Category Archives: Korean War

Warship Wednesday, April 2, 2025: Jeezy Breezy, We Hit Em!

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday, April 2, 2025: Jeezy Breezy, We Hit Em!

Naval History and Heritage Command photo NH 90825

Above, we see the Balao-class fleet boat USS Charr (SS-328), off Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Mare Island, California, 16 September 1946, just after the war.

Although she got into the war late, only starting her first war patrol in December 1944, Charr has the distinction of sinking the last enemy cruiser sent to the bottom by a U.S. submarine, a feat accomplished after a four-day chase some 80 years ago this week.

The Balao Class

A member of the 180+-ship Balao class, she was one of the most mature U.S. Navy diesel designs of the World War Two era, constructed with knowledge gained from the earlier Gato class. Unlike those of many navies of the day, U.S. subs were “fleet” boats, capable of unsupported operations in deep water far from home. The Balao class was deeper diving (400 ft. test depth) than the Gato class (300 feet) due to the use of high-yield strength steel in the pressure hull.

Able to range 11,000 nautical miles on their reliable diesel engines, they could undertake 75-day patrols that could span the immensity of the Pacific. Carrying 24 (often unreliable) Mk14 Torpedoes, these subs often sank anything short of a 5,000-ton Maru or warship by surfacing and using their deck guns. They also served as the firetrucks of the fleet, rescuing downed naval aviators from right under the noses of Japanese warships.

Some 311 feet long overall, they were all-welded construction to facilitate rapid building. Best yet, they could be made for the bargain price of about $7 million in 1944 dollars (just $100 million when adjusted for today’s inflation) and completed from keel laying to commissioning in about nine months.

An amazing 121 Balaos were completed through five yards at the same time, with the following pennant numbers completed by each:

  • Cramp: SS-292, 293, 295-303, 425, 426 (12 boats)
  • Electric Boat: 308-313, 315, 317-331, 332-352 (42)
  • Manitowoc on the Great Lakes: 362-368, 370, 372-378 (15)
  • Mare Island on the West Coast: 304, 305, 307, 411-416 (9)
  • Portsmouth Navy Yard: 285-288, 291, 381-410, 417-424 (43)

We have covered a number of this class before, such as the sub-killing USS Greenfish, the UDT-10 carrying USS Burrfish, the rocket mail slinger USS Barbero, the carrier-slaying USS Archerfish, the long-serving USS Catfish, the U-boat scuttling USS Atule, Spain’s “30-one-and-only,” and the frogman Cadillac USS Perch —but don’t complain, they have lots of great stories

Meet Charr

Originally to be the first warship named after the Bocaccio, a type of West Coast rock fish, our subject was laid down, 26 August 1943, at Electric Boat in Groton. The powers that be swapped this tough to spell marine creature for the much easier Charr, a type of trout common to the Pacific Northwest, a month later.

As such, the future USS Charr- the only warship to carry the name-  was launched on 28 May 1944, sponsored by the wife of a no doubt upstanding citizen of Groton, and commissioned on 23 September 1944, her construction spanning a scant 394 days. At the time, EB was building them so fast that it was a dual commissioning ceremony– the first at New London- with sistership USS Boarfish (SS-327), who had been laid down just a fortnight before Charr.

Charr’s plank owner skipper was CDR Francis Dennis Boyle (USNA ’34). It was his first command, having gone out as a junior officer and XO on three previous war patrols on other fleet boats.

Sailing for the West Pac on 5 November to join the Big Show after six weeks of shakedowns, she arrived at Pearl Harbor via the Ditch in early December and spent Christmas of 1944 at Pearl Harbor.

She had a fairly green crew, with her wardroom averaging out to about two patrols per officer (although her two most junior ensigns were mustangs with 14 patrols between them). Meanwhile, her goat locker had a similar average with three of her chiefs counting zero patrols between them. Overall, only 43 of her 80 men aboard had earned their dolphins.

War!

On 30 December 1944, Charr was escorted out of Pearl Harbor along with the veteran boat, USS Batfish, to begin her first war patrol, ordered to roam the South China Sea by way of Saipan. Clearing that occupied former Japanese possession on 13 January 1945 with a full load of diesel oil and provisions topped off from the sub-tender USS Fulton, Charr made for her patrol area and spent the next several weeks fighting heavy seas while hiding from Japanese patrol aircraft.

Carr in the distinctive late-war fleet “gunboat submarine” configuration with forward and aft 5″/25s augmented with matching 40mm and 20mm mounts. Photo by Lt. Herb Hanson via Navsource.

She dodged a couple of floating mines and made a rendezvous at sea with her commissioning mate Boarfish on 27 January off Pulo Kambir, some 8,500 miles away from New London. Small world!

The next day, she was dispatched to close with the coast of Japanese-occupied French Indochina to search for downed fliers. Anchoring just 2,700 yards offshore, a landing team recovered the radioman of a downed aircraft in broad daylight on the 29th, then had to return after dark for the rest of the aircrew but found herself in the middle of Japanese convoy HI-88-B (Singapore to Moji).

From Charr’s patrol report:

While Boarfish was lucky enough to sink the Japanese tanker Enki Maru (6968 GRT) and force the tanker Daietsu Maru (6890 GRT) aground, Charr came away from the encounter empty-handed, never able to get close enough to make an attack. Transferring her navy radioman aboard her sistership, which was Fremantle-bound, Charr remained on fruitless patrol, working off and on with the fellow fleet boats USS Tuna and Blackfin.

On 21 February, while Boarfish’s crew was enjoying the bars and beaches of Western Australia, Charr crossed the equator and was ordered to go to the rescue of the imperiled Dutch T-class submarine HrMs Zwaardvisch (P 322), which she did on the 22nd. She would spend the next four days on a risky southbound passage to Lombok Strait on the surface.

Charr ended her 1st patrol at Fremantle on 3 March, having not fired any torpedoes, dodged over 20 enemy air contacts, and only fired her guns (20mm) at enemy mines. Despite the risky rescue of the downed Navy radioman, and boldly escorting Zwaardvisch back to safety, the patrol was not deemed by COMSUBPAC to be successful.

On the bright side, she ran 13,799 miles across 63 days on her first patrol with no casualties, and 75 of 80 men aboard had dolphins at the end of it. She was ready.

Second Patrol

Charr sailed out of Freemantle again on 27 March after refit, ordered, in part, to comb the Flores, Java, and South China Seas in coordination with USS Gabilan (SS-252) and Besugo (SS-321) while HM Submarine Spark was nearby but not attached. Charr celebrated Easter submerged on 1 April entering the Lombok Strait.

Soon, this Yankee wolfpack would sniff out one of the Empire’s last operational cruisers outside of Japan’s home waters.

The Nagara class light cruiser Isuzu had helped seize Hong Kong from the British and survived the Solomons and the hellfire of the Leyte Gulf, but her days had run out.

Nagara Class Light Cruiser Isuzu pictured on completion off Uraga on August 20th, 1923

Nagara Class Light Cruiser Isuzu pictured underway in Tokyo Bay on September 14th, 1944

Tasked with collecting isolated Japanese troops from Kupang and taking them to Sumbawa Island with an escort of a torpedo boat and two minesweepers, Boyle’s wolfpack (he was SOPA) sighted the little convoy off Paternoster Island at 1125 on 4 April but were forced to submerge due to Japanese air cover. Meanwhile, Gabilan sank a small Japanese vessel with gunfire in a surface action.

Besugo got close enough in the predawn of 5 April to fire six torpedoes at Isuzu and one, throat down, at her escorts, all of which missed.

The pursuit continued with RAAF Mosquitos of No. 87 Squadron and FRUMEL intercepts, pointing the way for B-25s of the Free Dutch No. 18 Squadron to attack the force on the morning of 6 April, dropping 60 500-pound bombs without result.

Meanwhile, Isuzu picked up her assigned marooned troops and deposited them that afternoon at Sumbawa, unharmed. A second attack by B-24s of the RAAF’s Nos. 21 and 24 Squadrons later that day left Isuzu limping and on manual steering.

It was in the afternoon of 6th April, between Sumbawa and Komodo islands is the Sape Strait, that Boyle’s wolfpack caught up to the Isuzu group again. Besugo fired another 11 torpedoes in two attacks and bagged the escorting Japanese minesweeper W 12 (630 tons) for her effort, then was forced back to Freemantle as she was out of fish. She surfaced and saw survivors in the water after the Japanese had moved on “but all refused to be picked up.”

At 0255 on 7 April, Charr made radar contact with Isuzu and her two remaining escorts at 14,700 yards, making their way out of Sumbawa’s Bima Bay. “Bingo, this may be the jackpot,” noted Boyle.

Radioing the contact to Gabilan, who was in the path of the Isuzu group, that submarine made an attack on the cruiser with five torpedoes, one of which hit below the bridge, causing flooding forward and cutting her speed to 10 knots.

Meanwhile, Charr moved in for the kill. From her patrol report:

Isuzu was the last of her class in Japanese service remaining and the final Axis cruiser sunk by an American submarine.

The next day, the wolfpack broke up, with Gabilan and Spark heading on their ways as Charr was detailed to complete a Special Mission (planting a minefield off Pulo Island) while sinking a 500-ton Japanese coaster on 10 April via gunfire. On the 13th, they received word of FDR’s death (“All hands are deeply saddened”), then on the 16th fired six torpedoes at two Japanese escorts in the Gulf of Siam without luck.

Stopping in at Subic Bay briefly on 20-24 April, she then headed to Formosa for lifeguard duty, saving USAAF Lt. Hugo Casciola, a Fifth Air Force P-51 pilot (likely of the 3rd Air Commando Group), on 6 May.

Ending her 56-day patrol at Subic on 21 May, Charr sailed 11,688 miles. Her patrol was deemed a success and a Submarine Combat Insignia was authorized, with Charr credited for 5,670 tons of Japanese shipping sunk.

Third Patrol

On 14 June 1945, Charr left Subic Bay for her 3rd war patrol, ordered to the Gulf of Siam, one of the few areas with a significant Japanese presence afloat, even if it was in the form of coastal traffic. By the end of the month, she formed an Allied wolfpack with HMS Selene (P 254) and Sea Scout (P 253), later joined by Supreme (P 252). They chased down a small Japanese convoy not worth the torpedoes to sink but could never get close enough to engage it with gunfire.

On 5 July at 0042 while on the surface alone, Charr’s lookouts spotted an incoming torpedo that only missed them by 25 yards, with Boyle noting “Evidence of the torpedo from its wake is unmistakable” as Charr left the area at flank speed.

With the three luckless British S-boats returning to Freemantle, Boyle, on 11 Jul,y inherited an all-American pack built around USS Hammerhead, Blower, and Bluefish. Four days later, Bluefish, birddogged by reports from Blower, who fired four torpedoes at a Japanese I-class submarine contact, found I-351 on the surface 100 miles out of Natuna Besar, Borneo with a cargo of 42 irreplaceable naval aircrewmen. Bluefish sent I-351 and 110 of her 113 crew and passengers to the bottom with a four-torpedo spread.

Charr ended her 43-day 3rd war patrol at Fremantle on 26 July. Although her group bagged a big Japanese sub, that was Bluefish’s kill, and, thus, the patrol was not deemed worthy of an SCI.

As WWII ended before Charr could begin a fourth patrol, she ended the conflict with just one battle star for her second patrol. She was then dispatched to Guam to join SUBRON5.

Fleet boats USS Sea Cat (SS-399), USS Redfish (SS-395), and USS Charr (SS-328) alongside a tender at Apra Harbor, Guam, in 1945. Photographed by John R. Huggard. NH 93824

Submarine Squadron 5 boats of the squadron nested together in 1945. Photographed by Lieutenant Herb Hanson. Ships are (from left to right): Segundo (SS-398), Sea Cat (SS-399), Blenny (SS-324), Blower (SS-325), Blueback (SS-326), and Charr (SS-328). NH 86621

Charr then returned to the West Coast on 27 January 1946, capping 15 months deployed out of CONUS. A refit at Mare Island and a new skipper followed.

USS Charr (SS-328) off the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Mare Island, California, 16 September 1946. NH 90826

Cold War Snorkel Days

With the Navy rapidly demobilizing, there still had to be somebody on watch, especially with conflict boiling around the suddenly post-colonial West Pac, and Charr was one of several subs tasked with making what were termed simulated war patrols. One 115-day training patrol, departing San Francisco on the 4 October 1946, included visits to Pearl, Subic Bay, Shanghai, and Tsingtao China, as well as Yokosuka Japan, and was concluded at San Diego on 27 January 1947. A second one followed soon after.

She then fell into a quiet peacetime period of drilling naval reservists on two-week coastal deployments along the California and Mexican coasts with two dozen reservists aboard, serving as a training boat to the Submarine Training Facilities San Diego, participating in exercises, and earning a series of Battle Es including the Marjorie Sterrett Battleship Fund Prize in 1948, the first for a Pacific sub.

TBM-3E Avenger attack planes of VS-25 in flight over USS Charr (SS-328), 15 March 1950, under deployment to Fleet Air Wing Four, Whidbey Island. Note that she is still in her original configuration. 80-G-443900

On 10 July 1951, she entered Mare Island to be converted to a “Four-engine Fleet-type Snorkel” submarine, emerging four months later with a radically different topside appearance.

Caiman, SS-323 and Charr at Mare Island conversion to Guppy IA and Fleet Snork

USS Charr at Mare Island 9 Nov 1951

Would you look at that snorter! USS Charr at Mare Island 9 Nov 1951

Besides the obvious snorkel installation and sensor updates, the conversion gave her a new streamlined sail and removed her deck guns. She also sported a two-tone scheme.

USS Charr (SS-328) off the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Mare Island, California, November 1951. Following conversion to “fleet-Snorkel” configuration. Note her experimental paint scheme. NH 90830

Same as above. NH 90828

Same as above. NH 90829

Same as above.

Then came the Korean War, which included a six-month war patrol (26 March -2 October 1952) in the region under the orders of Commander Naval Forces, Far East.

Sent to the West Pac again after the cease fire, she left San Diego on 13 June 1954.

USS Charr at speed

She visited Formosa, Taiwan, and met the 7th Fleet boss and the inaugural commander of the U.S. Taiwan Defense Command, VADM Alfred M. Pride, who appeared on hand with exiled Generallisimo Chiang Kei-Shek himself. The 67-year-old first president of the Republic of China toured Charr extensively and got underway briefly on 9 November. Most Americans forget today, but the U.S. had upwards of 20,000 troops deployed at any given time to Taiwan through 1979, when the USTDC was disbanded under the Carter administration.

General Chiang Kai Shek on board USS Charr (SS 328) at Keelung, Formosa. General Shek peers through the periscope as Commander Whitman, Commanding Officer of the submarine, looks on, November 9, 1954. 330-PS-7025 (USN 649238)

General Chiang Kai Shek on board USS Charr (SS 328) at Keelung, Formosa. General Shek with Vice Admiral Alfred H. Pride on the navigation bridge, November 9, 1954. 330-PS-7025 (USN 649236)

General Chiang Kai Shek on board USS Charr (SS 328) at Keelung, Formosa. General Shek with Vice Admiral Alfred H. Pride on the weather deck, November 9, 1954. 330-PS-7025 (USN 649237)

Then followed a decade of West Coast operations, ranging from Vancouver to Acapulco with naval reservists and participating in public events such as the Seattle Sea Fair and supporting Girl Scout Marine Ship 36 of Pasadena with tiger cruises.

She was in 12,000 feet of water off San Diego on 26 September 1961 when, while rigged for deep submergence, a main motor circulating water hose ruptured at 150 feet, flooding the Maneuvering Room, a situation saved after two ratings sealed themselves in the engine room and maintained power to rapidly bring the Charr to the surface. Living to fight another day, she was towed to San Francisco Naval Shipyard for repairs. John McGee, EM1, received the Navy Commendation Medal, while Douglass Webster, EM3, received a Letter of Commendation for their efforts to save their ship that day.

Operationally, she drilled in PACTRAEX and completed active West Pac deployments with Seventh Fleet in 1957, 1959, 1961, and 1963.

USS Tilefish, USS Razorback, and USS Charr moored in Vancouver in 1957. Note the difference in sail types

Balao-class submarine USS Charr (SS-328) in drydock at Yokosuka, Japan, 1963

USS Charr (SS-328) underway, 14 December 1963. USN 1094488

Same as above USN 1094493

USS Charr (SS-328) underway off San Diego, California, 8 January 1965. USN 1110922

Balao class, 1965 Janes, at which point the Navy still had a whopping 80 of these boats on hand

With U.S. involvement in Vietnam ramping up in 1965, Charr was deployed to those waters as a sideshow to SEATO Exercise Sea Horse and, along with a half-dozen other diesel boats, would soon be laying off the North Vietnam littoral on secret observation and lifeguard missions for Rolling Thunder air strikes.

It was during these support operations that Charr recovered CDR Jack H. Harris, commanding officer of VA-155, from the Gulf of Tonkin on 29 March.

Harris, flying from the USS Coral Sea, had ejected from his damaged A-4E Skyhawk (BuNo 150078) after an Alpha strike against North Vietnamese air search radar facilities on Bach Long Vi Island, which is located about 70 miles offshore roughly midway between Haiphong and the Chinese island of Hainan. He was the last pilot to be rescued CSAR style by a lifeguard submarine, almost 20 years to the date from Charr’s WWII lifeguard service. The waterlogged pilot remained on Charr for several days and was eventually high-lined to a destroyer for return to Coral Sea. Sadly, he died in the fire on Oriskany in 1966.

Charr almost got a second rescue from Coral Sea off Bach Long Vi Island as well.

As noted by EM3(SS) Sid Anderson of the old USS Charr Association:

CDR William N. Donnelly, CO of Fighter Squadron 154, flying F-8D BuNo 148642, had his controls shot out while in a dive-bombing run against an AAA site. He ejected while inverted at 450 knots and 1,000 feet altitude, landing about 4 miles from the island. On the night of March 30th, upon becoming aware that transmissions from CDR Donnelly’s emergency radio were being received, the USS Charr surfaced and conducted a grid search but was unsuccessful in finding him. Later that day, during the mid-watch (12 noon to 4 p.m.) CDR Donnelly was sighted floating in his survival raft by aircraft that were en route to another bombing raid. His location was about 14 miles from the Charr, which was submerged at the time. Once in receipt of this information, LCDR John M. Draddy, CO of the Charr, surfaced and proceeded to CDR Donnelly’s location. Upon arrival at the site, a fleet of Chinese junks were already there, with no sight of CDR Donnelly or his raft. With the belief that the junks had gotten to him first, LCDR Draddy quickly assembled an armed boarding party intending to rescue him. However, before any action was taken, LCDR Draddy received word that CDR Donnelly had already been picked up by a U.S. Air Force HU-16 amphibian, and the boarding party was dismissed. In his raft, CDR Donnelly had successfully evaded North Vietnamese patrol boats for some 45 hours.

Entering the twilight of her career, Charr would be redesignated an Auxiliary Submarine (SGSS) in July 1966, and make her seventh West Pac deployment from May to December 1967 that included SEATO Exercise Sea Dog and service as a “tame” Military Assistance Program submarine on loan to the navies of the Philippines, South Korea and China for use in ASW training.

She made her 7,000th dive on 20 July 1968. Not bad work considering most of her constructors were war-hires and “Rosies.”

Charr’s (SS-328) 7000th dive, 20 July 1968. (L to R): TMSN Don McClain (IC Electrician watch), HMC(SS) “Doc” Taft(standing by just in case), TM1(SS) Vince Solari (OOD/Diving Officer), LCDR Jim Callan (port lookout), CS1(SS) Jake Wade (Chief of the Watch), EN1(SS) Harley Rackley (trim manifold watch), EM2(SS) Lin Marvil (starboard lookout).    Photo by J.D. Decrevel EM2(SS), via Navsource.

Spending the rest of her career stateside, Charr was decommissioned on 28 June 1969 in a mass five-way ceremony with the old fleet boats Bream, Tunny, Bluegill, and Raton.

Bream (AGSS-243), Tunny (AGS-282), and Charr (AGSS-328), during the decommissioning ceremony at Mare Island on 28 June 1969. Photo courtesy of the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum via Darryl L. Baker, via Navsource.

Charr continued “In Service, In Reserve” for another 18 months until 20 December 1971, at which time she was struck from the Navy List. She was sold to Nicolai Joffe, Beverly Hills, for $105,381 on 17 August 1972, then subsequently scrapped in Kearny. New Jersey

Charr earned an Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal for her Vietnam cruise, added to two for Korea, and her sole WWII battle star.

Epilogue

Little remains of Charr.

Her Cold War deck logs, WWII patrol reports, and war history are digitized in the National Archives. 

She had an active veteran’s group that was online until about 2020.

Post-WWII, Charr’s only wartime skipper CDR Boyle, who earned a Navy Cross for sinking Isuzu, did a stint at JPL then got heavily into guided missile research, rising to head White Sands in the late 1950s. He earned his surface warfare badge as commander of the USS Springfield (CLG-7) just after her conversion to a guided missile cruiser and then later broke his flag over Cruiser Destroyer Flotilla 7 as a rear admiral. He retired in 1968 and passed a decade later at age 68. His papers are in the Hoover Institution.

RADM Doyle, Charr’s WWII skipper

Her Vietnam-era skipper, LCDR John Draddy, the man who was ready to fight off a fleet of Chinese junks on the surface with Tommy guns and M1 Carbines to save a downed naval aviator, earned a Bronze Star for that cruise. He retired from the Navy as a captain, 29 years a submariner. He passed in 2005, aged 76, with a host of grandkids, and is buried at Arlington.

The P-51 pilot that Charr plucked from the drink off Formosa in May 1945, Hugo Casciola, survived the war and passed in Pennsylvania in 1976 at age 60. During WWII, U.S. submarines rescued no less than 504 downed airmen from all services.

It would be almost two decades after Chiang Kai-shek rode on Charr that the Republic of China obtained its first submarines, receiving the Balao-class ex-USS Tusk (SS-426) and Tench-class ex-USS Cutlass (SS-478) in 1973, recommissioning them as the “unarmed” training boats Hai Po and Hai Shih respectively. They were later augmented by a pair of Dutch-built SSKs.

Taiwan’s first Indigenous Defense Submarine (IDS), Hai Kun (SS-711), was launched last February at the CSBC shipyard in Kaohsiung. She is set to wrap up sea trials this month.

Taiwan IDS submarine, the future Hai Kun, departing for sea trials. CSBC picture.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

 

***

 

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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Getting some range time with the Owen

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While in town for SHOT Show earlier this year, we had a chance to swing by and visit our old friends at Battlefield Vegas. They gratefully allowed us a chance to tour their vault and pick a few guns to profile and shoot.

 

Battlefield Vegas
Choices, choices…(Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
Battlefield Vegas
You know us, we like the rare ones. 
Then we saw this baby, sandwiched between a Rattler and a UZI-SD. 
This beautiful Mk. 1 Owen may look a little funky because it is a little funky, but we just had to check it out. 
Keep in mind these were built for an all-up per-unit cost of about $30, so the furniture isn’t nice on this simple “toob” gun. In many respects, it was a forerunner of such simple modern SMGs as the Sterling and Beretta PMX. Note the charging handle is to the rear of the gun and comes super close to the face while reciprocating. 
Top fed with a 33-round 9mm magazine, it has a very peculiar feel to it.
The ejection port is on the bottom. 
One of the more curious aspects of the Owen is that the front sight post is off-center, canted to the right, as the top sight line is ruined by the magazine. 

More on how the range went, along with some background on the gun, in my column at Guns.com.

Warship Wednesday, March 5, 2025: Poster Child for the Donald Duck Navy

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday, March 5, 2025: Poster Child for the Donald Duck Navy

USN 479855

Above we see the PC-461-class 173-foot subchaser USS Chardon (PC-564) underway during fleet exercises on 9 May 1951. The humble gunboat survived an excruciating convoy across the Atlantic during WWII to serve on the beaches at Normandy only to take part in what was the last surface naval action in Europe during the conflict– some 80 years ago this week.

Along the way, she saved hundreds of Joes from perishing on the sea in a bit of a Christmas miracle.

The PC-461 Class

Designed to provide a beefy little sub-buster– similar to Britain’s corvettes and sloops– that could float in shallow enough water (10-foot draft) to perform coastal operations but still have enough sea-keeping abilities and range (4,800 nm at 12 knots) to escort cross-ocean convoys without needing the same anti-ship capabilities as found on patrol frigates and destroyer escorts, the Navy ordered some 400 small submarine chasers based on a modified design of one of the pre-war Experimental Small Craft program’s “X-boats” the diesel-powered USS PC-451.

USS PC-451 was designed in 1938 and commissioned on 12 August 1940. Some 173 feet long, the 270-ton steel hulled diesel-powered subchaser could carry two 3″/50 DP guns, six 20mm guns, two Mk 20 Mousetrap projectors, two depth charge racks, and two K-gun depth charge throwers, all while making nearly 19 knots and just requiring a 65-man crew.

The follow-on PC-461 went a bit heavier and, carrying twin 1,440 bhp diesel engines, could break 22 knots (when clean) and tote essentially the same armament, and ship out with QHA sonar (as well as small set SF or SO or SCR-517A radars after 1942).

PC-461 was laid down in July 1941– just five months before the attack on Pearl Harbor– and eventually, some 343 of her class would be constructed by March 1945 across 13 small shipyards, all non-traditional to the Navy.

Camouflage Measure 32, Design 12P drawing prepared by the Bureau of Ships for a camouflage scheme intended for application to 173-foot submarine chasers (labeled on the drawing as PC-578 class). This plan, approved by Captain Torvald A. Solberg, USN, is dated 19 July 1944. It shows the ship’s starboard side, exposed decks, and the superstructure ends. 19-N-73643

USS PC-483 is underway in a Navy Kodachrome. Note the ship’s camouflage pattern. 80-GK-00428_001

USS PC-546 underway off the U.S. East Coast, circa 1942. Interestingly, these ships carried a false stack, as the diesel exhaust was routed through the hull sides. 80-G-K-13278

USS PC-546 from the stern.

Another stern shot of the 546 boat, note her thin 23-foot beam, welded hull, and already thinning hull black applied in a rush, sloppy fashion.

USS PC-472 underway near Hampton Roads, Virginia, 31 August 1942. Note her armament layout including a 3″/50 forward, another aft, two 20mm Oerlikons on the bridge wings, two stern DC racks, and two K guns. NH 96481

The PC-461s were some of the smallest U.S. Navy ships to carry a legit sonar listening set.

Undergoing a course of instruction with Naval sonar equipment aboard the USS PC 592 are two Naval Reservists, Seaman First Class F.C. Semkin and Apprentice Seaman G.S. Jackson, Naval Base, SC. Accession #: L55-03

Depth Charges (probably Mk. 6 type) mounted on a “K-gun” projector, and on ready service holders, on the stern of a 173-foot submarine chaser (pc). Taken at the sub-chaser training center, Miami, Florida, 11 May 1942. Note depth charge racks in the background. 80-G-16048

Depth Charge explodes in the wake of a U.S. Navy submarine chaser (PC) during World War II. The photo was taken before April 1944. The 173s could carry as many as 30 depth charges, with a cumulative “throw” of some 5 tons of high explosives. 80-G-K-13753

Submarine chasers and crew. (PC-483, 461, 466), Key West. As the number of AAA guns expanded, crews would grow to as many as 80 officers and enlisted, against a planned complement of 65. 80-GK-00427_001

A motor whaleboat was carried amidships along with a small crane to launch and recover it.

USS PC-620 is seen in Key West in this LIFE Kodachrome. Note her whaleboat, crane, after 3″/50, and depth charges galore.

“Easy Does It!” Crewmen of A 173-foot submarine Chaser (PC) stowing their craft’s dory, after hoisting it from the water, circa 1942. Note Camouflage paint on the boat. The photo was received from the Third Naval District on 17 May 1943. 80-G-K-16426

The PC-461s ranged far and wide, seeing service in every theatre. Four (PC 566, PC 565, PC 624, and PC 619) claimed kills on German U-boats, two (PC 487 and PC 1135) with sinking Japanese fleet boats, three (PC 558, PC 626, and PC 477) with scratching German and Japanese midget subs, two (PC 545 and PC 627) with killing Italian torpedo boats, and two (PC 1129 and PC 1123) with stopping Japanese suicide boats.

“USS PC 565 shown a short time after sinking German U-boat, U-521, with a depth charge, only the Commanding Officer escaped. The vessel fell away from his feet as he climbed out of the conning tower, June 2, 1943.” 80-G-78408

When it comes to the butcher’s bill, six PC-461 class sisters were lost to a combination of enemy action and accidents during WWII while another 24 were seriously damaged.

Meet PC-564

Laid down on 25 January 1942 by the Consolidated Shipbuilding Co. in the Bronx (Morris Heights) PC-564 launched on 12 April and was commissioned on 2 July. In all, her construction spanned just 158 days, including the commissioning ceremony.

The Donald Duck Navy

Assigned to the Atlantic, our little subchaser spent the bulk of the next two years on unsung routine coastal patrol and escort duty, typically out of New York.

That is, after she passed out of shakedown and skills training at the U.S. Navy Subchaser School in Miami. It was there that her crew left a lasting impact on the school, with one of her crew, Signalman Jim Dickie, doodled a sort of fighting version of Donald Duck, complete with a depth charge Y-gun strapped to his back, a flag on his stern, listening gear, a “PC” brassard, and binos.

The combat duck insignia made it to PC-564′s crow’s-nest and the school personnel liked it so much it became the unofficial emblem of the SCTC.

The Donald Duck Navy insignia Mary Mclssac Collection. HistoryMiami. 2001-421-33N

In addition to dodging U-boats along the eastern sea frontier, the sea proved dangerous to our little patrol craft, with three men swept from her decks in the mountainous seas of Tropical Storm Seven off Cape Hatteras on 29/30 September 1943 while escorting a coastal convoy. SA Richard Tull (06508483) was never seen again while CBM John Black was amazingly tossed back on deck by a subsequent wave. The third man, RM Daniel Riley, was pulled from the cold embrace of the Atlantic by EM3 Norman Scaffe who wrapped a line around his waist and went after him, earning a well-deserved  Navy and Marine Corps Medal.

PC-564′s first skipper was Lt. Roland H. Cramer, USNR, who left the ship eight months later to commission a new sister, USS PC-1079, then left that ship six months later to command the destroyer escort USS Riddle (DE 185).

Her second skipper, Harvard-educated lawyer Lt. Alban “Stormy” Weber, USNR, likewise rotated out by June 1943 to command a tin can in the Pacific, leaving her to a third commander, NYC-born Lt. Seabury Marsh, USNR.

The Goofiest convoy

It was Marsh that pulled the short straw to join TF-67 in Convoy NY‑78, perhaps the most unusual Atlantic convoy of the war. As detailed in a past Warship Wednesday (Slow Going), NY-78 included 34 large (250 feet on average) NYC railway car barges specially modified into “Pickabacks” to make the voyage, which would be desperately needed to move ammo to the beaches on D-Day. Also, part of the convoy was two dozen tugs that would remain in Europe for Overlord and 11 other subchasers which were needed to work as control and support boats just off the surf line during the landings.

The pickaback convoy, Aug 1945 Popular Science

TF-67 wallowed 25 days from late March to mid-April on the 3,400nm trek from New York to Plymouth that averaged just under six knots! PC-564’s war diary for the period has her primarily chasing down loose barges, running ASW sonar lookouts, and acting as the convoy’s mail ship.

D-Day

The dozen 173-foot subchasers brought over in the convoy formed PC Squadron One and served as shepherds to the waves of LCIs headed to the beaches on D-Day, where PC-1261 was sunk off Utah Beach by a German coastal battery 58 minutes before H-Hour. Often while sidestepping German E-boats, midget subs, fire from shore batteries, mines, and aircraft, their war was one of up-close and sudden death.

Marsh would command PC-564 during the operation, leaving Portland Harbor, England at 0300 on 5 June, D-1, to function as the guide for Convoy Group 2 (O-2A), “riding herd” over the LCT flotillas in the convoy in the rough weather to the assembly area. On D-Day the next morning, she was assigned to function as a control vessel at Easy Red Sector, Omaha Beach, for Assault Group O-3, riding in with the 20th wave to the line of departure.

‘Easy Red Sector’, Omaha Beach – approx. 0700 on the 6th of June 1944. Men of Easy Company, the 2nd battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, US Army 1st Division hide under Czech Hedgehogs while under fire during fighting during the Landing at Normandy.

The afternoon of 6 June saw PC-564 standing as part of the ASW/anti-E-boat screen off Omaha Beach, a role she maintained until 1800 on the 7th. Over that night, 12 enemy planes were reportedly shot down near her line.

Normandy Invasion, June 1944, USS Ancon (AGC-4), command ship for the Omaha Beach landings, stands offshore on 7 June 1944. USS PC-564 is in the foreground. 80-G-257287

On the evening of 7 June, she was ordered by USS Ancon (AGC-4), the command ship for Omaha Beach, to proceed to Easy White Beach to serve as a control vessel there, closing to the two-fathom curve where she experienced several enemy shells landing close-by. She would maintain her position off Easy White, directing incoming and outgoing vessel traffic, until dark on 12 June when she was dispatched to ASW/E-boat screen duties to T.G. 122.4 just offshore through the 17th.

Leopoldville

Marsh left PC-564 in late 1944, his place taken by Lt. James E Spencer, USNR.

When the troop transport HMTS Leopoldville, packed with men of the U.S. 66th (“Panther”) Infantry Division, was torpedoed just five miles short of her destination on Christmas Eve 1944, PC-564 was one of the ships that went to her immediate assistance. Spencer ordered her to close with the much larger ship in the darkness, and, throwing lines over, tied up as Leopoldville settled slowly into the water, taking men aboard until the dying troopship threatened to drag the subchaser to the bottom with her.

As detailed by the NHHC:

HMS Brilliant came alongside and rescued about 500 soldiers, while the other escorts pursued the submarine. The U.S. tug ATR-3 reached SS Leopoldville from Cherbourg in time to rescue 69 soldiers, and PC-564 and PT-461 also contributed to the rescue of a further 1,400 U.S. soldiers.

As recalled by Thomas Kay, a British DEMS gun layer on one of Leopoldville’s 3-inch HA gun that found himself in the frigid water unexpectedly:

When I hit the water the red light on my life jacket lit up and I kept on swimming as hard as I could go. I stopped once to look back, there was a crowd of men near and behind me. I saw the bows of the Leopoldville sticking up in the air and men dropping off her like flies. I turned away and kept on swimming hard for a while, then as I looked around me, I seemed to be quite alone.

I must have been in the water about 15 minutes or so, I really couldn’t tell, when a PT boat came alongside me. I later learnt it was the PC 564. It had a scrambling net hanging over the side and I grabbed hold of part of the net, but I could neither climb up or let go of the net I was so exhausted. I was rising and falling with the swell on the sea and the rise and fall of the ship. Two American sailors came down the net and somehow dragged me up it. I was so exhausted I collapsed in a heap on a canvas on the deck and one of the sailors said to me “don’t’ lie there buddy” and lifted the corner of the sheet up and I could see two or three dead bodies underneath in army gear.

They half carried me to a short steel ladder, took me down and put me in a bunk. I thought it was a sick bay at the time but later learned it was an officer’s cabin and I had been put in the bunk of Lt. Wesley Johnson, an officer on the ship.

The Granville Raid

With the war in Europe in its last act, just eight weeks before VE-Day, VADM Fredrich Huffmeier, late of the battleship Scharnhorst, was in charge of the isolated German garrison in the occupied Channel Islands, a command that would not capitulate until after the war. Looking to keep Allied forces tied down, he ordered Kpltn. Carl-Friedrich Mohr to sea with a motley force of 600 troops crammed into six minesweepers, three AAA barges (Artilleriefährprahms), three motor launches, and a tugboat with an aim to raid the French coast for sorely needed coal. With escapees from the POW camp at Granville providing intel, that harbor was chosen as the easy target.

Lt. Percy Sandel Jr, USNR, the 30-year-old son of Judge Percy Sandel of Monroe, Louisiana, was in command of PC-564 at the time. Our subchaser was the only American warship in Granville harbor crowded with Allied merchant ships other than the Royal Navy anti-submarine trawler HMT Pearl (T 22), which was armed with just a single old 4-inch gun and was set to escort British colliers back to Plymouth in the morning.

Asdic trawler HMT Pearl (ex-Dervish). She did not make contact with the German forces other than to fire star shells. IWM FL 17276

Things got squirrely just before midnight on 8/9 March 1945.

Per PC Patrol Craft of WWII, based on Sandel’s nine-page after-action report:

At 2315 hours, the radioman on PC-564, which was on patrol off Granville, picked up an alert for his ship. The radio station blurted out the positions of three radar contacts between the islands of Chausey and Jersey. After they tracked and identified them as German, they sent orders to the PC to intercept them. Percy Sandel, USNR, the Skipper of PC 564, rang General Quarters. The PC charged toward the contacts. After a series of radar and navigational plots to intercept the largest, the captain commanded, “All ahead two-thirds.”

At a range of 4,500 yards, Sandel ordered the crew on the three-inch gun to illuminate the targets. The night sky flashed to brilliance as PC 564 fired three star shells over the enemy ships. Fear raced through the men on the bridge as they stared at the sight of three German gunboats knowing that even one gunboat had them outgunned.

Seconds later, a star shell from the German ships burst over the PC.

The PC opened fire and after one round from the main gun it jammed. The German ships opened up with their larger guns, and their shells pounded the PC. A few minutes later a German 8.8 cm shell bored through the bridge of the PC and exploded. The blast, heat, and flying metal struck down all hands on the bridge, killing all but one person. As sailors raced to fight the fire another shell tore through the chart house. A third round splintered the ship’s boat. Then, German shells riddled the 40mm gun tub and crew. Motor Machinist’s Mate 2/C Elmer “Scrappie” Hoover tumbled from his post as pointer. Shrapnel had riddled his body and splintered many of his bones. His buddies lashed him to a bomb rack as the ship rolled in the heavy sea. Bodies sprawled about the deck and the bridge.

Because of the severe damage to the engine room, the steady roar of the PC’s diesel engines faded to silence. The Skipper ordered the men to standby to abandon ship. Sailors scurried about the deck twisting tourniquets, wrapping bandages, and shooting morphine into shivering men with legs and arms bloodied and dangling or blown away. Below decks, the engineers lit off the engines again. Under the direction of Lt Sandel and Lt. Russell Klinger, the ship plowed ahead for the shore. It ground onto the rocks of La Baie du Verger near Cancale. Larry Jordan, Seaman Ist Class, wrote, “‘I never knew that land could look so good in all my life, but boy! That was the most beautiful land that ever looked at!”

The shells of the German gunboats killed fourteen men. wounded eleven and left fourteen missing. Dazed survivors who heard only the last words of the captain, “abandon ship,” jumped into the frigid water. From there they watched as Sandel, steering by hand, beached the heavily damaged ship. German sailors on the E-boat scooped up some of the men, who had gone overboard, before the ship ran aground. Those PC sailors ended the war in a German prison camp. A small group of men swam or went hand over hand along a line from the beached PC to shore. Though unable to speak French, they raised help from a French doctor and fishermen who went to rescue and care for the men still on the grounded ship.

Sandel’s damage report:

  • Shell through the Pilothouse exploded inside causing extensive fire damage.
  • Mast Damaged by shrapnel
  • Hull and deck have extensive damage due to shell holes and shrapnel.
  • Shell through deck at base of Pilothouse
  • Minor damage to 40mm gun, tub full of holes
  • Depth Charge release gear inoperative
  • Steam lines broken, electric cables cut.
  • Shell exploded in small boat, boat cut in half
  • Starboard rudder missing
  • Port rudder badly damaged
  • Both props badly damaged
  • Starboard strut shaft missing

Casualties: 2 Officers and 12 men dead, 11 men wounded, 12 men missing out of a crew of 5 officers and 60 men. At least five of those lost are buried at the Brittany American Cemetery, Montjoie Saint Martin, France.

The Germans lost one ship during the raid, the 224-foot M1940-class large minesweeper M-412, which had run aground in shallow waters and evacuated, was scuttled in place.

Commander, U. S. Naval Forces, France, endorsed the fight of PC-564 against hopeless odds at Granville as “The PC 564 closed the enemy rapidly, engaged vigorously, and did her best to break up the attack. The resultant loss of life and injuries to personnel is to be regretted, but the courage of the Captain and his crew was of a high order.”

VADM Laurence DuBose, chief of staff and aide to the commander, Naval Forces Europe under ADM Harold Stark, in May 1945 further endorsed Sandel’s report from Granville by saying, “The Commanding Officer displayed courage in fortitude in bringing superior enemy force to action. This action delayed and shortened the enemy’s subsequent activities in Granville.”

Beached on the French coast at the Pierre de Herpin Lighthouse, PC-564 was later salvaged and towed to Amphibious Base Plymouth, England, where she was repaired by late April and returned under her own power to the states. After more extensive overhaul on the East Coast, in June 1945 she was assigned to the Commander, Submarine Force in New London, Connecticut to serve as an ASW asset for new boats.

Cold War

Postwar, PC-564 was dispatched to Pearl Harbor where she was placed in service as a Naval Reserve Training vessel and general district craft assigned to the 14th Naval District. While stationed there, she was named Chadron on 15 February 1956, one of 102 sisters who lasted long enough to earn a name.

She is likely named for the small maple syrup-rich Ohio town established in 1812, with a slim runner-up being Anthony Chardon, a French exile and American patriot in Philadelphia who hobnobbed with Thomas Jefferson– he provided the wallpaper for Monticello– and whose image is in the Navy’s collection.

Her time at Pearl was spent in a series of training evolutions for reservists and as a guard and exercise asset for COMSUBPAC’s boats, as detailed in this log entry from January 1957:

She was decommissioned and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 1 November 1962 at Honolulu, as directed by the CNO in 1561P43 and placed in the reserve fleet.

Picking up a Taegeukgi

Ex-Chadron was transferred to the Republic of Korea on 22 January 1964 at Guam as Seoraksan (PC 709), seen in Janes at the time as Sol Ak.

The ROKN had a long record with the 173s, with the country’s first naval purchase being ex-PC-823, commissioned as Baekdusan in 1950.

Ultimately, the U.S. Navy transferred another five PC-461s to the ROKN during the Korean War– no cash required!

Three were lost to assorted causes and the three remaining of these PCs were retired in the 1960s and replaced by Chadron and two sisters– ex-USS Winnemucca (PC 1145), and ex-USS Grosse Pointe (PC 1546)– again giving the South Koreans a three-pack of PC-461s on patrol into 1975, by which time they were replaced by a six-pack of larger (1500-ton, 306-foot) Rudderow-class destroyer escorts.

Notably while in ROKN service, Chadron/Seoraksan on 10 November 1964, she rescued the South Korean trawler Changseong-ho, which had been captured by a North Korean patrol boat. Then, on 12 April 1965, while patrolling the East Sea, rescued and towed the fishing boat Songjin-ho, which was drifting due to engine failure, a feat she repeated on 22 July 1968 with the drifting trawler Choi Chang-ho.

ROK 173-foot class via Jane’s 1974.

Epilogue

Little remains of our subject.

Of her skippers, Alban “Stormy” Weber retired as a rear admiral and passed in 2007. He joined with other PC-564 crewmembers including Lt. Wesley Johnson, whose bunk the rescued British gunner from Leopoldville used, to form the Patrol Craft Sailors Association in 1987. Once some 3,000 strong in 1998, it is increasingly sunsetting with the end of the Greatest Generation.

Weber was preceded by Seabury Marsh, PC-564‘s skipper on the slow-going NY-78 Convoy, and during Overlord, who passed in New York in 1973, aged 63. Likewise, Percy Sandel Jr., who commanded her during the one-sided battle at Granville, passed in Louisiana in 1994, aged 80. James Spencer, who commanded her for the Leopoldville rescue, faded into history. I cannot find where he was even decorated for his role in the debacle, one that was classified for decades.

The “disposable” PC-461 class, besides the U.S. and ROK navies, served under the flags of more than 20 other countries. They remained in service around the globe until the late 1980s when the last two in active, ex-USS Susanville (PC 1149) and ex-USS Hanford (PC 1142), were retired by Taiwan.

Some 40,000 bluejackets sailed on the PCs during the “Big Show” and immediately after. The chronicle of their war is the out-of-print 400-page PC Patrol Craft of World War II: A History of the Ships and Their Crews by William J. Veigele, a former PC sailor, first published in 1998.

It’s a good read if you can find it

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

 

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, Feb. 5, 2025: Gallant Gussi

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025: Gallant Gussi

U.S. Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation photo No. 1996.253.7161.010

Above we see a Vought F4U-1D Corsair of Marine Fighting Squadron (Carrier Squadron) (VMF(CVS)) 512 as it prepares to catapult on deck qualifications from the brand new Commencement Bay-class escort carrier USS Gilbert Islands (CVE-107) during the flattop’s shakedown cruise off San Diego, on or about 6 March 1945.

Commissioned 80 years ago today, she was one of just six carriers earmarked to carry embarked dedicated all-Marine air groups during WWII, then would go on to continue to serve in a much different role into the Vietnam era.

The Commencement Bays

Of the 130 U.S./RN escort carriers– merchant ships hulls given a hangar, magazine, and flight deck– built during WWII, the late-war Commencement Bay class was by far the Cadillac of the design slope. Using lessons learned from the earlier Long Island, Avenger, Sangamon, Bogue, and Casablanca-class ships.

Like the hard-hitting Sangamon class, they were based on Maritime Commission T3 class tanker hulls (which they shared with the roomy replenishment oilers of the Chiwawa, Cimarron, and Ashtabula classes). From the keel up, these were made into flattops.

Pushing some 25,000 tons at full load, they could make 19 knots, which was faster than a lot of submarines looking to plug them. A decent suite of about 60 AAA guns spread across 5-inch, 40mm, and 20mm fittings could put as much flying lead in the air as a light cruiser of the day when enemy aircraft came calling.

Finally, they could carry a 30-40 aircraft airwing of single-engine fighter bombers and torpedo planes ready for a fight, or about twice that many planes if being used as a delivery ship.

Sounds good, right?

Of course, had the war run into 1946-47, the 33 planned vessels of the Commencement Bay class would have no doubt fought kamikazes, midget subs, and suicide boats tooth and nail just off the coast of the Japanese Home Islands.

However, the war ended in Sept. 1945 with only nine of the class barely in commission– most of those still on shake-down cruises. Just two, Block Island and Gilbert Islands, saw significant combat at Okinawa and Balikpapan, winning two and three battle stars, respectively. Kula Gulf and Cape Gloucester picked up a single battle star.

With the war over, some of the class, such as USS Rabaul and USS Tinian, though complete, were never commissioned and simply laid up in mothballs, never being brought to life. Four other ships were canceled before launching, just after the bomb on Nagasaki was dropped. In all, just 19 of the planned 33 were commissioned.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Meet Gilbert Islands

Our subject is the only American warship named for the sprawling August 1942-December 1943 Gilbert Islands campaign– Operations Galvanic and Kourbash– that included the seizures of Tarawa and Makin and the hard-fought Battle of Tarawa.

The Battle of Tarawa (US code name Operation Galvanic) was one of the bloodiest of the Pacific T/O during WWII. Nearly 6,400 Japanese, Koreans, and Americans died in the fighting, mostly on and around the small island of Betio. Many have never been recovered.

Laid down on 29 November 1943 at Tacoma, by Todd-Pacific Shipyards, CVE-107 was initially to be named USS St. Andrews Bay-– for a bay on the Gulf Coast of Florida and a sound on the southern coast of Georgia– but this changed when she was set to be renamed Gilbert Islands on 26 April 1944. She launched on 20 July 1944 under the latter name, sponsored by Mrs. Edwin D. McCorries, wife of a surgeon captain at Puget Sound Navy Hospital. The carrier was the 57th Navy ship launched at Todd, and the third of her class of carriers christened there.

She was commissioned on 5 February 1945, her company numbering 66 officers and 755 enlisted, about half of which (27 officers, 350 men) had sailed for two weeks on USS Casablanca (CVE-55) in the Puget Sound area as part of a CVE Pre-Commissioning School, with the command and senior petty officers spent another five days at sea on sister USS Block Island.

USS Gilbert Islands from her commissioning booklet Feb 1945. Via Navsource

Her first skipper was Capt. Lester Kimme Rice, a regular Navy aviator (USNA ’24) with 20 years under his belt that included operations officer of PATWING7 (1941-42) and commanding the Barnegat-class seaplane tender USS Matagorda (AVP 22) during the worst days (1942-43) of the Battle of the Atlantic.

After commissioning, our new carrier spent a week in Tacoma fitting out, then another week steaming around assorted Naval bases in the Puget Sound area, taking on supplies, ammunition, aviation ordnance, and getting depermed and degaussed. Setting out of San Diego on 20 February– with a stop at San Francisco– she arrived there on the 27th.

Now we need an air group.

WWII Marine Carrier Groups

Without getting too far into the weeds here, Gen. Alexander Vandegrift, Commandant of the Marine Corps, successfully campaigned during discussions with the CNO during an August 1944 conference at Pearl Harbor, to get Marine aircraft squadrons on carriers– ideally on ships dedicated to air support over Marine beachheads.

On 21 October 1944, under Order No. 89-44, Marine Carrier Groups, Aircraft, Fleet Marine Force, Pacific (FMFPac) was established as a tactical command at MCAS Santa Barbara under Col. Albert D. Cooley.

Originally formed as Marine Base Defense Aircraft Group 48 (MBDAG-48) at Santa Barbara and Marine Aircraft Group 51 (MAG-51) at Mojave, by early November, they had 406 officers and 2,743 enlisted assigned, along with a motley collection of 63 aircraft in nine types.

Of note, the four new Corsair squadrons of MAG-51 (VMF-511, 512, 513, and 514) had previously been training on the East Coast as part of Project Danny for Crossbow strikes on German V-1/V-2 rocket launching sites in Europe using massive underwing 10.5-foot “Tiny Tim” rockets, a mission scrubbed before the Devils got a chance to clock in.

While about 15 percent of the Marine aviators in the command had combat experience in the Pacific, few had ever landed on a carrier, so the ramp-up had to be fast.

This led to four initial Marine Air Groups (eight planned), each ideally with an 18-plane fighter squadron and a 12-aircraft torpedo bomber squadron, designed for operation from escort carriers:

By the end of December– just 75 days after founding– the Marine Carrier Groups had tallied 17,218 hours across 13,257 flights in the desert, rising and landing in approximated carrier flight deck outlines, and the number of aircraft on hand rose over 150, concentrating on Corsairs and Avengers while personnel climbed over 3,700.

The first flattop to pick up a Marine Air Group (MCVG-1) was Block Island on 3 February 1945, which shipped out with a mix of 12 TBMs, 10 F4Us, 8 F6F Hellcat night fighters, and 2 F6F planes.

The second group would go tothe  Gilbert Islands. Accordingly, Lt.Col. William R. Campbell’s MCVG-2 — made up of VMF(CVS)-512 with 13 FG-1Ds and five F4U-1Ds, VMTB(CVS)-143 with 10 TBM-3s and two TBM-3Es, and CASD-2 with two F6F-5P photo recon Hellcats– would embark on our carrier on 6 March at San Diego. The group would remain aboard through the end of the war except for brief periods ashore while the carrier was in shipyard maintenance.

The Rocket Raiders of VMTB(CVS)-143, had been formed in September 1942 and logged five major combat tours, primarily from Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, before stateside carrier conversion training. VMF(CVS)-512, meanwhile, was newer, only formed in February 1944, and had never been overseas.

Vought F4U-1D Corsair VMF-512 White 11 Mad Cossack https://www.asisbiz.com/il2/Corsair/VMF512.html

VMF-512 Corsair on USS Gilbert Islands https://www.asisbiz.com/il2/Corsair/VMF512.html

Vought F4U-1D Corsair MCVG 2 VMF-512 EE54 CVE 107 USS Gilbert Islands May 1945-01. https://www.asisbiz.com/il2/Corsair/VMF512.html

F4U-1D Corsair VMF-512 White 27 landing Gilbert Islands https://www.asisbiz.com/il2/Corsair/VMF512.html

F4U-1D Corsair VMF-512 White 25 Gilbert Islands https://www.asisbiz.com/il2/Corsair/VMF512.html

F4U-1D Corsair VMF-512 White 23, Man O War, Gilbert Islands https://www.asisbiz.com/il2/Corsair/VMF512.html

F4U-1D Corsair VMF-512, White 21, Brooklyn Butcher https://www.asisbiz.com/il2/Corsair/VMF512.html

F4U-1D Corsair of VMF-512 USS Gilbert islands NNAM https://www.asisbiz.com/il2/Corsair/VMF512.html

F4U-1D Corsair MCVG 2 VMF-512 EE64 landing mishap CVE 107 USS Gilbert Islands Mar 1945 https://www.asisbiz.com/il2/Corsair/VMF512.html

Landing mishap with a VMF-512 Corsair on USS Gilbert Islands, via https://www.asisbiz.com/il2/Corsair/VMF512.html

Four other “Marine” carriers that made it into service would be:

  • USS Vella Gulf (CVE-111), MCVG-3: VMF(CVS)-513, VMTB(CVS)-234, and CASD-3
  • USS Cape Gloucester (CVE-109), MCVG-4: VMF(CVS)-351, VMTB(CVS)-132, and CASD-4
  • USS Salerno Bay (CVE-110) MCVG-5: VMF(CVS)-514, VMTB(CVS)-144, and CASD-5
  • USS Puget Sound (CVE-113), MCVG-6: VMF(CVS)-321, VMTB(CVS)-454, and CASD-6

Compare this to the 16 Navy Escort Carrier Air Groups (CVEGs) and 90 Escort Scouting Squadrons (VGS)/Composite Squadrons (VCs) that served on the Navy’s 70 other “baby flat-tops.”

War!

Following workups off California and Hawaii, on 25 May, the Gilbert Islands arrived off Okinawa as part of the Fifth Fleet and, joining Task Unit (TU) 52.1.1, sent up her first CAP and close air support strikes against Japanese targets.

Take a look at this hectic one-day air report, with MCVG-2 just going ham on targets of opportunity: 

It was during these operations that VMF-512’s Capt. Thomas Liggett bagged a twin-engine Mitsubishi Ki. 46 Dinah reconnaissance plane– the only aerial victory for MAG Two and Gilbert Islands during the war.

The carrier also lost her first pilot around this time.

From her War History: 

On 1 June, Gilbert Islands joined her sister Marine carrier Block Island in TU 32.1.3 under Third Fleet control, then got busy neutralizing enemy installations in the Sakishima Gunto area via liberal application of rockets, bombs, and .50 caliber rounds.

Goodyear FG 1D Corsair VMF-512 TBM Avengers FM Wildcats aboard 2nd Jun 1945

As detailed by her War History, just take a look at this 10-day period (including a three-day gap to run to Kerama Retto for more ordnance), keeping in mind that this was carried out by a group of just ~30 aircraft:

Sent to San Pedro Bay, Leyte, on 16 June for 10 days of rest, replenishment, and repairs, Gilbert Islands was then dispatched south as part of TG 78.4 along with Block Island to cover the landings of Australian and Free Dutch forces during Operation Oboe II at Balikpapan.

With the path cleared by UDT-18, 7th Division Australian troops come ashore from landing craft during a landing near Balikpapan oil fields in Borneo. Some 33,000-strong combined Australian and Royal Netherlands Indies amphibious forces (the largest ever amphibious assault by Australian forces)

It ended up being somewhat anti-climactic, although she did lose one of her F6F drivers, 1LT James Benjamin Crawford, to Japanese AAA fire.

Sent back to San Pedro Bay after the 4th of July– making sure to dip her pollywogs along the way– she spent the rest of the month there, briefly serving as the flag of Carrier Division 27.

During operations in the PI, her plane guard, the “Green Dragon” USS Lee Fox (APD-45), suffered a bow bender while transferring the ditched Capt. Leggett was back aboard on the morning of 25 July 1945.

Fox on Gilbert Islands. The crack-up carried away the carrier’s starboard boat boom and caused superficial damage, with no injuries on either ship.

Sailing to Ulithi Atoll at the end of July in company with the escort carrier USS Chenango, she attached to TG. 30.8, a third fleet service squadron, to provide them with air cover. It is with this group that on 10-15 August, Capt. Rice, as senior officer afloat, was given command of half the group, TU 30.8.2– the oilers USS Kankakee, Cahaba, Neosho, and Cache; the destroyer USS Wilkes and the escorts USS Willmart, Leray Wilson, Lyman, and William C. Miller; and four tugs, to get on the run from an approaching typhoon.

F4U-1D Corsair VMF-512 White 24 behind typhoon barrier, USS Gilbert Islands

USS Gilbert Islands (CVE-107) in rough seas, circa 1945 NNAM 1996.488.253.1578

Vectoring in a big box, heading north at first, then southeasterly, then south and west, “The maneuver was successful, no heavy weather was encountered, and no damage was sustained by any of the vessels.”

By the time the storm was gone, the war was over, and the message that Japan had surrendered unconditionally was received at 0850 on 15 August 1945.

She then performed occupational duty. Sent to Okinawa with Carrier Division 27, she once again had to go to sea to dodge an incoming typhoon.

Carrier Division 27 successfully weathering China Sea Typhoon. Taken by USS Salerno Bay (CVE 110). Ships shown are: USS Block Island (CVE 106); USS Siboney (CVE 112) and USS Gilbert Island (CVE 107). 80-G-354604

Carrier Division 27 successfully weathering China Sea Typhoon. Taken by USS Salerno Bay (CVE 110). The ships shown are: the USS Block Island (CVE 106) and USS Gilbert Island (CVE 107). Photographed October 1945. 80-G-354600

CarDiv27, Gilbert Islands included, then appeared off Japanese-occupied Formosa on 15 October to have their planes as a “show of force” over the island and covering the landings of the Chinese KMT 70th Army at Kiirun on 16-17 October. “Observation over Formosa indicated enemy activity was non-existent.” She nonetheless spent a week off the island until the 20th, firing over 18,000 rounds of 20mm and 40mm ammunition in AAA drills while her planes expended 16 bombs and 32 5-inch rockets.

Dispatched to Saipan, she arrived there on the 23rd, then, with stops at Pearl Harbor and San Diego along the way, arrived at Norfolk on 7 February 1946. Her war was over, and the Marine Carrier Groups disbanded. She would decommission on 21 May and then would be mothballed, first in Norfolk and then in Philadelphia.

Of her sisters, all survived the war, and 15 of 18 (excepting Block Island, Sicily, and Mindoro) were all laid up following the conflict.

In the course of her career during World War II, Gilbert Islands received three battle stars.

Cold War recall

With the Korean War kicking off in June 1950, following a round of inspection among the mothballed CVEs, Gilbert Islands were selected and recommissioned on 7 September 1951 at Philadelphia. She was not alone, as nine of her sisters were also reactivated.

Following six months of overhaul at Boston Naval Yard while her new crew was pieced together, her first assignment was to head back to the Pacific and, carrying a jam-packed load of USAF F-86E Sabre fighters to Yokoyama from 8 August to 22 October 1952, she arrived back with the Atlantic Fleet, based at NS Quonset Point, and would operate the big AF-2 Guardian ASW aircraft. 

AF Guardian on the deck of USS Gilbert Island (CVE-107) during ASW near Rhode Island, 1953-1954

Tasked with ASW carrier training duties, she carried VS-24’s AF-2Ws and AF-2Ss along with a flight of HRS-3s from HS-3 in January 1953, followed by four other short cruises with VS-31 (April-May 1953), VS-22 (June-July 1953), VS-39 (August 1953), and VS-36 (October-November 1953).

USS Gilbert Islands (CVE-107) moored off New York City on 10 November 1953, NH 106714

She would then get operational with VS-36 on orders for a short (10-week) Sixth Fleet deployment to the Med that ran from 5 January to 12 March 1954.

USS Gilbert Islands (CVE-107) and USS Hailey (DD-556) were underway at sea in 1954, likely during Sixth Fleet operations

USS Gilbert Islands (CVE-107) is underway at sea. Gilbert Islands, with assigned Air Anti-Submarine Squadron 36 (VS-36) and Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron 3 (HS-3), was deployed to the Mediterranean Sea from 5 January to 11 March 1954.

Then, as noted by DANFS, “She became the first of her class to have jets make touch-and-go landings on the flight deck while she had no way on, a dangerous experiment successfully conducted on 9 June 1954.”

Her service as a carrier was completed after two wars. Gilbert Islands left Rhode Island on 25 June for Boston and decommissioned there on 15 January 1955. At the time, just five of her sisters were still on active duty, and all would join her in mothballs by May 1957.

While laid up a second time, she was reclassified as Cargo Ship and Aircraft Ferry (AKV)-39 on 7 May 1959, and her name was struck from the Naval Vessel Register in June 1961. She would surely have been scrapped, the fate all 18 of her sisters met between 1960 and 1971.

But the Navy had one more mission for the old girl.

Conversion

Ex-Gibert Islands was towed to Brooklyn Navy Yard in August 1962 down the river from her berth with Reserve Group Bayonne for conversion, reclassified as a Major Communications Relay Ship (AGMR-1) on 1 June 1963.

This saw all her old aircraft handling gear removed, as was the rest of her WWII-era armament, replaced by four 3″/50 twin Mk 33s on sponsons. Her flight deck saw a hurricane bow added.

Then came the real changes– turning her topside into a floating antenna farm.

From AGMR-1.com: 

The flight deck was converted to an antenna array with two ​​​directional and two omnidirectional antennas. The aircraft hangar bay was converted into communication spaces although one aircraft elevator was retained to allow servicing of equipment and boat storage. In the communication spaces were installed 24 radio transmitters with low through ultra-high frequencies. To provide the necessary cooling of equipment in the communications spaces, three 120-ton air conditioning units were installed with 130 tons dedicated for the communications spaces. The remaining air conditioning tonnage was routed to the other interior spaces of the ship.

She was renamed USS Annapolis, the third warship on the NVR to carry the name after a SpanAm-era gunboat (PG-10) that remained in service until 1940 and a Tacoma-class frigate (PF-15) that remained in service until 1946. Fittingly, her new motto became “Vox Maris” (Voice of the Sea).

Commissioned at Brooklyn Navy Yard on 7 March 1964– capping 19 months of conversion– her skipper would be Capt. John Joseph Rowan (USNA 1942).

Annapolis commissioning, March 7, 1964, Brooklyn Navy Yard from her cruise book

Those attending the commissioning service included RADM Bernard Roeder, Director of Naval Communications, and the Mayor of Annapolis, Maryland, Joseph H. Griscom. The latter presented the ship with an ornate silver service.

AGMR-1 Annapolis Inclining Experiment. Note she has four twin 3″/50 radar-guided rapid-fire mounts installed in place of her old 40mm/20mm fittings. NARA 19nn-b1543-0004

USS Annapolis (AGMR-1) Underway at slow speed in New York Harbor, 12 June 1964, soon after completing conversion from USS Gilbert Islands (AKV-39, originally CVE-107). Staten Island ferryboats are in the left and center backgrounds. NH 106715

Following Operation Steel Pike, an 80-ship U.S.-Spanish exercise held in October 1964, Annapolis soon transferred to (officially) Long Beach the long way, via the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean, and by September 1965 was off Vietnam.

She would spend the lion’s share of the next 48 months there, conducting relay operations on 19 communications patrols, averaging 270 days at sea per year. By December 1968, she had sent more than 1.5 million messages and steamed 150,000 miles as Annapolis.

She would typically intersperse her ~55-day patrols with short port calls around the West Pac, with individual crewmembers rotating out for home every 12-14 months.

As described by AGMR-1.com:

Annapolis, while on station off the coast of Vietnam did drop anchor every 10–15 days for a few hours outside Cam Ranh Bay to receive mail and transfer priority crew. During those brief stops, Navy swift boats would come alongside to receive much appreciated ice cream in 3-gallon containers that were prepared by the ships cooks the night before.

In a key event in Naval history, on 18 August 1966, while in Subic Bay, she used Syncom 3, the first geostationary communication satellite, to transmit the first documented ship-to-shore satellite radio message, a dispatch from Yankee Station off Vietnam back to Pacific Fleet Headquarters at Pearl.

The USS Annapolis

The USS Annapolis at Subic Bay, September 5, 1967, the former Gilbert Islands

Returning to Philadelphia on 1 October 1969 via Portuguese Angola, the Cape of Good Hope, Dakar, and Lisbon– including two months of operations with Sixth Fleet out of Naples, Annapolis decommissioned for a third and final time on 20 December 1969.

She was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 15 October 1976 and sold for scrap to the Union Minerals & Alloys Corp. on 19 December 1979.

Annapolis received a Meritorious Unit Commendation and eight battle stars for her service in the Vietnam War.

She was the last of her class in operation, and her relay role was key in the development of the Blue Ridge class LCC command ships (which entered service in 1970-71, effectively replacing her) and the later big deck LHA and LHD phibs.

Epilogue

Little remains of our subject. I cannot find where her bell endures, or a monument or marker exists to her.

The jeep carrier’s only WWII skipper, Les Rice, would continue to serve into the 1950s– earning the Legion of Merit as commander of the Essex-class fleet carrier USS Valley Forge (CV-45) during Korea– and lecture on the role of aircraft in ASW warfare, retiring from the Navy in 1958 as a rear admiral in the post of Commander Naval Air Bases First Naval District.

Rice as skipper of the Gilbert Islands, 1944. His first tour of duty was on the battleship USS Idaho in 1924. He capped a 34-year career following Korea.

Gilbert Islands’ deck logs are digitized in the National Archives, as are Annapolis’s.

VMTB-143 and VMF-512 also have many of their mission reports and logs in the National Archives.

The University of South Carolina has at least 19 films of the Marine Air Group Two aboard the carrier in 1945. 

Many of those films are mirrored elsewhere.

AGMR-1.com has a very detailed veterans’ page that includes digitized cruise books from 1964 through 1968.

Meanwhile, Gilbert Islands has Adam’s Planes, which have been dedicated to the ship and her squadrons. 

The Navy hasn’t reused the name “Gilbert Islands” for a second warship, although two USS Tarawas (CV-40 and LHA-1) and a USS Makin Island (LHD-8) were named after battles that occurred during the Gilberts campaign.

However, there has been a fourth USS Annapolis (SSN-760), a Los Angeles-class submarine commissioned in 1992 and currently part of the Guam-based SubRon15, although she is slated to decommission in FY27.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

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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Meet the New ROK Blue Water TF

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The South Korean Navy, which started in 1946 with a few second-hand Japanese ships left over in their local waters at the end of WWII and a surplus 173-foot subchaser bought cheaply from the U.S., now feels they have enough large warships to found the Mobile Fleet Command, a blue water task force some 36 years in the making.

First recommended by Admiral Ahn Byung-tae, in 1995, the force will primarily be tasked to intercept North Korean missiles and consist (initially) of 10 advanced destroyers and four logistics support ships, while a poster for the group shows it built around a helicopter-equipped 19,000-ton Dokdo-class LPH and augmented with SSKs, UAVs, and MPAs. 

The moto video includes some of the first publicly released footage of the brand new Aegis destroyer King Jeongjo the Great (DDG 995), the 8,200-ton lead ship of the KDX-III class Batch II vessels:

The video description, mechanically translated.

The backbone of the ocean-going navy, the Mobile Fleet Command, was established on February 1, 2025. The Mobile Fleet Command is the core force for executing the maritime-based Korean three-axis system operations and will perform various open-sea operations such as supporting national policies through the protection of maritime traffic lanes and overseas dispatch, along with the ability to rapidly deploy to the forward seas. Towards a wider sea, towards the future! The Republic of Korea Navy will vigorously advance towards the Blue Ocean Navy. The power of the Navy! The future of the Republic of Korea!

Warship Wednesday on a Friday Dec. 27, 2024: Taking a Licking

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday on a Friday, Dec. 27, 2024: Taking a Licking

Above we see the Balao-class fleet submarine USS Bergall (SS-320) upon her triumphal return to Freemantle, Australia, some 80 years ago this week, on 23 December 1944, on completion of her epic Second War Patrol. The path of a 278-pound 8-inch shell fired from the Japanese heavy cruiser Myoko is clearly marked, having passed from port to starboard through the sub’s pressure hull.

But you should see the other guy!

The Balaos

A member of the 180+-ship Balao class, she was one of the most mature U.S. Navy diesel designs of the World War Two era, constructed with knowledge gained from the earlier Gato class. U.S. subs, unlike those of many navies of the day, were “fleet” boats, capable of unsupported operations in deep water far from home. The Balao class was deeper diving (400 ft. test depth) than the Gato class (300 feet) due to the use of high-yield strength steel in the pressure hull.

Able to range 11,000 nautical miles on their reliable diesel engines, they could undertake 75 day patrols that could span the immensity of the Pacific. Carrying 24 (often unreliable) Mk 14 Torpedoes, these subs often sank anything short of a 5,000-ton Maru or warship by surfacing and using their deck guns. They also served as the firetrucks of the fleet, rescuing downed naval aviators from right under the noses of Japanese warships.

Some 311 feet long overall, they were all-welded construction to facilitate rapid building. Best yet, they could be made for the bargain price of about $7 million in 1944 dollars (just $100 million when adjusted for today’s inflation) and completed from keel laying to commissioning in about nine months.

An amazing 121 Balaos were completed through five yards at the same time, with the following pennant numbers completed by each:

  • Cramp: SS-292, 293, 295-303, 425, 426 (12 boats)
  • Electric Boat: 308-313, 315, 317-331, 332-352 (42)
  • Manitowoc on the Great Lakes: 362-368, 370, 372-378 (15)
  • Mare Island on the West Coast: 304, 305, 307, 411-416 (9)
  • Portsmouth Navy Yard: 285-288, 291, 381-410, 417-424 (43)

We have covered a number of this class before, such as the sub-killing USS Spikefish and USS Greenfish, the rocket mail-slinging USS Barbero, the carrier-slaying USS Archerfish, the long-serving USS Catfish, the U-boat scuttling USS Atule, the Busy Bug that was the USS Bugara, and the frogman Cadillac USS Perch —but don’t complain, they have lots of great stories.

Meet Bergall

Bergall was named for a small fish (Tautogolabrus adspersus) found along the East Coast.

Via the State of New York Forest, Fish, and Game Commission, 1901, painted by SF Denton.

Laid down on 13 May 1943 at Electric Boat in Groton, Bergall launched just nine months later and commissioned on 12 June 1944, her construction running just 396 days.

Electric Boat Company, Groton, Connecticut. Shipway where future USS Bergall (SS-320) is under construction, circa summer 1943. Two welders are at work in the foreground. 80-G-K-15063

Her plankowner skipper, T/CDR John Milton Hyde, USN, (USNA 1934), had already earned a Silver Star as executive officer of the Salmon-class submarine USS Swordfish (SS-193) across four Pacific war patrols that bagged 11 Japanese ships and commanded that sub’s sister, Snapper (SS-185) while the latter was under overhaul.

Bergall carried out shakedown operations off New England for three weeks then, following post-shakedown availability at New London, set out for the Pacific via the Caribbean and the Panama Canal, pausing to rescue the two fliers of a crashed Army training plane in the Mona Passage off Puerto Rico.

She arrived at Pearl Harbor on 13 August and was soon ready for battle.

War!

Made the flagship of SubRon 26’s SubDiv 262, Bergall departed from Pearl Harbor on 8 September 1944 on her First War Patrol, ordered to hunt in the South China Sea.

Arriving off Saipan on the 19th, she soon had her first encounter with the Empire’s fighting men:

Her first contact with the enemy came a day and a half west of Saipan when in the high periscope she sighted a small boat containing five Japanese infantrymen. Bergall closed, attempting rescue, but the efforts were abandoned when the Japanese made gestures that indicated that they wanted us to leave them alone and that we were the scum of the earth. The Americans marveled at the pride and insolent bearing of the enemy, admired their courage, and pitied their stupidity.

Continuing West, she damaged a small Japanese transport vessel with gunfire east of Nha Trang, French Indo-China on 3 October with an exchange of 5-inch (20 rounds) and 40mm (40 rounds) gunfire, and six days later sank a small (700-ton) Japanese cargo vessel just south of Cam Ranh Bay with a trio of Mark 14 torpedoes.

She followed up on that small fry on 13 October by stalking a small four-ship convoy off the coast of Vietnam and sent the tanker Shinshu Maru (4182 GRT) to the bottom via four Mk 23s– and survived a five-hour-long depth charging in retaliation.

On the 27th, she torpedoed and sank the big Japanese tanker Nippo Maru (10528 GRT) and damaged the Japanese tanker Itsukushima Maru (10007 GRT, built 1937) south-west of Balabac Strait, a heroic action seeing the two vessels were protected by a thick escort of four frigates.

On her way back to Freemantle on 2 November, she sank, via 420 rounds of 20mm, a small junk loaded with coconuts and chickens east of the Kangean Islands. Hyde noted in his patrol report “Regret the whole affair as picayune.”

Bergall’s very successful First War Patrol ended at Freemantle on 8 November 1944, covering 15,702 miles. Seventh Fleet authorized a Submarine Combat Insignia for the patrol and credited the boat with sinking 21,500 tons of Japanese shipping.

Not a bad first start!

Hyde would pick up his second Silver Star while the boat’s XO, LCDR Kimmel was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with Combat “V.”

Cruiser Shootout

On 2 December 1944, Bergall departed Fremantle for her Second War Patrol, ordered once again to hunt in the South China Sea.

On 13 December, nearing sunset, our boat spotted a large ship at 35,000 yards off Royalist Bank and made a plan to attack after dark.

Over the next couple of hours, running in just 12-to-14 fathoms of water, she fired six Mk 23s while on the surface and received gunfire back. It turned out she blew the stern off the heavy cruiser Myoko and left her dead in the water. In return, the surfaced submarine was bracketed by shells typically credited as being 8-inchers from Myoko but more likely 5-inch shells from the escorting Japanese destroyer Ushio. One of these zipped right through Bergall’s pressure hull, a disaster that kept the submarine from surfacing while floating some 1,200 miles inside Japanese territory.

Her patrol report on the attack:

While the shell impact left no personnel casualties, the sub was severely damaged and, with no welding capability, repairs consisted of a mix of brazed and bolted plates, plugged with pillows and mattresses:

With all guns manned, demolition charges set for scuttling, and her damage patched up as best as possible, Bergall headed for home and was grateful when, on the morning of 15 December, she rendezvoused with the Gato-class submarine USS Angler (SS-240).

Transferring 2/3rds of her crew (54 men and one officer, the junior ensign) to Angler, Hyde noted of the attempt to make the Karimata Strait:

“if mandatory we could dive in shallow water and sit on the bottom. With Angler near at hand the enterprise didn’t seem too bad for the skeleton crew and officers. To have scuttled our ship in itself seemed unthinkable and it wasn’t much further to deep water in the right direction that it was in the wrong. The weather was very much in our favor too. The sky was heavily overcast with rain storms coming from the west-northwest.”

The men who remained aboard, all volunteers, comprised eight officers and 21 crew, the latter including at least three chiefs. This allowed an underway watch bill with two officers on the bridge, two men (helm and radar) in the tower, three (Chief of Watch, Aux, and I.C.) in the control room, and one EM in the maneuvering room.

By the end of the 16th, Bergall and Angler cleared the Karimata Strait without incident.

By the 18th, they cleared the Lombok Strait– just skirting Japanese patrol boats in the dark.

Making Exmouth on the tip of Western Australia’s North West Cape on the 20th, Bergall was able to remove the lightly brazed plating from the torpedo loading hatch and had new plates arc welded in place, enabling her to make for Freemantle on the 23rd where she ended her abbreviated patrol.

Hyde would receive the Navy Cross for the patrol and three other officers received the Silver Star.

The patrol was later dramatized in an episode of The Silent Service coined, “The Bergall’s Dilemma.” Hyde appears at the end of the episode for a brief comment.

As for Myoko, arriving at Singapore via tow on Christmas day, she would never sail again under her own power and surrendered to the Royal Navy in September 1945.

Japanese Heavy Cruiser Myōkō in Singapore four days after surrendering to Royal Navy units, tied up alongside the submarines I-501 (ex U-181) and I-502 (ex U-862) – September 25, 1945 IWM – Trusler, C (Lt) Photographer IWM A 30701

Captain Power visits the damaged Japanese cruiser. 25 September 1945, Singapore. In May 1944, five ships of the Twenty-Sixth Destroyer Flotilla attached to the British East Indies fleet, led by HMS Saumarez, with Captain M L Power, CBE, OBE, DSO, and BAR, as Captain (D), sank the Japanese cruiser Haguro in one hours action at the entrance to the Malacca Strait. When Saumarez entered Singapore Naval Base, Captain Power with his staff officers, paid a visit to Myoko, the sister ship of Haguro, now lying there with her stern blown off after the Battle of the Philippines. Crossing to the deck of the Myoko via the conning tower of a German U-boat, Captain Power and his party were met by Japanese officers who took them on a comprehensive tour of the ship. Two British naval officers examine what is left of the Myoko’s stern. IWM A 30703

Cuties

Patched up and taking on a supply of diminutive new Mk 27 passive acoustic torpedoes– dubbed Cuties as they only went about half the size of Mk 14s and 23s— Bergall left Fremantle on 27 January 1945 for her Third War Patrol, ordered to scour the Lombok Strait of small Japanese escorts and move on to the South China Sea.

However, with a short range (just 5,000 yards), the shallow-water Cuties had to be used up close to work. Carrying a warhead with just 95 pounds of Torpex, they were meant for killing small escorts.

Between 27 January and 7 February, Bergall made five nighttime attack runs with Cuties while in the Lombok, each time allowing a single slow (12 knots) Mk 27 to swim out at ranges as close as 200 yards. The result was in sinking of the Japanese auxiliary minesweeper Wa 102 (174 tons)– picking up two survivors and making them POWs– and damaging the store ship Arasaki (920 GRT).

Moving toward the Philippines, Bergall sank the Japanese frigate Kaibokan 53 (745 tons) and damaged the tanker Toho Maru (10,238 GRT) off Cam Ranh Bay.

Then, on 13 February, working in conjunction with fellow subs USS Blower and Guitarro off Hainan island, she came across a ripe target for any submariner– a pair of Japanese battlewagons– the hybrid battleship/carriers Ise and Hyuga.

She ripple-fired six Mk 14s in a risky daylight periscope attack from 10,000 yards– without success.

She ended her patrol on 17 February at recently liberated Subic Bay, PI, having traveled 6,070 miles.

The “Cutie Patrol” would be immortalized in an episode of The Silent Service, “The Bergall’s Revenge.”

The hits keep coming

The boat’s uneventful Fourth War Patrol (5 March to 17 April) which included a special mission (typically code to land agents) and rescuing four USAAF B-25 aircrew from the water, ended at Freemantle.

Bergall then left Australia on 12 May 1945 on her Fifth Patrol, bound to haunt the coast of Indochina.

On the morning of the 18th, she battered a small Japanese coastal freighter in the Lombok Strait but didn’t get to see it sink as enemy aircraft were inbound.

Joining up with an American wolfpack in the Gulf of Siam including USS Bullhead (SS-332), Cobia (SS-245), Hawkbill (SS-366), and Kraken (SS-370), she sighted a small intercoastal convoy of tugs and barges in the predawn moonlight of 30 May, and sank same.

Then, on 13 June, she swept a mine the hard way while chasing an enemy convoy.

Ironically, the minefield, a mix of three dozen acoustic and magnetic-induction type mines, had been laid by Allied aircraft out of India in March and was unknown to the Seventh Fleet command. While the mine, which had at least a 490-pound explosive charge, was believed to be some 90 feet away from the hull when it went off, and Bergall’s hull retained integrity, it nonetheless rocked the boat severely.

From her damage report: 

The impact of the detonation jarred the entire ship. Personnel were knocked off their feet, tossed out of bunks, and in the maneuvering room were thrown up against the overhead. Lighting failed in the maneuvering and after torpedo rooms. The overspeed trips operated on Nos. 2 and 3 main Diesel engines, which were on propulsion, and No. 1 main Diesel engine, which was charging the batteries, causing all three engines to stop and thereby cutting off power to the main propulsion motors.

However, just 20 minutes after the explosion, Bergall had restarted her engines and was motoring away. While still capable of operations, her engineering suite was so loose and noisy it was thought she would be unable to remain operational and she was ordered to Subic, arriving there on 17 June.

Quick inspection at Subic found that the facility was unable to effect repairs and Bergall was ordered to shlep some 10,000 miles back to New London via Saipan, Pearl Harbor, and the Panama Canal.

Arriving at New London on 4 August 1945, she was there when the war ended.

Bergall earned four battle stars and a Navy Unit Commendation (for her 2nd patrol) for her World War II service. Her unconfirmed record at the end of the war included some 33,280 tons of enemy shipping sunk across five sunken warships and five merchantmen along with another 66,000 tons damaged.

Her WWII battle flag carried an upside-down horseshoe with the number “13” inside of it since so many incidents in her service had occurred on the 13th day of the month.

CDR Hyde, when he left the vessel in September 1945, was given a farewell watch by his crew. Engraved on its back was a large “13.”

As for Myoko, she towed to the Strait of Malacca in 1946 and scuttled off of Port Swettenham (Port Klang), Malaya.

Cold Warrior

Finishing her repair and overhaul– she picked up new sensors including an SV radar– Bergall rejoined the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in December 1945 and, as part of SubRon1, would spend the next five years stationed in Hawaii. This typically involved a series of reserve training dives, simulated war patrols and cruises between the West Coast and Hawaii, ASW exercises with the fleet, and acting as a tame sub for maritime patrol squadrons.

From December 1948 through February 1949, she roamed to the West Pac, visiting Australia and Japan for a bottom mapping exercise, a cruise that earned her a Navy Occupation Service Medal and a China Service Medal.

Bergall at Brisbane in December 1948, note she is still largely in her WWII configuration. Via Navsource. Photo courtesy of John Hummel, USN (Retired).

Transferring to the Atlantic Fleet in June 1950, she had her topside streamlined, landing her deck guns and receiving a new sail, then, between November 1951 and April 1952, received a Fleet Snorkel conversion at Philadelphia Navy Yard.

Bergall circa 1950, with her topside streamlined but before her snorkel conversion.

USS Bergall (SS-320), 22 July 1952. USN 479940

Bergall, in the spirit of her “lucky 13” nature, lost her periscope twice within five years during her peacetime service.

The first, in 1949, was to a passing Van Camp tuna boat off the California coast.

The second, during LANTFLEX on Halloween 1954, had her periscopes and radar masts where sliced through by the destroyer USS Norris (DDE-859)’s bow, luckily without any casualties.

Ironically, USS Angler, the same boat that stood by Bergall after she was holed in the fight against Myoko a decade prior, stood by her and escorted the sub into port.

Bergall (SS-320) as a causality on 2 November 1954. Photo and text i.d. courtesy of Mike Brood, bergall.org.

Repaired, she completed two Mediterranean cruises (9 Nov 1955-28 Jan 1956 and 31 Aug -6 Dec 1957), and, once she returned, was reassigned to Key West Naval Station for preparations to be handed over at military aid.

Bergall 1958, returning from Bermuda just before she was handed over to a NATO ally as military aid. Via Bergall.org

Turkish Guppy Days

Between May 1948 and August 1983, the Turkish Navy would receive no less than 23 second-hand U.S. Navy diesel submarines, all WWII-era (or immediately after) fleet boats.

These would include (in order of transfer): ex-USS Brill (SS 330), Blueback (SS 326), Boarfish (SS 327), Chub (SS 329), Blower (SS 325), Bumper (SS 333), Guitarro (SS 363), Hammerhead (SS 364), Bergall (SS 320), Mapiro (SS 376), Mero (SS 378), Seafox (SS 402), Razorback (SS 394), Thornback (SS 418), Caiman (SS 323), Entemedor (SS 340), Threadfin (SS 410), Trutta (SS 421), Pomfret (SS 391), Corporal (SS 346), Cobbler (SS 344), Tang (SS 563), and Gudgeon (SS 567).

Our Bergall would sail from Key West on 26 September 1958, bound for Izmir, Turkey, where she would arrive 19 days later.

On 17 October, she was decommissioned and handed over in a warm transfer to the Turkish Navy in a ceremony that saw her renamed Turgutreis (S-342), officially on a 15-year lease.

The highlights of the handover ceremony, in Turkish: 

Ex-Bergall/Turgutreis (S-342) in Turkish service. She would take part in the Cyprus War in 1974, among other operations with the Turkish fleet.

 

Turkey’s collection of Snorkel and GUPPY modified U.S. Navy fleet boats via the 1960 edition of Janes, to include Bergall/Turgutreis.

While in Turkish service, Bergall in the meantime had her name canceled from the Navy List in 1965 and was stricken from the USN’s inventory altogether in 1973, with ownership transferred to Istanbul.

Following the delivery of new Type 209 submarines from West Germany, Bergall/Turgutreis was no longer needed for fleet operations and in April 1983 she was decommissioned.

Renamed Ceryan Botu-6, she was relegated to pier side service at Golcuk Naval Shipyard for another 13 years, where she was stripped of parts to keep other American boats in operations while serving as a battery charging boat with a 15-man crew, primarily of electricians.

In June 1999, Ceryan Botu-6/Turgutreis/Bergall was pulled from service and sold for scrap the following year.

Turkey only retired its last two ex-USN “smoke boats,” Tang and Gudgeon, in 2004

Epilogue

Few lingering relics remain of Bergall.

Her War History and deck logs are in the National Archives. 

Her wartime skipper, John Milton Hyde (NSN: 0-73456), retired from the Navy following Korean War service as a captain with a Navy Cross and three Silver Stars on his salad bar. He passed in 1981, aged 71, and is buried in Arlington’s Section 25.

“The Old Man” completed 12 war patrols, five of them on Bergall.

The Navy recycled the name of its rough-and-tumble Balao for another vessel, SSN-667, a Sturgeon-class hunter-killer built, like her namesake, at EB, ordered on 9 March 1965.

USS Bergall (SSN-667) conducts an emergency surfacing test off the east coast, in September 1969. K-77428

Commissioned on 13 June 1969 (!) her ship’s crest carried five stars in a salute to the old Bergall’s five WWII Pacific war patrols. In another, less Navy-approved similarity to her namesake, she suffered a casualty-free peacetime collision with the submarine rescue vessel USS Kittiwake (ASR-13).

Notably, SSN-667 was the first submarine in the fleet to carry the Mk 48 heavy torpedo on deployment, as well as the first east coast-based submarine to carry a DSRV, and earned two Navy Unit Commendations. She decommissioned on 6 June 1996.

A vibrant veterans’ group saluting both Bergalls endures.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

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.

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find. http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

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.

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I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024: Floating Powerhouse

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024: Floating Powerhouse

Photograph by Walter E. Frost, City of Vancouver Archives, CVA 447-8946.1

Above we see the Buckley-class destroyer escort USS Whitehurst (DE-634) of ResDesDiv 273 as she makes a port call in Vancouver on 31 July 1965.

At just over 300 feet long, she doesn’t look like much, but by this time in her career, she had already fought in WWII– sinking a Japanese submarine some 80 years ago this week– earned battle stars during Korea, cruised off Vietnam, and would go on to live forever on the silver screen.

The Buckleys

With some 154 hulls ordered, the Buckleys were intended to be cranked out in bulk to counter the swarms of Axis submarines prowling the seas.

Just 306 feet overall, they were about the size of a medium-ish Coast Guard cutter today but packed a lot more armament, namely three 3″/50 DP guns in open mounts, a secondary battery of 1.1-inch (or 40mm), and 20mm AAA guns, and three 21-inch torpedo tubes in a triple mount for taking out enemy surface ships.

Buckley-class-destroyer-escort-1944 USS England by Dr. Dan Saranga via Blueprints

Then there was the formidable ASW suite to include stern depth charge racks, eight depth charge throwers, and a Hedgehog system.

Powered by responsive electric motors fed by steam turbines, they could make 24 knots and were extremely maneuverable.

Class-leader, USS Buckley (DE-51), cutting a 20-knot, 1,000-foot circle on trials off Rockland Maine, 3 July 1943, 80-G-269442

Meet Whitehurst

Our subject carries the name of Ensign Henry Purefoy Whitehurst, Jr. who, originally scheduled to graduate in February 1942, was matriculated early from Annapolis with the rest of his class 12 days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, becoming the second Class of 1941.

Rushed to the Pacific, Henry was lost along with 233 shipmates aboard the heavy cruiser USS Astoria (CA 34) when “Nasty Asty” was sunk early in the morning of 9 August 1942 by Japanese surface forces at the Battle of Savo Island. The young officer was 22.

Ensign Henry Purefoy Whitehurst, Jr. 16 Feb 1920-9 Aug 1942. He is remembered on the Tablets of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial.

Laid down on 21 March 1943 at San Francisco by the Bethlehem Steel Co and launched on 5 September 1943, USS Whitehurst (DE-634) was sponsored by Ensign Whitehurst’s grieving mother, Mrs. Robie S. Whitehurst, and commissioned on 19 November 1943.

Her plankowner skipper was T/LCDR James Robert Gray, USN, 78836, (USNA ‘37). As a young LT(jg), he was the officer of the deck on duty aboard the high-speed minesweeper USS Wasmuth (DD-338/DMS-15) at Pearl Harbor and got the ship underway and fighting, claiming one plane downed. He then served as Damage Control Officer on the heavy cruiser USS New Orleans (CA-32) at Coral Sea and Midway. Whitehurst was his first command.

Headed to War!

Following sea trials, calibration tests, and shakedown off the West Coast, Whitehurst arrived at Pearl Harbor on 4 February 1944 and then got underway for the Solomons three days later as part of a small convoy.

Such work, riding shotgun for troop transports, LCIs, and LSTs on slow and steady (8-9 knot) runs, would be her bread and butter.

She took part in the Palau, Yap, Ulithi, Woleai raid (30 Mar 44 – 1 Apr 44), and, from 26 April through 7 June, she was upfront for the Hollandia operations followed closely by Toem-Wakde-Sarmi and Biak landings, including a very close brush with Japanese shore batteries off the latter.

From her War Diary:

She then joined in the operations to clear out the Northern Solomons from 22 June into early October, which for our tin can meant escorting the PT-boat mothership USS Mobjack (AGP-7) as she shifted ports, patrolling for Japanese submarines and surface contacts, conducting exercises and drills as part of Escort Division 40.

By this stage of the war, the Solomons had become a backwater.

It was there, at Blanche Harbor on Treasury Island on 1 September, that LCDR Grey was relieved by LT Jack Carter Horton, DE-V(G), USNR, 96845. Grey was being sent on to command USS Lawrence C. Taylor (DE 415). Horton, who had gone through the wartime midshipman school with 738 fellow “90-day wonders” at Northwestern University in Chicago, knew Whitehurst well– he had been her XO since commissioning.

The death of I-45

On 12 October, Whitehurst got underway from Humboldt Bay with orders to escort Task Unit 77.7.1, the fueling force for the 7th Fleet for the upcoming invasion of the Philippines. This included four oilers (Ashtabula, Saranac, Salamonie, and Chepachet), the civilian tanker Pueblo, and three fellow Buckleys: the sequential sisters USS Witter (DE-636), Bowers (DE-637), and Willmarth (DE-638).

Nearing the Philippines, Japanese activity increased and folks got jumpy. Just after 0200 on 17 October, a sharp echo underwater led to a radical course change, and a pattern of 13 depth charges dropped over the side as a precaution. Whitehurst’s War Diary notes, “The contact was evaluated as a large fish due to its erratic movements and narrow width.”

Creeping through the Ngaruangl Passage on 20 October, three days later they steamed through the Surigao Straits into the Leyte Gulf, anchoring off Homonhon Island, with her log taking care to note, “This part of the island in Japanese hands.”

Starting the next morning, at 0826 on 24 October, Whitehurst’s tanker group began a four-day running fight with Japanese ground-based aircraft, fending off a series of air attacks by Betty twin-engine and Val single-engine bombers as they repeatedly shifted positions. This included making emergency turns, burning both chemical and oil smoke, and filling the air with 3″/50 and 20mm shells whenever planes came within range. All the while the force managed to conduct underway refueling and escape the battleships and cruisers of Nishimura’s “Southern Force,” although they observed the flashes in the distance of the Battle of Surigao Strait over the night of 24/25 October.

Just when things started quieting down, at 0325 on 29 October Whitehurst observed a strong underwater explosion “some distance away” and received word via TBS that the Butler-class destroyer escort USS Eversole (DE-404) had been torpedoed and sunk by the Japanese Type B2 submarine I-45, taking 80 of her crew to the bottom.

Japanese submarine I-45 (B-class new type-1), on speed trial run off Sasebo, 1943

Whitehurst was detached from her task unit to screen the sistership USS Bull (DE-402) which was picking up what would be 136 survivors from the lost greyhound.

Picking up a sonar contact as she closed with the scene, Whitehurst delivered a series of four barrages of 7.2-inch Mk.10 Hedgehog charges and was rewarded with a series of secondary underwater explosions.

Just after dawn, a large (500-yard by 2,000-yard) oil slick was observed, filled with debris.

From her War Diary:

Japanese Sixth Fleet HQ had no further contact with I-45 and she is presumed lost with LCDR (promoted CDR posthumously) Kawashima Mamoru and his 103-member crew, removed from the Imperial Navy List on 10 March 1945.

Back to work

Continuing her involvement in the Philippines through the end of the month, a role that included blowing up random floating mines with rifle fire, on 2 November Whitehurst was dispatched to escort the damaged oiler Ashtabula to Hollandia for repairs. There, she witnessed the horrific disintegration of the USS Mount Hood (AE-11), packed with 4,500 tons of high explosives, in Seeadler Harbor.

Ordered to leave the harbor with a force of small LSMs and LCTs for Humboldt Bay the same day, by 12 November Whitehurst headed back to the Philippines as escort for Echelon L-13, a mix of 23 LSTs in four columns and 11 merchants in another four columns.

Entering the Surigao Strait by the 19th, enemy planes were sighted off and on over the next few days, cumulating with an attack on the 21st by two Kawasaki Ki-48 “Lily,” with one of the twin-engine light bombers shot down in flames. Whitehurst’s gunners contributed 382 rounds to the effort.

Sent back to Manus in December, she remained in the Admiralty Islands on interisland convoy runs and training duties, drydocking in January 1945, and then escorting the destroyer tender USS Sierra (AD-18) and repair ship USS Briareus (AR-12) to Purvis Bay in the Solomons in February.

Then came a well-earned 10-day R&R period in Australia, reporting to Ulithi afterward for the next big show.

Okinawa

Assigned to TF-51 along with two destroyers, USS McDermut (DD-667) and Leutz (DD-481), and the escort USS England (DE-635), Whitehurst and company formed the anti-submarine screen around the light cruisers USS Mobile and Miami for the assault and occupation of Okinawa Gunto, leaving Ulithi at the end of March.

By 6 April, the first Japanese aircraft out of Okinawa were engaged by Whitehurst, whose gunners fired 263 rounds that day.

At 1500 on 12 April the Divine Wind came to Whitehurst.

Three Japanese Vals closed with the destroyer escort and two were shot down by the ship’s gunners. The third, in a steep 40-degree angle dive, smoking from 20mm hits, crashed into the ship’s bridge at 1502.

The entire bridge structure was enveloped in flames– with all the pilothouse and CIC personnel killed outright– and all control and communications lost. By 1507, with secondary control restored, with gun control conducted by voice, the ship’s force was fighting the fires that were under control by 1515.

The minesweeper USS Vigilance (AM-324) and assault transport USS Crosley (APD-87) came alongside the smoking warship to render medical assistance and rescue.

All of the men in the ship’s radio room as well as those in the forward gun crews had been either killed or seriously wounded by bomb fragments. In all, Whitehurst suffered 31 deaths and 37 wounded while six men were missing in action, presumed blown overboard. Overall, the casualties amounted to a third of the crew. 

With Vigilance leading the way and a signalman from the minesweeper on Whitehurst’s deck passing commands back and forth via semaphore flag and handheld blinker lamp, the damaged escort made the protection of the Kerama Retto anchorage by 1830.

Four days later, patched up enough to make for the sea once again, Whitehurst joined a slow convoy bound for recently occupied Saipan and arrived there on the 20th. On the 22nd, she received a dispatch ordering her back to Pearl Harbor for battle damage repairs and alterations. Arriving in Hawaii via Eniwetok on 10 May, where she unloaded munitions and entered the Naval Yard two days later.

P.I. Powerhouse

The brutal month-long campaign to Liberate Japanese-occupied Manila, once considered one of the most beautiful of cities in the Far East, had left the Philippines’s capital a pile of rubble amid destruction perhaps only surpassed by Warsaw.

Manila, Philippine Islands, Feb. 1945. (U.S. Air Force Number 59680AC)

According to post-combat accounting, the fighting destroyed 11,000 of the city’s buildings, leaving 200,000 Filipinos homeless in addition to the 100,000 killed when the smoke cleared in early February 1945. Survivors had no running water, sewage treatment, or electricity.

That’s where Whitehurst and her sisters came in.

Gen. Kruger’s Sixth Army engineer train, tasked with helping to stand Manila back up in addition to pursuing the Japanese into northern Luzon, was soon operating two floating diesel powerplants to provide the city with a trickle of power.

Responding to the call, USS Wiseman (DE-667), one of Whitehurst’s sisters, was given a set of ship-to-shore power reels and transformers, allowing her to send juice into the Manila Electric Service by using the destroyer escort’s main propulsion plant.

Two large cable reels and a transformer were added between the X-position director and the smokestack. The transformers installed as part of the conversion provided electricity in six different voltages ranging from 2,400 and 37,500 volts using the ship’s GE generators

Photo of a power cable reels on the USS Wiseman (DE-667) from the open bridge. The Wiseman helped provide power to Manila for a time in 1945. U.S. Navy Memorial Foundation Collection: Frank M. Frazitta Papers. 0677-048-b1-fi-i6. East Carolina University Digital Collections. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/24920. Accessed 29 Oct. 2024

As detailed by DANFS on Wiseman’s mission:

Arriving at Manila on [March] 23d, she commenced furnishing power to that nearly demolished city on 13 April and, over the next five and one-half months, provided some 5,806,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity. In addition, Wiseman’s evaporators furnished 150,000 gallons of drinking water to Army facilities in the harbor area and to many small craft. Her radios were also utilized to a great extent. Placed at the disposal of the Navy’s port director, the ship’s communication outfit was used to handle harbor radio traffic until the director’s equipment arrived and was installed ashore.

As part of her yard period in Pearl Harbor following her kamikaze strike, Whitehurst received a similar set of ship-to-shore transmission reels, which she tested on 1 July 1945 by illuminating a test grid ashore at the Navy Yard.

3 July 1945: Whitehurst at Pearl Harbor, undergoing Inclining tests, note her TEG conversion reels are visible behind her stack. (U.S. Navy photo, National Archives #19LCM-DE634-3)

Receiving munitions, provisions, and new crew members (including a new skipper), she spent three weeks on a series of speed and maneuvering trials, augmented by gunnery and ASW exercises then shoved off on 25 July bound for the Philippines.

On 14 August 1945, Whitehurst, which had just escorted the jeep carrier USS Core (CVE-13) from Ulithi to Leyte, arrived at Manila’s inner harbor and tied up, reporting to Sixth Army to relive Wiseman.

She soon after started lighting up the P.I. at a regular 13,200 volts (5.8746E-25 MWh), 24×7.

She would continue this unsung yet vital post-war recovery service for more than two months until relieved on 26 October.

Her services were needed in Guam, and Whitehurst steamed there in early November where she tied up and supplied electrical power to the dredge YM-25, in support of the 301st Naval Construction Bn, into 1946.

No less than six other destroyer escorts– all Buckley class ships– were at some point converted into floating Turbo-Electric Generators (TEG) in such a manner: USS Donnell (DE-56), Foss (DE-59), Marsh (DE-699), Maloy (DE-791), HMS Spragge (K-572, ex-DE-563) and HMS Hotham (K-583 ex-DE-574). Notably, Donnell, which had been extensively damaged by a torpedo from U-473 in May 1944, was reclassified IX-182 and used to supply shore power off Omaha immediately after D-Day.

This allowed them to operate in important expeditionary and humanitarian roles if and when needed, a trick some of them would be called to do in later conflicts. For example, Foss and Maloy went to the aid of blacked-out Portland Maine in 1947 while Wiseman and Marsh powered the respective Korean ports of Masan and Pusan in 1950 during the Korean War.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Korea

Finally returning to CONUS in April 1946 after more than nine months of service as a floating generator, Whitehurst was decommissioned six months later and placed in the Atlantic Reserve Fleet at Green Cove Springs, Florida. She earned six battle stars for her World War II service.

Not all of her sisters were as lucky. Four had been lost during the war: USS Fechteler, sunk by U-967 northwest of Oran, Algeria 5 May 1944; Rich; lost to mines off Utah Beach 8 June 1944 just months after joining the fleet; Bates, sunk by kamikazes off Okinawa 25 May 1945; and Underhill, sunk by a Japanese Kaiten human torpedo northeast of Luzon 24 July 1945. Meanwhile, England, like Whitehurst, was damaged by suicide planes off Okinawa, but unlike our subject was not repaired following the war.

The truth was that the peacetime Navy had little use for slow DEs with their open gun mounts when so many modern, fast, and well-armed new destroyers were just leaving the shipyards.

Port broadside aerial view of destroyer escort USS Whitehurst (DE-634) November 30 1949 USN 200669

When the Norks crossed the 38th Parallel during the summer of 1950 into South Korea, Whitehurst was dusted off and recommissioned on 1 September 1950. Sent to the Far East as part of Escort Squadron 11 (CortDiv 112), she earned three battle stars (First UN Counter Offensive, Communist China Spring Offensive, and UN Summer-Fall Offensive) for her activities during the Korean War in the seven months between 25 February and 19 September 1951.

She reportedly added a 13-year-old war orphan, one Jimmie Pon Son, to her crew. 

Gilligan patrol…and movie star

Remaining in the Westpac until 1955, she transferred to Pearl Harbor for another year of service that included poking around the remote islands and atolls of the U.S. Trust Territories for the Pacific, winning hearts and minds by providing aid and medical care for the locals while enforcing fishing regulations and low-key looking for Japanese hold outs.

With an 11-foot draft and the ability to easily launch rubber rafts due to her low freeboard, littoral surveillance came easy.

For instance, take this deck log note from March 1957 into account:

By June 1957, she was one of the last destroyer escorts remaining on active duty in her WWII configuration (if you disregard her TEG equipment).

This led to the ship and her crew being placed at the disposal of 20th Century Fox for six weeks for Dick Powell to film The Enemy Below.

Dubbed the fictional USS Haynes in the film, Whitehurst appears in several significant passages, all filmed in amazing DeLuxe Color.

Reserve Days, and her final mission

Once filming wrapped, Whitehurst was sent to the 13th Naval District at Seattle, Washington in October 1957 to serve with Reserve Escort Squadron 1 (ResCortDiv 112) as a Naval Reserve Training ship, used for weekend cruises one weekend per month and a two-week summer cruise per year.

Decommissioned a second time on 6 December 1958, Whitehurst remained “in service” as a training asset, keeping up her regular drill work.

USS Whitehurst (DE634), note the post-war hull numbers

This continued until October 1961 when she was recommissioned a second time during the Berlin Wall crisis, manned by activated reservists, and sent to Pearl Harbor to join Escort Squadron 7 for 10 months.

Buckley class USS Whitehurst (DE-634)

It was during this time that she was sent to Vietnam in March 1962 along with Escort Division 71. Operating in the South China Sea and the Gulf of Siam, she conducted training of South Vietnamese naval officers out of Danang.

Postwar view of Whitehurst, with her distinctive cable reels on the 01 level amidships

Decommissioned a third time on 1 August 1962, she returned to her weekend warrior NRT job in Seattle as part of Destroyer Squadron 27 (ResDesDiv 273) where, during a 1963 refit, she landed much of her WWII armament and her TEG reels.

Her summer cruises, longer two-week affairs, often ranged as far as Canada and Mexico.

Whitehurst, City of Vancouver Archives. 31 July 1965.

This quiet reserve life continued into October 1968 when she was shifted to Swan Island outside of Portland, Oregon, becoming an NRT vessel there.

On 12 July 1969, Whitehurst was struck from the Navy List as the likelihood of her offering anything as a training asset was slim. By that time, she was one of the final members of her “disposable” class still in the Navy’s hands, a record only surpassed by a handful of fellow NRT ships which lingered into the early 1970s.

Stripped, she was towed to sea by USS Tawasa (ATF-92) and sunk as a target by the submarine USS Trigger (SS-564) on 28 April 1971 in deep water off Vancouver Island, during the development of the MK 48 torpedo– its first live warshot test.

28 April 1971 ex-Whitehurst quickly slides beneath the waves. This photo was taken by the Trigger’s Periscope Photographer, Tom Boyer.

In her ending, she served the Navy one last time by helping to test new weapons and train new bluejackets in their use.

Likewise, 11 of her class were disposed of in similar SINKEXs between 1967 and 1973: ex-USS Lovelace, ex-James E. Craig, ex-Otter, ex-Darby, ex-J. Douglas Blackwood, ex-Alexander J. Luke, ex-Vammen, ex-Loeser, ex-Currier, ex-Cronin, and ex-Gunason.

Epilogue

Few relics remain of Whitehurst.

Her war diaries and deck logs are in the National Archives. 

She has a memorial at the Museum of the Pacific War in Texas. 

A website DE634.org, endures to keep her memory alive. Their last reunion listed, combined with veterans of USS Silverstein, Walton, and Foss, was in 2020.

As for her first skipper, James Grey, went on to command two other destroyer escorts and a troopship, including sea time during Korea, then served in several high-level shore assignments until he retired in 1960, capping 23 years with the Navy. He passed in Sunnyvale, California in 2002, aged 87.

Her first XO and second skipper, 90-day wonder Jack Horton, who commanded the ship during the battle against I-45 and somehow survived the kamikaze his ship took to the bridge six months later, mustered out in December 1945 and, settling in Houston, passed in a sailing accident on the Gulf of Mexico in 1970. Life is funny like that.

The Navy has not seen fit to commission a second USS Whitehurst.

However, The Enemy Below endures, and she is still beautiful in rich DeLuxe Color.

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.

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find. http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

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.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Toddy break

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Private Ken Williams, 2nd Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment (2RAR), is seen below in his winter fighting gear, as he takes time off from battle training in Korea for a refreshing drink from a can of chocolate-flavored Toddy, October 1953.

Photographer: Phillip Hobson, AWM Accession number: HOBJ4610

Note Williams’ Australian-made Owen sub gun, with its distinctive top-loading magwell, tucked under his arm. He also sports a camouflaged Mk III “Turtle” helmet, a lid rarely seen in Aussie service.

While the Owen and Turtle have long faded into history, Toddy is still very much around.

Australians served as part of the UN forces in Korea until 1957. As noted by the AWM, over 17,000 Australians served during the Korean War, of which 340 were killed and 1,216 wounded. A further 30 became prisoners of war.

Vale, Admiral Greer– who held a Ranger tab

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Fellow Mississippian James Earl Jones, who of course is probably best known for his sci-fi and Disney cartoon voiceover work, will always be remembered by me as the fictional VADM James “Jim” Greer (Ret.) in his trio of 1990s Tom Clancy movies (The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, and Clear and Present Danger).

What war nerd doesn’t remember the “I was never here,” ending to Red October?

Of course, his other on-camera screen roles were often impeccable such as the Single Action Army-packing Few Clothes in Matewan, the straight-man to Eddie Murphy in Coming to America, Sgt. Maj. Goody Nelson in Gardens of Stone, the B-52 bombardier in Dr. Strangelove (his first role)– which be bounced against his role as the general in charge of the Looking Glass EC-135 in the under-rated By Dawn’s Early Light 25 years later– and as world weary baseball writer Terence Mann in Field of Dreams.

What you may not know is that he was a Korean War-era Army officer.

Earning his butter bar via ROTC at the University of Michigan, he was commissioned in mid-1953 after finishing the Infantry Officers Basic Course at Fort Benning. Too late to see combat, he nonetheless finished Ranger School with a tab, served with the 38th Regimental Combat Team at Camp Hale, and was discharged as a 1LT in 1955.

He also gave the best rendition of the National Anthem, ever. 

You were definitely here, LT Jones.

Warship Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2024: Oft Overlooked Essex

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2024: Oft Overlooked Essex

U.S. Navy photo 80-G-282724 in the National Archives, Identifier: 276538368

Above we see the brand new Essex-class fleet carrier USS Bennington (CV-20), decked out in Measure 32, Design 17A camouflage, photographed in the busy shipping lanes off New York on 25 September 1944 by Navy Blimp ZP-12 with the troopship SS Nievw Amsterdam in the foreground. She would go on to become one of the last of her class in Navy custody but first had to earn battle stars off Japan and Vietnam as well as pluck a space capsule from the sea.

Meet Bennington

One of eighteen Essex-class carriers completed during World War II, CV-20 was the second U.S. Navy warship named after the little-known 1777 New York battle during the Saratoga campaign that occurred near the Vermont city of Bennington.

The first USS Bennington (Gunboat No. 4) was a hardy little vessel probably best known to history for taking formal possession of Wake Island for the United States in 1899.

(Gunboat # 4) Dressed with flags in a harbor, probably while serving with the Squadron of Evolution, circa 1891-1892. Courtesy of Donald M. McPherson, 1969. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 67551

Ordered a week after Pearl Harbor on 15 December 1941, our second USS Bennington was the first of her class built in the Empire State (which makes her name choice logical) and was laid down on 15 December 1942 at the New York (Brooklyn) Navy Yard.

Bennington was also the first American fleet carrier constructed wholly in a dry dock, rather than on a builder’s ways, and at her launching on 26 February 1944, the dock gates were opened to allow the Hudson to flow in. She was sponsored by the wife of eight-time U.S. Rep. Melvin Maas (R-Minn) who, a Great War Marine aviator, was back in uniform as a colonel on MacArthur’s staff.

Bennington being prepared for launching in a building dock at the New York Navy Yard, 23 February 1944. She was christened three days later. Courtesy of Mr. James Russell, Philadelphia Pennsylvania, 1972. NH 75631

USS Bennington (CV-20) being floated out of drydock at the New York Navy Yard, on 26 February 1944, following her christening. NH 75632

The same yard was soon turning the lessons learned in constructing CV-20 to good use and would build three sisters (Bon Homme Richard, Kearsarge, and Oriskany) while a fourth, USS Reprisal (CV 35) was canceled just after launch.

Bennington was one of the last of the “short bow” designed Essex class carriers completed, with later vessels having a longer clipper bow. Remember this in a minute.

Starting in May 1944, her crew gathered at Naval Training Station Newport and Brooklyn Navy Yard for pre-commissioning training while her inaugural carrier group, the brand new CVG 82, was likewise coming together at the fields around Norfolk.

She was commissioned on 6 August 1944– 80 years ago this week– and her plankowners and baby Airedales boarded her for the first time in front of a crowd of 8,000 people. Her first skipper, T/Capt. James Bennett Sykes (USNA 1919), came from the captain’s cabin of the very successful U-boat-busing USS Card (CVE-11) whose embarked VC-9 squadron bagged an incredible eight boats between August and October 1943.

Her wardroom also included 32-year-old LT John Aloysius “Buddy” Hassett, formerly a first baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Boston Bees/Braves, and New York Yankees. He naturally pulled down the collateral duty of Bennington’s athletic and recreation director and coach of the carrier’s baseball team and would remain with the vessel until the end of the war.

Hassett would leave the Navy in November 1945 as an LCDR.

CVG-82 was made up of the “Fighting Fools” of VF-82 (36 F6F-5 Hellcats), VB-82 (15 SB2C-4E Helldivers) and VT-82 (15 TBM-3 Avengers). This would be beefed up by two Marine Corsair squadrons, VMF-112 and VMF-223, with a total of 36 F4U-1Ds and 54 flying leatherneck pilots. Likewise, a night fighter det of six radar-equipped F6F-5N, six pilots, two ground officers, and seven enlisted ground crew joined VF-82 at the same time, landing six of the more standard Hellcats to make room.

Thus equipped, CVG-82 sailed for the Pacific in January 1945 with a very fighter-heavy 73 F models, 15 dive bombers, and 15 torpedo bombers, as opposed to the more traditional “Sunday Punch” of 36-36-36 of each type. This was to counter the onset of the kamikaze waves, which started in October 1944, and the general decline of floating and ashore targets on which to expend torpedoes and bombs.

By this point in the Pacific campaign, close-in air support had largely been passed from fast carriers to the Navy’s growing force of CVEs and CVLs, with the CVs tasked instead with providing a robust fighter umbrella over the fleet.

USS Bennington (CV-20) photographed from a plane that has just taken off from her flight deck, during the ship’s shakedown period, 20 October 1944. 80-G-289645

USS Bennington (CV-20) at anchor in Gravesend Bay, New York, 13 Dec 1944

USS Bennington (CV-20) ferries aircraft to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii while on her maiden voyage to fight in World War II in January 1945

War!

Steaming through the Panama Canal and calling at San Diego and Pearl Harbor on her way to Ulithi Atoll Fleet Anchorage by 7 February 1945, CVG-82 managed to chalk up 3,000 landings along the way, although crack ups were to be expected.

Firefighters battle flames engulfing a Marine F4U Corsair after a crash on the flight deck of the carrier Bennington (CV 20) on 14 February 1945. According to Bennington’s War Diary, the plane was of Marine 38, which crashed into the island and “created a stubborn gasoline fire” until it was jettisoned over the side. Its pilot, 2LT W.M. Browning, USMCR, escaped with “minor lacerations.” NNAM photo.

Underway as part of TG 58.1, Bennington/CVG-82’s baptism of fire came on 16 February when she took part in the first large-scale Navy air raids of the Japanese home islands, sending 130 combat sorties in “two deck load strikes” into the area around Tokyo Bay, flying missions against installations at Mitsune and Mikatagahara Airfields on Hachijo Jima, Nanpo Shoto. During the raid, she was the Westernmost carrier– the one closest to Japan.

At the end of the day, 10 aircrew were listed missing. They would not be the last.

From her War Diary for 16 Feb 1945:

She then pivoted south to support the Iwo Jima landings, plastering Chichi Jima on 18 February (D-1). Then came a four-month cycle that saw Bennington pivoting back and forth between supporting landings and operations on/over Iwo and Okinawa and Home Island raids.

This would include joining in, with air groups from 14 other carriers, on the 7 April hammering of the world’s largest battleship, Yamato (with Admiral Seiichi Itō on board), the light cruiser Yahagi, and four of the Emperor’s destroyers into the East China Sea.

Note Bennington’s hits

U.S. Navy deck crewmen aboard USS Bennington (CV-20) maneuver a Curtiss SB2C-4 Helldiver of bombing squadron VB-82 into position on the carrier’s flight deck. VB-82 operated from Bennington during the period February to June 1945. Note Bennington’s arrowhead geometric air group identification symbol on the SB2C’s wings and tail. U.S. Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation photo No. 1996.253.357

Bennington launching TBM Avengers from VT-1 during operations in early 1945. USS Harrison (DD-573), a Fletcher-class destroyer that received 11 battle stars for World War II service, steams past in the background. She would later serve in the Mexican Navy as Cuauhtemoc (E-01) until 1982. 80-G-K-5103

Japanese plane being shot down by gunfire on 14 May 1945 while approaching USS Bennington (CV 20). Image taken from USS Hornet (CV 12). The ships were serving as part of Task Force 38 off the Kyushu, Japan area. Sky is decorated with anti-aircraft fire. 80-G-331622

USS Bennington (CV-20) Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat fighters of VF-82 prepare for takeoff, circa May 1945. 80-G-K-4946

This high tempo continued until 5 June 1945 when Connie, a “small and tight typhoon overtook TG 38.1, which passed through the eye of the storm at 0700 that morning,” hitting the group with winds clocked at over 100 knots and seas of up to 50 feet. The storm damaged almost every ship in the TG and wrecked or washed away 76 aircraft from the group’s three assembled carriers.

Bennington got some of the worst of it, having her forecastle deck flooded, leaving living spaces a “shambles,” buckling a 25-foot section of her flight deck, and putting both catapults out of commission. Hornet, operating in TG.38.1 along with Bennington, suffered almost the exact same damage.

Nonetheless, she was still capable of putting up strikes– sending 26 Hellcats and 11 Corsairs to bomb and strafe Japanese airfields on Southern Kyushu on 8 June– and mount a CAP over her task group.

Bennington was forced to retire to Leyte Gulf off Tacloban Field where she underwent 20 days of emergency repairs courtesy of the forward-deployed repair ship USS Ajax (AR-6), which cut away her collapsed flight deck.

Workers from the floating workshop USS Ajax, (AR-6) repaired the bow of the carrier USS Bennington, (CV-20) off Leyte Island in June 1945. Virgil Cowart Collection. UA 539.11

CVG-82 made their 10,744th and final landing on Bennington on 10 June. In their four months in combat on CV-20, they had an impressive tally that included helping to break the back of the Imperial Air Force– claiming 386 Japanese aircraft destroyed in the air or on the ground– as well as contributing to ending the last surface threat of the Imperial Navy.

In return, CVG-82 lost an incredible 127 aircraft (remember that they sailed from California in January 1945 with 103!) along with 53 aviators and aircrew, a quarter of their complement, across 7,304 combat sorties.

Bled white in terms of both men and material, CVG-82 was pulled off Bennington on 17 June and sent back to the states on the homeward-bound jeep carrier USS White Plains (CVE-66). They would not be ready to deploy again until October 1946, when they shipped out on a Med cruise aboard Bennington’s sister, USS Randolph (CV-15).

CVG-82s scorecard from their 1945 cruise with Bennington:

Likewise leaving Bennington at this time was Capt. Sykes who was sent to take command of the Naval Ordnance Test Station (later NAWS China Lake) at Inyokern, California. His place was taken by Capt. Boynton Lewis Braun (USNA 1921B), a career naval aviator who earned his wings on the old USS Lexington and had formerly commanded the escort carrier USS Manila Bay (CVE-61).

With CVG-82 gone, Bennington soon picked up the recently reorganized Carrier Air Group One (CVG-1) which, formed in 1938 as the “Ranger Air Group” had a lineage that dated back to the Navy’s first purpose-built flattop. Consisting of VF-1 (Hellcats including photo and night fighter variants), VBF-1 (Corsairs) VB-1 (Helldivers), and VT-1 (Avengers), they arrived in the Philippines in mid-June 1945 on White Plains, the same jeep carrier which would tote CVG-82 home.

CVG-1 stood some 163 pilots and 98 aircraft strong.

Starting flight operations on 1 July, they would soon get a bite at the decaying Japanese apple, striking Tokyo just 10 days later. CVG-1 would spend the next five weeks hammering industrial, military, and naval targets across Honshu in what could really be looked at as mopping up operations.

Nonetheless, this allowed the group, and by extension Bennington, to put the final nails in the Imperial Navy’s coffin, logging hits on the 22,000-ton Unryū-class fleet carriers Amagi and Katsuragi; the hybrid carrier-battleships Hyuga and Ise, and the cherished battlewagon Nagato, among others taking refuge in the mine-blocked Inland Sea.

Salvaging parts of a damaged VBF-1 Corsair Aboard the USS Bennington (CV-20), 4 July 1945. 80-GK-6176

Raids on Japan, 1945. Japanese carrier Amagi under attack at Kure, on 24 July 1945. Photo by USS Bennington (CV-20). 80-G-490165

Raids on Japanese Home Islands, July 30, 1945. Japanese carriers of the Amagi-Katsuragi class hit by bombers at Kure Bay, Japan. Radio photograph. 80-G-490169

One of CVG-1’s most hard-felt losses was that of VB-1’s squadron commander, LCDR Andrew B Hamm (USNA ’39) when his SB2C-4E Helldiver was shot down by anti-aircraft fire over Kure on 28 July. Hamm’s folks in Alabama were given his posthumous Navy Cross, earned on a previous raid when he landed a 1,000-pound armor-piercing bomb on the carrier Amagi. He was one of 26 pilots and aircrewmen listed killed or missing from the group in their short time on Bennington— almost one per day.

A CVG-1 Corsair launches from the deck of the carrier USS Bennington CV-20 on 14 August 1945. Note the battleship on the horizon

When the Emperor threw in the towel on 14 August, Bennington and her air group spent the next two weeks jogging up and down the coast from Northern Honshu to Southern Hokkaido and back, cataloging 11 Allied POW camps around the region, many of which were not previously known.

Captured by one of CVG-1’s F6F-5P recon birds

They dropped 5.5 tons of supplies from TBMs using canopies repurposed from parachute flares with “more than one pilot expressing his deep satisfaction in making a perfect drop to starving prisoners who by their enthusiastic gestures indicated how welcome their packages were to them.”

CVG-1 was able to clean up its planes and put 83 aviators in the air in everything that could get off the deck to spearhead the “show of force” overflight of USS Missouri during the surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay on 2 September although the carrier was still 100 miles offshore.

Bennington carried on with her role of patrol and mounting photo recon missions along the Japanese Home Islands until 10 September, when she finally steamed into Tokyo Bay and berthed for a weeklong rest.

There, on 13 September 1945, her crew celebrated the ship’s first birthday complete with entertainment and a “grand dinner.” As noted in her War History, “The birthday actually occurred a little more than a month previous of course (6 August but the celebration was necessarily delayed due to combat operations.”

Big Benn remained in the Far East until mid-October and then went back stateside for the first time since January, dropping off her low-mileage air group at Saipan. CVG-1 would later return to be disestablished at Alameda NAS via the east-bound jeep carrier USS Kwajalein (CVE-98). They had been on Bennington for 30,381 steaming miles in just over three months and made 3,323 landings on her decks.

CVG-1s scorecard for July-August 1945:

Entering San Francisco Bay on 7 November sans aircraft, Bennington remained there over the holidays until January 1946 when she set out for Pearl Harbor with a load of planes and a draft of men headed West for occupation duty.

USS Bennington (CV 20) – Pearl Harbor, Hawaii – January 1946

Remaining in the Hawaiian Islands for training for a few months, the carrier was given orders for Norfolk, via the Panama Canal, and arrived there on 22 April.

On 8 November 1946, she was decommissioned and berthed with the Atlantic Reserve Fleet along the James River.

Bennington earned three battle stars for World War II service: 1) Iwo Jima operation, 15 Feb – 4 Mar 1945, 2) Okinawa Gunto Operation, 17 Mar – 11 Jun 1945, 3) Third Fleet operations against Japan 10 Jul – 15 Aug 1945.

Another, Colder, War

Bennington’s mothball slumber lasts just under four years.

Reawakened in October 1950 due to the war in Korea, she was towed to her birthplace at New York Naval Shipyard for an extensive SCB-27A conversion to allow her to handle jets including a pair of new hydraulic Type H Mark 8 (H8) catapults. This upgrade took two grueling years and, once it was finished, she recommissioned on 13 November 1952.

In this, she had been reclassified as an “Attack Aircraft Carrier” to differentiate her from her unconverted sisters and redesignated CVA-20.

Her first jet-and helicopter-equipped air group, CVG-7, composed of VF-71 (F2H Banshee) and VF-72 (F9F Panthers), VF-74 (Corsairs), and VA-75 (AD-4 Skyraiders), along with a det of HUP-2 whirlybirds, arrived on board in February 1953 for Bennington’s Caribbean shakedown cruise and subsequent September 1953- February 1954 Med deployment for NATO exercises.

A F9F-4 Panther from NATC at NAS Patuxent on USS Bennington (CVA 20) 19 April 1954.

It was during this period that she suffered an explosion in her No. 1 fireroom on 27 April 1953 that claimed the lives of 11 men and put her in the yard for two weeks of repair.

She would soon suffer far worse.

Just after returning from the Med, while conducting flight operations off Narragansett Bay with Air Group 181 on 26 May 1954, a series of explosions rocked the carrier after her port catapult accumulator burst and filled the air with vaporized lubricating oil which detonated, immolating the wardroom and crew’s mess which were in the compartments directly above. The fire killed 91 men outright while another 12 succumbed to wounds. Over 200 were injured. twelve would die later from their injuries.

Had it not been for the fact that helicopters and small boats were able to rapidly medevac 82 critically injured sailors ashore to the nearby Naval Hospital in Newport, surely more would have perished.

Sailors injured in the below-deck explosions and fires on board the USS Bennington are carried by elevator to the flight deck for transport to Newport Naval Hospital, 26 May 1954.

The Bennington explosion, almost totally forgotten by the public today, was the second worst U.S. Navy accident during peacetime in terms of lives lost, only surpassed by the 1952 collision between USS Hobson (DD 464) and USS Wasp (CV 18) that left the destroyer cut in half and with 176 men killed or missing.

Her deck bulged in numerous places and with most of the front third of the ship with twisted I beams and blackened compartments, Bennington returned once more to New York Naval Shipyard under her own power on 12 June 1954, where she completed a longer SCB-125 conversion that added an enclosed hurricane bow– to lessen the potential for damage in heavy weather– and of an angled flight deck to improve the efficiency of air operations.

She looked very different upon completion of this, her second major overhaul and conversion in five years. 

USS Bennington (CV-20) off Point Loma near the entrance to San Diego Bay in the late 1950s

Bennington emerged from NYNSY on 19 March 1955 and would embark a new air wing, Air Task Group (ATG) 201, that September for an eight-month “around the Horn” West Pac cruise.

Bennington with ATG-201 embarked, in 1956, seen simultaneously landing an AD Skyraider and catapulting an FH Phantom. Note that she has an enclosed bow now but no bridle catchers handing over. 

Bennington, as modernized. NH 67558

Then, in rapid succession, came another new group ATG-181 for a 1956-57 West Pac cruise.

F9F-8 Cougar of Fighter Squadron (VF) 174 launches from Bennington (CVA 20) as another squadron aircraft prepares to maneuver onto the catapult during flight operations in 1956. NNAM collection.

A U.S. Navy North American AJ-2 Savage of heavy attack squadron VAH-6 Det. N Fleurs landing on the aircraft carrier USS Bennington (CVA-20). VAH-6 Det. N was assigned to Air Task Group 181 (ATG-181) for a deployment to the Western Pacific from 15 October 1956 to 22 May 1957. U.S. Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation photo No. 1996.253.3301

F2H-3 Banshee of Marine Fighter Squadron (VMF) 214 pictured while making touch-and-go approaches on board the carrier Bennington (CVA 20) on 2 November 1956. NNAM collection.

Talk about the recruiting poster! Stern of USS Bennington (CVA-20) at Hong Kong, showing her 3″/50 Mk 33 AAA twin mounts. Bennington, with assigned Air Task Group 181 (ATG-181), was deployed to the Western Pacific from 15 October 1956 to 22 May 1957.

San Francisco Naval Shipyard with USS Hancock (CVA-19), the USS Oriskany (CVA-34), and the USS Bennington (CVA-20), 3 October 1957. K-23227

A U.S. Navy North American FJ-4B Fury (BuNo 143574) from Attack Squadron VA-146 Blacktails after landing aboard the aircraft carrier USS Bennington (CVA-20) during carrier qualifications off Southern California (USA) in April 1958. VA-146 was assigned a the time to Carrier Air Group 14 (CVG-14) aboard the much larger supercarrier USS Ranger (CVA-61). NNAM No. 1996.253.7230.017

Fly Navy! FJ3 Fury of VF-173 on board of USS Bennington during the middle of the 50s. (US Navy)

Official U.S. Navy Photograph. Catalog #: USN 1036055

The angled deck USS Bennington (CVA-20) passes the wreck of USS Arizona (BB-39) in Pearl Harbor on Memorial Day, 31 May 1958. Bennington’s crew is in formation on the flight deck, spelling out a tribute to Arizona’s crewmen who were lost in the 7 December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. USN 1036055

Her final West Pac cruise as a CVA (August 1958 through January 1959) came with ATG-4 embarked.

USS_Bennington_(CVA-20)_underway_c 1958 with ATG 4

Air Task Group 1 (ATG-1) embarked on USS Bennington (CVA 20) in 1958 off Hawaii. Note how big those Savages look!

On 30 June 1959, Bennington was reclassified as an “Antisubmarine Warfare Support Aircraft Carrier” (CVS), a designation that eight of her sisters (Essex, Yorktown, Hornet, Randolph, Wasp, Intrepid, Kearsarge, and Lake Champlain) would share.

The big change that this meant, besides switching to an air group made up of S-2 Trackers and SH-3 Sea Kings with a few AD-5W (EA-1E) Skyraiders for airborne early warning, was having a bow-mounted SQS-23 sonar installed in a SCB-144 conversion.

Five Essex-class flattops at Long Beach Navy Yard. USS Bennington, Yorktown, and Hornet (angled flight decks; no bridle catchers) are configured as ASW carriers; USS Bon Homme Richard (angled deck; with bridle catchers) is an attack carrier; USS Valley Forge (straight axial flight deck with heli zones marked) is serving as LPH-8

Her go-to anti-submarine air group (CVSG) during the 1960s, with which she made six West Coast deployment cruises, was CVSG-59. It was made up, in general, of the “World Famous and Internationally Traveled Screwbirds” of VS-33 and the “Red Griffins” of VS-38 (Trackers), the “Eightballers” of HS-8 (H-34/HSS-1 Seabat/SH-34G then later Sea Kings), and a det from the “Early Elevens” of VAW-11 (Skyraiders, later replaced with E-1B Tracers after 1965).

Note her red and blue H-34/HSS-1 Seabat/SH-34Gs of HS-8, which deployed on Bennington between October 1960 and August 1963 when the squadron switched to Sea Kings

USS Bennington (CVS-20) and USS Braine (DD-630) during an underway replenishment in the Pacific Ocean, circa in 1960. Note her wing of helos and Trackers

Bennington (CV-20), Benner (DD-807), USS Eversole (DD-789), Alfred A. Cunningham (DD-752), and O’Brien (DD-725), on 25 November 1963 honoring the passing of JFK.

Sent to Vietnam on four of her CVS West Pac cruises (Feb-Sept 1964, March-Oct 1965, Nov. 1966-May 1967, and May-December 1968) Bennington also carried a few A-4 Skyhawks for muscle.

Flight deck personnel stand by to prepare for the next launch as an A-4C Skyhawk of Antisubmarine Fighter (VSF) 1 roars down the catapult during carrier qualification aboard the antisubmarine warfare Bennington (CVS 20) 18 November 1967. NNAM photo.

USS Bennington (CVS-20) underway off the coast of California, 25 November 1967. Photographed by Dolenga. NH 97582

Bennington (CVS-20) in Pearl Harbor 17 May 1968

USS Bennington (CVS-20) at Pearl Harbor, in May 1968 while outbound on her last Vietnam cruise. She has CVSG-59 aboard. USN KN-1702

USS Mauna Kea (AE-22) high lines ammunition to the USS Bennington (CVS-20) in the Gulf of Tonkin, the 10 September 1968. Our carrier has nine S-2E Trackers, two E-1B Tracer “Stoof with a Roof” models, and at least four SH-3A Sea Kings on deck. This would be Bennington’s final deployment and would end on 9 November. USN 1137061

A visiting USAF HH-3 Jolly Green Giant tagged on Bennington’s decks, likely off SE Asia

In between West Pac cruises, Bennington also clocked in in the 1960s for runs along the California coast in which she served as a training carrier for qualifications and handled experimental aircraft.

She served as the floating testbed for the big Ling-Temco-Vought XC-124A, a wild tri-service tilt-wing cargo aircraft that predated the CV-22 by decades.

Able to carry 32 equipped troops or 4 tons of cargo with a 470nm combat range, it had a max T/O weight of 45,000 pounds (about twice that of the C-1 Trader carrier delivery aircraft) and a 67-foot wingspan. While this sounds crazy, the C-2 Greyhound went to 50K pounds and had an 80-foot span, but then again nobody wanted to land a C-2 on an Essex-class carrier anyway.

It was thought that as many as 25 folding-wing navalized XC-124s could be carried on the deck of an 18,000-ton Iwo Jima-class LPH (or on an old Essex class CVA/CVS in a pinch), capable of lifting an 800-man Marine battalion landing team ashore in one go– again, predating the LHD/MV-22 concept by a good bit.

Bennington would host the No. 5 XC-124A airframe for 44 STOL take-offs and landings and 6 full VTOL cycles in wind conditions ranging to 30 knots.

An XC-124A after landing aboard the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Bennington (CVS-20) off San Diego, California (USA), on 18 May 1966. Note the Sikorsky SH-3A Sea King in the background.

She also pitched in with the Apollo program, picking up the first module launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

USS Bennington (CVS 20) Apollo 4 spacecraft November 9th, 1967

The Apollo Four Command Module is hoisted onboard USS Bennington (CVS-20) following splashdown at 3:37 pm., 934 nautical miles northwest of Honolulu. Damage to the heat shield from the extreme heat of reentry is evident. Photograph released November 9, 1967. 428-GX-K-45494

With the Navy looking to pare down its WWII-era carriers, then rapidly pushing through their 20s, in favor of a new (Nimitz) class of CVNs, Bennington was decommissioned on 15 January 1970 and placed in mothballs at Bremerton in Puget Sound.

She had spent 18 years with the fleet and earned three battle stars in WWII and five during Vietnam. 

Kept on the bench

The Navy retained four Essex class carriers in reserve on the Naval List through the 1980s: Bennington, Bon Homme Richard, Hornet, and Oriskany.

It was thought, semi-realistically for a while, that they could be a mobilization asset to run S-3 Vikings (if the catapults worked), SH-3/SH-60s, and Marine AV-8 Harriers from them as a “sea control ship” on convoy support in the event of a WWIII Red Storm Rising type of event– given enough lead time.

Plans were even floated in 1981 by SECNAV Lehman to bring back Oriskany to active duty as a “strike carrier” in peacetime, equipped with a wing made up totally of Marine A-4M Skyhawks (2 squadrons= 48 aircraft) and 4-6 SH-3 helicopters, as well as possibly Harriers, ideally to support Marine operations ashore.

The GAO kind of filled that concept full of holes: 

With it thought that Oriskany had 10-15 years left in her, the fact that Skyhawks were on their way out (only 118 were on hand in 1981 and the last active Marine A-4 squadron shuttered in 1990), and the 24-month/1.1 million man-hour reactivation overhaul was estimated to cost $500 million in 1981 dollars, the Navy pulled the plug on that concept.

Still, Big Benn and her four sisters languished in the ordinary for two decades. 

As Bennington and Hornet were SCB.27A ships, with hydraulic instead of steam catapults, they likely would have been reactivated without their cats, leaving them restricted to Harriers and SH-3/SH-60s, but that still could satisfy as an ASW carrier.

Hornet and Bennington in the 1973 Janes.

She even looked good, despite the fact she was on red lead row.

Four decommissioned aircraft carriers, Naval Inactive Ships Maintenance Facility, Bremerton, Wash. ex-USS Hornet (CVS-12), ex-USS Oriskany (CV-34), ex-USS Bennington (CVS-20), and ex-USS Bon Homme Richard (CVA-31)

Pacific Reserve Fleet, Bremerton, Washington, July 1974. The major units here are USS Missouri (BB-63), New Jersey (BB-62), Hornet (CVS-12 and Bennington (CVS-20).

Bremerton Washington Mothball Fleet, 1989: USS Hornet, USS Chicago, USS Oriskany, USS Bennington, USS Bon Homme Richard and USS Nimitz in the distance, 

USS Bennington (CVS 20) laid up at the Naval Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility Jan 25 1990 DN-SC-90-03981

1992: USS Hornet, USS New Jersey, USS Oriskany, USS Bennington, USS Midway. Mothball Fleet, PSNS Bremerton, plus minesweepers and destroyers

However, nothing lasts forever and, with the end of the Cold War, the Navy moved to divest itself of the last of its lingering steam-powered warships from battleships through frigates.

Bennington was stricken on 20 September 1989, just days before the Berlin Wall came down, and sold for scrap in January 1994 to a breaker in India.

Her island and masts were shorn, and armament and sensors removed, then towed to Alang in March 1995 for scrapping by hand.

Bennington became only the second fleet carrier to be sold for scrap outside the United States, following sister USS Shangri-La (CV-38) which had been sent to a yard in Taiwan in 1988. Subsequent flattops disposed of by dismantling including the Forrestal and Kitty Hawk-class supercarriers recycled in the past 20 years have all gone to Texas for breaking.

When Bennington was gone, the Navy only had two other Essex class carriers still in mothballs and one of those, USS Hornet (CV-12) went on to become a museum shortly after while Oriskany (CV-34) was sunk as a reef off Pensacola in 2006. Other sisters preserved include Lexington, Intrepid, and Yorktown— all of which had the same 1950s SCB-125 conversion and subsequent 1960s CVS service as Bennington, so they are all great representations of what the old girl looked like.

Epilogue

Bennington’s WWII War Diaries are in the National Archives as is her War History and those of CVG-82 and CVG-1.

There has not been another naval vessel named Bennington.

Big Ben is remembered fondly by the Bennington Reunion Group, which has a superb online presence that dates back to 1999. Sadly, they do not seem to have held a reunion since 2017, as their members are no doubt dwindling. Keep in mind an 18-year-old bluejacket on her crew list when she was decommissioned for the last time is now pushing age 75.

On 26 May 2004, a bronze plaque was installed at Fort Adams State Park in Rhode Island, near the spot where Bennington had her terrible catapult explosion and fire, to memorialize the event and the crewmembers lost.

Likewise, the city of Bennington has had custody of her bell for the past several decades and includes it in a ceremonial parade and ringing on the town green every Independence Day. 

Of Bennington’s historic WWII air groups, CVG-82 was redesignated to CVAG-17 and later CVG-17 before being disestablished in 1968. CVG-1, which earned two Presidential Unit Citations during the war, has served aboard nine different carriers since then and today, as Carrier Air Wing One (CVW-1), is based at NAS Oceana and is assigned to USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75).

Her primary CVS air group, CVSG-59, after Bennington was mothballed, went on ship out with sisters Yorktown, Hornet, and Ticonderoga— and took part in the recovery of Apollos 8, 11, 12, 13, 16, and 17– before it was disestablished in June 1973.

Finally, her plankowner skipper, RADM James Bennett Skyes, who earned a Navy Cross while in command of the carrier in 1945, retired from the Navy in 1953. He passed at his Texas home in 1981, aged 86, and was survived by two daughters, four grandsons, and three great-grandsons.

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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They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find. http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

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.

I’m a member, so should you be!

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