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Warship Wednesday, July 26, 2023: The Iron Woman

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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

Warship Wednesday, July 26, 2023: The Iron Woman

USN photo by LCDR John Leenhouts. DN-SC-88-08301. National Archives Identifier 6430231

Above we see an air-to-air front view of a Spanish AV-8S Matador (Harrier) in flight over the Spanish aircraft carrier Dedalo (R01), below, in the Mediterranean Sea in the summer of 1988. If you think Dedalo looks much like a WWII light carrier, your hunch is correct, and she entered service under a different name and flag some 80 years ago this week.

“30/30” Ships

In 1942, the Navy had its ass in a bind.

Starting the war with just six large-deck fleet carriers, within the first six months of combat was down to just four, and by the end of the year; just a single one of these (Enterprise) was still afloat and operational.

While the first huge and ultra-modern 34,000-ton Essex-class carriers were building as fast as the riveters could rivet and the welders could chip slag, they would not be able to arrive in numbers until 1944. This put the Big Blue behind the Japanese 8-ball in naval warfare.

FDR, himself always a Navy man (he won a naval warfare essay contest while a teenager and slept with Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power upon History on his nightstand before being appointed Asst. Scty of the Navy during World War One), came up with the idea to convert a bunch of cruisers that were already partially complete at the New York Navy Yard over to flat-tops. Although the Navy balked, FDR was the commander and chief, so guess who won?

USS Cleveland CL-55 1942. The Navy wanted between 40-50 of these hardy little cruisers. They settled for much less, and nine of those became aircraft carriers while still under construction

USS Cleveland CL-55 1942. The Navy wanted between 40-50 of these hardy little cruisers. They settled for much less, and nine of those became aircraft carriers while still under construction

The 14,000-ton Cleveland class light cruisers were designed after the gloves came off in 1940 and the U.S. no longer had to abide by the Washington and London Naval treaties of the 1920s and 30s. As such, these were very large cruisers, at just a hair over 600 feet long, and very fast (33 knots). Designed to carry a dozen 6-inch and a supplemental dozen 5-inch guns, they were also heavily armed.

In all the Navy wanted something on the order of 40 of these cruisers to lead destroyer groups, escort convoys, scout ahead of battle groups, and screen carriers and battleships. Well, FDR carved nine whose hulls were nearing completion but did not have decks, guns, or superstructures installed yet.

A scale model of the Independence-class light carriers and the Cleveland-class light cruiser. Note the hulls.

A scale model of the Independence-class light carriers and the Cleveland-class light cruiser. Note the hulls.

It was not that hard of a concept. Many of the first carriers were auxiliaries, cruisers, and battleships that had their topside removed and covered with a flat top. Langley, the first U.S. carrier, was a collier. Lexington and Saratoga, the country’s second and third carriers respectively, were originally laid down as battlecruisers.

The first of the class of FDR’s “cruiser carriers,” laid down originally as the cruiser Amsterdam but commissioned instead as the USS Independence, was commissioned on 14 January 1943 and rushed to the fleet. Over the next nine months, eight sisters would join her, roughly one every 45 days on average. They were all constructed in the same yard to keep the program streamlined.

A “30/30” ship, they could make 30+ knots and carry 30+ aircraft while having legs long enough to cross the Pacific and operate on their own for a few weeks before she needed to find an oiler. While they were still much smaller than a regular fleet carrier such as the Enterprise that could carry 80-90 aircraft, they could still put a few squadrons in the air and fill lots of needs.

Simultaneously, they were much faster than the similarly sized quartet of converted oilers that had already been rushed into service and could keep up with a fast-moving battle force. Initially classified as normal fleet carriers (CV), all were re-designated “small aircraft carriers” (CVL) on 15 July 1943.

From U.S. Navy manual FM 30-50: Recognition Pictorial Manual of Naval Vessels, showing U.S. ship silhouettes showing the relative size of the various classes of aircraft carriers, battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. Note the big difference between the size of the large fleet carrier classes (top center), the assorted escort carriers (center to bottom) and the Independence class CVLs, which are right in the middle

Side-by-side comparisons show the principal fleet carriers of the Pacific War compared to an Independence-class CVL. Outside left are the prewar USS Saratoga (CV-3) and USS Enterprise (CV-6), moored near the short-hulled Essex-class USS Hornet (CV-12). Beyond the Hornet is moored the Independence-class USS San Jacinto (CVL-30). U.S. Navy photo 80-G-701512

Worth, in his Fleets of World War II, described the Indys as such:

These were not attractive ships. They had no deck edge elevator, just one catapult, and a small air group (usually 33 planes). Though meant to carry one or two 5-inch DP guns, they never received them. The armor layout provided modest protection, though the first two ships scrambled into service so hurriedly they never got their side armor. In spite of all of this, the design was a success. Not a war winner, it augmented the fleet’s main strength, having sufficient size and speed to bring modern aircraft into battle.

Meet Cabot

The name “Cabot,” after the English-employed Venetian explorer John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto), was one of the oldest in the Navy.

As far back as 5 January 1776, the first Continental Navy squadron under Commodore Esek Hopkins was ordered to sea by Congress to seek the British off coasts of the Carolinas and Rhode Island and in the Chesapeake Bay. The ships under Hopkins’s flag were Alfred, Columbus, Andrea Doria, Cabot, Providence, Hornet, Wasp, and Fly. Sadly, Cabot was also the first Continental naval ship captured by the British, which may be why the Navy waited until 1943 to reissue it.

The second Cabot was laid down as light cruiser USS Wilmington (CL-79) on 16 March 1942, by New York Shipbuilding Co. in Camden, then was reclassified to an aircraft carrier (CV-28) and renamed Cabot during her conversion.

USS Cabot (CV 28), launching at Camden, New Jersey. Photographed April 4, 1943. 80-G-41832

Launched on 4 April 1943, she was reclassified as a small aircraft carrier (CVL-28) just before her commissioning on 24 July 1943 —some 80 years ago this week.

Her first airwing was Carrier Air Group 31, made up of the “Flying Meataxers” of Fighter Squadron 31 (VF-31) and Torpedo Squadron 31 (VT-31), which came aboard in November 1943. CAG 31 would remain on Cabot until 4 October 1944, when CAG 29 (VF-29 and VT-29), late of the USS Santee, came aboard. In general, these CAGs would ship out with 9 TBM/TBF Avengers and 24 F6F-3/5 Hellcats, for a total of 33 aircraft.

They were good at their job.

VF-31 would end up with the highest kill ratio per pilot of any squadron in the US Navy, credited with 165.6 Japanese airplanes destroyed in aerial combat.

For a much deeper dive into her war record, please refer to the extensive 120-page War History completed in late 1945 and available in the National Archives.

We’ll get into the high points below.

Shipping out for the Pacific on 15 January 1944, she joined Task Force 58 and got into the fight for real.

USS Cabot, CVL-28 off Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. 27 AUG 43

Task Force 58 raids in the Carolines, July 1944. RADM J.J. Clark’s task group 58.1 reverses course during attacks on Yap, 28 July 1944. USS HORNET (CV-12) is in the center, with USS CABOT (CVL-28) in the left middle distance and USS YORKTOWN (CV-10) on the right. Six F6F fighters are overhead. Photographed with a K-17 camera from a HORNET plane. 80-G-367247

Crossing the line ceremony on USS Cabot, CVL-28

U.S. Marines drilling on the flight deck of USS Cabot (CVL 28). Photographed by the crew of USS Cabot, July 3, 1944. 80-G-263276

Hitting Truk, the Marshalls, raids on the Palaus, Yap, Ulithi, and Woleai; the Hollandia landings, the famous “Marianas Turkey Shoot,” the liberation of the Philippines, raiding Formosa, Indochina, Hong Kong, Kyushu, and Okinawa, Cabot and her airwing were hard at work.

Just look at this fighting chart chronicling her actions off Formosa, 13-18 October 1944.

Divine Wind

The class would take quite a beating from Japanese aircraft. Sister USS Princeton (CV/CVL-23) was destroyed following a bomb hit during the Battle of Leyte Gulf that sparked fires that got out of hand. Likewise, both sisters USS Belleau Wood (CV/CVL-24) and USS Independence (CV/CVL-22) endured significant damage but pulled through.

Cabot had her own turn in the barrel on 25 November 1944, two days after Thanksgiving.

USS Cabot (CVL-28) is hit by a Kamikaze while operating with Task Force 38 off Luzon, 25 November 1944. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, 80-G-289608

As detailed by DANFS

Cabot had fought off several kamikazes when one, already flaming from hits, crashed the flight deck on the port side, destroying the still-firing 20-millimeter gun platform, disabling the 40-millimeter mounts and a gun director. Another of Cabot’s victims crashed close aboard and showered the port side with fragments and burning debris. Cabot lost 62 men killed and wounded, but careful training had produced a crew that handled damage control smoothly and coolly. While she continued to maintain her station in formation and operate effectively, temporary repairs were made.

Damage to the catapult room of USS Cabot (CVL 28) caused by a crash dive by a Japanese plane. The hole through to the catapult room. The area formerly contained a generator station and crew shelters. 80-G-270879

From her war history:

Back in the fight

Patched up, Cabot returned to action on 11 December 1944, steaming with the force in support of the Luzon operations.

Ernie Pyle shipped out on the Cabot for three weeks and filed reports from her decks on the push to Tokyo.

Pyle, right, on the bridge of Cabot with the skipper –CAPT (later RADM) Walton Wiley Smith (USNA 1920)–during strikes in the North Pacific against Tokyo, February 1945. 80-G-262854-001

The only aircraft carrier he ever visited, Pyle publicized the nickname of the “Iron Woman.”

One of his reports from Cabot:

In the Western Pacific–An aircraft carrier is a noble thing. It lacks almost everything that seems to denote nobility, yet deep nobility is there….It doesn’t cut through the water like a destroyer. It just plows…

Yet a carrier is a ferocious thing, and out of its heritage of action has grown nobility. I believe that today every navy in the world has its No. 1 priority, the destruction of enemy carriers.

That’s a precarious honor, but it’s a proud one.

My Carrier is a proud one. She’s small, and you have never heard of her unless you have a son or husband on her, but still she’s proud, and deservedly so.

She has been at sea, without returning home, longer than any other carrier in the Pacific, with one exception. She left home in November of 1943.

She is a little thing, yet her planes have shot down 228 of the enemy out of the sky in air battles, and her guns have knocked down five Japanese planes in defending herself.

She is too proud to keep track of the little ships she destroys, but she has sent to the bottom 29 big Japanese ships.

She has weathered five typhoons. Her men have not set foot on any soil bigger than a farm-sized uninhabited atoll for a solid year.

They have not seen a woman for nearly ten months. In a year and a quarter out of America, she has steamed a total of 149,000 miles!

Four different air squadrons have used her as their flying field, flown their allotted missions, and returned to America. But the ship’s crew stays on– and on and on.

She is known in the fleet as “The Iron Woman”, because she has fought in every battle in the Pacific in the years 1944 and 1945.

Her battle record sounds like a train caller on the Lackawanna railroad. Listen— Kwajalein, Eniwetok, Truk, Palau, Hollandia, Saipan, Chichi Jima, Mindanao, Luzon, Formosa, Nansei Shoto, Hong Kong, Iwo Jima, Tokyo…and many others.

She has known disaster. Her fliers who have perished cannot be counted on both hands..She has been hit twice by Kamikaze bombs. She has had mass burial at sea..with dry-eyed crew sewing forty-millimeter shells to the corpses of their friends as weights to take them to the bottom of the sea.

Yet she has never even returned to Pearl Harbor to patch her wounds. She slaps on some patches on the run and is ready for the next battle.

My Carrier, even though classed as “light”, is still a very large ship. More than 1,000 men dwell upon her. She is more than 700 feet long…

She has been out so long that her men put their ship above their captain. They have seen captains come and go, but they and the ship stay on forever.

They aren’t romantic about their long stay out here. They hate it, and their gripes are long and loud. They yearn pathetically to go home. But down beneath, they are proud— proud of their ship and proud of themselves.

And you would be too.

Pyle left Cabot at the end of February 1945 and just six weeks later was killed on Ie Shima with the Marines when a bullet from a Japanese machine gun hit him in the left temple below the rim of his helmet.

Cabot would remain on the line until April 1945, when she was sent to Mare Island for a much-needed overhaul.

But before she left, her air group was able to get in some licks on the ill-fated Japanese super battleship Yamato.

USS Cabot (CVL-28) flies a long Homeward Bound pennant as she departs the Western Pacific for overhaul in San Francisco, California, on 13 April 1945. She had been operating in the combat zone since January 1944. The view looks aft from the ship’s island, with her SK-1 radar antenna at the left and other shipping in the distance. Aircraft on Cabot’s deck include (from right front): OS2U, SOC, TBM, SB2C, F4U, and F6F types. NH 96958

Sailing back to the front lines, her last combat missions were flown against Japanese-occupied Wake Island on 1 August while en route to Eniwetok.

USS Cabot (CVL-28) Underway at sea, 26 July 1945. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 80-G-262768

She then joined Task Group 38.3 to support the landings of occupation troops in the Yellow Sea area in September and October.

Embarking homeward-bound men at Guam, Cabot arrived at San Diego on 9 November, then sailed for the East Coast.

Cabot earned a Presidential Unit Citation and nine battle stars for service during WWII.

Her end of the war tally sheet, via her War History.

USS Cabot (CVL-28) close-up view of the ship’s port side bridge wing, showing her insignia, circa 1943-44. The design is based on the slogan of Cabot’s first Commanding Officer, Captain Malcolm F. Schoeffel: Up Mohawks, At ‘Em!. Mohawk was the ship’s voice radio call sign at the time. 80-G-263253

Cabot was placed out of commission in reserve at Philadelphia, Pa., on 11 February 1947.

Korean War Service

Independence class light carriers, Janes 1946

Recommissioned on 27 October 1948 after spending just 20 months in mothballs, Cabot was assigned to the nascent Naval Air Reserve training program. Operating first out of Pensacola, then NAS Quonset Point, she would embark NAR squadrons on summer cruises to the Caribbean and make herself available to the training command for carrier deck quals.

SNJ-5B Bu51927, coming to grief on the USS Cabot (CVL-28) sometime before late 1951

It was around this time that Cabot was given a series of quiet upgrades and strengthened flight deck supports that made her both suitable for helicopters and for the weight of larger aircraft such as the F8F Bearcat. The electronics fit was also updated.

Assistant Sec. of the Navy for Aviation, John F. Floberg, does a solo pass USS Cabot CVL-28 on April 18, 1952, in an SNJ Texan. Floberg would get his carrier quals. The cover is the June 1952 edition of Navy Aviation News

F8F-2 Bearcat Naval Air Training Command carrier qual on USS Cabot CVL 28 June 20, 1952

USMC H-19 Chickasaw on an elevator aboard the refit USS Cabot 1952

One of the young budding Naval Aviators she would qual would be the first man on the moon. Before transitioning to the F-9F Panther jet, which he would fly with VF-51 for 78 combat missions over Korea, Neil Armstrong, flying an F8F Bearcat, would make his first six carrier traps on Cabot in March 1950. By August, he had aced his carrier quals.

Armstrong, shown left on Cabot after his first trap. note the 40mm Bofors behind him.

Cabot even made an operational deployment of sorts, embarking COMCARDIV 14 in January 1952, loading a squadron of short-lived AF-2S/AF-2W Grumman Guardians from the “Duty Cats” of VS-24, adding a det of HUP-1 helicopters from the “Fleet Angels” of HU-2 for liaison work and plane guard roles, then setting out for a Med cruise. 

USS Cabot (CVL-28) underway, circa 1951–1952, with what appear to be two AF-2 Guardians from Antisubmarine Squadron (VS) 24 “Duty Cats.” NARA image.

same as above

same as above

She returned stateside on 26 March 1952 and went back into the training pipeline for a few more years. 

Newly-delivered PA-tail coded T-28B Trojan and T-34 Mentor over Pensacola NAS, note the CVL training carrier below, likely USS Monterey but possibly Cabot or USS Saipan– the latter one of two light carriers built on a Brooklyn-class heavy cruiser hull. The photo is likely from 1955-56. 

Cabot was again placed out of commission, in reserve, on 21 January 1955, and was later reclassified to an auxiliary aircraft transport (AVT-3) while mothballed.

Her career in the U.S. Navy had concluded.

A new flag

The Navy had previously transferred two of the remaining eight Indys to France in the 1950s– USS Langley (CVL-27) and USS Belleau Wood (CVL-24), which became La Fayette and Bois Belleau, respectively.

Meanwhile, the Spanish Navy had been chasing the dream of an aircraft carrier, going back to their seaplane tender and balloon carrier, Deadalo, which was active from 1921 through 1934, even getting in some carrier air raids during the Rif War.

With the general post-WWII rapprochement between a still very fascist Franco and the Western allies, the 1953 Madrid agreements thawed the chill between the U.S. and the country, opening it to military aid in return for basing.

Soon, the country would receive its first modern submarine, the snorkel-equipped USS Kraken (SS-370) (taken in service as Almirante García de los Reyes, E-1), later joined by three Guppy’d Balao-class smoke boats. Five Lepanto-class destroyers– WWII Fletcher-class tin cans– starting with USS Capps (DD-550) in 1957, were transferred. These were soon joined by five more FRAM I Gearing class destroyers, starting with USS Eugene A. Greene (DD/DDR-711) in 1972, as the Churruca class. By this time, the Spanish were also getting five new-made Baleares-class frigates, variants of the Knox class destroyer escort/fast frigates updated with Standard SAM suites.

In many ways, the Spanish fleet by the late 1960s was very American.

Looking for a helicopter carrier/amphibious assault ship and being rebuffed when they wanted the converted escort carrier USS Thetis Bay (LPH-6), and after taking a look at the laid-up USS San Jacinto (CVL-30) and passing, the Spanish went with Cabot as she had embarked and supported helicopters in the 1950s and had a better sensor and radio fit than just about any other mothballed flattop on the menu.

Cabot was loaned to the Spanish Navy on 30 August 1967, which renamed her Dédalo (R.01). She was then stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 1 August 1972, and sold to the Spaniards.

In Spanish operations, she would embark 16-24 helicopters in 4-packs starting with H-13 Sioux, H-19 Chickasaws, and Agusta-Bell 204s, then evolving to SH-3 Sea Kings, torpedo-carrying Hughes 500ASW variants, Agusta-Bell AB.212s, and AH-1 Cobras.

Ever thought you’d see a blue Cobra gunship on a WWII light carrier?

Look at how cute the Hughes 500ASWs are!

Spanish Marina ordered eight AH-1G Cobras and flew them in blue livery from Delado. They were the only country besides the US to operate the model

Dédalo, far right, and hospital ship Esperanza del Mar– the ex-4,000-ton WWII coastal minelayer USS Monadnock (ACM-10)– with one of the carrier’s SH-3D Sea King hanging out on her helideck– a tight fit!. Also, note the stacks of a Descubierta-class corvette to the left

Spanish Arma Aérea de la Armada SH-3D Sea King of Quinta Escuadrilla on Dédalo/Cabot with AS-12 missiles and a torpedo rigged for carry

Entry in Janes, 1973

By 1972, Spain bought eight British-built Harriers. Designated VA.1 Matadors in Spanish service, they were essentially modified variants of the USMC AV8A/B series and were classified as AV-8S/TAV-8S models.

Spanish Dédalo/Cabot with Harrier and helicopters

By 1976, the jump jets were active on Dedalo, providing both air defense and strike capabilities for the Spanish fleet, ultimately buying 13 of the type.

An aerial port bow view of the Spanish aircraft carrier DEDALO (R01) underway. Note the mix of Matadors, AB-212s, and Sea Kings. DN-SC-88-08303

Check out this amazing footage of Dedalo operating with her Matadors off the Canary Islands in 1978, “Defensa de las Canarias,” which simulated the repulsion of a Soviet amphibious assault on the chain.

However, with Spain’s WWII-era fleet beginning to show its age in the early 1980s, a refresh was soon underway that saw the Guppy boats traded in for a quartet of new French Agosta-class submarines, the Fletchers and Gearings replaced by a half dozen Santa Maria-class frigates (a Spanish version of the Oliver Hazard Perry-class), and a plan to replace Dedalo.

A port beam view of the Spanish amphibious assault ship DEDALO (PA-01), formerly the USS CABOT (AVT-3), in the foreground and the frigate BALEARES (F-71) participating in exercise Ocean Venture ’81.

The planned Almirante Carrero Blanco, built to a modified U.S. Navy Sea Control Ship study, entered service in 1988 as the 16,700-ton Príncipe de Asturias. Equipped with a 12-degree ski jump and powered by GE LM2500 gas turbines that could push the carrier along at 26 knots, the new Spanish carrier would embark and launch the larger and more advanced AV-8B Harrier II, which was produced locally at CASA’s facility in Seville, Spain, as the EAV-8B Matador.

Príncipe de Asturias (R11)

The old Dedalo, unneeded, was headed to the breakers, and her old AV-8As were soon resold to Thailand for use with that country’s building HTMS Chakri Naruebet, which was based on the design of Príncipe de Asturias and constructed in Spain.

On 12 July 1989, Dédalo was decommissioned, capping a 46-year career.

A brief reprise

Rushing in to save the day was a group of WWII U.S. Navy vets and their supporters. At the time that Cabot was retired, she was by far the only member of her class still around. In addition to her nine battle stars and Presidential Unit Citation for WWII, there was also her Korean War service, her connections to Neil Armstrong and Ernie Pyle, and her Cold War journey that made her worthy of preservation.

Ultimately, she was brought to New Orleans triumphantly in August 1989 when she still looked amazing– having only left Spanish naval service the month prior. Within months, she was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service.

Then, sadly, the successive efforts to preserve her all tanked for one reason or another, typically money-related (or lack thereof), and she sat along one dock or another in the Crescent City for eight years, suffering marine collisions, looting, and neglect.

Being a warship nerd in my 20s at the time, I snuck through a series of fences to get a snapshot of her tied up on a foggy morning near the Mandeville docks.

USS Cabot/Spanish Dédalo, tied up in New Orleans. Photo by Chris Eger

By 1997, with her time all but gone, she was towed to Texas, where she would soon be involved in a confusing series of lawsuits and seizures by the U.S. Marshals for debts owed. Slowly scrapped there over the next several years, she disappeared by August 2001.

As summed up by WWII After WII, who covers her tragedy in detail:

The USS Cabot fiasco was a sad, but in some ways foretelling, end to the boom of WWII warship museums in the United States. From the late 1970s to the early 1990s, these seemed to proliferate – however, with a few exceptions (USS Intrepid in NYC being particularly successful) they were extremely difficult to keep financially sound after opening. To display a P-51 Mustang fighter or M4 Sherman tank ashore doesn’t take a whole lot beyond the purchase cost, but afloat decommissioned ships are “financial zombies” in that even when dead, they require constant money just to stay above the waterline, let alone be profitable, and this only increases as the ship continues to age – the USS Texas saga being a good example. Often visitor admission fees just aren’t enough.

Anger was directed at the original Foundation, who were portrayed in veteran’s circles as idiots, grifters, or both. This is not fair as the original intentions were good; and in fact, much of the early fundraising was done by veterans at a VFW post in Louisiana on their own time. It might be better to say that they had no idea what they were getting into and quickly found themselves in way over their head.

Epilogue

Several echoes of Cabot endure.

There is, of course, the USS Cabot Association.

The National Museum of the Pacific War has a plaque honoring her as well as CAG 29 and 31.

The National Archives has her plans, diaries, and logs on file.

At the National Naval Aviation Museum, the center floor display includes a replica of the wooden flight deck and island superstructure of Cabot. Assisted by his son, the same sailor who painted the original scoreboard highlighting the combat record of the ship and its embarked air groups duplicated his work for the museum.

(Photo: Chris Eger)

(Photo: Chris Eger)

One of her screws and some of her WWII-vintage Bofors mounts went to USS Lexington, which is preserved in Corpus Christi, just a couple of hours away from where she was scrapped.

Meanwhile, the Spanish Navy’s AH-1G Cobras that flew from Dedalo proved to be a time capsule for the U.S. Army and are now gems in the collection of the Army Aviation Museum in Alabama, as most of their type in U.S. service were either scrapped or converted to updated models.

This toothy G-model Cobra served with the Spanish Navy and was recently returned to the U.S. Note the early 7.62mm minigun and 40mm grenade launcher in the chin. (Photo: Chris Eger)

A few years ago, scale model maker Amo released an AV-8S Matador kit (AMO-8505) that features box art by Valery Petelin that includes Cabot/Dedalo cruising below.

AV-8S Matador AMO box art by Valery Petelin, with Delado/Cabot below

Of Cabot’s sisters, besides USS Princeton (CV/CVL-23), which was lost in 1944, USS Independence was extensively damaged in the Crossroads tests and then, filled with radioactive material, was scuttled off the coast of California in deep water in 1951.

Langly/ La Fayette and Belleau Wood/Bois Belleau, after operating with the French off Indochina and Algeria, were returned to the Navy in the 1960s and scrapped, replaced in French service by the new domestically built Clemenceau-class carrier,s which were twice as large and were built from the keel up to operate jets.

USS Bataan (CVL-29), which added seven Korean War battle stars to the six she earned in WWII, was scrapped in 1961.

USS Bataan (CVL-29) was photographed on 22 May 1953, as she was en route to Naval Air Station San Diego, California, following a deployment to Korean waters. Note crew paraded on the flight deck spelling out the word “HOME” and an arrow pointing over her bow. Aircraft on deck include 19 Grumman AF “Guardian” anti-submarine planes and a solitary Vought F4U “Corsair” fighter (parked amidships on the starboard side. NH 95808

USS Cowpens (CVL-25), laid up after the war, was reclassified as an auxiliary aircraft transport (AVT-1) while in mothballs and was scrapped in 1960.

USS Monterey (CVL-26), on which the future president Gerald Ford served aboard in WWII, served as a training carrier (AVT-2) during the Korean War, then was decommissioned in 1956 and scrapped in early 1971.

USS San Jacinto (CVL-30) would be the last in U.S. Navy possession, sold to the breakers in December 1971 after sitting on red lead row for 24 long and unkind years.

The Indys earned a total of 81 WWII battle stars, and it is a crying shame that none remain.

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, June 7, 2023: Shutterbug SSK

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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

Warship Wednesday, June 7, 2023: Shutterbug SSK

Time-Life Archives, Bernard Hoffman, photographer, from a series that ran in LIFE in 1943 entitled, How to Build a Submarine.

Above we see a fantastic original Kodachrome from 80 years ago of a female shipyard worker at Electric Boat in New London with an acetylene torch near the forward escape hatch of a building Gato-class submarine. Inscribed on the hatch is the hull number SS-243, making this the future USS Bream.

A couple of other great shots from that day, seemingly centered on the rear hatch: 

About the Gatos

One of the 77 Gatos cranked out by four shipyards from 1940 to 1944 for the U.S. Navy, they were impressive 311-foot long fleet boats, diesel-electric submarines capable of extended operations in the far reaches of the Pacific.

Able to swim an impressive 11,000 nautical miles on their economical power plant while still having room for 24 (often cranky) torpedoes. A 3-inch deck gun served for surface action in poking holes in vessels deemed not worth a torpedo while a few .50 and .30-cal machine guns provided the illusion of an anti-aircraft armament.

A development of the Tambor-class submarines, they were the first fleet boats able to plumb to 300 feet test depth, then the deepest that U.S. Navy submersibles were rated.

Meet Bream

Our subject, Bream, was the only U.S. Navy ship to carry the name of the “A common food and game fish of the carp family typically found in lakes and slow rivers,” as noted by DANFS.

USS Bream (SS 243), insignia, showing a fish nipping a horned Japanese admiral. Photographed by Lieutenant Commander Charles Jacobs, USN, on 14 August 1943, at her builder’s yard, the Electric Boat Company, Groton, Connecticut. National Archives photograph: 80-G-468313.

Built by Electric Boat Co. of Groton, Connecticut, she commissioned on 24 January 1944, one of the staggering 74 submarines and 398 PT boats EB made for Uncle during WWII.

Her first skipper was LCDR Wreford Goss “Moon” Chapple (USNA 1930), a former heavyweight boxing champion at Annapolis who had already earned two Navy Crosses and two Silver Stars in command of the submarines USS S-38 and USS Permit.

To tell you a bit about Chapple, he was officially reprimanded in February 1942 for bringing 40 officers and men out of besieged Corregidor, pulled on the carpet because of the gross overcrowding on his little boat. Here, he is seen with his wife, Mrs. Chapple, who was the boat’s sponsor, and son, at Bream’s christening. (EBCo Photo)

Following shakedown and exercises on the East Coast and off Panama, Bream crossed “The Ditch” into the Pacific in April 1944 then made for Seeadler Harbor in the Admiralties by way of Australia.

From Seeadler, she put to sea on 29 May for her 1st War Patrol, loaded with Mark 23 torpedoes for the Morotai Strait.

Chasing down contacts and avoiding Japanese sub busters, she made two unsuccessful attacks on passing convoys in early June before hitting paydirt on 16 June when she torpedoed and sank the Japanese army cargo ships Yuki Maru (5704 GRT) and Hinode Maru (1916 GRT) off Halmahera Island. Bream promptly got 25 depth charges dropped on her roof in exchange.

From her patrol report:

Bream ended her 1st War Patrol at Manus on 29 June then put back out for an unsuccessful 2nd War Patrol, south of the Philippines, three weeks later that ended in early September with a return to Australia.

Her 3rd War Patrol would be much more fruitful.

Heading out on 2 October, Moon, besides his command on Bream, was commander for a submarine “search and attack group” (Yankee wolfpack) consisting of USS Raton (SS-270) and USS Guitarro (SS-363), bound for a patrol in the central Philippines, where they would be joined briefly by USS Ray (SS-271).

On the 23rd, Bream torpedoed and damaged the 9,000-ton Japanese heavy cruiser Aoba off Manila Bay, with one of six torpedoes hitting the warship’s No. 2 engine room. In return, the cruiser’s escorts dropped 32 depth charges on our boat.

From Bream’s patrol report:

The heavily damaged Japanese cruiser Aoba 

Aoba limped into Cavite Navy Yard near Manila for emergency repairs. She would eventually make it back, slowly, to Kure but her damage was deemed irreparable and she never sailed again. Related to a floating AAA battery, Aoba was later sent to the bottom there at the hands of TF 38 carrier aircraft.

On 24 October, Bream ran across floating debris that included several dead bodies (listed by Moon as “non-survivors”) and six Japanese who they took prisoner after one sailor, White, “showed unusual solicitude in diving overboard to retrieve one who slipped back into the water.”

From her patrol report:

These EPOWs were quartered in the forward torpedo room and then transferred to Australia-bound sister USS Cod (SS-224) five days later, with Moon noting in his ship’s log “Cod was not too crazy about the Japs.”

Then, on 4 November, the Bream-Guitarro-Ray wolfpack shared the sinking of the Japanese seaplane tender/transport Kagu Maru (6806 GRT), picked off from convoy TAMA-31A off Dasol Bay, Philippines. The poor Kagu Maru, carrying troops of the 218th Naval Construction Unit, had no chance, being hit by one of four torpedoes from Bream, then one of eight torpedoes from Guitarro, and finally two of two from Ray in a third attack.

During the November 4 attack, Bream was also attacked by a Japanese plane, which dropped two bombs that resulted in a near miss that nonetheless caused some flooding and damage to our boat.

From her patrol report:

Two days later, on 6 November, the pack found the Japanese heavy cruiser Kumano west of Lingayen.

From her patrol report:

Japanese heavy cruiser Kumano anchored at Rabaul, with a Mitsubishi F1M Pete reconnaissance seaplane in the foreground, December 4-5, 1942

Part of the cover force for convoy MATA-31, Kumano had narrowly avoided the submarine USS Batfish the day prior but, out of a staggering 23 torpedoes fired from the Bream-Guitarro-Ray-Raton wolfpack, two made good, blowing off the cruiser’s bow section and flooding all her engine rooms. Dead in the water, Kumano had to be towed into Dasol Bay with an 11-degree list. Towed from there to Santa Cruz harbor, she was found still under repair on 25 November by aircraft from the carrier USS Ticonderoga and bombed to the bottom of the harbor.

By that time, Bream’s submariners were already throwing back a cold one in Australia and returned home early.

Her third patrol ended after just 52 days (35 submerged), with Bream traveling 10,833 miles. Her primary reason for calling it quits early was that she only had three torpedoes left. It would be her most successful patrol.

There, plankowner skipper Moon Chapple was pulled from his boat, given a Gold Star in lieu of the Second Silver Star Medal, and sent back to New London to become a tactics instructor at the Submarine School, replaced by LCDR James Lowell Page McCallum.

Targets thinned out notably by this stage of the war, with most subs managing only to bag the occasional coaster or trawler via surface action as the small fry wasn’t worth wasting a torpedo on. For instance, Bream on 14 March 1945 bagged the auxiliary submarine chaser Keihin Maru (76 GRT) in a surface action in the Java Sea, while on her 5th War Patrol, after adding no tonnage on her 4th Patrol in early 1945.

An extensive depth charging in March that cut her 5th Patrol short led to the submarine’s periscopes, her starboard shaft, and both of her screws being replaced in Freemantle, a patch job that was done in three weeks. She was thought capable of another patrol and sortied out on 20 April.

On her 6th War Patrol, Bream came across the German minesweeper/submarine depot ship Quito (1230 GRT) off Borneo’s Tanjong Puttion on 29 April, just a week away from VE Day. Loaded with fuel for Monsoon U-boats, she had been steaming from the oil fields of Balikpapan for Jakarta, and, with her daily position reports intercepted by the Navy’s FRUMEL unit in Melbourne, she was never going to make it.

From her patrol report:

The next day, a severely burned survivor from Quito, picked up by the submarine USS Besugo (SS-321), passed on the identity of the fireball that Bream had sent to the bottom.

Later on the same patrol, Bream was given orders to recon the anchorage at Miri in Japanese-occupied Borneo, where she found no shipping but was spotted by a passing American B-24 who got overly excited. As noted in her war history, “USS Bream made the big time on the 22nd when a U.S. Army plane reported her as a carrier, but still no targets. No flight pay either.”

She was also pressed into duty as a minelayer, sowing 23 Mark 12 mines off Pulo Ob in the Gulf of Siam on 8-9 May. Ironically, she would have to get really involved in navigating such fields directly after.

While on lifeguard duty in the Philippines in late May, she picked up the pilot of a downed USAAF P-51 Mustang on the 19th “after barreling through a minefield at four main engine speed,” then negotiated a different minefield on the 26th to pluck four survivors of a downed B-25 bomber from the water. The patrol report noted, “We are mighty ready to get these boys but wish they wouldn’t pick the minefields to ditch in.”

After 18 months and six hard charging patrols, during which she received rail cars full of depth charges and at least two air-dropped bombs, Bream was in need of refit and left Saipan in June 1945 for Bethlehem Steel Company shipyard at San Francisco.

She stopped off at Pearl on the way and a series of photos, taken by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, likely stationed ashore rather than part of her crew, were taken. It is rare that images of wartime Gatos exist, and these are some of the best, despite their poor condition.

USS Bream (SS 243) entering Pearl Harbor after a successful war patrol. Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, 15 June 1945. 80-G-325193

USS Bream (SS 243) entering Pearl Harbor after a successful war patrol. Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, 15 June 1945. 80-G-325192

Note her rough appearance. Hard to believe she is only been in the fleet for 18 months at the time this image was snapped. This is a fighting submarine! USS Bream (SS 243) entering Pearl Harbor after a successful war patrol. Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, 15 June 1945. The two large ships directly behind the sub at the center of the photo are both later Baltimore class cruisers.

USS Bream (SS 243) entering Pearl Harbor after a successful war patrol. View of the conning tower. Note her homeward-bound pennant and mounted Oerlikons. Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, 15 June 1945. 80-G-325197

At the Pearl Harbor submarine base, crew members touch up the rusted areas on USS Bream (SS 243), which has just completed a successful war patrol. Note her 5″/25. Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, 15 June 1945. 80-G-325172

Another great view of the 5″/25. At the Pearl Harbor submarine base, crew members touch up the rusted areas on USS Bream (SS 243), which has just completed a successful war patrol. Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, 15 June 1945. 80-G-325173

USS Bream (SS 243). Crew members inside torpedo tube. Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, 15 June 1945. 80-G-325176

USS Bream (SS 243). Crew members in engine room spaces. Note the “patrol beard” and the snipe chewing a cigar. Talk about old-school Navy! Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, 15 June 1945. 80-G-325181

In true Navy tradition, shipmates of John O. Tibs toss him overboard from USS Bream (SS 243) at Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, on his promotion to Chief Machinist’s Mate. Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, 15 June 1945. 80-G-495544

Bream was in San Francisco on VJ Day. Following her refit, she was decommissioned there on 31 January 1946 and was placed in reserve.

Bream earned four battle stars for her World War II service.

Cold War

After five years in mothballs, war came again and Bream was dusted off for Korea, then, along with six other sisters– USS Angler (SS-240), USS Grouper (SS-214), USS Bashaw (SS-241), USS Bluegill (SS-242), USS Cavalla (SS-244), and USS Croaker (SS-246), she was selected to become a submarine hunter-killer (SSK) via an SCB 58 conversion, sometimes called a “Grouper conversion” after the first boat that underwent the transition from fleet boat to SSK.

Comparing Fleet Boat Gato to SSK Gato. Forgive the bend in the page. The SSK conversion did not have that crazy hull deformity

As noted by DANFS:

As a part of the Navy’s fleet expansion program in response to the communist invasion of the Republic of Korea, Bream was recommissioned on 5 June 1951 and reported to Submarine Squadron 3, Pacific Fleet. From June 1951 until August 1952, she was engaged in type training and provided services to the Fleet Sonar School at San Diego. She was decommissioned once again on 10 September 1952 to undergo conversion to an antisubmarine “killer” submarine at the San Francisco Naval Shipyard.

The conversion included the installation of a snorkel, which enabled her to take in air and operate her diesel engines while submerged. In addition, her conning tower was streamlined, the habitability of the crew’s living spaces was improved, and special sonar listening equipment was installed. The warship was redesignated SSK-243 in February 1953. Bream was placed back in commission on 20 June 1953.

USS Bream (SSK-243) photographed during the 1950s. Description: Courtesy of Commander Donald J. Robinson, USN (MSC), 1974. Catalog #: NH 78980

USS Bream (SS-243) USN 1042361

Our new SSK would spend the next decade on a series of training, exercises, antisubmarine warfare tactical development duty, and West Pac cruises. Shifting her homeport to Pearl Harbor in 1956, she roamed the largest ocean Pacific spanning from Adak, Alaska to Aukland, New Zealand, and from Hong Kong to Pago Pago, notably spending both Christmas Day 1957 and 1962 in Yokosuka.

Bream (SS-243) is seen here on 1 January 1962 off the coast of Hawaii. The fairwater has been streamlined and all guns removed. Also, she has been fitted with an enlarged sonar dome on her bow. USN Archives photo # USN-1039531 courtesy of All Hands magazine by the Naval Historical Center, April 2002, pg. 47 & submitted by Bill Gonyo. Text courtesy of The Floating Drydock, Fleet Subs of WW II” by Thomas F. Walkowiak.

In April 1964, Bream was reclassified as an auxiliary submarine (AGSS-243), as were most of her remaining sisters still in U.S. Navy in service, and switched primarily from duty as a warfighting submarine to a training boat, largely in conjunction with ASW assets such as destroyers and patrol aircraft as an OPFOR. This included a trip to Vietnam in late 1965 as well as three extended WestPac deployments to perform the same services to allies in the South Korean, Taiwanese, and Philippine fleets.

Bream (AGSS-243) underway in the Pacific in the late 1960s, via Navsource.

With time not kind to these old WWII-era diesel boats, and the Navy desperately wanting to be SSN-only, Bream was slated to decommission in 1969. On 28 June, she and four sisters– USS Bluegill (AGSS 242), 1944 Wolfpack pal USS Raton (AGSS 270), USS Tunny (AGSS 282), and USS Charr (AGSS 328), were decommissioned on the same day.

Raton (AGSS-270) and Bluegill (AGSS-242) during the decommissioning ceremony at Mare Island on 28 June 1969. Bream (AGSS-243), Tunny (AGS-282) and Charr (AGSS-328) are forward of Raton and Bluegill. Chara (AE-31) is in the background. Photo courtesy of the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum via Darryl L. Baker. Via Navsource.

In a fitting allegory that there would be no going back for these old “smoke boats,” Bream was struck from the Naval Register and sunk as a target, on 7 November 1969, sent to the bottom in tests of the new Mk48 heavyweight torpedo by the Skipjack-class nuclear-powered submarine USS Sculpin (SSN 590).

Epilogue

Almost all of Bream’s war patrol reports, war history, and Cold War-era logbooks are digitized in the National Archives and sometimes make very entertaining reading.

Her battle flag is one of 49 preserved in the Submarine Force Library and Museum and is certainly colorful.

Note her six service stripes for her patrols, the minelaying flag, the Swazi for the German ship Quito, two rising suns for the two Japanese cruisers she accounted for, and the lifeguard flag for the five Army aviators she plucked from the Japanese minefields off Takao in the PI. Note that she is seen sailing into the setting sun. She had a busy 18 months.

As for her WWII skipper, “Moon” Chapple commanded the heavy cruiser USS Pittsburgh in the Korean War and would go on to retire as a rear admiral in 1959. He died in 1991, aged 83.

One of Bream’s Cold War era crewmembers, EM1 Bob Droke, a shutterbug who later became a commercial photographer, has a great collection of period images from Bream on Flickr. 

1955-57 USS Bream at Sea photo by Bob Droke

USS Bream, docked at Pearl Harbor, photo by Bob Droke

As for her sisters, other Gatos lived on, although an amazing 20 were lost in the Pacific during WWII. The last two Gato-class boats active in the US Navy were USS Rock (SS-274) and Bashaw (SS-241), which were both decommissioned on 13 September 1969 and sold for scrap. Nine went to overseas allies with the last, USS Guitarro (SS-363) serving the Turkish Navy as TCG Preveze (S 340) in one form or another until 1983.

A full half-dozen Gatos are preserved in the U.S. so please visit them when you can:

  • USS Cavalla is at Seawolf Park near Galveston, Texas
  • USS Cobia is at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum in Manitowoc, Wisconsin
  • USS Cod is on display in Cleveland
  • USS Croaker is on display in Buffalo, New York
  • USS Drum is on display on shore at Battleship Memorial Park in Mobile, Alabama
  • USS Silversides is on display in Muskegon, Michigan

Two of these, Cavalla and Croaker, are rare SSK Gato conversions, like Bream, while Cod and our boat were liked via the POW incident.

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, May 31, 2023: USS Fallout

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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

Warship Wednesday, May 31, 2023: USS Fallout

Photo courtesy Jim Merritt.

 

Above we see a great 1968 image of the Edsall-class destroyer escort-turned-radar picket, USS Falgout (DER-324) with a bone in her teeth during a Westpac deployment. Some 25 years old at the time, of note her christening occurred 80 years ago this week. 

A vessel that saw combat against the Germans while on convoy duty during WWII, she would continue to serve in Korea and as a Cold Warrior, seeing the atomic starburst no less than nine times.

The Edsall class

A total of 85 Edsall-class destroyer escorts were cranked out in four different yards in the heyday of World War II rapid production with class leader USS Edsall (DE-129) laid down 2 July 1942 and last of class USS Holder (DE-401) commissioned 18 January 1944– in all some four score ships built in 19 months. The Arsenal of Democracy at work–building tin cans faster than the U-boats and Kamikazes could send them to Davy Jones.

The U.S. Navy destroyer escort USS Edsall (DE-129) underway near Ambrose Light just outside New York Harbor on 25 February 1945. The photo was taken by a blimp from squadron ZP-12. Edsall is painted in Camouflage Measure 32, Design 3D. U.S. Navy photo 80-G-306257

These 1,590-ton expendable escorts were based on their predecessors, the very successful Cannon-class boats but used an FMR type (Fairbanks-Morse reduction-geared diesel drive) propulsion suite whereas the only slightly less prolific Cannons used a DET (Diesel Electric Tandem) drive. Apples to oranges.

edsallArmed with enough popguns (3×3″/50s, 2x40mm, 8x20mm) to keep aircraft and small craft at bay, they could plug a torpedo into a passing enemy cruiser from one of their trio of above-deck 21-inch tubes, or maul a submarine with any number of ASW weapons including depth charges and Hedgehogs. Too slow for active fleet operations (21 knots) they were designed for coastal patrol (could float in just 125 inches of seawater), sub-chasing, and convoy escorts.

Meet Falgout

The hero of our story, USS Falgout, is the only ship named for Seaman 2c George Irvin Falgout, a resident of Raceland, Louisiana who was a posthumous recipient of the Navy Cros for his actions while serving on the heavily damaged cruiser, USS San Francisco (CA-38) at Guadalcanal in November 1942. Falgout reportedly “remained at his gun, blazing away at a Japanese aircraft until it crashed his station.”

His citation:

The only ship named in his honor was constructed by Consolidated Steel Corp, Ltd., Orange, Texas (all the Edsalls were built at one of two Texas Gulf Coast yards) and sponsored at launch by his sister, Mrs. H. J. Guidry. She was commissioned on 15 November 1943 with an all-Coast Guard crew under CDR Henry A Meyer, a Coast Guard regular who earned his first thin gold stripe in 1931.

The CNO, ADM Ernest J. King, had, in June 1943, ordered the Coast Guard to staff and operate 30 new (mostly Edsall-class) destroyer escorts on Atlantic ASW duties, trained especially at the Submarine Training Centers at Miami and Norfolk. Each would be crewed by 11 officers and 166 NCOs/enlisted, translating to a need for 5,310 men, all told.

By November 1943, it had been accomplished! Quite a feat.

The USCG-manned DEs would be grouped in five Escort Divisions of a half dozen ships each, 23 of which were Edsalls:

  • Escort Division 20–Marchand, Hurst, Camp, Crow, Pettie, Ricketts.
  • Escort Division 22–Poole, Peterson, Harveson, Joyce, Kirkpatrick, Leopold.
  • Escort Division 23–Sellstrom, Ramsden, Mills, Rhodes, Richey, Savage.
  • Escort Division 45–Vance, Lansing, Durant, Calcaterra, Chambers, Morrill.
  • Escort Division 46–Menges, Mosley, Newell, Pride, Falgout, Lowe.

These ships were soon facing off with the Germans in the Atlantic and Mediterranean.

Following shakedown along the East Coast and the Caribbean– where Falgout picked up 11 survivors from the American tanker Touchet that was torpedoed and sunk on 3 December 1943 by German U-boat U-193— our new destroyer escort was bound for the Med in February 1944 as part of the escort of Convoy UGS 32 to Casablanca, and returned to New York with GUS 31.

Then came Convoy UGS 38 out of Hampton Roads to Bizerte in Tunisia in April. This crossing proved much more contentious and suffered from German air attacks by waves of Junkers and Heinkel bombers with the Benson-class destroyer USS Landsdale (DD-426) sunk after hits from torpedo-carrying Ju 88s on the night of the 20th. Falgout expended no less than 600 rounds of 20mm and 16 rounds of 40mm on bombers that came close enough to swat.

While on the next homeward bound convoy, GUS 39, Falgout’s sistership USS Menges (DE 320), was hit by a G7es acoustic torpedo from U-371 on 3 May. The German fish destroyed a third of the tin can, and created casualties of a third of the ship’s crew but would amazingly survive the war. Just two nights later, the Buckley-class destroyer escort USS Fechteler (DE-157), would be sunk near Falgout by German submarine U-967, with the bulk of the crew rescued.

Not all the Coast Guard-manned DEs would come through to VE-Day. USS Leopold (DE-319) of CortDiv 22 was torpedoed by U-255 and later sank in the North Atlantic, 400 miles south of Iceland on 10 March 1944, with a loss of 13 officers and 158 men. Two other classmates with Navy crews, USS Frederick C. Davis (DE-136) and USS Fiske (DE-143), would also be lost in the Atlantic to U-boats.

Falgout would make two further roundtrips to Bizerte and back followed by three to Oran and back, although not coming as close to death as on UGS 38/GUS 39. Notably, however, she did pluck four Ju88 crewmembers from the water following a raid on GUS 45 in July 1944.

USS HAMUL (AD-20) Caption: At Bermuda in early 1944, while serving as flagship of the DD-DE shakedown group (CTG-23.1). Alongside are: CALCATERA (DE-390), PRIDE (DE-323), FALGOUT (DE-324), ALGER (DE-101), and EICHENBERGER (DE-202). Description: Collection of Captain D.L. Madeira, 1978. Catalog #: NH 86271

She was in Oran when the news of the German surrender was received.

Her final WWII skipper was a young LCDR Henry C Keene, Jr.,(USCGA 1941), who had been aboard the Treasury-class cutter USCGC Bibb (WPG-31) earlier in the war when that vessel plucked 235 survivors (and a dog) from U-boat-infested waters in the North Atlantic. Keene would later retire in 1965 as commander of Ketchikan CG Base and go on to be a noted Superior Court judge in Alaska. Meanwhile, the good CDR Meyer, who was the greyhound’s first commander, would continue his career with the Coast Guard for at least until 1956, retiring sometime later as a full captain.

For her 14 convoys, Falgout received one battle star for her wartime service, her only casualty being EM3c James G. O’Brien who died in a 1944 accident while on libo in Casablanca, falling from a second-story window.

After limited post-war service, during which she spent most of 1946 “in commission, in reserve” in Charleston with a caretaker crew (the USCG was returned to the Treasury Department in December 1945, and most of its wartime personnel discharged and Navy-owned ships returned) Falgout was classified “out of commission, in reserve” 18 April 1947 and lowered her flag.

The Edsall class, 1946 Janes.

Break out the white paint.

With the dramatic surge in air and maritime traffic across some downright vacant stretches of the Pacific that came with the Korean War, the USCG was again tapped to man a growing series of Ocean Stations. Two had been formed after WWII and the Navy added another three in 1950, bringing the total to five.

These stations would serve both a meteorological purpose– with U.S. Weather Bureau personnel embarked– as well as serve as floating checkpoints for military and commercial maritime and air traffic and communication “relay” stations for aircraft on transoceanic flights crisscrossing the Pacific. Further, they provided an emergency ditch option for aircraft (a concept that had already been proved by the Bermuda Sky Queen rescue in 1947, which saw all 69 passengers and crew rescued by the cutter Bibb.)

As detailed by Scott Price in The Forgotten Service in the Forgotten War, these stations were no picnic, with the average cutter logging 4,000 miles and as many as 320 radar fixes while serving upwards of 700 hours on station.

Ocean station duty could be monotonous at one moment and terrifying the next, as the vessels rode out storms that made the saltiest sailors green. One crew member noted: “After twenty-one days of being slammed around by rough cold sea swells 20 to 50 feet high, and wild winds hitting gale force at times, within an ocean grid the size of a postage stamp, you can stand any kind of duty.”

A typical tour was composed of arriving at Midway Island for three weeks on SAR standby, three weeks on Ocean Station Victor midway between Japan and the Aleutian Islands, three weeks on SAR standby at Guam, two weeks “R and R” in Japan, three weeks on Ocean Station Sugar, three weeks on SAR standby Adak, Alaska, and then back to home port.

To stand post on these new ocean stations and backfill for other cutters detailed to the role, the Navy lent the USCG 12 mothballed Edsalls (Newell, Falgout, Lowe, Finch, Koiner, Foster, Ramsden, Rickey, Vance, Lansing, Durant, and Chambers), nine of which the service had originally operated during WWII.

To man these extra vessels and fill other wartime roles such as establishing new LORAN stations and pulling port security, the USCG almost doubled in size from just over 18,000 to 35,082 in 1952.

The conversion to Coast Guard service included a white paint scheme, an aft weather balloon shelter (they would have to launch three balloons a day in all sea states), and the fitting of a 31-foot self-bailing motor surfboat for rescues in heavy weather. The USCG designator “W” was added to the hull number, as was the number 100, therefore, our vessel went from USS Falgout (DE-324) to USCGC Falgout (WDE-424).

Falgout’s sister, the Edsall-class USS Durant (DE-389/WDE-489/DER-389) in her Coast Guard livery. Note the WWII AAA suite is still intact. Falgout carried the same white and buff scheme.

Falgout was on loan to the Coast Guard between 24 August 1951– the second Edsall so converted– and 21 May 1954, in commission for duty as an ocean station vessel out of Tacoma, Washington.

Schenia notes that she pulled eight patrols in this period including two on OS Queen, two on OS Sugar, one on OS Nan, and two on OS Victor in addition to serving as the policing cutter for the International Cruiser Race Regatta in British Columbia in 1952 and the Lake Washington Gold Cup Race in 1953.

Besides nine Edsalls, two similarly loaned ex-Navy seaplane tenders, two 180-foot buoy tenders, and nine existing 255-foot/327-foot Coast Guard cutters also clocked in on Pacific Ocean station detail, with a total of 22 vessels and their crews earning the Korean Service Medal during the conflict. The Pacific Ocean station cutters in all assisted over 20 merchant and Navy vessels in distress, including one transoceanic airliner during the war.

The USCG-manned Edsalls were all retrograded to the Navy in 1954, with the last, Chambers, striking 30 July. It turned out that the Navy had other plans for these humble vessels, now double war vets.

DER

Falgout, laid back up after her 32 months of USCG service during Korea, was picked to become a radar picket ship, and given a new lease on life, reclassified into the Navy at Mare Island on 28 October 1954 as DER-324.

The DER program filled an early gap in the continental air defense system by placing a string of ships as sea-based radar platforms to provide a distant early warning line to possible attack from the Soviets. The Pacific had up to 11 picket stations while the Atlantic had as many as nine. A dozen DEs became DERs (including Falgout) through the addition of SPS-6 and SPS-8 air search radars to help man these DEW lines as the Atlantic Barrier became fully operational in 1956 and the Pacific Barrier (which Falgout took part in) by 1958.

To make room for the extra topside weight of the big radars, they gave up most of their WWII armament, keeping only their Hedgehog ASW device and two Mark 34 3-inch guns with aluminum and fiberglass weather shields.

DER conversion of Edsall (FMR) class ships reproduced from Peter Elliot’s American Destroyer Escorts of WWII

Detail of masts. Note the WWII AAA suite, one of the 3″ guns, and centerline 21-inch tubes have been landed

Her conversion complete, Falgout was recommissioned on 30 June 1955.

30 June 1955: Mare Island NSY, Vallejo, Cal. – Radm. Frederick L. Entwistle, USN (Commander, Mare Island Naval Shipyard) is commissioning speaker at the ceremony marking USS Falgout’s re-commissioning. Lcdr. Walter P. Smiley is on the far right of the photo. (U.S. Navy photo #DER-324-063055-1TH) via Darryl Baker, Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum, via Navsource.

30 June 1955: Mare Island NSY, Vallejo, Cal. – Colors are raised aboard USS Falgout at Mare Island after her conversion at the shipyard. (U.S. Navy photo #DER-324-063055-3TH) via Darryl Baker, Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum, via Navsource.

She was assigned to Seattle as a homeport, with orders coming from the Continental Air Defense Command, heading out to serve regular radar picket in the Early Warning System.

USS Falgout (DER 324) underway

In March 1959, this changed to duty out of Pearl Harbor.

On 31 January 1961, she received her 10th skipper, LCDR Samuel Lee Gravely Jr., a mustang who enlisted in 1942 and went through NROTC in 1944 to earn his commission. Gravely had previously served on USS PC-1264 in WWII, then aboard the battleship USS Iowa during Korea and the cruiser USS Toledo (CA-133), and served as executive officer and acting commander of the destroyer USS Theodore E. Chandler (DD-717) immediately before taking command of Falgout. This act, noted by the NHHC, put Gravely as the first African-American to command a combat ship.

Dominic

In late 1962, Falgout, with Gravely as skipper, was detailed to Joint Task Force 8, operating out of Pearl Harbor, for Operation Dominic.

Sparked by the Soviet resumption of nuclear testing after the 1958–1961 moratorium, Dominic would see no less than 31 air dropped, high-altitude rocket, parachuted, and underwater tests of prototype and existing weapons (including the first Polaris SLBM war shot) carried out over the Eastern Pacific spanning from the coast of California to Christmas and Johnston Island.

Falgout would closely participate (sometimes within 90 miles of the detonation) in at least nine of these tests, all off Johnston Island as part of TU 8.3.6, while she would be a more distant weather ship (over 500 miles away) for much of the remainder of the other tests, in the latter tasked with chasing off Soviet spy trawlers.

The Defense Nuclear Agency’s 432-page report on Operation Dominic I compiled in 1983, has the below rundown of Falgout’s nine hottest experiences:

Notably, of the more than 80 Army, Navy, and Coast Guard vessels that took part in or supported Dominic I, only 16, Falgout included, had personnel with “suspect” radiological film badges.

And the detonation maps for Tightrope (Operation Fishbowl, less than 20 kt), Housatonic (9.96 Mt), Calamity (800 Kt), Chama (1.6 Mt), and Bumping (11.3 Kt):

Dominic Chama blast, 18 October. B-52 Airdrop; 11,970 Feet detonation. This was a free-fall LASL test of the Thumbelina device in an Mk-36 drop case. 

Another shot of Chama. This was a test of a lightweight small-diameter device, possibly a replacement for the W-38 (the 2-4 Mt warhead for the Atlas and Titan I missiles). The results are variously described as “thoroughly successful” while the yield was reported to be below the predicted value.

Tightrope. Nike Hercules Missile Airburst; 69,000 Feet. Carrying the LASL-designed W-31 air defense warhead.

Continued service

Brushing the dust off Dominic off her decks, Falgout would continue to be based out of Pearl for the rest of the decade.

USS Falgout (DER 324) at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, June 1963

DE-397 Wilhoite Feb 1966 Pearl Harbor with Falgout DER 324

From 1966 to 1969 Falgout rotated to service along the coast of Vietnam where she served in Operation Market Time, attempting to interdict Viet Cong maritime traffic. This would include the TEE SHOT V operation which saw our tin can serve as a mother ship in Qui Nhon Bay to two 50-foot PCFs including berthing for two spare PCF crews.

A stalwart of the Brown Water Navy in Vietnam: the PCF. Here, PCF-94 of Coastal Division 11in the Gulf of Thailand, March 1968. USN 1130655

As detailed by NHHC, TEE SHOT V “was established in the coastal area from Dong Phu village south to Chanh Oai village to detect and capture or destroy any hostile craft attempting to exfiltrate the area…During the operation a total of 2,448 junks were detected, 1,210 inspected and 484 boarded. Twenty-three persons and six junks with a total of seventeen tons of salt were apprehended and delivered to VNN authorities.”

On 10 October 1969, Falgout was decommissioned at Mare Island after just over 14 years of service to the Navy and four to the USCG under Navy orders. Her fellow DERs shared a similar fate, either laid up in mothballs or transferred to overseas allies.

USS Falgout and Canberra laid up at Stockton, California on 20 May 1972. The bow of USS Canberra (CA-70) is visible astern. Probably photographed by Ted Stone. Courtesy of Ted Stone, 1980. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval History and Heritage Command. Catalog #: NH 90588

1973 Janes on the Edsall class DERs.

On 1 June 1975, Falgout was struck from the NVR then in early 1977 was towed out to sea off the coast of California and sunk as a target.

Epilogue

Few relics of Falgout remain, although much of her deck logs and WWII war history is digitized in the National Archives.

As for LCDR Gravely, once he left Falgout in 1963, he went on to complete 38 years of service, command USS Taussig (DD-746), USS Jouett (DLG-29), Naval Communications Command, Cruiser-Destroyer Group Two, the Eleventh Naval District, Third Fleet, and the Defense Communications Agency.

In 1976, while serving as commander of the Third Fleet, he was promoted to Vice Admiral. He passed away in 2004 and is buried in Arlington.

The Flight II Burke, USS Gravely (DDG 107), is named for him. Here seen Oct. 26, 2013, with an MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter from the “Swamp Foxes” of Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron (HSM) 74 overhead. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Billy Ho/Released) 131026-N-QL471-333

As for the rest of the Edsalls, the former Coast Guard-manned USS Forster (DE/DER-334/WDE-434) may possibly still be afloat in Vietnam as the pier side trainer Dai Ky, while ex-USS Hurst (DE-250) which has been in the Mexican Navy since 1973, is still in use limited use as the training ship ARM Commodore Manuel Azueta (D111).

The final Edsall in U.S. waters is USS Stewart (DE-238). Stricken in 1972, she was donated as a museum ship to Galveston, Texas on 25 June 1974 and has been there ever since, today she is celebrating the 80th anniversary of her 1943 commissioning.

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!

One last laugh with Billy Waugh

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You may have previously heard that ARSOF legend, Retired SGM Billy Waugh, recently packed his duffle for the last time at the age of 93. His military career spanned 30 years from Korea to Vietnam, joining the Army in 1948 (after an unsuccessful attempt to join the Marines at 15 during WWII to make the final push on Japan).

Once retired, in 1977 he joined the CIA’s paramilitary guys and, among other places, took part in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom– in his 70s. While most of his agency work is lost to history, he for sure took part in operations against Quadaffi’s Libya, the Soviets, and in chasing Carlos the Jackal.

In noting his death, the 1st Special Forces Command said Waugh had “inspired a generation of special operations.”

There are three services planned:

12 May: Fairview Cemetery, Bastrop, Texas: There will be a small, private, gathering of family and close friends to spread a small amount of BIlly’s ashes at the Waugh family plot. Billy’s parents, infant brother, and sister are buried there.

27 June: A large memorial, organized by SOCOM, will be held at MacDill AFB. Location and time not provided yet.

22 July, 11:00: Jumping of the ashes. Billy requested that his ashes be HALO jumped and scattered by the HALO team. The time is not known yet, but it will be at Raeford Drop Zone, Raeford, North Carolina.

Korean War era P-80 Shooting Star ‘Flies’ Once Again

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Armed with six . 50 caliber machine guns in the nose with 200 rpg, the P-80 Shooting Star was one of “Kelly” Johnson’s kids and, with its first flight in 1944, only barely missed mixing it up with Luftwaffe Me-262s in combat over Germany. In fact, the prototype aircraft was developed by Johnson’s team in just 143 days, with the 262 as the goal to match/beat.

It nonetheless made a lot of “firsts.”

In addition to making the first U.S. transcontinental jet flight, the Shooting Star was the first American aircraft to exceed 500 mph in level flight, the first American jet airplane manufactured in large quantities, and the first U.S. Air Force jet used in combat. It was in an F-80C of the 16th FIS that the first American claim for a jet-versus-jet aerial kill was made when 1st Lt. Russell J. Brown reported that he downed a MiG-15 over Korea in November 1950– just six years after the type’s first flight.

In all, some 1,700 P/F/RF-80s were produced, along with over 6,500 of its dopey T-33 Shooting Star younger brothers, and the type remained in at least limited USAF and U.S. Navy service well into the 1980s.

Well, some 50 years or so since the type left U.S. martial service, an Iowa Air National Guard F-80 just took a flight, of sorts.

S/N 47-0171, a P-80C-1-LO built in Burbank in 1947, is the sole example constructed almost entirely of magnesium (talk about a nightmare if it ever caught fire!).

After service at the Wright Air Development Center as the only NF-80C model, she was later sent to the Air Force Museum and preserved on static display in Canton, Ohio, wearing Ohio ANG livery in the 1990s.

She was then restored and has been on display in the livery of the Iowa ANG’s 174th Fighter Interceptor Squadron (which flew F-80Cs from 1953 to 1955), at the Iowa Gold Star Military Museum aboard Camp Dodge since 2012.

Well, after a decade of outside display, she needed a new paint job and was taken to an ANG paint facility in Sioux City last September.

To get the aircraft back to the state headquarters last week after the refresh, she was carried via sling lift under an Iowa ARNG CH-47 Chinook of the Davenport-based B/171 Aviation Regiment.

Air National Guard photo Senior Master Sgt. Vincent De Groot

Air National Guard photo Senior Master Sgt. Vincent De Groot

Air National Guard photo Senior Master Sgt. Vincent De Groot

Warship Wednesday, April 12, 2023: Wind Them Up

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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

Warship Wednesday, April 12, 2023: Wind Them Up

Naval History and Heritage Command photo NH 85018, Courtesy of Donald McPherson, 1976.

Above we see USS Winder (PCS-1376), the leader of her class of 89 very interesting Patrol Craft, Sweepers, seen in a World War II image, likely while on coastal escort out of Miami in 1944-45.

You’ll note that, although she is only 136 feet long overall, she is very well armed with both twin Mousetrap ASW rocket racks and a 3″/50 DP mount forward, four 20mm Oerlikon singles amidships, a 40mm Bofors aft, four depth charge projectors, and two depth charge racks over her stern.

These criminally forgotten little patrol boats went on to serve a myriad of roles in the Cold War.

Meet the 1376s

With the British 105-ft Admiralty-type motor minesweepers (MMS) making a good impression on the U.S. Navy– after all, the Royal Navy ordered more than 300 of those hardy 295-ton wooden coastal mine hunters from 1940 onwards and used them for everything from gunboat to light salvage in addition to their mine warfare roles– the idea of a PCS seemed a good one to the Americans.

With wooden hulls to counter magnetic influence mines, the 105-ft Admiralty-type motor minesweepers were very successful– and easy to make by small commercial shipyards. Here a 105, Motor Minesweeper J 636, is underway in British coastal waters. IWM A 14421

Whereas the Admiralty 105s typically only carried a few Oerlikons in addition to their sweep gear and acoustic hammer, the Americans needed something with longer legs and, they felt, a lot more firepower. As described above, they got it with a mix of 3-inch, 40mm, and 20mm guns as well as the capacity to carry as many as 50 depth charges to feed their racks and K-guns.

Hampton (PCS-1386), 4 November 1944, As completed. Line drawing by A. D. Baker III from U.S. Small Combatants: An Illustrated Design History by Norman Friedman, Russian version.

Plus, there was Mousetrap.

The Mk 20 Mousetrap anti-submarine rocket system is both loaded/ready to fire and stowed on a similarly sized PC. The projectiles were 7.2 inches in diameter and weighed 65 pounds with an explosive charge of 31 pounds. Unlike the Hedgehog weapon, the Navy classified the projectile as a rocket, as it utilized propellant that burned for 0.2 to 0.7 seconds.

They carried an SF-1 type radar (some later fitted with more advanced SO-1 or SU-1 sets) and a QHA sonar set (later upgraded to the more mine-sensitive FM sonar in some ships).

First fielded in 1942, the SF-1 was a 10cm 150 kW surface search radar good out to 16nm. Here, USS PCS-1389 is seen on 12 December 1944, showing an updated SO-1 radar antenna. NH 64671

Simple and cheap, their engineering suite consisted of a pair of General Motors 8-268A diesel engines, generating 800hp, using Snow and Knobstedt single reduction gear, turning two shafts. This enabled a top speed of 14 knots but meant the cruising speed was still in the 12-13 knot range.

Constructed by firms as diverse as the Burger Boat Co of Manitowoc, Tacoma Boat, Western Boat in Tacoma, Astoria Marine Construction Co., Bellingham Marine Railway & Boatbuilding Co, Wheeler Shipbuilding of Long Island, Robert Jacob Shipyard in the Bronx, Greenport Basin & Construction Co in Connecticut, W.F. Stone & Son Shipyard in Alameda, and the Gibbs Gas Engine Co of Jacksonville, these warships could be made fast and without tying up a lot of precision slipways or using tough-to-source material.

Our class leader was laid down on 13 October 1942 as PC-1376 at Wheeler on Long Island, soon reclassified to PCS-1376 while still under construction, and commissioned on 9 July 1943.

As befitting an overgrown armed yacht built on Long Island, her skipper was LT J. P. Morgan III, USNR, (Harvard 1940), the great-grandson of robber baron J. Pierpont Morgan and son of Junius Spencer Morgan III– the latter at the time an OSS officer. Along with three other officers (two ensigns and an LT jg) and 54 enlisted, they provided PC-1376‘s first crew.

Check out the rates, for those curious, as seen in the ship’s war diary:

Her first ammo draw from Iona Island on the Hudson River included 296 3-inch shells (270 service, 16 target, 2 practice, 8 dummy), 1,784 40mm shells (1760 service, 16 target, 8 dummy), 2,800 rounds of .45 for the Tommy guns and M1911s in her small arms locker; and 1,800 rounds of .30 caliber for her M1903A3 rifles. This did not include depth charges, Mousetrap bombs, and 20mm ammo.

The class leader had a rather boring war career, being ordered for duty as a school ship at the Submarine Chaser School located in Miami after she completed her shakedown. She would spend the rest of the war there, alternating between use as a training bot and in coastwise patrol, riding shotgun on convoys from Miami to Cuba and back.

But our story is about all the 1376s.

The rest of the class…

USS PCS-1421 in San Francisco Bay, 2 March 1944. 19-N-66847

USS PCS-1423. Note her Mousetraps ready to fire. World War II photograph. NH 89237

USS PCS-1424 photographed by her builder, Burger Boat Company, Manitowoc, Wisconsin, on 24 November 1943. NH 96491

USS PCS-1424 photographed by her builder, Burger Boat Company, at Manitowoc, Wisconsin, on 24 November 1943. Note that she is fitted with Mousetrap anti-submarine rocket launchers forward. NH 97492

A baker’s dozen became Control Submarine Chasers (PCSC) almost as soon as they were completed. This conversion was simple, removing the 40mm mount to allow a radio shack to be built. In this role, they could better control swarms of inshore landing craft headed toward the beach.

A sort of mini amphibious command ship.

This was detailed by the NHHC further in its coverage of the Iwo Jima landings:

The Iwo Jima operation provided the first test of the amphibious forces’ newly formed permanent control organization. This organization was established following the Marianas campaign, where it was realized that proper control of the ship-to-shore movement of the amphibious craft had become a continuing 24-hour-a-day task, requiring specially trained control personnel and specially equipped control vessels.

The control organization for the Iwo Jima operation consisted of the Transport division, Transport Squadron, and Central (Amphibious Group or Force) Control Officers, permanently assigned to the staff of their respective commanders. This organization now parallels the echelons of both the beach party and the shore party. Control officers were embarked in the same ships as their opposite number in the beach and shore party, giving the maximum amount of time for coordination and understanding of each other’s problems prior to the landing.

Each control officer was provided with a control vessel (PCE, PCS, PC, or SC) which had been previously equipped with special communication facilities and provided with a control communication team and advisors from the troops. The control vessels were obtained and equipped, and the personnel were trained in their specialized duties, well in advance of the operation. As a result, for the first time the task of controlling the ship-to-shore movement, both during the assault and unloading phases, was handled by a “professional.” In addition, the control-equipped craft was provided to the different troop staffs for use as floating command posts.

Another 33 became Auxiliary Motor Minesweepers (YMS), renumbered YMS 446-479. This involved landing most of their ASW weapons and loading up on the sweeping gear.

USS YMS-475 (ex PCS-1447) and USS YMS-461 (ex PCS-1448) In San Francisco Bay, California, shortly after the end of World War II, circa late 1945 or early 1946. YMS-475 was disposed of in 1947 and YMS-461 was later transferred to South Korea as Hwaseong (PCS 205). Courtesy of Donald M. McPherson, 1976. NH 84992

USS LST-277 sails in the background while USS PCS-1404, is being refueled while en route to Saipan, by an unidentified vessel, on 15 June 1944. US National Archives Identifier 193832778 US Army Air Corps photo # A63650A.C.

Some managed to get some real trigger time in, for instance, USS PCS-1379 participated in the invasion of Peleliu and Angaur Islands, shelled Japanese targets on Eil Malk and in the Abappaomogan Islands, then saddled up for the Okinawa campaign.

PCS-1391 took part in the Leyte and Lingayen Gulf operations in the Philippines, serving as a landing craft direction vessel. Then at Okinawa, she carried Maj. Gen. Pedro del Valle, the Commanding General of the First Marine Division, to the beach during the initial assault landings.

USS PCS-1391 photographed circa 1945-1946. Courtesy of William H. Davis, 1977. NH 85160

Okinawa Campaign, shipping as seen from the beach in May 1945. Most ships present appear to be amphibious types. USS PCS-1391 is just to the right of the exact center, with USS LCI(L)-77 partially hidden behind her bow. 80-G-K-16204

PCS-1452 participated in operations at the Marianas, Saipan, Tinian, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. She had lots of company, as no less than 10 of her class were present at the latter two operations.

YMS-481 (exPCS-1462) was lost to Japanese shore batteries off Tarakan, Borneo, on 2 May 1945.

YMS-478 aground after taking fire from a shore battery at Tarakan, Borneo.

PCS-1396 was damaged off Okinawa by a Japanese Kamikaze but would shrug it off and continued serving until 1949.

PCS-1407, PCSC-1418, PCS-1440, PCS-1454, PCS-1461, and YMS-472 were lost to the September-October 1945 Typhoons Ida and Louise off Japan and Okinawa.

PCS-1435 was present in Tokyo Bay during the Japanese surrender ceremony in September 1945.

PCS-1445 would serve with the 7th Fleet for the last ten months of the war then spend another eight months as the harbor entrance control vessel for the Yangtze River at Shanghai.

Jane’s 1946 listing on the type.

Some would serve in the Korean conflict as mine hunters, with PCS-1416 for instance clearing a channel more than 60 miles inland from the Yellow Sea and up the Taedong River to Chinnampo.

Catching names

Oddly, while many were laid up in the 1950s, they picked up a series of names, typically those of small towns. This non-inclusive list shows some of the variety. Sadly, many of these towns have never had another warship named in their honor.

  • Provincetown (PCS 1378)
  • Rushville (PCS 1380)
  • Attica (PCS 1383)
  • Eufaula (PCS 1384)
  • Hollidaysburg (PCS 1385)
  • Hampton (PCS-1386)
  • Beaufort (PCS 1387)
  • Littlehales (AGSC 7, ex-PCS-1388)
  • Deming (PCS 1392)
  • Sanderling (MHC 49)
  • Dutton (AGSC 8, ex-PCS-1396)
  • Coquille (PCS 1400)
  • McMinnville (PCS 1401)
  • Elsmere (EPCS 1413)
  • Swallow (MSC[O] 36)
  • Prescott (PCS 1423)
  • Verdin (MSC[O] 38)
  • Conneaut (PCS 1444)
  • Waxbill (MHC 50)
  • John Blish (AGSC 10)
  • Medrick (AMc 203)
  • Minah (MHC 14)

Shifting duties and designations

Postwar, besides utility work, many became naval reserve training vessels, with their shallow draft allowing them to be stationed well inland. For example, PCS-1423 was stationed at Vicksburg, Mississippi, and PCS-1431 in Louisville.

Louisville, KY, 1958, U.S.Navy sub chaser USS Grafton (PCS 1431) passing 

Their designations often shifted to Coastal Minesweepers (AMc), or Motor Minesweepers (AMS) in the late 1940s, designations they carried until they were decommissioned and struck.

Another quartet became Coastal Surveying Ships (PCS-1388, PC-1396, PC-1404, and PC-1457 became AGSC 7/8/9/10).

Survey ship USS Littlehales (AGSC 7, ex-PCS-1388) Courtesy of D.M. McPherson. NH 51413

Three of the ships, PCS-1393, PCS-1456, and PC-1465, would be reclassed no less than four times as a YMS, then an AMS, then a Coastal Minesweeper Underwater Locator (AMCU), and finally a Coastal Minehunter (MHC)– carrying five different pennant numbers in 12 years.

PC-1413 and PC-1431 would be reclassified as Experimental Patrol Craft Sweepers (EPCS).

At least three picked up the curious designation of Coastal Minesweeper, Old (MSC(O)).

By this time, their fit had changed significantly, shedding most of their guns and Mousetrap devices in lieu of a large Hedgehog ASW device forward (which it was thought could also prove effective in minefield destruction).

USS PCS-1445 underway off the U.S. west coast. She has been fitted with a Hedgehog mounting forward, in place of her 3/50 gun. NH 96492

USS PCS-1400 off the Puget Sound Navy Yard, 24 January 1947. She was later named USS Coquille. Note her Hedgehog. NH 55385

USS Rushville (PCS-1380), 26 August 1959, showing her postwar fit, which saw all her weapons landed. USN 1043655

USS Eufaula (PCS-1384), late in her career, with Hedgehog. Note she still has DC racks and projectors as well. USN 1043656

USS Deming (PCS-1392), 1959. Note the Hedgehog, depth charge racks, and not much else. USN 1043658

USS PCS-1387 photographed circa the late 1940s, with extensive awnings in place. This ship was renamed Beaufort (PCS-1387) in February 1956 and used as a naval reserve training ship in St. Petersburg, Florida until 1967. Courtesy of Donald M. McPherson, 1976. NH 85019

Moving on…

While some were disposed of by scrapping as soon as 1947, the Navy would look to transfer others to allies and other missions.

One, PC-1458, served both as a Navy survey ship (AGS-6), in 1944, then was transferred to the Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1948 as USC&GS Derickson, serving until 1954.

USC&GS Derickson, NOAA photo

Two other ships of the class, PC-1405 and PC-1450, were also transferred to the survey and named USC&GS Bowie (CSS 27) and USC&GS Hodgson (CSS 26), respectively. Bowie served until 1967 when she was scrapped, and Hodgson was transferred the following year to South Korea for further service.

USC&GS Bowie (CSS 27) (bow visible at left) and USC&GS Hodgson (CSS 26), circa 1965. NOAA photo

One, PCS-1425, was transferred by the WSA to the Puget Sound Naval Academy in 1947 to serve as a training vessel. At the same time, PCS-1445, formerly of the Yangtze squadron, went to Texas A&M.

As with any WWII-era American warship smaller than a heavy cruiser, several were transferred to the Allies as Lend Lease.

The Russians got a full dozen PCSs in 1945 which were active well into the late 1950s, serving as dive boats, degaussing ships, as well as mine vessels. Unlike most larger vessels, these were never repatriated.

Three were handed over to the Philippines at Subic Bay post-war as military aid (USS PCS-1399, USS PCS-1403, and PC-1404) and served into the late 1960s.

The Japanese got one (PCS-1416) while the South Koreans picked up five (PC-1426, PCS-1428, PCS-1443, PC-1445, and PCS-1448) and continued to use them into the 1970s. Meanwhile, Turkey got PCS-1436.

The end game

January 1958, left to right: ex-Rushville, ex-Deming (PCS 1392), and two unidentified PCS’/YMS’ at Mare Island awaiting transfer to civilian buyers.

The last in Navy inventory was McMinnville (PCS 1401), placed out of service and struck from the Naval Register in August 1962. Sold the next year to a group of treasure hunters in south Florida, she remained in the Keys as a yacht for another 20 years.

Ex-USS Prescott (PCS-1423) ashore after its towing vessel, the fishing craft Sea King, struck a rock jetty at Barnegat Inlet, New Jersey, and sank in February 1963. The Prescott had just been purchased from the Navy at Brooklyn, New York. She was later pulled free and, converted to a trawler, and would remain active into the 1980s. UA 455.12

Others were bought up at auction by fishing companies and converted to that life, bumping around with nets and dredges as late as the 1990s, often under Caribbean nation or Panamanian flags. 

One, ex-PCS-1438/YMS-470/AMS-37/MSC(O)-37, was bought by General Motors in 1959 and used as a corporate yacht in California, then was acquired by Windjammer Cruises to operate as the M/Y Royal Taipan out of Hawaii. She was famously almost lost at sea in 1990.

As for class leader Winder (PCS 1376), she was decommissioned after the war in February 1947, used for a time as a Naval Reserve training vessel at Norfolk, then was laid up in Florida where she was struck in 1957 and sold. Her ultimate fate is unknown. I’d like to think that she is still out there somewhere in some sort of low-pressure use. 

As far as I can tell, there are no surviving PCS-1376s afloat and they left behind few relics to prove they even existed, save for some war diaries in the National Archives.

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!

Warship Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2023: A Dozen Stars and a Wigwam

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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 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2023: A Dozen Stars and a Wigwam

U.S. Navy Photo by JOC(AC) Warren Grass. National Archives Catalog #: 80-G-K K-98130

Above we see the unpresuming Navajo/Cherokee/Apache-class fleet tug USS Tawasa (AT-92) departing Subic Bay bound for Haiphong in February 1973 to take part in Operation End Sweep. Don’t let her workaday appearance fool you, launched eight decades ago today– 22 February 1943– she saw more hairy situations than many battleships across her 32-year career and helped boil the sea.

A new type of tug, for a new type of war

With the immense U.S. Naval build-up planned just before WWII broke out, the Navy knew they needed some legitimate ocean-going rescue tugs to be able to accompany the fleet into rough waters and overseas warzones. This led to the radically different Navajo/Cherokee class of 205-foot diesel-electric (a first for the Navy) fleet tugs.

These hardy 1,250-ton ships could pull a broken-down fleet carrier if needed (Tawasa would prove that in 1965) and had long enough sea legs (10,000 miles) due to their economical engines to be able to roam the world. Armed with a 3″/50 caliber popgun as a hood ornament, a matching pair of twin 40mm Bofors, and some 20mm Oerlikons, they could down an enemy aircraft or poke holes in a gunboat if needed.

In all, the Navy commissioned 28 of these tough cookies from 1938 onward, making a splash in Popular Mechanics at the time due to their impressive diesel-electric power plant consisting of a quartet of GM 12-278A diesels driving four GE generators and a trio of GM 3-268A auxiliary services engines, generating 3,600shp.

Their war was hard and dangerous with 3 of the ships (Nauset, Navajo, and Seminole) meeting their end in combat, and the 25 that made it through the crucible going on to serve in other conflicts, and under other flags.

The Cherokee/Navajo class would prove successful enough that 22 follow-on tugs– with the same hull form and engineering plant but with a re-trunked exhaust that shrunk the funnel diameter– of the Abnaki class would be constructed during the war, and two (Wateree, lost in a 1945 typhoon; and Sarsi, sunk by a mine off Korea in 1952) lost in Navy service. 

Meet Tawasa

The hero of our story, USS Tawasa (AT-92) was laid down on 22 June 1942 at Portland, Oregon, by the Commercial Iron Works, a small firm that would crank out no less than 188 hulls for Uncle Sam during the conflict ranging from landing craft to escort carriers. Tawasa’s launch date, some 80 years in the rearview, saw her sponsored by Mrs. Thomas F. Sullivan, the tragic gold star mom of the five lost Sullivan brothers.

The first U.S. Navy vessel named for a Florida branch of mound-building Muskhogean Indians subsequently named the Apalachicola tribe, she commissioned on 17 July 1943, just under 13 months after her first steel was cut.

WWII

Following her shakedown cruise off California, Tawasa was assigned to Service Force, Pacific Fleet, and left Pearl Harbor in early November, bound to spend Thanksgiving 1943 in the Gilbert Islands, which were being taken by Marines.

USS Tawasa (ATF-92) underway, circa 1943-1945, location unknown. David Buell for his father CWO4 Benton E. Buell USN, Ret. USS Tawasa Chief Engineer, 1962-63. Via Navsource http://www.navsource.org/archives/09/39/39092.htm

Christmas saw her in Tarawa and the New Year of 1944 with TF 52 pushing through the Marshall Islands, where she lent a hand in the landings at Kwajalein, Majuro, and Eniwetok, at times pinch-hitting as a destroyer acting as a screening vessel with her overheating and cranky WEA-2 sound equipment in the water. Her ASW armament if she had a contact? Just eight “ashcan” style depth charges on two short gravity racks over her stern.

As noted by DANFS:

Off Kwajalein Atoll on the 31st [of January], Tawasa took soundings enabling Mississippi (BB-41) to approach the shore for close bombardment. The tug then performed salvage, towing, and screening duty until 18 February when she moved to Eniwetok to assist in the assault that was to strike that atoll the next morning. She supported operations until the atoll was secured and remained in the area for almost two months, providing services to American ships using this new base.

Tawasa’s War Diary for 30/31 January 1944:

Continuing with TF52, she would soon be assisting combat-loaded LSTs landing Marines and gear on Saipan in June.

With the Marianas wrapping up, by late July Tawasa would be reassigned from TF52 back to ServRon, South Pacific, and placed on a series of unsung missions. She became particularly adept at pulling LCIs off the beach. Her embarked divers came in handy when it came to recovering lost anchors and chains, along with conducting submerged inspections of recently captured ports and leaky hulls, while her DC teams would often fan out to weld 1/4-inch steel sheeting over holes in the side of battle damaged landing craft. Her 20-ton derrick boom allowed her to salvage all manner of objects from the seafloor. Meanwhile, her sonarmen and radar operators would keep their eyes and ears peeled for interloping enemy aircraft and vessels of all types.

The Japanese surrender found our tug in Guadalcanal, where she had just transported military passengers from the Russell Islands. Post VJ-Day, she remained forward deployed except for a trip stateside to California and would operate in Chinese and Japanese waters well into 1947.

In the end, Tawasa would earn three battle stars for her WWII service.

Korea

While a wide variety of brand new ships wound up in mothballs in the days after WWII– some being towed to red lead row right from the builders’ yards– these fleet tugs remained on active service. No rest for the working man.

The Cherokee class fleet tugs listed in the 1946 Jane’s, Tawasa included. Note that the list includes the Abnaki-class half-sisters as well.

Alternating between Alaska and Guam in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Tawasa was deployed to the 7th Fleet to serve in the Korea conflict, assigned alternatively to the ports of Cho Do, Sokcho, and Chinghai while under the control of TF 92 from July 1952 through January 1953. In this, she added two further battle stars to her salad bar.

Returning stateside, she spent six months in overhaul at the San Francisco Naval Shipyard. When she emerged in November 1953, a terrific series of images were captured of her for the U.S. Navy Bureau of Ships files, detailing her radar (SO-4), radio, and overall fit. If you are a modeler looking for shots of a 1950s Cherokee class tug, the National Archives has you covered with this series:

Note that she still carries her WWII twin Bofors mounts. 19-NN-ATF 92 Tawasa-145199

19-NN-ATF 92 Tawasa-145203

19-NN-ATF 92 Tawasa-145715

19-NN-ATF 92 Tawasa-145197

19-NN-ATF 92 Tawasa-145716

19-NN-ATF 92 Tawasa-145717

19-NN-ATF 92 Tawasa-145201

19-NN-ATF 92 Tawasa-145714

Note the two bridge wing 20mm single Oerlikons. These would be replaced by M2 .50 cals by Vietnam while the Bofors would be deleted about the same time. 19-NN-ATF 92 Tawasa-145202

19-NN-ATF 92 Tawasa-145200

19-NN-ATF 92 Tawasa-145198

19-NN-ATF 92 Tawasa-145713

Wigwam

Fielded in 1952 without full-scale war shot tests, the 500-pound Mark 90 “Betty” nuclear depth charge was seen as an ace-in-the-hole against rapidly growing fleets of schnorkel-equipped Soviet Whiskey-class submarines, of which Moscow ordered a staggering 215 in four different versions (Projects 613, 640, 644, and 665) between 1949 and 1958.

Carrying a W7 Thor tactical fission bomb with a theoretical yield of up to 30 kilotons– twice the force of the Hiroshima bomb– it was thought that a single Betty dropped via a patrol plane would be enough to clear out a whole nest of Whiskeys.

But the Navy wanted to be sure the theory held.

Enter Operation Wigwam, a full-scale test of a live device.

Conducted in May 1955 some 500 miles southwest of San Diego in water 16,000 feet deep, Tawasa tugged a Betty as part of a six-mile long towline that included a trio of identical white-painted 4/5-scale submarine hulls (704 tons, 140 foot long with a 20-foot beam complete with correct bulkhead spacings to spec and 1-inch HST steel hull plating) dubbed “Squaws” which were filled with instruments. 

The three Squaw submarine mock-ups generally mimicked the same hull construction techniques as seen on the Navy’s SS-563 (post-war Tang) class diesel GUPPY boats, which were at least as strong if not stronger than Soviet Whiskey boats. The targets were fitted with extensive seismography instruments at 52 locations spread throughout their compartments.

With the Squaws submerged at a depth of 250-290 feet at three different distances from the device, the Betty was rigged some 2,000 feet under the keel of its support barge and the Wigwam task force beat feet to observe from five miles away.

The resulting “hot” bubble from the submerged blast grew to over 4,600 feet across when it broke the surface and rose some 1,900 feet above the water at its height.

Squaw 12, the closest to the device, simply disappeared.

Here is the view from five miles out. Hydrophones at Point Sur, Hawaii heard the “thump” of Wigwam from 2,500 miles away. NARA 374-ANT-30-30-DPY-11-20

The gist of the 56-page after-action report on the squaws:

The external pressures applied to the three SQUAW targets in Operation Wigwam were measured with pressure gages, and the deformations of the hull were measured with strain and displacement gages. The results indicate that SQUAW-12 was at a horizontal range of 5150 ft and a depth of 290 ft the peak shock pressure at the hull was about 850 psi and the target was destroyed, probably within 10 msec. SQUAW-13 was at a horizontal range of 7200 ft and a depth of 260 ft the peak dynamic pressure at the hull was about 615 psi, and the hull was probably near collapse but did not rupture. The estimation is that the lethal horizontal range of the SQUAW target under the Wigwam test conditions is about 7000 ft for a depth of 250 ft and about 4500 ft for a depth of 70 ft.

Even though at least 362 personnel of the task force’s 6,732 men embarked– clad just in working gear with no flash or NBC protection– would have mildly dirty dosimeters after the event, and contaminated water was found at several depths during the weeks following the test, it was judged that Betty was safe-ish enough to be used under certain conditions, and was more than capable of sinking an enemy sub (or three) within a two-mile radius of its impact if used correctly.

This 11-minute film covers the test in great detail, including Tawasa and her six-mile squaw-laden towline.

Betty would remain in service until 1960 when it was replaced by the multipurpose B57 nuclear bomb during the mid-1960s. In its depth charge variant, the hydrostatic fuzed B57 had a selectable yield up to 10 kt– only about one-third of the Wigwam device– and could be dropped by P-3s, S-3s, and SH-3s as well as the short-lived Drone Anti-Submarine Helicopter (DASH). It was thought that in most scenarios, the B57 depth charge would only be dialed in at 5 kt. It would finally be withdrawn in 1993.

Anyway, back to our ship.

Vietnam

Dusting off and cleaning up post-Wigwam, Tawasa would continue to serve with the 7th Fleet on WestPac deployments, including four to Vietnam (May-Oct 1968, April-Sept 1969, May-Sept 1970, and Feb-June 1972). For this, she would earn seven Vietnam-era campaign stars.

Her most notable moments during this era included the largest operational tow made by a solo tug of the Pacific Fleet: 33,946 tons, when she pulled the decommissioned USS Bunker Hill (AVT-9) from San Francisco to San Diego, and coming to the rescue of the shattered destroyer USS Frank E. Evans (DD-754) which had been sheered in two by the Australian aircraft carrier Melbourne during Southeast Asian Treaty Organization exercises in the South China Sea.

Tawasa took the remaining stern section in tow and returned it to Subic Bay.

2 June 1969 SH-3 helicopters from USS Kearsarge (CVS-33) join search and rescue operations over the stern section of USS Frank E. Evans, as USS Everett F. Larson (DD-830) stands ready to offer assistance (at right). NH 98649

She closed out her Vietnam service with Operation End Sweep off Haiphong in 1973. During the six months of End Sweep, 10 ocean minesweepers, 9 amphibious ships, 6 fleet tugs, 3 salvage ships, and 19 destroyer types operated in RADM Brian McCauley’s Task Force 78, sweeping hundreds of the aircraft-laid mines.

By 1973, she was one of 25 of her class still in Navy service but her days were numbered.

Jane’s 1973-74 listing, in which the class is dubbed the Apache class. Note that the list includes the Abnaki-class half-sisters as well.

Epilogue

With a final scoresheet that would include three battle stars for World War II service, two for Korea, and seven for Vietnam, Tawasa was decommissioned and struck from the Navy list on April Fool’s Day 1975. She was sold for scrapping the following August.

There has not been a second Tawasa on the Navy List.

Much of her logs and photos are in the National Archives.

As for the rest of her sisters, many continued in U.S. Navy service until as late as the 1970s when they were either sunk as targets or scrapped. A number went as military aid to overseas allies in Mexico, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Indonesia, and elsewhere. One sister, USS Apache (ATF-67) who served as the support tender for the bathysphere Trieste, was transferred in 1974 to Taiwan and continues to serve as ROCS Ta Wan (ATF-551). Added to this is USS Pinto (AT-90), which has been in Peru as BAP Guardian Rios (ARB-123), and USS Sioux (AT-75), which lingers as the Turkish Navy’s Gazal (A-587).

The final Abnaki-class half-sister in the Navy’s inventory, ex-USS Paiute (ATF-159), was stricken in 1995 after 44 years of service spanning WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and the First Gulf War, then scrapped in October 2003 at Portsmouth.

The legacy of U.S. Navy fleet tugs is kept alive by NAFTS, the National Association of Fleet Tug Sailors. The only Navy tug museum ship is the former ATA-170-class auxiliary tug USS Wampanoag/USCG Comanche, which will be opened to the public in the coming months.

When it comes to Betty, the National Museum of the U.S. Navy has an inert casing on display, noting, “After tests at sea and in the Nevada desert, the Navy soon determined that the Mk 90 was not a practical weapon and retired the system in 1959.”

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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May we all grow up to be Buzz Aldrin

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Downing a pair of NorK MiG-15s while flying an F-86 Sabre as part of the famed 51st Fighter Wing over Korea would be the highlight of a career for most, but was just the opening act for Buzz…

Col. Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr., (USMA 1951), besides flying 66 combat missions during the Korean war, shooting down two enemy MiG-15s, making three spacewalks as pilot of the 1966 Gemini 12 mission, serving as the lunar module pilot on the 1969 Apollo 11 mission where he was the second man to walk on the surface of the moon– and pack later a punch to defend that honor— just made his 93rd orbit around the sun while aboard this humble rock in style.

On my 93rd birthday, and the day I will also be honored by Living Legends of Aviation, I am pleased to announce that my longtime love and partner, Dr. Anca V Faur, and I have tied the knot. We were joined in holy matrimony in a small private ceremony in Los Angeles, and are as excited as eloping teenagers.

The oldest surviving moonwalker (only 4 of the 12 remaining) got hitched in combat boots, no less. 

Clowns and Mills Bombs

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78 years ago today, 23 January 1945: PVT Marcel St-Laurent of “D” Company, Le Régiment de Maisonneuve, clowns for the camera at Cuyk, Netherlands. Details of the fuze on the bottom of the No. 36 Mills Bomb grenade can be seen. The length of the cloth bandolier has been altered by tying a knot in it to make it shorter.

First introduced in May 1918 and updated in the 1930s, the No. 36M Mk I was the British Army’s standard hand grenade until 1972 and still pops up in Africa and the Middle East from time to time.

A Canadian UN soldier in Korea with a U.S. made M-1 Carbine and several British Mills bomb grenades.

As for the good PVT St-Laurent, the Montreal-recruited Régiment de Maisonneuve was first recruited in 1880 and covered itself in glory in both World Wars– where its members became well-acquainted with the Mills Bomb. When the top image was taken, the regiment had previously landed in France in July 1944 as part of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division. It was bled white through the Battle of the Scheldt, and the Walcheren Causeway before reforming for the final campaigns in the northern Netherlands and the Battle of Groningen.

Infantry of the Regiment de Maisonneuve moving through Holten to Rijssen, both towns in the Netherlands. 9 April 1945. Lt. D. Guravitch. Canadian Military photograph. New York Times Paris Bureau Collection. (USIA) NARA FILE #: 306-NT-1334B-11

It endures to this day as a Primary Reserve unit, still based in Montreal, along with the better-known “Van Doos” of the 22nd Regiment, making up one of the few French-language units of the Canadian forces.

The Flight to Freedom’s final chapter

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We pause to remember a North Korean fighter pilot today, No Kum-sok.

Born in 1932 as Okamura Kyoshi in the Japanese-occupied Hermit Kingdom, he was the son of a baseball player. The teen considered becoming a kamikaze during the latter stages of WWII but was dissuaded from it and nonetheless later became an aviator for the Korean People’s Air Force.

Training in Manchuria under his new, more Korean name, he would complete no less than 100 combat sorties in the Korea War. Just after the truce was announced, and with his father dead and his mother in the West, he decided it was time to pull stumps for the South.

At the stick of his advanced MiG-15bis, he would famously streak from Sunan outside of Pyongyang to Kimpo Air Base in South Korea on 21 September 1953, a flight of just 17 minutes, and become probably the highest-profile defector of the day.

After being debriefed by the CIA, he was given $100K as authorized by Operation Moolah, although he was not aware of the reward for defectors who brought their MiGs over.

1.2 million of these pamphlets were dropped on North Korea in 1953. Operation Moolah promised a $100,000 reward to the first North Korean pilot to deliver a Soviet MiG-15 to UN forces, or just $50K for either a pilot or aircraft. The pamphlet carried the photo of LT Franciszek Jarecki, who had flown his Lim2 (license version of MiG 15bis) from Poland to political asylum in Denmark in March 1953.

No’s MiG, repainted in USAF markings and insignia, the under guard and awaiting flight testing at Okinawa. Note the M3 grease gun at the ready. (USAF image)

Taking the name Kenneth H. Rowe, he emigrated to the U.S.– where his mother had already escaped to– and, picking up several engineering degrees and a Korean-American bride, worked in the American aviation community and then as a professor at Embry-Riddle. Mr. Rowe, late of the DPRKAF, passed in Florida over the weekend, aged 90.

As for his MiG, following a career as a test aircraft in USAF custody, it was sent to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, where No visited it before his death. It has been restored to its original #2057 livery. 

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