Category Archives: littoral

Back to Alto su barco!

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The crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Waesche (WMSL 751) offloaded a little over 9 tons of Colombia’s finest, worth something like $239 million, on Wednesday in San Diego after the conclusion of her latest 89-day East Pac patrol.

The 418-foot cutter– with a Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron (HITRON) MH-65 Dolphin helicopter and aircrew, members from Law Enforcement Detachment (LEDET) 101 and 102, and contractors who flew a Scan Eagle UAV embarked– patrolled more than 19,750 nautical miles conducting law enforcement and search and rescue operations in international waters off Central and South America.

The 9-ton dope haul came from six interdictions at sea– four by Waesche and two by the smaller 210-foot USCGC Active who transferred her impounds to the larger national security cutter to bring in.

The biggest of the interdictions, on 20 November, was from a narco sub, officially a “self-propelled semi-submersible” (SPSS) that was shipping more than 5,500 pounds of blow. Of note, the interdiction of the SPSS was the first (caught) in the Eastern Pacific since 2020.

11th District released many great images from the narco sub-bust, showing just how big it is with the cutter’s 26-foot RHIB as a size reference.

Members of the Coast Guard Cutter Waesche (WMSL-751) law enforcement boarding team inspect a self-propelled semi-submersible (SPSS) in international waters of the Eastern Pacific Ocean, Nov. 20, 2023. The interdiction of the SPSS yielded more than 5,500 pounds of cocaine. (U.S. Coast Guard photo)

Members of the Coast Guard Cutter Waesche (WMSL-751) law enforcement boarding team inspect a self-propelled semi-submersible (SPSS) in international waters of the Eastern Pacific Ocean, Nov. 20, 2023. The interdiction of the SPSS yielded more than 5,500 pounds of cocaine. (U.S. Coast Guard photo)

Members of the Coast Guard Cutter Waesche (WMSL-751) law enforcement boarding team inspect a self-propelled semi-submersible (SPSS) in international waters of the Eastern Pacific Ocean, Nov. 20, 2023. The interdiction of the SPSS yielded more than 5,500 pounds of cocaine. (U.S. Coast Guard photo)

Members of the Coast Guard Cutter Waesche (WMSL-751) law enforcement boarding team inspect a self-propelled semi-submersible (SPSS) in international waters of the Eastern Pacific Ocean, Nov. 20, 2023. The interdiction of the SPSS yielded more than 5,500 pounds of cocaine. (U.S. Coast Guard photo)

Note the MH-65 on her heli deck with her two-door hangar open. The Legend-class cutter can accommodate an MH-65 or MH-60T and two vertical-launch unmanned aerial vehicles (U.S. Coast Guard photo)

If you ask me, those brainstorming about using more advanced (unmanned) narco subs to supply Marines on remote West Pac islands in the event of a China dustup make some sense.

Of note when it comes to the WMSL program, the 10th member of the class, the brand new USCGC Calhoun (WMSL 759), departed Pascagoula on 19 November for her homeport in Charleston.

Warship Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2023: As Easy as 123

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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, Nov. 29, 2023: As Easy As 123

Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph NH 109514

Above we see Wickes-class tin can USS Gamble (Destroyer No. 123) steaming into after the review of Pacific Fleet, 13 September 1919, with her sister USS Radford (DD-120) trailing behind.

Brand new and beautiful in this image, she was commissioned 105 years ago today. Gamble would give her last full measure off Iwo Jima and be deep-sixed a month before the end of World War II but don’t worry, she rolled the dice and took a few of the Emperor’s ships with her.

The Wickes

Gamble was one of the iconic first flights of “Four Piper” destroyers that were designed in 1915-16 with input from no less an authority as Captain (later Admiral) W.S. Sims. Beamy ships with a flush deck and a quartet of boilers (with a smokestack for each) were coupled to a pair of Parsons geared turbines to provide 35.3 knots designed speed– which is still considered fast today, more than a century later.

The teeth of these 314-foot, 1,250-ton greyhounds were four 4-inch/50 cal MK 9 guns and a full dozen 21-inch torpedo tubes.

They reportedly had short legs and were very wet, which made long-range operations a problem, but they gave a good account of themselves. Originally a class of 50 was authorized in 1916, but once the U.S. entered WWI in April 1917, this was soon increased and increased again to some 111 ships built by 1920.

 

Wickes class USS Yarnall (DD-143): Booklet of General Plans – Inboard Profile / Outboard Profile, June 10, 1918, NARA NAID: 158704871

 

Wickes class USS Yarnall (DD-143): Booklet of General Plans – Main Deck / 1st Platform Deck / S’ch L’t P’f’m, S’ch L’t Control P’f’m, Fire Control P’f’m Bridge, Galley Top, After Dk. House and 2nd Platform Deck. / June 10, 1918, Hold NARA NAID: 158704873

Wickes class. A close-up of her stern top-down view of plans shows the Wickes class’s primary armament– a dozen torpedo tubes in four turnstiles and stern depth charges.

Meet Gamble

Our subject is the first Navy ship to be named in honor of at least two of the quartet of Gamble brothers who served in the War of 1812. The four brothers including Capt. Thomas Gamble (USN) who served aboard USS Onedia during the war and perished while in command of the sloop USS Erie of the Navy’s Mediterranean Squadron in 1818; 1st Lt. Peter Gamble (USN) killed on the USS Saratoga during the Battle of Lake Champlain in 1814; Lt. Francis B. Gamble (USN) who died of yellow fever in 1824 while in command of the USS Decoy of the navy’s West Indies Squadron; and U.S. Marine hero Lt. Col. (Brvt) John Marshall Gamble, the only member of the Corps to command an American warship in battle– the prize ship USS Greenwich in her combat with the British armed whaler Seringapatam in 1813. Only John lived into the 1830s, passing at age 44, still on active duty.

Two of the four brothers Gamble. Midshipman Thomas Gamble, USN (L) via Analectic magazine. Painted by Waldo, and engraved by J.B. Longacre. NH 49483 and Lt. John M. Gamble, USMC (R). Photo from a portrait in possession of his grandson. (Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph NH 49482)

Gamble (Destroyer No. 123) was laid down on 12 November 1917 at Newport News, launched on 11 May 1918 sponsored by a dour relative of SECNAV Josephus “Cup of Joe” Daniels; and commissioned at Norfolk 18 days after the Armistice on 29 November 1918.

Wickes class sisters USS Breese (DD-122) and USS Gamble (DD-123) on the ways at Newport News between November 1917 and May 1918. NH 43018

USS Gamble (DD-123) launched at Newport News, Virginia, on 11 May 1918. Her sistership USS Breese (DD-122) is next to her and launched the same day in a dual ceremony. NH 53813

Same as above, NH 53812

Entering a crowded and rapidly demobilizing fleet that was just coming off the Great War, Gamble would spend the next several months in a series of shakedowns and trials up and down the East Coast from Maine to Cuba but notably was one of the ships escorting the troop transport George Washington, which was carrying President Woodrow Wilson back to the U.S. from peace negotiations in Paris to Boston in February 1919 and again in July.

In May 1919, she was one of the support ships for the legendary first transatlantic flight by the Navy’s Curtiss NC flying boats, helping spot NC-4 through the Azores.

In mid-July 1919, Gamble, along with sisters Breese, Lamberton (Destroyer No. 119), and Montgomery (Destroyer No. 121), were shifted to the Pacific Fleet to join Destroyer Division 12 and made their way to San Diego via the Panama Canal.

USS Gamble (DD-123) and USS Breese (DD-122) photographed circa 1919, probably at Balboa, Panama, Canal zone. Courtesy of Jack Howland, 1983. NH 94956

Once on the West Coast, she would spend most of the next three years haze gray and underway, so to speak, steaming from up and down the West Coast from San Diego to Seattle and out to Pearl and back in a series of tests, maneuvers, and reviews.

Gamble photographed about 1919. NH 53815

Gamble at San Diego, California, circa 1919. NH 53816

USS Gamble (DD-123) photographed on 23 April 1919 with extensive tropical awnings covering her decks. Sister USS Breese (DD-122) is in the background. NH 53814

Gamble with her original DD-123 hull numbers. NH 67684

Destroyers at the Mare Island Navy Yard, 1919 (from left to right): USS Tarbell (Destroyer # 142); USS Thatcher (Destroyer # 162); USS Rizal (Destroyer # 174); USS Hart (Destroyer # 110); USS Hogan (Destroyer # 178); USS Gamble (Destroyer # 123); USS Ramsay (Destroyer # 124); and USS Williams (Destroyer # 108). Donation of Rear Admiral Ammen Farenholt, USN (Medical Corps). NH 42537

USS Gamble (DD-123) at anchor and dressed with flags, circa 1921, following the relocation of her after 4″/50 cal gun to the top of the after deckhouse. NH 59648

Battleship USS Mississippi (BB-41) at sea for maneuvers, during the early 1920s. Wickes class destroyers in the background include USS Radford (DD-120) and USS Gamble (DD-123). NH 46051

Destroyer tender USS Prairie (AD-5) in San Diego Harbor, California, with USS Gamble (DD-123) alongside, circa 1920-1922. NH 105775

U.S. fleet in Balboa, Panama, early 1920s. The center of the photo is the battleship USS New Mexico BB-40, then a cluster of flush deck destroyers including USS Ramsey DD-124, USS Montgomery DD-121, USS Breese DD-122, USS Lamberton DD-119, and USS Gamble DD-123. In the background are the battleship USS Mississippi BB-41, the tin cans USS O’Bannon DD-177, USS MacKenzie DD-175, USS Hugan DD-178, USS Anthony DD-172, and several other destroyers and another battleship in the far distance.

With budget cuts, Gamble was tapped to begin inactivation procedures and was decommissioned on 17 June 1922 and was held in reserve at San Diego.

Recall, and a job change

After nearly a decade on red lead row, Gamble was taken out of mothballs and redesignated a fast destroyer minelayer (DM-15) on 24 May 1930. This saw her head to Mare Island for a general overhaul and conversion.

The Navy had previously converted 14 Wickes and Clemson class ships to this designation in 1920, with the simple swap out of having their torpedo tubes replaced with a set of two 140-foot tracks that could carry approximately 85 1,400-pound Mark VI moored antenna mines (of which the Navy had 50,000 left over from the Great War) to drop over the stern.

The Navy ordered 100,000 Mark VI (MK 6) mines in 1917, carrying a 300-pound charge, and had so many left that even after using thousands during WWII they remained in U.S. service into the 1980s. Gamble and her sisters could carry as many as 85 of these on a pair of rails that ran, port and starboard, down the aft half of the ship.

As noted by Destroyer History.org:

Among the lessons World War I offered the US Navy was the possibility that fast ships could be effective in laying minefields to disrupt enemy operations. The surplus of flush-deckers at the end of the war provided an opportunity to experiment.

The original 14 circa 1920 rated destroyer-minelayers were slowly replaced throughout the 1930s by a smaller group of eight converted flush-deckers taken from mothballs– USS Gamble (DM-15)(DD-123), USS Ramsey (DM-16)(DD-124), USS Montgomery (DM-17)(DD-121), USS Breese (DM-18)(DD-122), USS Tracy (DM-19)(DD-214), USS Preble (DM-20)(DD-345), USS Sicard (DM-21)(DD-346) and USS Pruitt (DM-22)(DD-347).

Jane’s 1931 entry on the type. Note Breese is misspelled as “Breeze.”

Curiously, these ships would retain their white DD-hull numbers but wore Mine Force insignia on their bow, outwardly looking much more destroyer than minelayer.

Wickes-class destroyer USS Ramsey (DM-16)(DD-124) view was taken by Tai Sing Loo, at Pearl Harbor, T. H., circa 1930. Note that she is fitted out as a minelayer (DM) and retains her DD-hull number while wearing a mine-force insignia on her bow. NH 49953

In addition to these minelayers, several Wickes/Clemson class flush deckers were converted during the WWII era to other tasks including eighteen fast minesweepers (DMS), fourteen seaplane tenders (AVD), and six fast “Green Dragon” transports (APD) plus test ship Semmes (AG 24, ex-DD 189) at the Key West Sound School and damage control hulk Walker (DCH 1, ex-YW 57, ex-DD 163) which was reclaimed from commercial service as a dockside restaurant at San Diego.

All eight of the active destroyer-minelayers were formed into Mine Squadron 1 headed up by the old minelayer USS Oglala (CM 4), flagship of Rear Admiral William R. Furlong, commander of Minecraft for the Battle Force of the Pacific Fleet, and forward-based with “The Pineapple Fleet” at Pearl Harbor, where a new conflict would soon find them.

USS Oglala (CM-4); USS Gamble (DD-123/DM-15); USS Ramsay (DD-124/DM-16). (listed L-R) anchored off Cocoanut Island, Hilo Harbor, Hawaii, T.H., 12 December 1931. Mauna Kea Volcano is in the distance. Note that the DMs are still wearing their destroyer hull numbers but with Mine Force insignias. 80-G-409991

Gamble and her crew were busy while in Hawaiian waters in the 1930s, and often helped in search and rescue cases including that of the missing aircraft Stella Australis, the disabled steamer President Lincoln, and the yacht Lanikai.

She was also something of a public relations boat and was tapped to carry Territorial Governor Lawrence M. Judd from Honolulu to Hilo in 1931 then hosted the six-year-old singing and dancing wonder, Ms. Shirley Temple, in 1935.

Besides spending the day on Gamble, Temple was declared a Colonel of the Hawaiian National Guard, inducted as a Waikiki Beach lifeguard, and given a surfboard by Duke Kahanamoku during her 1935 Hawaiian trip.

Gamble (DM-15) dressed with flags while tied up in port, circa 1940 at the Golden Gate International Exposition (World’s Fair) in San Francisco. Note the circular Mine Force insignia, red/blue/white with a black center and outline, on her bow. In the distance is a USCG 240-foot Lake class cutter. Courtesy of the Mariners Museum, Newport News, Virginia. Ted Stone Collection. NH 66812

War!

All MineRon1’s ships were swaying at their berths at Pearl’s Middle Loch on 7 December 1941 when the Japanese attack came in. The squadron was divided into two divisions, with MinDiv2 consisting of Gamble, Montgomery, Breese, and Ramsay.

The response by Gamble, among others, was immediate, opening fire just two minutes after her lookouts saw enemy planes.

From her after-action report:

0745 Heard explosions on Ford Island.
0756 Wave of about 50 Japanese planes attacked battleships and Naval Air Station, Ford Island, planes flying at low altitudes about 500 feet over battleships from the direction of Diamond Head, about 700 feet over Ford Island. Five successive waves of the attack of about 10 planes each.
0758 Went to General Quarters, opened fire with .50 cal. machine guns on planes passing over nest at about 800 feet altitude. Set material condition afirm except for certain protected ammunition passages.
0759 Opened fire with 3″/23 cal. AA guns, firing as planes came within range, fuses set 3 to 8 secs.
0805 Mounted and commenced firing with .30 cal. machine guns on galley deck house.
0810 Commenced making preparations to get underway. Lighted off four boilers.
0925 One Japanese plane shot down by A.A. fire, falling in water on port beam about 1000 yards away from ship. Believed shot down by ROBERTS, W.L., BM2c, U.S.S. Gamble, port machine gunner (#2 machine gun) .50 cal., and JOOS, H.W., GM3c, U.S.S. Gamble (#1 machine gun) starboard.
0930 Division commenced getting underway. U.S.S. Breese underway.
0930 U.S.S. Gamble got underway and cleared mooring buoy.
0937 Japanese planes attacked near main channel entrance.
0955 Temporarily anchored, astern of U.S.S. Medusa.
1005 Underway proceeding out of channel.
1015 Shifted .30 cal. A.A. machine guns to top of pilot house on fire control platform.
1021 Cleared channel entrance. Eight depth charges were armed and the ship commenced off-shore anti-submarine patrol off Pearl Harbor entrance.
1204 Established sound contact with submarine and dropped three depth charges. Position bearing 162° T from Diamond Head Light, distant 2.5 miles.
1255 Proceeded on course 270° T at 20 knots to join friendly forces upon receipt of orders from CinCPac.
1412 Sighted sampan bearing 320° T.
1435 Slowed to investigate but did not search. Sampan position approximately 4 miles south of Barbers point.
1628 Sighted smoke bomb off port bow.
1631 Submarine surfaced.*
1632 Fired one shot 4″ gun and missed, short and to the left. Submarine displayed U.S. colors, and ceased firing. Submarine submerged and fired recognition red smoke bomb.
1647 Proceeded west.
1732 Sighted Enterprise and exchanged calls. Instructed by Commander Aircraft, Battle Force to join Enterprise.
1744 Joined Enterprise and took station as third ship with two other plane guard destroyers.

*The friendly submarine turned out to be the Tambor class boat USS Thresher (SS-200), which was unharmed although a critically ill member of her crew– the reason for her surfacing and heading to port– passed. She again tried to enter the harbor on 8 December but was driven off by depth bombs from a patrol plane and only made it into Pearl under escort from a seaplane tender. Thresher went on to become the most decorated submarine of the war with 15 battle stars and a Navy Unit Commendation.

Gamble would remain off Pearl for the rest of the month, dropping depth charges on at least two further underwater sound contacts, and continue her ASW mission into 1942 when she expanded her operations to Samoa and Fiji, sowing defensive minefields in the waters of both. She also picked up some much-needed extra AAA in the form of a couple of 20mm Oerlikons.

Escorting a convoy to Midway in June, Gamble returned with a high-profile enemy POW, CDR Kunizo Aiso, the former chief engineering officer of the Japanese carrier Hiryu which had been sunk in the pivotal battle.

Carrier flagship Hiryu: Last Moments of Admiral Yamaguchi at the Battle of Midway. oil painting by Renzo Kita, 1943. Most of the ship’s officers chose to ride her to the bottom or were evacuated. Aiso, forgotten in the engineering spaces with a small group of snipes, surfaced after the ship had been left to the sea and managed to take to lifeboats. 

Aiso was the senior Japanese naval officer imprisoned in the U.S. at the time and would be until 1944. Picked up at sea in a crowded lifeboat with 34 other survivors of his carrier after 12 days bobbing around the Pacific some 250 miles west of Midway, the English-speaking officer reportedly did not wish to return to Japan, nor wish his government be informed of his capture, preferring to be recorded as lost with his ship. For the trip to Hawaii, CDR Aiso was issued USN officer khakis and barricaded inside Gamble’s captain’s cabin with the wings cut off the wingnuts of the battle ports.

Finally, picking up 85 Mark VI mines at Pearl for points West, Gamble set off for Espíritu Santo in August 1942 and, from there, Guadalcanal.

DD-123, meet I-123

When it comes to pennant numbers, the meeting that Gamble had on the morning of 29 August some 60 miles east of Savo Island was curious. She came across I-123, a big Japanese I-121-class minelaying submarine, operating on the surface. On her fifth war patrol, she had left Rabaul two weeks prior under the command of LCDR Nakai Makoto and had already given the Marines on Lungga Point heartburn with her deck gun.

Type I-121 Submarine I-23 pictured at Kobe Naval Arsenal on April 28th, 1928

The rolling ship vs submarine combat between DM-15 (formerly DD-123) and I-123 over the course of four hours ended with Makoto and his 71 crewmembers receiving a promotion, posthumously.

Gamble’s report:

While the Japanese lost 131 seagoing Ro- and I-class submarines during World War II (100 by Allied action including mines, 3 in accidents, and 28 by unknown causes) I-123 was only the 12th boat sent to the bottom in the conflict and was one of the Empire’s first early losses.

Gamble was soon back to work.

The very afternoon after she sank I-123, she sped to Nura Island to pick up four shot-down TBF-1 Avenger (Bu. No. 00396) aviators of Torpedo 8 from the Saratoga (LT JG EL Fayle, ARM3c W Velogquz, S1C RL Minning and ARM3c JR Moncarrow), retrieved via her whaleboat from the surf line. She would rescue two more lost Airedales from Palikulo Bay two weeks later, picking up 2nd LT EN Railsbach, USMC, and Ens. EF Grant, USNR, after their SBD burned in.

Gamble was pressed into service at Guadalcanal as a fast troop transport, on the morning of 31 August carrying 158 Marines from Guadalcanal to Tulagi in company with sisters USS Gregory and USS Little, who were equally loaded down with Devil Dogs.

Gamble also was soon performing her primary role once again, that of sowing minefields around the area, planting 42 in a defensive belt in Segond Channel in December 1942.

Speaking of which…

Stopping the “Tokyo Express”

On 7 May 1943, Gamble and sisters Breese and Preble laid mines in the Ferguson Passage/Blackett Strait between Gizo and Wanawana Islands in the Solomons southwest of Rendova. Hidden by a rain squall and with enemy attention diverted by a supporting cruiser-destroyer group, the old four pipers were able to sow 250 sea mines in three rough lines across the strait in just 17 minutes.

Hours later, these mines were stumbled upon by a passing column of first-class Japanese tin cans of DesDiv 15 on an overnight fast troop transport run and sank the Kagero-class destroyer Kuroshio, with 83 lives, and crippled two sisterships– Oyashio and Kagero– which, barely able to maneuver and full of seawater, would be sunk the next day after being spotted by Navy dive bombers from Guadalcanal.

IJN First-class destroyer Hamakaze of the Kagerō-class. Three of her sisters were killed due to mines laid by Gamble and company. 

As noted by Allyn D. Nevitt over at Combined Fleet, “The loss of even one such modern destroyer was fast becoming intolerable to the Japanese; having a crack unit of three erased in one blow was pure catastrophe. American daring and ingenuity in the Blackett Strait had reaped a substantial reward indeed.”

After further service– including supporting the invasion of New Georgia and planting more mines– Gamble was sent to San Francisco in July 1943 for a three-month overhaul at Hunter’s Point Navy Yard. Arriving back in the South Pacific, Gamble spent November 1943 conducting several mining runs off Bougainville in the Solomon Islands in support of the Allied offensive there.

Then, as noted by DANFS:

Through late 1943 and much of 1944, Gamble generally served as convoy escort ship screening for enemy submarines while operating between Guadalcanal and Florida Island in the Solomons; Espíritu Santo; and Noumea, with additional runs to Suva, Fiji; Finschhaven and New Britain Island, New Guinea; Sydney; and Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands.

Overhaul

In September 1944, Gamble was sent back to the West Coast for four months at the Bethlehem Steel Repair Yard at Alameda. This led to a serious overhaul of her guns, landing all her old 3″/23s and 4-inchers in favor of a homogenized set of 3″/50s and 20mm Oerlikons.

According to her December 1944 plans, her WWII topside armament was mostly emplaced on a series of superstructure platforms except for a forward 3″/50 DP above the CPO quarters just 20 feet from the bow and a 20mm Oerlikon directly behind it in front of the wheelhouse. The ammo magazine was three decks down on the keel amidships and another on astern near the shafts, meaning a chain gang had to be established to hump it up top. The main gun platform was over the galley between the three remaining funnels and held two 3″/50 DPs (port and starboard) with hinged sponsons for the gun crew and two Oerlikons. A small gun tub with two single 20mm Oerlikons (port and starboard) was above Radio 3 next to the stub mast. The stern superstructure gun platform was built atop the crew’s washhouse and armory and held a single 3″/50 DP installed just 22 feet from the stern. Two portable .50 cals were set up midship atop the pilot house and on the main deck at frame 117 (of 177 frames).

She also only had three stacks by this point. 

All told, this fit gave her four 3″/50 DPs, five 20mm Oerlikons, and two .50 cals. She would also be fitted with a twin 40mm Bofors gun, although I am not sure of its placement. Not a lot of throw weight there, but then of course her main armament was in her mine rails and projectors for Mark VI depth charges.

Eight breakaway Carely float-type life rafts were installed to augment the ship’s 26-foot whaleboat and punt. The crew at this time was a skipper (LCDR/CDR) and 8 wardroom officers along with a mix of 132 rates and enlisted (62 Seamans branch, 57 Artificer branch, 4 Special branch, 4 Commissary branch, 5 Messman branch). By this time, she carried SF and SC radar sets and QCL sonar.

She also picked up a new camo scheme.

Camouflage Measure 32, Design 7D drawings prepared by the Bureau of Ships for a camouflage scheme intended for light minelayers of the DM-15 (Gamble) class. This plan, approved by Captain Torvald A. Solberg, USN, is dated 14 June 1944. 80-G-173486 and 80-G-173487.

This readied her for the “Big Show,” the push to Iwo Jima, Operation Detachment, in February 1945.

Back in the thick of it

On D+3, 17 February, Gamble closed into the beach close enough to cover the small minesweepers (YMS) and UDT teams of Sweep 5 and 6 clearing a path in the shoaling waters, shelling Japanese coastal emplacements and positions with her 3-inch and 40mm guns to silence them from harassing the cleaners via the application of 204 rounds of 3-inch AA Common and 254 of 40mm HETSD over seven hours. There, roughly six miles off Mt. Suribachi, she scored a hit on a large ammo dump with secondary explosions as well as silencing several enemy guns and bird-dogging other emplacements for the battlewagons.

Her NGFS report: 

Taking position off the old battlewagon Nevada the next night, she was hit by two small 250-pound bombs dropped by a  Japanese Kawasaki Ki-45 Toryu (Nick) twin-engine bomber that came in low and fast while she was silhouetted by star shells ashore. The bombs effectively wrecked our Gamble.

From her report:

Her crew was removed, and the shattered Gamble was towed to Saipan where she was decommissioned on 1 June 1945, and her name was stricken from the Navy Register three weeks later.

Stripped of anything thought useful, a series of images and videos were captured of her scuttling process, which took place off Guam on 16 July.

 

“Down Went the Gamble (DM 15).” Gamble was scuttled in June 1945. She was previously hit by Japanese enemy bombs in Feb 1945. Artist: Standish Backus, No.9. U.S. Navy photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 428-GX-KN 18978

Gamble received seven battle stars for service in World War II.

Epilogue

As Gamble was scuttled off Guam in deep water, few relics of her remain topside.

The wooden mold for her D Sharp ship’s bell, cast at Mare Island, resurfaced in 1991.

Her plans, drawings, deck logs, and war history are online in the National Archives. 

As for Shirley Temple, a bosun whistle presented to her by Gamble’s crew in 1935 remained a treasured possession for years. After all, she would meet her future husband, Charles Alden Black, a former Naval intelligence officer, in Hawaii in 1950 so perhaps those long-ago Pearl Harbor USN memories were prized. The whistle remained part of Ms. Temple’s estate and archives until it was sold at a 2015 auction by Theriault’s in New York.

It is undoubtedly in some collector’s display as this is written and perhaps will resurface one day.

Thus far, the Navy has chosen to not reissue the name “Gamble” to a second ship, which is a pity.

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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Remote Work

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For those with a little chill in the air, how about this breathtaking photo from U.S. Coast Guard Air Station Clearwater of an MH-60 Jayhawk somewhere in their AOR, likely in the Keys but could be in points further South or West.

Photo by LT Scott Kellerman, USCG

Formed in 1934, CGAS Clearwater currently counts 700 personnel and has 10 MH-60T Jayhawks and four HC-130H Hercules (upgrading to HC-130Js) assigned as well as Port Security Unit 307.

As detailed by base:

We are the largest and busiest Air Station in the Coast Guard. In addition to the local area, our Area of Operations includes the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean basin, and the Bahamas. We constantly maintain deployed H-60s for Operations Bahamas, Turks and Caicos (OPBAT), a joint DEA, Coast Guard, Bahamian Turks and Caicos anti-drug and migrant smuggling operation in the Bahamas. We also have C-130s deployed in support of Joint Interagency Task Force (JIATF) operations in the Caribbean. This is done while simultaneously maintaining a constant Bravo Zero Search and Rescue response at home in Florida.

Warship Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023: From Midway to Trafalgar

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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, Nov. 22, 2023: From Midway to Trafalgar

Above we see a great bow-on shot of the FRAM’d Gearing class destroyer USS Eugene A. Greene (DD/DDR-711)with a bone in her teeth in her second life as the Spanish Navy’s Churruca (D61) in the 1980s, the country’s traditional crimson and gold Rojigualda ensign on her mast, a twin 5″/38 hood ornament and two forward-facing Mk.32 triple torpedo tubes under the bridge wings. Her original moniker comes from naval aviator Eugene Allen Green, born 98 years ago this week.

The Gearings

In July 1942 the U.S. Navy, fighting a U-boat horde in the Atlantic and the Combined Fleet in the Pacific was losing ships faster than any admiral ever feared in his worst nightmare. With that in mind, the Navy needed a lot of destroyers. While the Fletcher and Allen M. Sumner classes were being built en mass, the go-ahead for some 156 new and improved Sumners— stretched some 14 feet to allow for more fuel and thus longer legs to get to those far-off battlegrounds– was given. This simple mod led to these ships originally being considered “long hull Sumners.”

These hardy 3,500-ton/390-foot-long tin cans, the Gearing class, were soon being laid down in nine different yards across the country.

Designed to carry three twin 5-inch/38 cal DP mounts, two dozen 40mm and 20mm AAA guns, depth charge racks and projectors for submarine work, and an impressive battery of 10 21-inch torpedo tubes (downgraded to just 5 tubes) capable of blowing the bottom out of a battleship provided they could get close enough, they were well-armed. Fast at over 36 knots, they could race into and away from danger when needed.

Meet Eugene A. Greene

Our subject is the first Navy ship to be named in honor of Eugene Allen Green, born in Smithtown, New York on 21 November 1921. A 1940 graduate of Rhode Island State College, he attended ROTC while in school and promptly enlisted in the U.S. Navy Reserve’s air cadet program, earning his ensign bar along with his wings of gold by August 1941.

Assigned to Bombing (VB) Six aboard USS Enterprise (CV-6) in March 1942, he gave his last full measure behind the controls of his SBD (6-B-9) at the ripe old age of 21 during the Battle of Midway when, following the attack by VB-6 against the aircraft carrier Kaga on 4 June, he was one of 14 of the “Big E’s” pilots that had to ditch their planes on the way back home, out of fuel. Greene and his gunner, RM3c SA Mutane, along with the crews of eight other ditched aircraft from Enterprise that day, would never be seen again.

Greene was granted a posthumous Navy Cross in December 1942 and his widow, Mrs. Anita M. Greene, would sponsor the destroyer named in his honor.

The second of 16 Gearings contracted via Federal Shipbuilding, Kearny, New Jersey, the future USS Eugene A. Greene (DD-711) was laid down on 17 August 1944, launched the following March, and commissioned on 8 June 1945.

War!

While 98 Gearings would eventually be completed, most of these arrived too late to take part in WWII, with Greene joining a club that only included 44 sisters who arrived very late in the war. Although some were present in the final push to Tokyo, none were damaged or lost. Three of the class– USS Frank Knox, Southerland, and Perkins— entered Tokyo Bay in time to be present at the Japanese surrender, on 2 September 1945.

As for Greene, her WWII service, as detailed by her War History, consisted primarily of a shakedown cruise ranging from Penobscot Bay, Maine to Guantanamo Bay then, in mid-August following the news of the Japanese surrender, was assigned to the Atlantic fleet to serve as a school ship in Norfolk and Casco Bay, then to Pensacola to assist as a plane guard for aviation cadets– a task she would be well-versed in over her career.

USS Eugene A. Greene (DD-711) off New York City on 29 May 1946. She is still painted in wartime Camouflage Measure 22. NH 66345

A Chilly Peace

As the Navy’s newest destroyers, none of the new Gearings were mothballed after the war.

On 13 February 1947, Greene sailed south in a task group bound for Montevideo, Uruguay, to participate in the festivities accompanying the inauguration of the country’s new president, Tomás Berreta. The group also paid a goodwill visit to Rio de Janeiro before returning to Norfolk on 31 March.

Light cruiser USS Fresno (CL-121) on port call at Rio De Janeiro, March 1947, alongside her Gearing class consorts, USS Gearing, USS Gyatt, and USS Eugene A. Greene. Note the stern depth charge racks. The quartet was returning from Uruguay where they represented the U.S. at the inauguration of the new Uruguayan president. The Fresno was launched in 1946, too late to serve in WWII, so she took part in good-will diplomatic missions like this. She was sold for scrap in 1966. Photo attributed to Robert Norville, from NavSource.

As detailed by DANFS, the Norfolk-based Greene then became a staple of the 6th Fleet until 1960:

On 10 November 1947, Eugene A. Greene sailed on the first of 9 Mediterranean cruises made over the next 13 years. During those years, she and her sisters of the U.S. 6th Fleet have guarded the interests of peace and order in that sea which was the cradle of democratic government. Voyages to northern Europe and the Arctic varied the routine of overseas deployment for Eugene A. Greene.

What was skipped by DANFS was the fact that Greene was on hand in the region for five months through the 1956 Suez Crisis just in case she was needed.

It should be noted that, by this stage, she was significantly modernized, picking up a new tripod mast with AN/SPS-6 L-band radar (later augmented by an SPS-8A S-band capable of spotting aircraft 60nm away) and lightened her topside by landing most of her WWII AAA suite, torpedoes, and depth charges. This resulted in a change to a destroyer radar picket (DDR-711) that she held from July 1952 until she reverted to the simpler DD-711 in March 1963.

USS Eugene A. Greene (DD-711) underway at sea on 19 September 1950. Note that she has received a new tripod mast with AN/SPS-6 radar and has landed much of her WWII AAA suite, torpedoes, and depth charges. National Archives Identifier 24743125

At sea, October 1951. 80-G-442191

USS Eugene A. Greene (DDR-711) off the Norfolk Naval Shipyard on 18 December 1952. National Archives Identifier 24743145

Same as the above, bow on 24743147

Same as the above, stb profile. Note the newly installed AN/SPS-8 air search radar aft for her role as a DDR picket. 24743143

The Frostiest Part of the Cold War

Greene experienced the life that came with all the classic 1960s naval adventures in the Atlantic.

Greene is on the list of U.S. Navy ships that received the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal for participating in the Cuban quarantine, from 24 October through 20 November 1962.

Roger Powell missed ship’s movement of the destroyer USS Rush (DD-714) — along with 44 other shipmates as she sortied out over the weekend on little notice– and was tacked on to help fill out Greene’s crew, similarly, headed for Cuba to be a plane guard alongside the USS Enterprise.

Greene would undergo a nearly year-long FRAM I reconstruction at Boston NSY, completed in October 1963. Meant to add 8 years to the ship’s life via a complete rehabilitation of all shipboard components, it also fundamentally changed the destroyer to a modern sub-buster. The 5″/38 Mount 52 forward was removed during the rebuild while a hangar and platform for the QH-50C DASH ASW drone was added in place of the SPS-8A radar house.

Also new was an 8-cell ASROC matchbox launcher amidships, SQS-23 SONAR, VDS, and a six-pack of Mark 32 torpedo tubes. She added Mk 44 ASW torps to her magazine, for use by her own Mk32s as well as DASH, which theoretically could drop them some 20 miles away from the destroyer.

When she left Boston, she became first the flag of Destroyer Squadron 28, then DESRON 32.

Like most East Coast-based Navy ships in the era, Greene participated in several NASA recovery missions between other assignments, logging two (Mercury-Atlas 2 and 3) in early 1961 and Gemini-Titan 2 (GT-2) in 1965, supporting the primary recovery ship, USS Lake Champlain (CVS-39).

A great view of the post-FRAM’d USS Eugene A. Greene (DD-711) steaming past USS Lake Champlain (CVS-39) during operations on 23 September 1964. Note her ASROC amidships and her big DASH hangar aft in place of the deleted Mount 52. She still carries her aft mount (Mount 53) and forward (51). One of the carrier’s big Sikorsky SH-3 Sea King ASW helicopters is flying by in the right foreground, and another destroyer is in the left distance. Photographer: AN Thomas J. Parrett. NH 107007

Speaking of the Med, Greene would make another four deployments there between 1968 and 1972– and on two of them job into the Persian Gulf/Indian Ocean to show the flag in the increasingly important region. This included a seven-month goodwill cruise with the U.S. Middle East Force in 1968 during which she was the first U.S. ship to enter the new Iranian port of Bander Abbas, doing the Shah’s Navy the courtesy of charting the harbor from end to end with her advanced sonar.

Earning “blue noses” for her crew, she also took part in Operation Deep Freeze ’69 in the Antarctic and two North Atlantic cruises that crossed the Arctic Circle. Warming up, she went to Latin America once again in UNITAS ’68.

War! (This time for real)

Greene, being a top-of-the-line ASW boat post FRAM mods, also sailed to the Pacific to take part in a West Pac deployment (June-December 1966) to Vietnamese waters, shipping via the Panama Canal, Pearl Harbor, Guam, Subic Bay, and Hong Kong to take up station as a plane guard alongside the carrier USS Constellation (CVA-64) on 28 July.

There she remained for a month at sea, every day closing to within 4,000 yards with a rescue detail at the ready in case one of Conny’s birds went into the drink, all the while her sonar techs kept an ear out for anything funny in the depths.

USS Constellation (CVA-64), the third ship named for the configuration of 15 stars on the original United States Flag shows an A-4 Skyhawk given landing instructions by a technical crewman using the Landing Signal Officer’s (LSO) console as the LSO watches, October 1966. Greene was her primary plane guard during a good part of Conny’s 1966 Far East Cruise (12 May–3 December) with CVW-15 on board during which 16 aircrewmen and 15 aircraft were lost in operations. K-33638

This lifeguard work paused on 21 August when Greene was dispatched to close to the South Vietnam littoral under control of Task Unit 70.8.9 where she stood by in the Republic of Vietnam’s I Corps area on call for naval gunfire support missions. Over the next five days, her gunners got in lots of work as she steamed as close as 2,000 yards from shore answering NGFS calls with 311 rounds of HE and WP and providing 90 nighttime star shell illumination for friendly outposts. She was credited with annihilating an enemy base camp, wiping out a platoon-sized element of infiltrators in the open, and destroying several enemy supply buildings.

A sampling from her deck log:

Headed back to Yankee Station after rearming while underway, she worked alongside the carrier USS Coral Sea for the rest of her deployment until she slipped her port shaft in October and had to limp into Tse Ying, Taiwan, for a quick fix that would get her to Subic Bay. Returning to Norfolk in December via the Suez and the Med, Greene ended up circumnavigating the globe in a 205-day around-the-world deployment.

In short, her 27-year career with the U.S. Navy was diverse and, well, just remarkably busy. It was little surprise one of her lasting nicknames was “The Steamin’ Greene.”

But all good things must come to an end and on 31 August 1971, with Greene almost eight promised years to the dot past her FRAM I service life extension, she was decommissioned.

A second life

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.

Then came five Lepanto-class destroyers– WWII Fletcher-class tin cans– starting with USS Capps (DD-550) in 1957, which were transferred. The old light carrier USS Cabot was loaned to the Spanish Navy on 30 August 1967, which renamed her Dédalo (R.01).

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

These were soon joined by five FRAM I Gearing class destroyers, starting with USS Eugene A. Greene (DD/DDR-711) in 1972. By this time, the Spanish were also slated to get five new-made Baleares-class frigates, variants of the Knox class destroyer escort/fast frigates updated with Standard SAM suites.

Greene, still on the Navy List, was loaned to Spain the same day she was decommissioned. Renamed Churruca (D61) she honored RADM Cosme Damián Churruca y Elorza, who was lost on his ship-of-the-line San Juan Nepomuceno at Trafalgar in 1805.

Muerte de Cosme Damián Churruca (detalle), Eugenio Álvarez Dumont

Stricken from the U.S. Navy List on 2 June 1975 three years after she joined the Spanish Navy, Greene was sold to Spain for a token fee and remained in service with the force through the 1980s, class leader of her 11th Destroyer Division sisters. To be fair, although they were 30 years old, these FRAM I Gearings in the 1970s and 80s were still capable against Russki Whiskey, Romeo and Foxtrot-type smoke boats and their guns still worked enough for old-school NGFS should the large Spanish naval infantry need fire missions.

Period photos of Churruca show her still very much in her prime.

With the Cold War ending, so did the Gearings worldwide. Churruca was stricken by Spain on 15 September 1989, and disposed of in a SINKEX in 1991.

Sent to the bottom by a mixture of ordnance from Spanish Air Force F-18s and Spanish Navy AV-8 Matadors as well as some Standard missiles and Harpoons, her death was captured on grainy video, much like a snuff film.

Her four sisters in Spanish service (Gravina, ex-USS Furse; Méndez Núñez, ex-USS O’Hare; Lángara, ex-USS Leary; and Blas de Lezo, ex-USS Noa) were all disposed of within another year.

Epilogue

Greene’s deck logs are digitized in the National Archives and represent one of the few items left of the old girl. 

Of her massive armada of 98 Gearing-class sisterships that were completed, 10 survive above water in one form or another including three largely inactive hulls in the navies of Mexico and Taiwan. The others are museum ships overseas except for USS Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. (DD-850) in Fall River, Massachusetts; and the USS Orleck (DD-886) in Jacksonville. Please visit these vital floating maritime relics.

Orleck, fresh out of dry dock, being towed to her new home in Jacksonville

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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Preserving Ms. Higgins

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US Coast Guard-manned LCVP landing craft carried invasion troops toward Luzon in Lingayen Gulf, 9 Jan 1945

PA31-17, a humble 36-foot long LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicle, and Personnel), or “Higgins boat” after the New Orleans manufacturer that churned them out by the thousands (23,000 to be exact) in WWII, was found derelict on the shores of Shasta Lake in fall 2021.

The thing is, although it was old and damaged, it was still in more or less original condition, still with lots of her Higgins-installed mahogany including the original paint on the ramp.

Further, it turned out that PA31-17, assigned throughout the war to the Crescent City class attack transport USS Monrovia (AP-64), landed troops on the beach in seven different campaigns– Sicily, Tarawa, Kwajalein, Saipan (the last three with Devil Dogs of the 2nd Marine Division), Guam (77th Infantry Division), Luzon (96th Infantry then 1st Cavalry Division) and Okinawa (6th Marine Division).

Acquired by the Nebraska National Guard Museum in Columbus, Nebraska—the birthplace of Andrew Higgins, the organization made the move to protect it, not restore it.

So who do you get to stabilize an 80-year-old combat veteran wooden landing craft? A 75-year-old combat veteran woodworker, that’s who. Eric Hollenbeck with Blue Ox Millworks in Eureka, California took on the two-month task and it is documented in The Craftsman – Preserving the Last Higgins Boat, which I just saw online on Max but it is out there on other platforms as well.

If you have a chance, do check it out.

Coastie Update: Increasingly International

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One thread that I have noticed is that the personnel and cash-strapped U.S. Coast Guard is plugging in a lot more joint spaces, both within DOD and with international partners. While a lot of people have some sort of misunderstanding that the USCG is just a guy sitting in a fan boat on the iced-over Great Lakes in winter, or some poor shlub cleaning the weeds from a channel marker in the middle of the Ohio River, they are also spanning the globe.

Three examples:

James

The 418-foot National Security Cutter James (WMSL 754) just returned home to Charleston, following a 113-day patrol in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.

During the patrol, James’ crew disrupted illegal narcotics smuggling, interdicting 12,909 kilograms of cocaine and 7,107 pounds of marijuana valued at over $380 million. While in theater, James interdicted eight drug-smuggling vessels and apprehended 23 suspected traffickers, including one low-profile vessel laden with contraband.

James’ crew conducted multiple joint operations with foreign partner nations such as Ecuador and Mexico. James conducted a passing exercise with the Mexican Navy’s ARM Chiapas. During the exercise, James practiced close-quarters tactical maneuvering and landed the Chiapas’ Panther helicopter on deck. 230806-G-G0100-1001

If you take a look at the crew that shipped out on the four-month East Pac cruise, not only do you see the Coast Guard blue, but there are also four contractors (top left) for the Scan Eagle UAV, as well as a contingent of two Marines, a Soldier, and five Bluejackets (center) who most likely provided medical, commo, and terp support in the region. At the stern is a HITRON MH-65 detachment of airborne precision rifle experts. 

Coast Guard Cutter James Port Everglades, Florida, Oct 26, 2023. 231026-G-FH885-1002

Horne

The 154-foot Fast Response Cutter Terrell Horne (WPC-1131) returned home to California last week after a 52-day patrol across 4,000 miles of the Eastern Pacific, conducting operations and international engagements with Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, and Costa Rica. That’s a lot of time and distance for a 154-foot boat, a platform that is proving very adept at ranging far and wide.

The crew of the Terrell Horne deployed in support of multiple missions, including Operations Green Flash, Albatross, Martillo, and Southern Shield, within the 11th Coast Guard District’s area of responsibility. During the patrol, Terrell Horne’s crew conducted a range of missions encompassing law enforcement, counter-drug operations, illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing enforcement, and search and rescue operations.

Dauntless

Meanwhile, in the Caribbean, the Portsmouth-based RN Type 45/Daring-class destroyer HMS Dauntless (D33) is currently serving as the West Indies station ship and, with a USCG Tactical Law Enforcement Team (TACLET) aboard, spent the summer running successful interdiction missions with the ship’s embarked Wildcat helicopter and RM 42 Commando snipers riding shotgun.

HMS Dauntless flies the Royal Navy Ensign and Law Enforcement Detachment (LEDET) flag from the sea boats prior to boarding a suspect vessel in the Caribbean Sea.

HMS Dauntless’ embarked Law Enforcement Detachment team (LEDET) go to ‘boarding stations’ after finding a suspect vessel in the Caribbean Sea.

HMS Dauntless conducting a drugs intervention/rescue mission whilst operating in the Caribbean region.

HMS Dauntless conducting a drugs intervention/rescue mission whilst operating in the Caribbean region.

HMS Dauntless’ embarked Law Enforcement Detachment (LEDET) leave the ship in sea boats in preparation to apprehending a suspect vessel in the Caribbean Sea.

Coast Guard Mothballing Cutters Due to Recruiting Shortfalls

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It seems the USCG, which is increasingly strung out across the globe backfilling a short-hulled/staffed Navy, is itself running on empty after years of failing to meet recruiting goals through a variety of societal and administrative reasons.

Among the austerity measures in the crew-poor Coast Guard, which is 10 percent understaffed across the board:

  • Three 210-foot Reliance class Medium Endurance Cutters (WMEC) will be placed in layup, pending decommissioning.
  • ​Seven 87-foot Patrol Boats (WPB) will be placed in layup, pending reactivation.
  • Five 65-foot Harbor Tugs (WYTL) will temporarily not be continuously manned but will be kept in a ready status in case icebreaking is needed. 
  • Two 154-foot Sentinel (Webber) class Fast Response Cutters (WPC) will commence uncrewed Recurring Depot Availability Program (RDAP) at the Coast Guard Yard in Baltimore, Maryland. The next 154′ Patrol Craft scheduled for RDAP will deliver the hull to the Coast Guard Yard and swap hulls with a cutter that has completed drydock.  
  • Crews at all 23 seasonal station smalls will transfer to their parent command.
  • The six non-response units (boat forces units without SAR responsibilities) will suspend operations and their crews will be reassigned in assignment year (AY) 2024.
  • The identified 19 stations whose SAR response capabilities are redundant will be deemed Scheduled Mission Units. Three of these 19 stations will be ports, waterways and coastal security (PWCS) level one-Scheduled Mission Units.  

    Maybe this explains why the service is making moves to expand its JROTC units nationwide among other initiatives. It announced its first California-based JROTC unit last week at Mission Bay High School in San Diego.

    SAN DIEGO — The U.S. Coast Guard announces the establishment of its first California-based Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) program. Photo by: Photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Nicolas Cavana | VIRIN: 231027-G-LC063-6158

    The Coast Guard established its first JROTC unit in 1992, in Miami. Under recent federal legislation, the Coast Guard is expanding the JROTC program to each of its nine Districts by 2025. Studies show that about 20 percent of all JROTC participants go on to join the military.

    FFH Group & Surveillance Force Grenada, 1983-84

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    As a wrap of our coverage of the 40th anniversary of the 1983 invasion of Grenada, we take a look at the unique surface action group that arrived to assist in the peacekeeping phase of the operation, which ran roughly through November and December when the last U.S. combat troops were withdrawn– that of hydrofoils operating with a frigate mothership.

    Mid-November 1983 found the newly commissioned Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate USS Aubrey Fitch (FFG-34), along with the two equally new Pegasus-class hydrofoil patrol boats, USS Aquila (PHM-4) and Taurus (PHM-3) in Guantanamo Bay “for the purpose of testing the feasibility of operating those types of ships in the same task organization.”

    As noted by Fitch’s DANFS entry, she assumed tactical control of the hydrofoils and jetted over to Grenada:

    Demands incident to the continuing American presence in Grenada, however, overtook the experiment and sent Aubrey Fitch and her two consorts south to the tiny republic. Duty in the waters adjacent to Grenada lasted until mid-December when the warship returned to Mayport.

    All three were eligible for the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal for Urgent Fury.

    Aquila and Taurus would return to their homeport at Key West on 16 December and spend the rest of their career in unsung law enforcement support work in the Caribbean and off Central America, being decommissioned as a class in 1993 with their sisters and disposed of in 1996.

    Fitch lasted a little longer. Decommissioned on 12 December 1997, the frigate was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 31 May 1999 and sold for scrap shortly after.

    Sadly, there are no photos I can find of Fitch and her two ‘foils operating together in Cuba-Grenada Oct-Dec 1983, which is tragic, but drink in these were taken of the ships separately early in their careers.

    USS AUBREY FITCH (FFG 34) underway 1982 Bath trials DN-SC-85-04417

    USS AUBREY FITCH (FFG 34) underway 1982 Bath trials DN-SC-85-04399

    USS AUBREY FITCH (FFG 34) underway 1982 Bath trials DN-SC-85-04401

    hydrofoils USS AQUILA (PHM 4), front, and USS GEMINI (PHM 6), center, lie tied up in port with a third PHM. The Coast Guard surface effect ship (SES) cutter USCGC SHEARWATER (WSES 3) is in the background. NARA photo

    Hydrofoil patrol combatant missile ship USS TAURUS (PHM 3) race by. Navy hydrofoils are regularly used on Joint Task Force 4 drug interdiction missions.

    DN-ST-90-09381 The patrol combatant missile hydrofoils USS HERCULES (PHM 2) and USS TAURUS (PHM 3) maneuver off of Key West, Florida.

    Seattle pegasus class hydrofoil USS Taurus (PHM-3) during her acceptance trials

    USS Hercules (PHM-2) and Taurus (PHM-3) 1983

    Cue USCG

    As for what happened from a maritime perspective after Fitch and her PHMs returned home, the answer is that the Coast Guard took over the task of policing Grenada’s waters for the next year, and it should be pointed out that two HC-130s and the 378-foot Hamilton-class cutter USCGC Chase (WHEC 718), which was deployed from 23 Oct – 21 Nov 1983, served during the shooting-part of Urgent Fury, earning the deploying units the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal for their service.

    The follow-on Operation Island Breeze USCG Grenada Getaway response was a WWII-era 180-foot Balsam (Iris) class buoy tender that served as the mothership for three rotating 95-foot cutters drawn from the Florida-based Seventh Coast Guard District, allowing the small boat crews to get some showers and better food as well as mechanical support from the tender’s extensive onboard workshop.

    On 8 December 1983, the Cape-class patrol cutters Cape Gull (WPB-95304), Cape Fox (WPB-95316), Cape Shoalwater (WPB 95324), and the tender Sagebrush (WLB-399) arrived off of the island of Grenada to replace U.S. Navy surface forces conducting surveillance operations after the U.S. invasion of the island earlier that year.

    Commissioned on 1 April 1944, Sagebrush spent most of her service life home-ported in San Juan, Puerto Rico, earning four USCG Unit Commendations before she was decommissioned on 26 April 1988.

    USCGC Cape Fox (WPB 95316) celebrating Christmas 1983 off Grenada 1983.

    Note the two mounted M2 .50 cals, rare for Capes in the 1980s, as well as the Christmas tree on deck.

    The Capes used three crews, Green, Blue, and Red, rotating out every 30 days, and used backpack HF radio sets borrowed from the Army to communicate with the forces ashore. Support shoreside for the roughly 100-man force came from two 20-foot containers in port converted into shops.

    For air support, they had HC-130Hs out of Clearwater fly over occasionally, taking off and recovering at CGAS Borinquen, as well as a weekly logistics run.

    They would remain on station until 3 February 1984 when replaced by a similar group, a task that would run through the end of the year.

    The WPB/WLB force was rotated out roughly every three months in 1984 and saw the buoy tender USCGC Mesquite (WLB 305), her sister USCGC Gentian (WLB 290), and the 140-foot icebreaker (!) Mobile Bay (WTGB 103) which sailed from Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. Meanwhile, the number of WPBs was cut from three to two. 

    The sum, as detailed by ADM James S. Gracey, USCG:

    After a few days, the Navy figured out that patrolling around the island to keep people from coming on or going off, additional people coming on or other people from escaping, wasn’t working very well with Navy PCs or whatever they were using, whereas our smaller patrol boats would do the job very well. So we took over. We were there long after everybody else had gone home doing this operation and other things that the Coast Guard always does when we are someplace. That was Grenada.

    A lasting legacy of the USCG in Grenada was the reformation of the Grenadian Coast Guard, an organization that endures today, with a little help from its northern neighbor.

    Warship Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2023: Mad Marcus

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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, Nov. 1, 2023: Mad Marcus

    Photographer: PHCM/AC Louis P. Bodine Official U.S. Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval History and Heritage Command. Catalog #: NH 107602

    Above we see a great 1968 image of the Edsall-class destroyer escort-turned-radar picket, USS Vance (DER-387) underway off the coast of Oahu. At this time in the little tin can’s life, she had left her mark on the end of two German U-boats, frozen in polar expeditions, logged three very trying tours off coastal Vietnam, and survived a real-life Lt. Commander Queeg who, no shit, was named for a Roman emperor.

    She was brought to life on this day in 1943.

    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 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 USS Vance

    Our subject is the only U.S. Navy warship to carry the name of Joseph Williams Vance, Jr.. A mustang who volunteered for the Navy Reserve at age 21 in 1940, the young Seman Vance served aboard the old battlewagon USS Arkansas (BB-33) and, as he had university hours at Southwestern and Florida on his jacket, was appointed a midshipman in the rapidly expanding Navy after four months in the fleet. Joining the flush deck tin can USS Parrott (DD-218) in the Philippines on 16 April as an ensign in charge of the destroyer’s torpedo battery. Facing the Japanese onslaught in the Western Pacific, Ensign Vance picked up a Bronze Star at the Battle of Makassar Strait (24 January 1942)– the Navy’s first surface action victory in the Pacific– saw action in the Java sea and the Badoeng Strait, and, by Guadalcanal, had been promoted to lieutenant (junior grade). With the promotion came a transfer– to the ill-fated HMAS Canberra, as liaison officer with the Royal Australian Navy. He was aboard Canberra on that tragic night off Savo Island on 9 August 1942 when the Kent-class heavy cruiser was sent to the depths of “Ironbottom Sound” with 73 other members of her crew.

    His body lost to sea at age 23, his family remembered Joe in a cenotaph at Bethlehem Cemetery in Memphis. He is also marked on the Tablet of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial. The paperwork for Makassar Strait caught up to him eventually and his family was presented his bronze star posthumously.

    The future Vance (DE-387) was laid down on 30 April 1943 at Houston, Texas by the Brown Shipbuilding Co. and launched just 10 weeks later on 16 July 1943.

    She was sponsored by the late Lt. (jg.) Vance’s grieving mother, Elizabeth Sarah “Beth” Harrison Vance, and Joe’s sister, Willie.

    A Coast Guard-manned DE, Vance’s pre-commissioning crew was formed in August 1943 at the sub-chaser school in Miami while their ship was under construction on the other side of the Gulf of Mexico. Consisting of 40 officers and men drawn from across the USCG– most had seen war service chasing subs and escorting convoys across the Atlantic. This skilled cadre left Miami after two months of training and headed to Houston in early October, joining 30 newly minted techs and specialists direct from A schools and 130 assorted bluejackets right from basic.

    All hands moved aboard USS Vance on 1 November 1943 when she was commissioned at the Tennessee Coal & Iron Docks in Houston, LCDR Eric Alvin Anderson, USCG, in command. As noted by her War History, “The shipyard orchestra played for the commissioning ceremonies and later sandwiches and coffee were served to all hands.”

    Following outfitting and shakedown cruises off Bermuda, Vance became the flagship for the all-USCG Escort Division (CortDiv) 45, including the sequentially numbered sisters USS Lansing (DE-388), Durant (DE-389), Calcaterra (DE-390), Chambers (DE-391) and Merrill (DE-392) with Commodore E.J. Roland raising his command pennant aboard on 19 December.

    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.

    War!

    Celebrating Christmas 1943 at sea “being tossed around like a matchstick,” Vance’s first escort job was to ride shotgun on a group of tankers running from Port Arthur, Texas to Norfolk just after the New Year, then escorting the jeep carrier USS Core (CVE-13) to New York City.

    She crossed the Atlantic with her division to escort a large slow (7-10 knots) convoy, UGS.33, to Gibraltar in February then turned around to the return trip with a GUS convoy, returning to the Med with UGS 39 in May, where she would come face to face with the enemy. On 14 May 1944, the Type VIIC sub U-616 (Kplt. Siegfried Koitschka) torpedoed two Allied merchants– the British flagged G.S. Walden (7,127 tons) and Fort Fidler (10,627 tons).

    From Vance’s war history:

    Eight American destroyers and aircraft from five squadrons hunted U-616 until it was sunk on 17 May, lost with all hands.

    1944 Palermo, Sicily – USS Vance (DE 387) via navsource

    Following her battle with U-616, Vance would recycle and cross the Atlantic again with UGS.46 in June, UGS.53 in September, UGS.66 in January 1945, UGS.78 in March 1945, and UGS.90 in May 1945. The latter dispersed on 18 May as it wasn’t considered needed after the German surrender.

    It was on this last convoy that the advanced Type IXD2 Schnorchel-fitted submarine, U-873 (Kptlt. Friedrich Steinhoff), was sighted on the surface at 0230 on 11 May off the Azores by Vance and her sister, Durant. Finding Steinhoff’s crew, illuminated by 24-inch searchlights and with every gun on two destroyers trained on them, ready to surrender and the boat making no offensive actions, Vance put a whaleboat with the ship’s XO, Lt. Carlton J. Schmidt, USCGR; Ensign Vance K. Randle, USCG; and 19 enlisted aboard to take U-873 as prize. They found seven Kriegsmarine officers and 52 enlisted, about half of whom had come from the gesunken U-604.

    By 0410, a spare U.S. ensign was hoisted aboard the German boat, and Vance, departing the convoy with her prize, made for Bermuda, then was directed to Casco Bay to bring the sub to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, arriving there on the 17th.

    U-873 is under her own power, manned by 2 officers and 19 crewmembers of USS Vance DE 387. Notably, U-873 carried a rare twin 3.7 cm Flakzwilling M43U on the DLM42 mount, seen stern. Photo courtesy of Joe Haberkern, son of Joseph W. Haberkern, Jr., MoMM2/C, Plankowner

    Captain Friedrich Steinhoff (wearing white cap) and Officers and Crew of Surrendered German U-873 on Deck of Tug, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, May 17, 1945. Note the Marine to the right with a Reising SMG at the ready. NARA photo

    Steinhoff under heavy Marine guard

    Crewmembers of USS Vance DE 387. Showing items from their captured German U-boat, U-873. Photo courtesy of Joe Haberkern, son of Joseph W. Haberkern, Jr., MoMM2/C, Plankowner

    Sadly, as detailed by U-boat.net, even though VE-Day was well past, post-war POW life would not be kind to U-873‘s crew.

    Steinhoff and his men were taken, not to POW camp, but to Charles Street Jail, a Boston city jail where they were locked up with common criminals while awaiting disposition to a POW camp. There are many accounts of mistreatment of the U-boat men while they were held there.

    After suffering harsh interrogation, Steinhoff- [brother of rocket scientist and future U.S> Army rocketry bright bulb Ernst Steinhoff] committed suicide on the morning of 19 May 1945, opening his arteries using broken glass from his sunglasses. U-873‘s doctor, Dr. Karl Steinke, attempted to give first aid but was too late.

    Steinhoff was buried in the military cemetery at Fort Devens, age 35, while the rest of his crew were sent to warm their skin in a Mississippi POW camp until repatriated.

    As for U-873, she was placed in dry dock for a design study of her type by Portsmouth Naval Shipyard engineers and then later transferred to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard for tests. After trials, the U-boat was scrapped in 1948, her lessons being rolled into the Navy’s GUPPY program.

    For Vance, her war in the Atlantic and Med was over.

    She put into Boston Naval Yard for additional AAA guns and departed on 2 July 1945 bound for the Pacific. Crossing through “The Ditch” and putting into San Diego then Pearl Harbor, she was there with orders to sail for the 5th Fleet in Philippine waters when news of the Japanese surrender overtook her.

    Ordered to the Green Cove Springs, Florida reserve fleet, she was decommissioned on 27 February 1946. Her Coast Guard crew returned to their home service, with most being demobilized. Her skipper for five of her eight convoy runs and the capture of U-873, LCDR Frank Vincent Helmer, USCG (USCGA ’35), would go on to retire as a rear admiral during the 1960s.

    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.

    This brings us to Vance, some seven years in Florida mothballs, being recommissioned as the white-painted USCGC Vance (WDE-487) on 9 May 1952. She was stationed at Honolulu, and, assigned to the Commander Philippine Section, served on Ocean Station Queen there from 2-23 August 1953, and again on 4-24 October 1953.

    Coast Guard Cutter Vance WDE 487 working with a Sangley Point USCG-operated PBM-5G, one of two PBM-5Gs and a JRF that were assigned to augment the PBY-5As there in 1951-53. Importantly, one of the Sangley Point PBMs went to attempt the rescue of a VP-22 P2V-5 Neptune (BuNo 127744) crew shot down in the Formosa Strait while the aircraft was on a covert patrol along the Communist Chinese coast near Swatow. USCG photo 211103-G-G0000-002

    Vance was decommissioned for a second time on 3 April 1954 and returned to the Navy.

    DER

    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 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 Vance 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 that would eventually be fitted 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

    Vance was towed to the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in November 1955 for conversion to a radar picket destroyer escort. Designated DER-378 as a result, she recommissioned for a second time on 5 October 1956, a 12-year-old Navy escort with its first Navy skipper, CDR Albert Martin Brouner (USNA ‘44).

    USS Vance (DER-387) underway in San Francisco Bay, California (USA), on 1 November 1956. Note her 3-inch guns are open, which would change in the 1960s when they would get distinctive weather shields. Photo via Navsource

    As detailed by DANFS:

    Between March of 1957 and the end of the year, Vance was homeported at Seattle, Wash., as a unit of CortDiv 5 and completed eight patrols on various stations of the Radar Early Warning System in the northern Pacific. Each tour lasted approximately 17 days, and the ship maintained a round-the-clock vigil with air-search radars, tracking and reporting every aircraft entering or approaching the air space of the northwestern United States.

    This continued into 1958 when she shifted homeports to Pearl Harbor; and she began operating with CortRon 7, the first ship working the DEW line in the newly organized Pacific barrier patrol. This would continue through early 1965, with a segway to join TF43 for Deepfreeze ’62, serving as the relay ship for aircraft bringing supplies to the Antarctic stations from Dunedin, New Zealand between August 1961 and March 1962. In this duty, she was called “The Loneliest Ship in the Navy.”

    Then came Vietnam.

    Market Time

    With the DEW line service fading as far as the Navy was concerned at the same time the Navy established Operation Market Time (March 1965-1972) to prevent North Vietnamese ships from supplying enemy forces in South Vietnam, recycling the fleet’s increasingly idle shallow-draft DERs into what would be today called a littoral combat ship was an easy choice.

    Vance would complete four WestPac cruises (March-Sept 1965, Jan.-August 1966, Dec. 1966- August 1967, Jan-Aug. 1968) with the 7th Fleet, detached to TF 115 for use in brown water. Of note, she was the first DER to take a Market Time station, reporting for duty to CTU 71.1.1 on 1 April 1965, and soon after was the first U.S. Navy ship to take aboard a Vietnamese Navy Liaison Officer while underway.

    USS VANCE South China Sea 1966. Note the weather shields on her 3-inch mount

    For example, during this time Task Force 115 consisted of an LST mothership, 70 Navy PCFs, 26 Coast Guard 82-foot patrol boats (WPBs), with the support of the “big boys” in the form of eight DERs (including Vance), and 16 smaller minesweepers (six MSCs, and 10 MSOs).

    USS Vance (DER-387) – November 1967. Note her Hedgehog device uncovered and ready to rock 

    A typical breakdown of how one of these deployments would run can be had from Vance’s 220-day 1967 stint which included 62 days on Market Time operations in the Vietnam littoral, 24 days on the tense Taiwan Patrol, and 15 days in Hong Kong as SOPA Admin station ship. To illustrate just how busy a Market Time rotation could be, in her short 1965 deployment which included just 92 days under TF 115, Vance had 1,538 radar contacts, sighted visually 1,001, and investigated 185 vessels.

    USS Vance (DER-387) underway at sea on 26 November 1967 NHHC

    Among the more notable incidents while on Market Time was saving Capt. Leland D. Holcomb, USAF, who had ejected from a burning F-100 Super Sabre in 1965 while on a ferry mission from Danang to Clark AFB in the PI. Her 1966, 1967, and 1968 reports are on file in the NHHC and make interesting and sometimes entertaining reading.

    Vance as radar picket 1960s with her glad rags flying. Note by this time the large EW “pod” on her aft mast.

    Oh yeah, something else happened while off Vietnam as well.

    The Arnheiter Affair

    LCDR Marcus Aurelius Arnheiter entered West Point in 1946 but subsequently resigned, later obtaining an appointment to Annapolis where he passed out as 628th of 783 mids in 1952 and then saw Korean War service on the battleship USS Iowa (BB-61). He later saw much service on destroyers (USS Ingersoll– where he served as XO– Fiske, Coolbaugh, Abbot, and Worden), held a series of staff appointments in the Pentagon where he authored a novel (Shadow of Pearl) under a pseudonym before arriving on Vance’s quarterdeck as her 14th (7th Navy) skipper on 22 December 1965.

    Just 99 days later, he was relieved of his first, and last, seagoing command.

    The scandal over just what happened in those 99 days aboard Vance is lengthy, including a book by NYT writer Neil Sheehan that was the subject of a libel suit filed by Arnheiter. Suffice it to say, there are avenues to dig deeper if you are curious but among the (many) oddities seen on Vance during Arnheiter’s command was the purchase (through MWR funds!) of a 16-foot fiberglass speedboat that was armed with a .30 caliber M1919 machine gun and painted with a shark’s mouth.

    The speedboat was supposed to be for interdiction and patrol work but ended up getting Vance’s crew into problems time after time.

    Other oddities included the skipper’s insistence to blare the Hellcat Reveille over the 1MC while in port rather than a simple bosun call for reveille, follow gun line destroyers into no-go areas while they were performing NGFS ashore to the point that said destroyer’s skipper directed the radio traffic be recorded and incident logged, establishing a “boner box” in the wardroom with mandatory levies of 25-cents per perceived infraction, requiring non-religious personnel to attend services, cruising danger close to shore (like within small arms range) while only one engine was working, doubling the small arms locker from 15 authorized M1 Garands to 30 without permission then holding wild live-fire drills in congested waters (to include reportedly keeping a rifle on the bridge wing that the skipper would use to zip off rounds at random “sea snakes” while VBSS crews were away checking a sampan.)

    Following a six-day non-judicial inquiry at Subic, Arnheiter was removed from his command quietly but not reprimanded or court-martialed, even though he repeatedly requested the latter to clear his name, even lobbying Congress. He ended up retiring from the service in 1971, still as an LCDR, and passed in 2009, aged 83. Sheehan died in 2021, likely closing the matter although both continue to be the subject of much conversation.

    As for USS Vance, her usefulness ended following extensive Vietnam service, she was decommissioned on 10 October 1969.

    Her fellow DERs shared a similar fate, either laid up in mothballs or transferred to overseas allies.

    1973 Janes on the Edsall class DERs.

    Stricken on June 1, 1975, Vance was used as a target for several years off the California coast until finally sent to the bottom in deep water in a 1985 SINKEX.

    Vance in August 1983 when being used as a target ship off San Francisco. The sign amidships reads “Target Ship – Stand Clear.” Photo from Ozzie Henry who acquired them from a sailor at a DESA Convention. Via the USS Vance veterans’ group.

    Vance received seven battle stars for USN service in Vietnam in addition to her USCG service in WWII and Korea.

    Epilogue

    Vance’s war history, plans, and diaries are in the National Archives.

    Vance’s memories are carried forward by a well-organized veterans’ group and they last had a reunion last October in Georgia.

    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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    Making it Rain, Guam & Caron edition

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    Of the 22 U.S. Navy warships and auxiliaries tasked with supporting Operation Urgent Fury– the invasion of Grenada– some 40 years ago this week, two really stand out, the old ‘phib USS Guam (LPH-9) and the newer Sprucan, USS Caron (DD-970).

    Guam gets a big nod, of course, because, of the 116 American servicemen wounded in the four-day operation, Guam treated no less than 77 in her cramped hospital suite after they were medivaced to her deck just offshore.

    Speaking of which, Guam was also the main launching/refueling point for the helicopters of the 82nd Airborne and 22nd MAU for the operation and logged a whopping 1,214 launchings and landings in Urgent Fury.

    Flight deck crewmen hose down a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter upon its landing aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Guam (LPH 9) during Operation Urgent Fury, October 25, 1983. The helicopter’s engine was hit by anti-aircraft fire on the island of Grenada. JO1 Sundberg. DN-SN-85-02069

    Flight operations take place aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Guam (LPH 9) off the coast of Grenada during Operation Urgent Fury. Visible on the flight deck are two UH-1N Iroquois helicopters, a CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter, and a CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter. JO1 Sundberg. October 25, 1983. DN-SN-85-02037

    But if Guam’s “Grenada Get Away” is largely forgotten, Caron’s is never even mentioned, which is a crying shame.

    Commissioned 1 October 1977 at Pascagoula, USS Caron is the only warship ever named for HC3c Wayne Maurice Caron, a MoH recipient who gave his last full measure at age 21 as a corpsman with 3d/7th Marines in Vietnam, mortally wounded while going to save those who needed him.

    The destroyer that carried his name lived up to it in Grenada.

    As detailed by DANFS:

    After embarking Capt. Grant A. Sharp, Commander, DesRon 32, on 19 October 1983, Caron got underway for deployment to the Mediterranean the following day as part of the Independence Battle Group. However, on 21 October, Caron was detached from the battle group and diverted to Grenada at “max speed” in support of Operation Urgent Fury.

    As the first U.S. Navy ship to arrive on the scene on 23 October 1983, Caron paused 12 miles off the coast of Grenada to gather intelligence. With the Special Forces amphibious assault on the island already underway, in the early morning hours of 25 October, destroyer Moosbrugger (DD-980) and guided missile frigate Clifton Sprague (FFG-16) joined Caron, and the ships steamed at 25 knots for Point Saline with their arrival planned for daybreak. While advancing toward the island, Caron recovered a small craft with 12 Special Forces troops embarked that had been carried to sea by strong currents. Later in the morning while conducting a search and rescue operation for a downed Bell AH-1T Cobra of Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 261 near St. George’s Harbor, Caron avoided enemy mortar rounds while operating close to shore.

    On the afternoon of the 25th, Caron fired her 5-inch guns towards the site of the communist propaganda station “Radio Free Grenada,” allowing a 12-man Navy Sea, Air and Land (SEAL) team to evade enemy forces surrounding their position there. That night, as fighting continued to rage on the island, Caron responded to a visual signal from shore and rescued ten of the SEALs who had escaped from the radio transmitter site, two of whom had suffered serious injuries. While Caron’s medical staff treated the wounded men, the destroyer directed Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawks to the beach to rescue the two remaining SEALs from the team. The following evening, the ship also saved 11 U.S. Army Rangers whose helicopter had crashed.

    Caron remained on the scene at Grenada through 2 November 1983. During this time, she continued to patrol within range of hostile gunfire, ready to provide naval gunfire support for land and amphibious troops. All told, Caron’s search and rescue efforts saved 41 soldiers and sailors. “Caron demonstrated in a wartime environment what our forces are capable of,” Capt. Sharp remarked, “and the readiness that ‘Can-Do’ Caron is known for.” For her actions in the Grenadian conflict, Caron received the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal.

    Artwork: “USS Caron Neutralizes Radio Free Grenada – Beausejour Bay”. by Mike Leahy, via the Naval History and Heritage Command. U.S. Navy Combat Art Center, Washington Navy Yard. U.S. Navy photo by the Navy Audiovisual Center.DN-SC-85-07100.

    She would keep her guns blistered in the coming weeks.

    Escorting Guam and the 22nd MAU from Grenada to Lebanon, she would be called for NGFS ashore on 8 February 1984, plastering enemy positions with 450 5-inch shells, then follow up on another fire call on 25-26 February, firing 141.

    Keep in mind that Spruance-class tin cans only had enough room for about 1,200 rounds of assorted 5-inch in their magazines, if they were fully loaded.

    Caron later received the Navy Expeditionary Medal for her service off Lebanon.

    As for retirement, Guam decommissioned on 25 August 1998 after 33 years of service and was disposed of in a SINKEX three years later while Caron, decommissioned on 15 October 2001 after just 24 years, would likewise be deep-sixed at the hands of the same Navy she once served so well.

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