (Photo: 442nd Fighter Wing / Lt. Col. Marks) and Lt. Col. John Marks stands in the cockpit of an A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft and pumps his fists in a sign of victory after his “fini” flight on August 23, 2024, on Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo. Marks retired after 37 years with more than 7500 hours in the A-10. (Photo: Mr. Bob Jennings/U.S. Air Force)
Since then, Marks has deployed overseas at least a dozen times and responded to 48 troops-in-contact situations over 358 combat sorties.
As noted by the 442d Fighter Wing in a release, Marks flew 1161 combat hours during which he expended 39,340 rounds of 30mm ammunition, dropped nearly 350 bombs, and fired 59 Maverick air-to-ground missiles. Going past that, his trigger time on the Warthog’s hulking GAU-8/A Avenger 30mm cannon included another 141,500 rounds, bringing his career total to 180,840 30mm rounds.
The GAU-8/A, made by General Electric, is a 19-foot long 7-barreled rotary cannon that fires huge 30x173mm shells— each about the size of a catsup bottle as fast as 3,900 rounds per minute. Unloaded, the gun weighs more than 600 pounds.
In all, he has logged 7,500 hours in the aircraft, a record, with the Air Force noting, “With the clock inching toward midnight on the divestiture of the A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft, there are no pilots close enough in hours behind the Warthog’s stick to even come close to the bar set by Lt. Col. John ‘Karl’ Marks.”
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Warship Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024: Passing the Cup Around
Netherlands Institute of Military History (NIMH) photo 2000-364-26
Above we see the business end of the Polish submarine Orzel while on the builder’s ways at NV Koninklijke Maatschappij De Schelde in Holland in 1937, showing her four-pack of forward 21.7 inch torpedo tubes.
Some 85 years ago this month the boat and her crew would be homeless and looking for some revenge.
The Polish submarine program
Left with only about 90 miles of coastline along the Baltic by the Versailles framers, the Polish Navy (KMW) for the 1920s was made up very simply of a half-dozen small (300-400 ton) ex-German torpedo boats, two slow ex-Russian gunboats, four flat-bottom FM-class German coastal minesweepers, and some shallow-draft river monitors.
Following a military alliance with France, it was decided to build a proper navy base, operate an near condemned French protected cruiser (ex-D’Entrecasteaux, laid down in 1894) as a stationary training ship, and start exploring options for more modern warships to include battleships, cruisers, destroyers and submarines with varying degrees of success.
Speaking to the final type, Warsaw cobbled together enough cash (and French-backed loans) by 1928 to buy a trio of new Normand-Fenaux-type (enlarged French Saphir class) minelayer submarines.
Trim little 1,250-ton boats that ran just 257 feet overall, they carried four bow tubes and a trainable twin tube atop the pressure hull along with the ability to carry and deploy 40 mines.
These three boats– Wilk (Wolf), Rys (Linx), and Zbik (Wildcat)– were delivered by the early 1930s from three different French yards (A C de la Loire Nantes, A C Augustin-Normand, and CNF) after significant delays and were never really successful, reportedly being noisy and prone to leaks.
Polish submarine Wilk visiting Stockholm in 1932 Fo37710C
However, the Wilks were the cradle of the Polish submarine force, and soon after the Poles in 1933 moved to order four larger submarines in two flights as a believed counter to German pocket battleships. After consulting French, British, Italian, Swedish, Dutch, and American firms for designs, the KMW went with the conjoined submission from NV Koninklijke Maatschappij De Schelde, Vlissingen and Rotterdamsche Droogdok Maatschappij.
The design was based on the one-off experimental Dutch Hr.Ms. O 16— a 1,200-ton/251-foot advanced ocean-going welded double-hulled design using high tensile St52 steel yielding a 330-foot depth rating and hydraulic surface controls while being capable of hitting 18 knots while carrying 8 torpedo tubes.
The Dutch submarine Hr.Ms. O 16 fitting out in late 1936. Note the masked 88mm gun forward of her sail. At the time of her commissioning, she was the largest submarine in the Dutch Navy. Sent to the Dutch East Indies in 1939, when war came with Japan two years later, she sank three Japanese troopships and damaged two others before she was sunk by a mine in December 1941. NIMH
The Polish boats would be larger (1,473 tons, 276 feet oal), faster (19.44 knots– capable of chasing down Russia’s Gangut-class battlewagons), and even more heavily armed with a full dozen tubes (4 bow/4 stern 550mm, and 2×2 external 533mm trainable) along with room to carry 20 steel fish.
Her plant used a pair of Dutch-licensed 6QD42 Sulzer diesel engines for surface running, another pair of Brown Boveri electric motors for subsurface, and two 100-cell batteries.
Sulzer diesel’s 2000-364-53
Big for a Baltic boat, she had a range of 7,000nm at 10 knots and could remain underway for 90-day combat patrols. The reason behind this was to allow the class the capability to conduct long-term combat operations without depending on their (few and easily seized/blockaded) bases and, to state the obvious, would allow these subs to range out of the Baltic and interdict enemy shipping (be they Russian or German) on the Atlantic in time of war.
The Poles, who had a military alliance with France at the time, went with the Wzor 1924V, which was the big 21.65-inch French STST 24V (683 pound TNT warhead, 3,300 yards @45 knots) torpedo for her in-pressure-hull tubes and, for her topside trainable tubes, the Wzor AB, a new 21-inch Whitehead steam torpedo (660-pound warhead, 3,300 yards at 47 knots) designed for use from the deck-mounted launchers of the British-made Polish Grom-class destroyers.
When it came to deck guns, whereas the Dutch O 16 had an 88mm DP gun and a twin 40mm AAA, the Orzel would go just a bit larger with a single low-angle 4.1-inch L/40 wz.36 Bofors forward in a revolving bubble-shaped mask in front of the sail and a twin Bofors atop the rear of the sail that could be lowered into a watertight shaft, augmented with a twin 13.2mm Hotchkiss heavy machine gun mount. The big Bofors had four watertight ready lockers capable of holding 21 shells between them while a magazine capable of storing another 100 rounds was located amidships under the auxiliary control room, with a chain gang passing shells forward during a prolonged surface engagement. The same magazine held 1,200 40mm shells and six boxes of 13.2mm ammo as well as small arms.
The Poles wanted four submarines and eventually ordered two, Orzel (Eagle) and Sep (Vulture) from the Dutch, with a second pair– Kuna (Marten) and Lasica (Weasel)– ordered in France to a slightly modified design (lighter steel and no deck gun) in late 1938 from AC Augustin Normand and AC de la Loire Nantes. The French pair saw work suspended on them in April 1939 and both would be destroyed on the slipways by the Germans during the war.
The cost for the planned two new Dutch-built subs was 21 million zlotych, a figure that would be satisfied in part (10 percent) by Polish agricultural products and raw materials sent to Holland, 15.44 million zlotych from the Polish government generated by bonds sold on the Warsaw Stock Exchange largely to French and British investors, and the balance, about 3.5 million zlotych, raised via a combination of public subscription into the Fundusz Obrony Morskiej(Maritime Defense Fund) to include schoolchildren’s campaigns and a 0.5 percent garnish on the pay of Polish Army and Navy’s officer and NCO corps.
As a side note, there was enough money left over from the subscription that the Polish Navy planned to order a class of 17 motor torpedo boats– one named after each of the country’s provinces– but the war intervened.
The Dutch thought the finished product was so nice that they ordered a follow-on pair of subs based on the Orzel design but with minor tweaks. The two boats, Hr.Ms. O 19 and O 20, ditched the masked deck gun design for a simpler standalone 88mm DP and reduced the number of torpedo tubes to add 10 vertical mine tubes along each side of the casing outside the pressure hull, each capable of carrying two mines. They were notably the first submarines equipped with working snorkels.
One of Orzel and Sep’s near sisters, Hr.Ms. O 20 seen entering Curacao in the Dutch West Indies in November 1939. Both O 19 and O 20 managed to escape the Germans in 1940 and sailed for the Allies during the war, being lost in 1941 and 1945, respectively. NIMH 2158_015360.
Meet Orzel
On 29 January 1936, the Polish Navy signed a contract with the Dutch submarine concern for the construction of two submarines to the modified O 16 design.
Our subject was the first of her class laid down, as Yard No. 205, at De Schelde, Vlissingen, on 14 August 1936. Her sister, Sep, was laid down three months later as Yard No. 196 at nearby Rotterdamsche Droogdok, Mij.
Orzel was launched on 15 January 1938, with 35-year-old Kmdr.ppor. (CDR) Henryk Kloczkowski, a former cadet of the Tsar’s Imperial Navy– and nephew of RADM Wacław Kloczkowski– who had graduated from the French submarine school (École de Navigation Sous-Marine) in Toulon, appointed as her first skipper.
15 January 1938. The Polish submarine ORP Orzel is being towed here by a tugboat from the shipyard to another location, after the launching festivities. On the forecastle the Dutch Chief Supervisor of the shipyard, Mr. Meerman. Saluting on the bridge the Polish naval officer (supervision for the construction kltz. Niemirski. NIMH 2000-364-34
17 October 1938, construction of the Polish submarine Sep at the Rotterdamsche Droogdok Maatschappij (RDM), showing her just after launch being pulled by a yard tug. NIMH 2158_072978
By late January 1939, she had finished her builder’s trials including torpedo tests in Den Helder and speed trials in Norwegian waters in the Oslofjord, then was handed over to her Polish crew in a ceremony held on 2 February.
Matka chrzestna okrętu podwodnego ORP “Orzeł” generałowa Jadwiga Sosnkowska (z kwiatami), kontradmirał Józef Świrski, poseł RP w Holandii Wacław Babiński i gen. Stanisław Kwaśniewski w czasie wodowania okrętu.
Feb 2 1939 Orzel commissioning plankowners at the Vlissingen yard canteen 2000-364-62
2 February 1939. The consecration of the Polish submarine ORP Orzel by the chief chaplain of the Polish miners in Limburg, Father Hoffman. The boat was christened by Mrs. Jadwiga Sosnkowska, wife of General Kazimierz Sosnkowski, who was head of the Committee for Matters of Armaments and Equipment (in the photo she is arranging the flowers). During WWII, Sosnkowski would become the CiC of the Polish military in exile before he was demoted over his protests about the Warsaw Home Army being left to rot in 1944. NIMH 2000-364-33
On 5 February, the newest Polish submarine left Vlissingen and headed into the Baltic for Gdynia, arriving there on the 7th to a welcoming crowd.
Polish submarine Orzel arriving home via Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
It was there that a plaque was ceremonially unveiled, mounted on the ship’s conning tower, informing that the boat was built in part with public contributions from the FOM.
Sep joined her sister Orzel in Poland in April.
The sisters then spent the next several months on a series of shakedown cruises in the Baltic– there were clouds on the horizon.
War!
On 24 August 1939, two days after a speech from Hitler to his commanders all but saying war was inevitable with Poland, the Polish military went on alarm and began quietly mobilizing as the world slow-walked into the opening conflict of WWII over the next week.
Orzel spent that week checking and rechecking her systems, taking on a full load of torpedoes and shells, and provisioning. Her skipper was handed several sealed orders in different envelopes aligned with various plans, and some $9,000 in gold and Polish banknotes should he have to put to sea and refuel elsewhere.
By 0700 on 1 September, three hours after the start of the German invasion, Orzel left her pier and submerged in the Bay of Gdansk where she survived her first depth charging of the war that evening. Her orders, as part of the Polish Navy’s Worek Plan, were to watch for the old battlewagon KMS Schleswig-Holstein, should the pre-dreadnought leave Danzig, and put her on the bottom.
German battleship Schleswig-Holstein bombarding a Polish military transit depot at Westerplatte in the Free City of Danzig, Sept 1939. Orzel was ordered to take her out if the opportunity arose.
With Schleswig-Holstein staying put and after dodging several Kriegsmarine destroyers and being bombed several times by German aircraft while on the surface, and with a malfunctioning compressor, LT Kloczkowski decided on his own to abandon his patrol zone on the morning of 4 September and head to Swedish waters near Gotland. Claiming illness and signaling back and forth with naval command, Kloczkowski ordered his boat to Tallinn in neutral Estonia on the night of the 14th.
Once in Tallinn, on a 24-hour stay under the rules of war, the crew went ashore for baths, Kloczkowski to the hospital, and the malfunctioning compressor was sent off for local repair.
Well short of 24 hours, the Estonian gunboat Laine/Laene (ex-Russian Sputnik, 400 tons, two 75 mm L/50 Canet guns) came alongside Orzel and put a detachment of armed sailors aboard, informing the remaining officers and crew aboard that the sub was being interned.
Breakout
Orzel was untied and towed deeper into the Tallinn military port facility, flanked by two armed minelayers. Meanwhile, the Estonians seized and removed the boat’s maps, navigation log, and small arms before sealing its radio compartment.
Polish submarine Orzel at Tallinn’s military harbor. The 400-ton Estonian sidewheeler minelayers Suurop (1x 47mm gun) and Ristna, formerly the Russian Apostol Piotr and Apostol Paviel, are visible to the left. Eesti Meremuuseum MM F 7318.
The disarmament continued for the next two days with the Estonians impounding and removing Orzel’s deck gun breech, 14 of 20 torpedoes, and the shells from her magazine.
Having seen enough and unwilling to sit out the war in an Estonian internment camp, Orzel’s XO, Kpt.mar. (Lt.Cdr.) Jan Grudzinski, rallied the sub’s crew on the night of 17/18 September– 85 years ago today– and made a move to release themselves from custody.
Overpowering the two Estonian sailors on her quarterdeck and casting off at 0300 on 18 September, Orzel motored out on her quiet electrical suite until sentries on shore spotted her leaving the darkened harbor and opened fire with a 130mm coastal defense battery firing 14 shells blindly into the night. Sending the crew below, the Polish submarine submerged as soon as she had depth under her keel and headed towards the Finnish Aland Islands, with the Estonian Navy giving short and apparently half-hearted pursuit.
As for Poland’s four other submarines, sister Sep managed to make it to Swedish waters on 17 September along with the damaged submarines Rys (on the 18th) and Zbik (on the 25th) after the latter two had laid their mines. They were disarmed and interned first in Nynäshamn (Vaxholm) and then in Mariefred for the duration.
Polska ubaten ORP Sep interned in Nynäshamn, guarded by Pollux, Vedett Boat No. 52 (ex 1st class torpedo boat, b. 1909) in September 1939. Fo37714A
Only Wilk, having sown her mines, managed to skirt German dragnets then thread the Danish straits (Oresund) on 14/15 September and, once in the North Sea made for British waters.
With Orzel’s crew champing at the bit to fight rather than be interned again, and Polish exile forces in London advising that the Germans claimed her crew had killed the two Estonian sailors aboard, Grudzinski headed to Gotland as best she could without charts and put the two “resurrected” men (electrician Roland Kirikmaa and conscript sailor Boris Mahlstein) ashore in the sub’s dinghy at Östergarnsholm in Sweden on 21 September. Grudzinski had left the Estonians with $50 each, a bottle of liquor from the sub’s medicine locker, and a letter of commendation. They arranged to return home via plane before the week was out.
Orzel then turned back to sea and patrolled unsuccessfully for German ships over the next two weeks just off Oland. Lacking charts, she grounded twice during this period, sustaining some minor damage to her keel and the bow outer torpedo caps. This, coupled with chipped propeller blades and oil leaks, would seem to point to the logical move to opt for the quiet life in Sweden.
However, electing to follow in Wilk’s footsteps, Orzel then began heading West on 7 October.
The boat’s navigator, 24-year-old LT Marian Mokrski, his charts impounded, was left with only a dated German edition of the Baltic List of Lights and Fog Signals (Verzeichniss der Leuchtfeuer und Signalnstellen) and navigational tables (Nautische Tafeln). Using those, along with his personal knowledge of the Baltic Sea and its straits from previous passages (and apparently an eidetic memory), created three hand-drawn navigational charts covering the span from Leningrad, through the Strait of Oresund, and around Denmark via the Skagerrak into the North Sea. A cadet of the 1937 tranche (graduated 2nd in his class), he had previously been a sonar officer on the Wicher-class destroyer ORP Burza and had sailed on a nine-month exchange with the French on the training cruiser Jeanne D’Arc.
When they cleared Jutland and made it into the relative safety of the North Sea on 12 October, Grudzinski presented navigator Mokrski with the most valuable items on the boat– the last two cans of pineapple– and a hand-written commendation in front of the assembled crew.
Two days later, nearing the Isle of May, Orzel transmitted her recognition signals to the Admiralty and soon rendezvoused with the destroyer HMS Valorous who guided her ultimately to Dundee where Wilk was tied up undergoing repairs.
Free Polish Navy service
By December 1939, Wilk and Orzel had been rearmed with a mixture of French torpedoes and British 21-inchers in sleeved tubes, then received hull numbers (85-A for Orzel, 64-A for Wilk), picked up a few Lewis guns, and were placed under British orders by the Free Polish forces in London. As such, each sub had its crew augmented by an RN submarine force officer and two communications ratings for liaison purposes.
Orzel and Wilik in Roysth, 1940, LIFE William Vandivert
Orzel and Wilik in Roysth, 1940, LIFE William Vandivert
Orzel and Wilik in Roysth, 1940, LIFE William Vandivert
As part of the 2nd Submarine Flotilla, they were assigned to the tender HMS Forth.
Kpt.mar. Jan Grudziński, the skipper of the Polish Navy submarine ORP Orzeł seated in the boat’s fin in Scotland, 1940. IWM (HU 110081)
“Close-up of the conning tower of the Polish Navy submarine ORP Orzeł (Eagle) as she returns to her depot ship at Rosyth, 11 January 1940. Lieutenant Commander Jan Grudziński, the ship’s commander, is at the front on the right. Her pennant number (85A) has been obscured by the censor.” IWM (HU 76134)
“Gunners of the Polish Navy mine-laying submarine ORP Wilk (Wolf) manning a 100 mm Schneider 1917 gun in Rosyth, January 1940. Another submarine, ORP Orzeł (Eagle), can be seen alongside a British submarine depot ship in the background.” IWM (HU 128170)
Orzel sailed as part of the escort for Convoy ON 6 in late December 1939, then Convoy HN 6 in January 1940.
Sent out on her 2nd (1st Atlantic) War Patrol in February, she lurked off the coast of neutral Denmark for three uneventful weeks looking for German blockade runners heading into the Baltic and raiders headed out.
She was made a darling of the press, an emblem of Free Poland.
Orzel in Roysth, Scotland LIFE photo by William Vandivert
Orzel in Roysth, Scotland LIFE photo by William Vandivert
Orzel in Roysth, Scotland LIFE photo by William Vandivert
Orzel in Roysth, Scotland LIFE photo by William Vandivert
Orzel in Roysth, Scotland LIFE photo by William Vandivert
Orzel in Roysth, Scotland LIFE photo by William Vandivert
Orzel in Roysth, Scotland LIFE photo by William Vandivert
Orzel in Roysth, Scotland LIFE photo by William Vandivert
Orzel in Roysth, Scotland LIFE photo by William Vandivert
She repeated the Danish search in March for her 3rd War Patrol with the same result, narrowly missing seizing the German transport Helene Russ (993 GRT) in the fog on the 11th of that month.
Then came her 4th War Patrol, departing the Firth of Forth on 3 April 1940 for the waters off Lillesand, Norway.
At the same time, as part of Operation Wesserübung, the German occupation of neutral Denmark and Norway, some 1,900 German troops were allocated to capture Bergen and Stavanger under RADM Hubert Schmundt’s Kriegschiffgruppe 3. One of the transports of 1. Seetransportstaffel– loaded with 330 soldiers and Luftwaffe personnel, six 2 cm FlaK 30 and four 10.5 cm FlaK 38 anti-aircraft guns, 73 horses, 71 vehicles and 292 tons of provisions, animal feed, fuel, and ammunition– was the requisitioned Hamburg Süd freighter MS Rio de Janeiro (5177 grt).
Built by Bremer Vulkan as Santa Ines in 1914, Rio de Janeiro sailed originally out of Stettin on runs to South America and had survived the Great War because she was interned in Valparaiso for the duration, sold to Hamburg Süd by the British in 1921. Finding herself in Argentine waters in 1939 when WWII started, she only made it back to Hamburg in January 1940 by the skin of her teeth through the Royal Navy blockade– just to be impounded by the Kriegsmarine for what would turn out to be a one-way trip to Norway.
Off Lillesand on the morning of 8 April, Orzel and Rio de Janeiro bumped into each other.
0945A/8, Sighted a suspicious merchant vessel to the south. Closed to investigate. The vessel was seen to fly no ensign and was proceeding on a course of 240°. She was high in the water indicating very little cargo.
1100A/8, Closed enough to read the ships name which was Rio de Janeiro with place of registration being Hamburg.
1110A/8, Surfaced and signaled the vessel to stop which she did.
1112A/8, Ordered the vessel to sent a boat. There appeared to be very little movement on board so fired warning shots with the Lewis guns which unfortunately was the only armament available as the deck gun is still inoperative.
1120A/8, Ordered the vessel to abandon ship in 15 minutes.
1130A/8, A boat was lowered but it made very little attempt to close Orzel. So ordered the vessel once more to abandon ship and that they had 5 minutes left to do so before a torpedo would be fired.
1135A/8, Sighted a Norwegian motor boat approaching. There was still no sign of movement on board the merchant vessel.
1145A/8, Fired a torpedo while the Norwegian motorboat was still clear. a slight explosion was seen and the vessel heeled. She was still 1.8 nautical miles outside territorial waters.
1150A/8, Dived. The vessel showed no signs of sinking. More boats were seen to be lowered.
1155A/8, Sighted a Norwegian aircraft approaching. Orzel circled underwater to give the enemy crew time to pull clear before finishing off the ship with a second torpedo which blew up to ship on hitting.
About 180 Germans who survived the Rio de Janeiro sinking, were rescued by local vessels and landed at Lillesand and Kristiansand. The waterlogged and very much uniformed Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe troops freely told the Norwegians that came to their aid that they were bound for Bergen on invitation from the King’s government. The intel made its way to the Norwegian government where it was met with skepticism.
Likewise, Orzel, who came back to inspect the wreckage and found expired German soldiers adrift on the waves, reported the incident back to London.
Ordered to a different patrol zone and with the German invasion of Norway on in full force, Orzel on the 10th tangled with the German auxiliary patrol vessel V 705/ex-Carsten (258 GRT) in the Skagerrak without either side coming away damaged. She then spent the 12th through the 15th dodging a series of German bombs dropped on her while on the surface and depth charges while submerged, logging 111 ash cans and 20 bombs.
She ended her 4th patrol at Rosyth on the 19th.
“Close-up of the conning tower of the Polish Navy submarine ORP Orzeł (Eagle) as she returns to her depot ship at Rosyth after taking part in operations off Norway during which she accounted for two enemy transport ships, 19 April 1940.” IWM (HU 76132)
Her 5th War Patrol began just a week later, sent back to Norwegian waters. Unsuccessful, she returned to Rosyth on 11 May.
Orzel’s 6th Patrol, starting 23 May, would be her last. She failed to confirm receipt of signals from England on 1 June, was listed as overdue from 8 June, and feared lost on 11 June.
Her 60-man crew, along with three RN submariners– LT Keith D’Ombrain Nott, Radio Operator Walter Fordyce Green, and Telegraph Operator Leslie William Jones– are still on patrol.
Epilogue
The Cold War-era Polish Navy recycled Orzel’s name for a pre-owned Soviet-built Project 613 (Whiskey class) submarine (292, ex-Soviet S-265) that served from 1962 through 1983, and for a Project 877E (Kilo class) submarine (291) that has been in service since 1986. The latter is one of the only Warsaw Pact era subs still operational, the oldest Kilo-class submarine in active service, and the only operational submarine in the Polish Navy, having spent most of the past decade in a series of overhauls and updates.
In 2016, prewar Dutch 1:50 scale builder’s sheets for the original Orzel were restored at the Polish Navy Museum in Gdynia.
The site also has several Orzel-related exhibits including models, the Bofors guns of her sister Sep, and one of Grudzinski’s sailor’s books.
Polish Navy Museum relics of Orzel and Sep
The Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum in London, home to thousands of relics from the old Free Polish days, has several Orzel items including LT Mokrski’s hand-drawn escape charts from the 1939 Baltic breakout and her builder’s model from De Schelde.
Model of ORP Orzel presented by her Dutch constructors De Schelde 1938 PISM
Since 1942 when the Polish government in exile issued its own stamps, there have been dozens of pieces of philately with Orzel appearing on them.
Similarly, she is remembered in maritime art.
1940 ORP Orzel vs Rio Janeiro – Gregorz Nawrocki
1940 Polish submarine Orzel – Grzegorz Nawrocki
Polish submarine ORP Orzeł 8 .04.1940
She is also remembered in a variety of scale models, one of which has sat on my desk for years.
DeAgostini Atlas 1:350 scale Orzel
At least two Polish-language films, one in 1958 and another in 2022, have been produced about our subject with the first having the benefit of Orzel’s sister, Sep, standing in as a submarine double, which was odd because the latter by that time had her original Bofors gun replaced by a Soviet model.
Monuments to Orzel exist at Lillesand (the site of the Rio de Janeiro sinking), Tallin at the site of the Estonian Maritime Museum, and Gdynia. The two overseas posts are often visited by Polish naval attaches to lay wreaths and pay respects.
As for the wreck of Orzel, she has been repeatedly searched for with the SANTI Finding the Eagle (Santi Odnaleźć Orła) project mounting no less than 10 expeditions since 2014, chasing down leads. How she met her final end is unknown.
Her plank owner commander, the controversial LCDR Henryk Kloczkowski, left marooned in Estonia after Orzel escaped into the Baltic, and was arrested by the NKVD when the Soviets illegally occupied Tallinn in the summer of 1940.
Escaping the sort of final march that most other Polish officers suffered in Soviet captivity, Kloczkowski managed to attach himself in 1941 to Gen. Władysław Anders’ Polish Army in the East. Once this force was transferred to the British via the Caspian Sea and Iran in 1942, Kloczkowski was summoned to London to be brought before the Polish Maritime Court on charges over his actions on Orzel in September 1939. Demoted to the rank of sailor and given a four-year prison sentence, the latter was suspended so he could sail out on a series of American Liberty ships on dangerous Atlantic convoys. Surviving the war, he settled in Portsmouth, where he passed in 1962.
Ships are more than steel and wood And heart of burning coal, For those who sail upon them know That some ships have a soul.
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Brigadier General (Army of the United States, Captain in the Regular Army) James “Jumpin’ Jim” Gavin (USMA 1929), commander of the 82nd “All American” Airborne Division, checks his equipment before boarding a C-47 at Cottesmore airfield near Rutland, England for Operation Market Garden on 17 September 1944. He was in Chalk number one of Serial A-7, 316th Troop Carrier Group. The aircraft was piloted by Major Kendig, CO of the 44th Troop Carrier Squadron.
National Archives and Records Administration Still Pictures Unit SC 232810
Note his M1 Garand along with the M1911A1 on his hip and a fighting knife behind the pistol. Gavin had jumped into Sicily carrying a lighter folding M1A1 Carbine but the gun jammed on his first encounter with the enemy, leaving the general to switch to the big .30-06 battle rifle as his personal weapon moving forward.
Gavin assumed command of the 82nd the month before Market Garden on 8 August 1944, the third Commanding General of the Division during the war, after Omar Bradley who led the reformed division in 1942 when it was still a “leg” unit, and Matthew Ridgway who had commanded the All Americans in Sicily, Italy and at Normandy. Jim was the only American general officer to make four combat jumps in the war.
For the record, a lookback by the IWM on “The Bridge Too Far” that was Market Garden and the Arnheim operation.
Gavin, at age 37, was also the youngest general to command an American division during the war. He was later the youngest Regular Army lieutenant general when promoted in July 1954, at age 47.
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Warship Wednesday, 11 September 2024: You Have to Go Out…
USCG Photo #: 16079-A Photographer: J. N. Heuisy
Above we see a member of the 35 so-called “Buck and a Quarter” Active-class Coast Guard cutters rushed into completion to deal with bootleggers during Prohibition, the USCGC Jackson (WPC-142) as she appeared in 1927 in her original “rum-buster” haze gray configuration. Don’t let the bone in her teeth fool you, she is probably just making revolutions for 10 knots– her designed top speed.
These choppy little 125-foot gunboats were designed to serve as subchasers in times of war and Jackson, along with her sister Bedloe, did their part during the conflict, atop an unforgiving sea, to the bitter end.
The 125s
These cutters were intended for trailing the slow, booze-hauling “Blacks” mother ships of “Rum Row” along the outer line of patrol during Prohibition.
Constructed for $63,173 each, they originally had a pair of 6-cylinder 150hp Superior or Winton diesel engines that allowed them a stately speed of 10 knots, max, but allowed a 4,000 nm, theoretically Atlantic-crossing range– an outstanding benefit for such a small craft.
While slow, this was deemed at first adequate as most of the Blacks were cheapy acquired and nearly condemned old coasters and fishing schooners salvaged from backwater ports around New England and the Maritimes for their shady last hurrah.
For armament, they carried a single 3″/23 cal deck gun for warning shots– dated even for the 1920s– a Lewis gun or two for serious use, and a small arms locker that included everything from Tommy guns to .38s. In a time of conflict, they could tote listening gear and depth charge racks left over from the Great War, but we’ll get to that later.
Taking advantage of one big contract issued on 26 May 1926, the class were all built within 12 months by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation in Camden, New Jersey (although often listed as “American Brown Boveri” due to their owners at the time, the Swiss Brown Boveri corporation).
The class was named in honor of former historic cutters from the Coast Guard and its preceding Lighthouse Service, Revenue Marine, and Revenue Cutter Services.
Meet Bedloe
Commissioned 25 July 1927 as USCGC Antietam (WPC-128) after a circa 1864 Revenue Cutter Service centerboard schooner of the same name that was a nod to the pivotal Maryland Civil War battle, this hardy 125-footer was first stationed in Boston under the 1st CG District where she served for eight years, accomplishing her hallmark law enforcement and SAR duties but also breaking light ice when needed.
The USCG sent no less than 11 of the first 125s to Boston, where they were desperately needed to parol the New England coastline. Besides Antietam, they included USCGC Active (WPC-125), Agassiz (WPC-126), Alert (WPC-127), Bonham (WPC-129), Dix (WPC-136), Faunce (WPC-138), Fredrick Lee (WPC-139), Harriet Lane (WPC-141), General Greene (WPC-140), and Jackson (WPC-142).
These new cutters were based at the Charleston Navy Yard and arrived in a haze-gray livery, built to take the “Rum War” to the bootleggers.
Five 125-foot cutters– likley including Antietam– at Charleston Navy Yard Boston late 1920s. Boston Public Library Leslie Jones Collection.
Once the Volstead Act was repealed, the 125s got a more regal peacetime USCG white and buff appearance.
Cutter Antietam in the Boston area, likely during a summer regatta around 1930. Boston Public Library Leslie Jones Collection 08_06_004565.
USCGC Antietam, later Bedloe in 1930, likely in the Boston area. USCG Photo.
With cutters needed on the Great Lakes and the downturn in cutter tempo that accompanied the end of Prohibition, Antietam transferred to Milwaukee in May 1935, a station that typically meant a winter lay-up once the lakes froze over.
Of note, on 1 December 1937, Antietam was used as a dive platform for a famous deep dive in Lake Michigan by Max Gene Nohl that set the world’s then-deep dive record of 420 feet. Nohl, using a self-contained suit with a heliox (helium/oxygen) breathing mixture pioneered by what would become DESCO, had earlier made history from the cutter’s deck the previous April when she hosted the first live underwater broadcast to a national audience by WTMJ over the NBC-Blue network.
On 10 April 1937, Max Nohl (shown in the dive suit) along with John Craig made a dive on the shipwreck Norland to perform another early test of the newly designed diving suit in conjunction with testing the helium-oxygen mixture that Dr. End and Max had been working on. The dive took place off the deck of the Coast Guard cutter Antietam (note the “A” on her whaler) about five miles out from Milwaukee’s breakwater, via the Wisconsin Historical Society.
Between 1939 and 1940, most of the 125s in the Coast Guard’s inventory had their often cranky original diesels replaced by new General Motors 268-As. Rated for 600 hp, they were capable of breaking 14 knots (vs the designed 10) in still seas. However, the radius dropped down to 2,500nm @ 12 knots and 3,500 @ 8.
Then came WWII in Europe and the need for the Neutrality Patrol. This was long before FDR’s 1 November 1941 Executive Order 8929 that transferred the Coast Guard to the Navy Department.
With the Navy short on hulls, Antietam was pulled from her Wisconsin home and ordered to Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1940. There, her armament was beefed up at the Tietjen & Lang yard to include stern depth charge racks and the capacity to carry 10 cans. To acknowledge the upgrade, in February 1942, the 125s were redesignated from WPC (Coast Guard patrol craft) to WSC (Coast Guard sub chaser.)
Assigned to the EASTSEAFRON (Eastern Sea Frontier), Antietam was stationed out of Stapleton, Staten Island, where she saw service as a coastwise convoy escort along the eastern seaboard. It was in this duty that she proved a godsend to those souls on the sea and was involved in several rescues including that of the unescorted Gulf Oil tanker SS Gulftrade (6,776 tons) after she had been sunk by U-588 (Victor Vogel). Antietam pulled 16 Gulftrade survivors out of the ocean on 9 March 1942.
It was around this period that our cutter would be further up-armed with a pair of 20mm/70 Mk 4 Oerlikon AAA guns, a Mousetrap Mk 20 ASWRL, swap out their goofy little 3″/23 for a 40mm Bofors single Mk 1, and pick up a SO-model surface search radar set. So equipped, they had become subchasers in reality rather than just names.
The 125-foot Coast Guard Cutter Cuyahoga ready to depart from the Coast Guard Yard in Curtis Bay, Md., Feb. 11, 1945. U.S. Coast Guard photo. Note her 40mm Bofors crowding her bow. By mid-war Antietam and her sisters had a similar appearance.
As the Navy was looking to use the name “Antietam” for a new Essex-class fleet carrier (CV-36) that was under construction at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, our patrol boat was unceremoniously renamed USCGC Bedloe on 1 June 1943. Shortly after, she was dispatched to Navy Section Base (NSB) Morehead City, North Carolina, to join the Chesapeake Escort Group (T.G. 02.5).
The AOR of TG 02.5, as seen on the cover of its war diary
Morehead City served as the link in the coastal escort chain between Norfolk and Charleston and its vessels– a mix of auxiliary motor minesweepers (YMS), miscellaneous Yard Patrol craft (YPs), random patrol yachts such as USS Cymophane (PYc-26), a handful of 110-foot patrol boats (PC) and subchasers (SC), augmented by a dozen Coast Guard 83 footer “Jeeps of the Deep”— was a motley assortment to say the least. A couple of 97-foot converted trawler hulled coastal minesweepers, USS Kestrel (AMc-5) and USS Advance (AMc-63) puttered around on sweep duties just in case the Germans laid a few eggs.
Antietam/Bedloe, and her sister Jackson, were about the brawniest vessels the Morehead City group had at its disposal.
USCGC Bedloe, probably 1944. Note her stern depth charges and SO radar set. USCG Photo #: A-8125.
Meet Jackson
Repeating the name of one of the 13 circa 1830s Morris-Taney class 73-foot topsail schooners ordered for the service USCGC Jackson (WPC-142) commissioned 14 March 1927. Like her sister Antietam/Bedloe, she was immediately assigned to Boston.
Four 125-foot cutters at Charleston Navy Yard Boston late 1920s including, from the outside, USCGC Fredrick Lee, General Green, and Jackson. Boston Public Library Leslie Jones Collection.
Like Antietam, Jackson painted over her haze grey for a more Coastie white and buff scheme post-Prohibition.
A black and white photograph of the Coast Guard Cutter Jackson passing through the Cape Cod Canal on the day of the Canal Bridge Opening, August 15, 1935. Nina Heald Webber Cape Cod Canal collection. MS028.04.022.005
Reassigned in the late 1930s to U.S. Coast Guard Stations Rochester and Greenport, New York in the Great Lakes, Neutrality Patrol work saw her armed and assigned to Norfolk on 1 July 1941 for anti-submarine patrol and coastal escort duty.
This typically boiled down to escorting one or two merchies at a time along cleared (for mines) routes at speeds hovering around 10 knots. Some faster vessels took their chances and ran the coastline on their own which didn’t always work.
One such instance was the unescorted and unarmed tanker SS Tiger (5,992 tons) which on April Fool’s Day 1942 caught a torpedo from U-754 (Hans Oestermann) just as she reduced speed and signaled with blinkers to pick up a pilot off Cape Henry, Virginia. Her complement taken off by the Yippee boat USS YP-52, Jackson and the tug Relief brought a salvage crew by the listing tanker to attempt to tow it to Norfolk but the hulk was uncooperative and sank in the Chesapeake.
On 20 July 1944, Jackson was made part of Task Group 02.5, joining sister Antietam/Bedloe.
Then came…
SS George Ade
An EC2-S-C1 break bulk cargo carrier, SS George Ade (7176 tons) was built by Florida-based J. A. Jones in 1944. Based out of Panama City, while carrying a mixed load of cotton, steel, and machinery from Mobile to New York, the brand new Liberty ship was unescorted (!) and steaming on a non-evasive course (!!) off Cape Hatteras when she came across by the Schnorchel-equipped Type IXC U-518 (Oblt. Hans-Werner Offermann) on 12 September 1944.
Hit by a Gnat that destroyed her rudder and flooded the shaft alley, she was effectively dead in the water. Her Naval Armed Guard fired a few rounds in U-518’s direction, keeping the boat away but she was a sitting duck.
The Great Atlantic Hurricane of September 1944
Four days before George Ade was torpedoed, Commander Gulf Sea Frontier issued an advisory that a tropical hurricane centered east of the Leeward Islands was moving northwest at 10 knots. Aircraft recon on 11 September found a system with a radius of 150 miles and warnings “This is a large and severe storm” were flashed.
It would grow into what we today would deem a Category-4 monster.
Guantanamo to New York Convoy GN-156 on 12 September came across the storm’s periphery and logged 47-knot winds, later upping to over 65 which scattered the convoy although no casualties were reported.
On the night of 12 September, the refrigerated stores ship USS Hyades (AF-28), escorted by the Somers-class destroyer USS Warrington (DD-383) only two days out of Norfolk bound for Trinidad, encountered the hurricane between West Palm Beach and the Bahamas as the storm moved North.
USS Warrington (DD-383), photographed by Navy Blimp ZP-12, 9 August 1944. Just five weeks after this image was snapped, the destroyer would be at the bottom of the Atlantic. 80-G-282673
As noted by DANFS:
Later that evening, the storm forced the destroyer to heave to while Hyades continued on her way alone. Keeping wind and sea on her port bow, Warrington rode relatively well through most of the night. Wind and seas, however, continued to build during the early morning hours of the 13th. Warrington began to lose headway and, as a result, started to ship water through the vents to her engineering spaces.
The water rushing into her vents caused a loss of electrical power which set off a chain reaction. Her main engines lost power, and her steering engine and mechanism went out. She wallowed there in the trough of the swells-continuing to ship water. She regained headway briefly and turned upwind, while her radiomen desperately, but fruitlessly, tried to raise Hyades. Finally, she resorted to a plain-language distress call to any ship or shore station. By noon on the 13th, it was apparent that Warrington’s crewmen could not win the struggle to save their ship, and the order went out to prepare to abandon ship. By 1250, her crew had left Warrington; and she went down almost immediately.
A prolonged search by Hyades, Frost (DE-144), Huse (DE-145), Inch (DE-146), Snowden (DE-246), Swasey (DE-248), Woodson (DE-359), Johnnie Hutchins (DE-360), ATR-9, and ATR-62 rescued only 73 men of the destroyer’s 321 member watch bill– and these were spread out for 98 miles from the destroyer’s last position!
Coordinated by the jeep carrier USS Croatan, whose escorting tin cans did a lot of the work in pulling men from the water, the group commander signaled on 14 September, “Sharks very active. Am making every effort to locate and recover living before dark as those so far rescued are very weak.”
Further north, New York to Guantanamo Convoy NG-458, with 15 tankers and 17 freighters escorted by two frigates and a few PCs and YMSs, encountered the unnamed hurricane for 18 hours across the 12th and 13th, and reported: “winds estimated 130-150 knots and seas 50-60 feet.” The COMEASTSEAFRON War Diary for the period notes, “It was impossible for a person to remain exposed to the wind because the tremendous force of driving spray was unbearably painful. Visibility was nil, and all ships and escorts were widely scattered.”
One man, LT North Oberlin of USS PC-1210, was swept overboard “and undoubtedly drowned.”
Another small escort, PC-1217, had her bulkhead plates buckled and several compartments flooded– including her radio shack. Her communications knocked out and long missing from the rest of the convoy, she limped into Mayport alone on the 16th– self-resurrecting from among the missing thought dead.
One ship that never arrived in port was the 136-foot baby minesweeper USS YMS-409, which foundered and sank, taking her entire crew of 33 to the bottom.
Photo from the collection of LT(jg) Bernard Alexander Kenner who served on board YMS-409. He departed a few days before the ship left port and sank off Cape Hatteras. He kept this photo for over 61 years along with a list of his former crew mates who perished, via Navsource.
Further up the coast, the USCG’s Vineyard Sound lightship (LS-73), anchored before the shallows off Cuttyhunk, Massachusetts, was also claimed by the storm, taking her entire crew.
The 123-foot United States Lightvessel 73 (LV 73 / WAL-503) on her Vineyard Sound station where she served from 1924 through 1944. On 14 September 1944, she was carried off station during a hurricane and sank with the loss of all hands. USCG photo
…Back at the George Ade
Late on the afternoon of 12 September, some 14 hours after the attack by U-518 that left her dead in the water, the salvage ship USS Escape (ARS 6), escorted by our previously mentioned Bedloe and Jackson, arrived and took her in tow.
Struggling against the ever-increasing seas with the hurricane inbound, Ade and Escape hove to on 14 September some 12 miles off Bodie Island, North Carolina in 13 fathoms of water, where they reported 100-knot winds and 50-foot seas. Ade suffered one of her anchors, two lifeboats, and four rafts carried away.
However, the tow’s escorts, Bedloe and Jackson, had vanished.
At around 1030 on 14 September, Jackson was struck hard by seas while laid her over her port side, a roll from which the 125-footer could not recover. Given the order to abandon ship, her complement too to four life rafts, which all swamped/flipped and sank within 30 minutes. This left her crew afloat and on their own…in a hurricane.
Bedloe, meanwhile, was entirely unaware of the disaster with her nearby sister due to the strong seas and nil visibility. At around 1300 local, she suffered three severe rolls to port, the last of which left her that way until she submerged three minutes later. Of her crew, 29 were able to abandon ship on three life rafts.
Rescue
With Bedloe and Jackson failing to report to shore following the storm, and George Ade and Escape confirming their separation from the escorts, the 5th Naval District launched an air search beginning with four Coast Guard-operated OS2U3 Kinfishers from CGAS Elizabeth City taking to the air at first light on the morning of the 16th. At this point, the survivors of Bedloe and Jackson had been on the sea for two days.
The first group of men, the three waterlogged rafts from Bedloe with but just 21 remaining men, were spotted 10 miles off Cape Hatteras. Three of the Kingfishers landed and taxied to the rafts to give aid to the injured.
Pilots and radio operators knocked off their shoes and then dove into the water to help pull semi-conscious men onto the wings of the bobbing planes.
Eight of the Bedloe’s crew had perished over the night of the 15th from a mixture of injuries and exposure. Two more would die shortly after rescue.
A Navy blimp dropped emergency rations.
Navy airship hovers over two OS2Us and a CG launch with picked-up survivors of the USCGC Bedloe, 16 September. USN ZP24-2906
With the Kingfishers on hand as a guide, a Coast Guard 30-foot motor lifeboat, CG-30340, from the Oregon Inlet Lifeboat Station, 15 miles away, raced to the scene and brought the survivors ashore.
BM1 William W. McCreedy from the Oregon inlet Lifeboat Station, who assisted in the rescue of the survivors from the Bedloe said the first thing he saw was a man doubled up in a small raft, his eyes resembling “a couple of blue dots in a beefsteak.”
“He flashed a beautiful smile that couldn’t be missed,” McCreedy continued. “I felt I had looked at something a man sees once in a lifetime — sort of thought I had come to the edge of heaven. Then, as though his last will to fight had been lost when he saw us, he jumped into the water. The radioman grabbed him and held him in the raft. I went overboard to help and the three of us dragged the raft down. The unconscious man’s foot was twisted in the lines, but I cut him free and we put him in the boat.” Just before reaching shore, the man reached, stroked McCreedy’s face and mumbled “We made it.” Then he died.
Once back at Oregon Inlet, a Coast Guard PBM with a doctor aboard flew the men to Norfolk for treatment.
Original caption: “Coast Guard survivors of hurricane disaster recover in Norfolk hospital: eight of the 12 survivors of the hurricane sinking of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Bedloe are shown recovering in the naval hospital at Norfolk, Virginia. They were rescued by Coast Guard air and seacraft after clinging to life rafts for more than 50 hours in shark-invested [sic] Waters 15 miles off the Virginia coast. All suffered from shock and exposure, as well as lashing by the stingers of ‘Portuguese men-of-war.’ the cutter Bedloe was sunk at the height of the hurricane on Thursday, about the time that the Coast Guard Cutter Jackson went down in the same area. In all, 19 were rescued and 49 officers and enlisted men are missing in the twin disaster. In this group, left to right, are Coast Guardsmen Jerry VanDerPuy, seaman, first class, of. . . .Sheboygan, Wisconsin; John Kissinger, soundman, third class, of Brooklyn, N.Y.; Robert Greeno, seaman first class, of Monroe, Michigan; Robert Hearst, seaman first class, of Latonia, Kentucky; Joseph Martzen, soundman second class, of. . . .McAdoo, Pennsylvania.; Michael J. Cusono, radioman third class, of Schenectady, NY, Pearcy C. Poole, chief radioman of Lakewood, N.J. and Joseph Ondrovik, coxswain of Bellville, Michigan.” Date: 14 September 1944. USCG Photo 1248 Photographer: “Kendall”, U.S. Coast Guard photo.
The search for the floating Jackson survivors continued into the night of the 16th, with Navy Blimp K-20 following up on a report from a Navy SB2C Helldiver that two groups of men were sighted in the water 18 miles offshore. USS Inflict (AM-251), on her shakedown cruise between Charleston and Norfolk, joined the rescue.
Aided by dropped water lights from the aircraft, whaleboats from the minesweeper recovered 12 men who had been adrift for over 60 hours, hounded by sharks and Portuguese men-of-war. Of these, the ship’s pharmacist’s mate found one man had a gangrene infection, another appendicitis, a third a broken leg, and a fourth a dislocated shoulder and cracked ribs, while all suffered necrotic salt water ulcers, hypothermia, and general fatigue.
Pushing her twin ALCO diesels to their max to break 14 knots, Inflict made Norfolk on the morning of the 17th and her charges were rushed to the Naval Hospital.
Later that day, USS PC-1245 recovered the floating bodies of four from Bedloe.
The air and naval search for the cutters’ lost members continued until the evening of the 18th. No less than 116 planes and six blimps had been aloft in the search.
In all, 22 men from Bedloe are still marked “missing” while another four who were recovered died. Of Jackson’s crew, which spent more time in the sea– almost all of it treading water– 21 are still somewhere under the waves.
This bill from Poseidon was paid, along with the 251 souls from the destroyer Warrington, LT Oberlin of PC-1210, the 33 minemen aboard YMS-409, and a dozen lightkeepers on LV-73.
Epilogue
Separate courts of inquiry conducted by ComFive and COMEASTSEAFRON inquired into the loss of Bedloe and Jackson:
Coast Guard Historian William H. Thiesen suspected Jackson succumbed to waves pushed ahead of the storm’s eyewall, while Bedloe was sunk by rogue waves formed on the backside of the eyewall, writing in a 2019 Proceedings article that, “It is possible that both cutters were victims of a phenomenon called the ‘three sisters,’ a series of rogue waves that travel in threes and are large enough to be tracked by radar.”
Post-war, the Coast Guard would use both cutters’ names a third time, with USCGC Jackson (WPC-120), ex-USS PCE(R)-858, and USCGC Bedloe (WPC-121), ex-USS PCE(R)-860. In typical Coast Guard fashion, “Both of the new cutters remained berthed at Curtis Bay, Maryland due to a lack of personnel,” and were later decommissioned and sold in 1947.
Today, Jackson rests, broken in two, southeast of Nags Head in 77 feet of water in NOAA’s Monitor National Marine Sanctuary. Navy EOD visited the site in the 1990s to remove ordnance and depth charges.
The USCGC Maple in 2022 hosted a Coast Guard chaplain, divers, and an underwater archaeologist for four days while the sites were visited, mapped, and honored.
The Coast Guard Art Program has also saluted the cutters.
“The Fate of Cutters Jackson and Bedloe,” Louis Barberis, watercolor, 16 x 23. US Coast Guard Art Program 2005 Collection, Ob ID # 200503
As for the SS George Ade, the Liberty ship made it back to Norfolk where she was drydocked and repaired, returning to service on 18 December 1944.
Ade’s shot away rudder and damaged screw/shaft following the hit from U-518 and surviving a hurricane at sea immediately after. Photos: MARAD.
Post-war, Ade was transferred to the National Defense Reserve Fleet, in Mobile, Alabama, and, after 20 years in mothballs, was sold for scrap in 1967.
As for U-518, she was sunk on 22 April 1945 in the North Atlantic north-west of the Azores by depth charges from the destroyer escorts USS Carter (DE 112) and USS Neal A. Scott (DE 769), with all hands lost including Oblt. Hans-Werner Offermann. Ade was the final ship the U-boat had torpedoed.
U-518 via Deutsches U-Boot-Museum, Cuxhaven-Altenbruch, Germany
The Atlantic holds its dead.
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The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.
