Official caption: “Mekong Delta, Republic of Vietnam. US Navy Gunner’s Mate Third Class Barry Johnson returns enemy fire with the M-60 machine gun on board his US Navy River Patrol Boat (PBR). The enemy opened fire on the PBR as it moved along a canal near Tan Dinh Island during Operation Bold Dragon III, 26 March 1968.”
U.S. Navy Photo 428GX-K46404
Note the C-ration can used to keep the ammo belt in line without an assistant gunner, a common hack in Vietnam.
There is also another from the same angle.
U.S. Navy Photo 428GX-K46403
Note the locally-made River Div 532 (Navy River Division Five Three Two) patch, a PBR group of 10 boats that typically worked from moored gator mother ship USS Harnett County (LST-821) in the Mekong Delta.
Marolda and Dunnavent mention 532 at least twice in their work on the Brown Water Navy, most notably in this section, covering operations in Feb. 1969’s Operation Giant Slingshot on the Vam Co Dong River:
River Division 532 commanded by Lieutenant George Stefencavage was one of the most successful units in Giant Slingshot. Between 8 February and 4 April, the PBR unit killed more than 100 of the enemy while suffering the loss of two PBRs and four Sailors. Stefencavage and over half of the men in his command were wounded during the period. On 28 February, in a typical action, the PBRs surprised and dispersed a Viet Cong ambush force but then took heavy fire from another position nearby. Without hesitation, Stefancavage, even though he was already wounded in several places, led his command against the threat and silenced the remaining guerrillas. The Navy awarded him a Silver Star for his bravery.
CDR Stefencavage (Moorhead ROTC ’52) retired from the Navy in 1984, with his last command being the XO at Philadelphia Naval Base. He passed in 1990.
As detailed by the head of Naval Surface Forces, VADM Brendan McLane, during the annual Surface Navy Association conference this week, warships expended some 400 pieces of ordnance in defense against incoming threats from Iranian/Houthi rebels over the past 15 months.
120 SM-2 missiles.
80 SM-6 missiles.
20 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles (ESSM) and SM-3 missiles.
160 rounds from destroyers and cruisers’ five-inch main guns.
The last one is great news, as the anti-air capability of the MK 45 5″/54 and 5″/62— especially when using proximity (VTF and IR) rounds– has been often overlooked. I mean they have a published effective AA range of 23,000 feet and can fire 20 rounds in the first minute of going hot.
Datasheets inbound:
LCS Combat!
One interesting tidbit not included in the above table is that an LCS has been bloodied in battle as well, with the USS Indianapolis (LCS 17) recently earning a Combat Action Ribbon and Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal, the first for her type, “after shooting down Houthi drones and missiles in the Red Sea.”
Indy, a Freedom-variant littoral combat ship, just completed an 18-month deployment, which included two exchanges of command between LCS Crew 112 and LCS Crew 118.
Now, unclear is if Indy got in shots on said incoming vampires, and if so was it from her 57mm gun, her Sea-Ram, or her embarked MH-60 from HSC 28. It was also recently detailed that a Seahawk downed a Houthi drone via its 7.62mm door gun last month, so that’s a possibility.
“What this team of amazing Americans achieved over the course of this deployment will pay dividends in the maintenance planning and tactics development arenas for years to come,” said Cmdr. Matthew Arndt, USS Indianapolis’ Commanding Officer. “As the workhorse of the Arabian Gulf, Indy executed the lower tier missions necessary to maintaining good diplomatic relations in the Middle East which allowed Standard Missile shooters to reposition to deal with bad actors in the Red Sea. I think it’s pretty special that we were able to provide the 5th Fleet commander with more tools and options to aid in the free flow of commerce through a contested waterway.”
Short Cruise on a Destroyer Escort, By Ernie Pyle:
“So now I’m a D-E sailor. Full-fledged one. Drenched from head to foot with salt water. Sleep with a leg crooked around your rack so you won’t fall out. Put wet bread under your dinner tray to keep it from sliding.
They are rough-and-tumble little ships. Their afterdecks are laden with depth charges. They can turn in half the space of a Destroyer. Their forward guns can seldom be used, because waves are breaking over them.
They roll and they plunge. They buck and they twist. They shudder and they fall through space. Their sailors say they should have flight pay and sub pay both — they’re in the air half the time, underwater half the time. Their men are accustomed to being wet and think nothing of it.
I came back from the northern waters on a D-E. When a wave comes over and you get soaked and a sailor laughs and says, ‘Now you’re a D-E sailor,’ it makes you feel kind of proud.”
Destroyer Escort, WGT (Butler) type, plows into heavy seas, during operations in support of the Lingayen Gulf invasion, 12 January 1945. USS Colorado (BB-45) is steaming in the distance. Photographed from the escort carrier USS Makin Island (CVE-93) 80-G-301255
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Warship Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025: Frozen Comanche
USCG image.
Above we see the 165-foot (A) Algonquin-class U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Comanche (WPG 76) with her warpaint on, circa 1942, while part of the oft-forgotten Greenland Patrol during WWII. With Greenland and its defense in the news right now, it is worth revisiting the ship that started the whole discussion, so to speak.
The Algonquins
In 1934, the Coast Guard moved to construct a half dozen new ice-strengthened patrol gunboats (by Navy standards). These were based on the successful circa 1915 165-foot ice-breaking cutter Ossipee (WPG 50) but constructed with a reinforced belt at the waterline and a cutaway forefoot, features that, combined with their geared turbine drives– the first for the USCG– were thought capable of breaking up to two feet of sea ice.
USCGC Ossipee, view taken circa 1916, shortly after her completion. NH 89751
Coast Guard 165-foot cutter Ossipee, Boston Navy Yard, April 1932. Note her 3-inch guns forward. Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection
The plating doubled around the bow, the cutaway forefoot, short length, and medium draft made these cutters good ice boats. They had a heavy steel belt around the vessel at the waterline and relatively short bilge keels, so in a seaway they had a tendency to roll considerably.
Built for a total of just under $3 million in Public Works Administration construction allotments, three of these new cutters– Algonquin (WPG-75), Comanche, and Mohawk (WPG-78) — were awarded on 14 October 1934 with Pusey & Jones Company of Wilmington, Delaware while a week later on 23 October a second trio– USCGC Escanaba (WPG-77), Onondaga (WPG-79) and Tahoma (WPG-80)-– were contracted with Defoe on the Great Lakes at Bay City, Michigan.
Using a pair of side-by-side Foster-Wheeler high-pressure boilers to feed a centerline 1,500shp Westinghouse double-reduction geared turbine mated to a single screw, the Algonquins could make a paint-peeling 12.8 knots at full RPMs or a more economical 9.4 knots, with the latter allowing a 5,000nm range– long enough legs to wallow across the Atlantic if need be or pull far-off Bering Sea and International Ice Patrols.
Algonquin on trials in the Delaware River, 1934
A peacetime crew of six officers and 56 men could handle the cutter and a main battery of two 3″/50 guns, curiously arranged abreast of each other on the foc’sle, backed up by a pair of two quaint old 6-pounders off the bridge wings, provided a top-side armament. Typical of Coast Guard cutters for the time, the 3-inchers were almost always well greased up and covered, only fired on annual gunnery exercises, while the 6-pounders were used more liberally for law enforcement, saluting, line-throwing, and signaling. Typical peacetime allowances per cutter included 55 service rounds and 110 “Navy” blanks per 6-pounder and 60 service rounds per 3-incher.
There were also enough small arms to send a light platoon-sized (30-man) landing force ashore, arranged in a six-man HQ team, two eight-man rifle squads, and an eight-man machine gun detachment. The 1938 small arms allowance for cutters of this size was for 40 M1903 Springfield rifles with bayonets and slings, 15 M1911 pistols with two magazines apiece, two M1917 Lewis guns, and at least one Thompson sub gun, all fed by 2,400 rounds of .30 caliber ball for the Lewis guns and rifles and a whopping 6,000 of .45 ACP for the pistols and Tommy guns. A full 38 sets of “landing force gear”, including a FAK, mess kit, canteen, web belt with pouches, haversack, and pack carrier, were stored for such use.
Coast Guard cutter crew made up in landing force kit. Note the M1903 Springfield rifles. USCG Historian’s Office, CG-09231220211-G-G0000-025
These cutters also had magazines for legacy 238-pound guncotton or smaller new 150-pound TNT electrically detonated “wrecking mines” used in destroying derelicts– or in reducing hazardous icebergs and blasting paths in the ice sheet.
Coast Guard destroying a derelict with TNT mines. March 1927. An explosion on the water throws lumber through the air. In the foreground is the railing of a Coast Guard ship with the American flag flying. The caption reads, “Destroying a derelict with TNT mines. The Coast Guard destroys or removes from the path of navigation hundreds of such derelicts each year.” NARA 26-G-03-21-27(1)
As detailed by a 1935 Yachtsman article, these cutters typically carried a 36-foot motor launch with a 20hp engine, two 26-foot Monomoy-type surf boats, and a 19-foot surf boat, the latter three vessels oar-powered.
Electrified, these cutters had an extensive radio suite (three transmitters and four receivers) with the vessel’s radio call letters prominently displayed for overhead aircraft, interior and topside lighting, refrigerators and reefers sufficient for length patrols, and a pair of remote-controlled 12-inch incandescent searchlights on the flying bridge overhead.
Meet Comanche
Our cutter is the second to carry the name of the fierce Native American tribe in the USCG.
The first, a 170-foot vessel which was the service’s first attempt at a “modern” steam cutter in 1897, originally commissioned as the USRC Windom and, after serving during the Spanish-American War and the Great War, policed against rumrunners in the Gulf of Mexico during Prohibition before she was disposed of in 1930.
The original USCGC Comanche, formerly USRC Windom, seen in 1920. CG Historian’s Photo.
Our Comanche, laid down at Pusey & Jones in late 1933, was launched in September 1934 and commissioned in December.
Comanche seen on 26 November 1934, post-delivery but before commissioning in a rare period color photo. Note she does not have her Navy-owned main and secondary batteries fitted yet but does have her gleaming white hull, buff stack and masts, and black cap.
The Coast Guard has never been overstaffed, and the plankowners of her first crew were transferred hot from the old cutter Gresham, which was being decommissioned for the first time and was co-located at Wilmington. As Gresham still had stores aboard while Comanche did not, her crew had to walk back to their old cutter for meals for the first several days.
Her 1934 deck log for commissioning, detailing her initial five officers and four men transferred from the USCG inspector office at the builder’s yard, while 43 other men came from Gresham:
One of her enlisted inherited from Gresham, 44-year-old S1c Maurice D. Jester, listed above, had volunteered for the service in 1917 as a surfman. A chief boatswain mate by 1941, Jester was given a temporary lieutenant’s commission post-Pearl Harbor and, in command of the 165-foot USCGC Icarus (WPC-110), would sink one of the first U-boats (U-352) by an American ship in WWII, earning a Navy Cross in the process.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
Comanche was stationed at Stapleton, New York, on Staten Island, and carried out the typical varied missions of the Coast Guard, often deploying to Florida for patrols and naval training exercises in the summer.
CGC Comanche in service, 1930s. Note that she has her armament installed
A page covering a typical day while on one such stint deployed to the Sunshine State:
Having an ice-cruncher bow, she also pulled down the additional task of light ice-breaking on the Hudson River in winter.
Comanche Hudson River ice patrol, Saugerties, 1938
Comanche Hudson River Ice Patrol, 1939
March 1936. “This image depicts the Coast Guard cutter Comanche, which found the pictured vessels stuck fast in the ice off Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and broke the ice to free them.” NARA 26-G-04-27-36(8)
War! (In Denmark)
Despite being neutral, Denmark was invaded by Germany on 9 April 1940.
German Linienschiff Schleswig-Holstein off Denmark on April 9, 1940, sending landing forces ashore
This led to a tense occupation that, for the first three years or so, still “allowed” the Danes to keep their military, so long as it remained in skeletal format, hiding in its garrisons and ports.
The majority of the ships of the Royal Danish Navy would be immolated or drowned by their faithful crews in August 1943 when the Germans moved to capture them once the veil of civility was removed from the occupation. Despite being almost totally disarmed and de-fueled to comply with German armistice requirements, a handful of vessels managed to make it across the Oresund to neutral Sweden or were lost trying.
A few vessels outside of metropolitan Denmark- such as the two armed Icelandic Coast Guard cutters Aegir and Odinn and two smaller vessels in Greenland waters, which we will get to- escaped German custody or destruction to prevent such custody. A beautiful 212-foot three-masted schoolship, the Danmark, filled with Danish merchant marine and naval cadets, was on an extended visit to America in 1940 and would end up clocking in after Pearl Harbor, crew included, to train over 5,000 USCG and USMM officer cadets during the war as USCGC Danmark (WIX-283).
Meanwhile, in giant colonial Greenland, the world’s largest island, the entire armed Danish military presence in April 1940 amounted to the Royal Danish Navy inspektionsskip Maagen and opmålingsskib (survey ship) Ternen. Small shallow draft sailing cutters with auxiliary diesels had an 11-member crew, a single ancient low-angle 3-pounder (37mm) M/84 cannon, and some small arms. Four larger corvette/frigate-sized inspection ships existed– Besytteren, Islands Falk, Hvidbjornen, and Ingolf— but were in Denmark getting ready for their summer patrols and thus were trapped there under German occupation.
The Royal Danish Navy’s opmålingsskib (survey ship) Ternen, left, and inspektionsskip Maagen, right, wintered in Greenland waters and thus were there in April 1940, escaping German capture. They were small cutters, at about 70 feet oal and 100 tons displacement, good for about 8 knots on their single diesel engine.
Other than the two cutters, the only other armed body in Greenland was the police under their inspector (Politiinspektør for Østkysten), the multi-hatted Danish polar explorer Ejnar Mikkelsen– who was back in Denmark at the time. The force had two stations (politistationer), at Eskimonæs (to cover the Norddistriktet) and Ella Ø (to cover the Syddistriktet), with just two officers at each location. This was to enforce the law over a territory about three times larger than Texas. Even this token group was only created in 1933 to answer the dispute with Norway over what was called Erik Raudes Land in north-east Greenland, with the League of Nations arbitrating that if Denmark wanted to continue to claim all Greenland as its territory, it had to maintain a permanent presence.
Although Norse settlements went back to the 9th Century, the island’s population in 1940 was still just hovering around 18,000, and the four police officers and 22 navy personnel described above were all that was needed for its constabulary purposes.
Worse, there were some serious German efforts to win the hearts and minds of the locals via a “religious mission” in Nuuk, which sent emissaries out to isolated settlements along the coast.
a small group of Greenlandic Nazi sympathizers in Sisimiut, where anti-Danish sentiment is said to have been particularly pronounced among parts of the Greenlandic population. Based on eyewitness accounts, Vinding reports on the practices and symbols of the Nazi movement, whose followers are said to have saluted with arms on Adolf Hitler’s birthday, taught children the “Sieg Heil” at school, adapted their sealskin boots (kamikker) to look like military boots, and adopted the German salute. Last but not least, the members of the group are said to have worn swastika armbands decorated with an upright polar bear outside the white circle. According to Vinding, two catechists trained in Nuuk are said to have spread the gospel of National Socialism in the North Greenland colony. In Nuuk, the friendliness towards Germany was notorious at times and even divided Danish officials on this issue. However, the friendly attitude towards Nazi Germany in the Greenlandic administrative capital did not [according to Vinding] turn into “pure Nazism”.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military had long bumped along the Greenland coast, including the Navy visiting it during the Polaris expedition of 1871–1873, the Juniata and Jeannette expeditions in 1873 and 1879-81, the Greely Relief Expedition in 1884, and the well-known Peary Arctic Expedition in 1898-1901.
In 1928, the 125-foot USCGC Marion carried out two full months of extensive oceanographic and iceberg studies of the region, fleshing out charts and adding to the general knowledge of the 450,000 sq. miles of the Davis Strait, with copies forwarded to the Danish Hydrographic Office. Her skipper was LT Edward Hanson “Iceberg” Smith, a polar ice nerd who had attended MIT before joining the Revenue Cutter Service in 1910, loved working the International Ice Patrol, and went on to attain a Ph.D. in oceanography from Harvard.
USCGC Marion alongside a glacier in Baffin Bay, Canada. August 1928. The Active-class patrol boat, built for the Rum War, would go on to serve through WWII and was only disposed of in 1962. NH 46401
In 1933, the American Geographical Society wrapped up a trip to nearly all the fjords in Greenland between 72°30’ and 74°North latitude, including photogrammetric mapping of the valleys, glaciers, and mountains, and depth charting the fjords with echo-sounding equipment. Five years later, American meteorologist Clifford MacGregor conducted a groundbreaking study on the formation of polar air masses over Greenland.
To complicate things, the chief industry in Greenland in 1940 was an immense and strategically important cryolite mine at Ivittuut (Invigtut, also seen as Ivigtut)– a vital mineral used at the time to smelt aluminum. The largest known natural deposit of cryolite in the world was at Ivittuut, where about 150 mostly Canadian and Scandinavian miners toiled in the pits for the rare substance under the employ of the Kryolith Mine-og Handelsselskabet A/S.
Kryolitminen, Ivigtut, Greenland, 1937. The ships are the Danish patrol gunboat Hvidbjørnen (right) and the mines tender, the 1,200-ton coaster SS Julius Thomsen. Hvidbjørnen, trapped in Denmark in 1940, was scuttled by her crew during the war, while Thomsen, taken over by the British, survived and kept up a regular transit between Canada and America and the mine during the war. THM-18645
With all this in mind, the two Danish Landsfogeder (governors) of Greenland, Eske Brun and Aksel Svane, invoked a 1925 emergency clause that allowed the colony to govern itself in the event of war. Moving forward, the Landsfogeder coordinated with the Danish ambassador in Washington, Henrik Kauffmann, to act as a sovereign nation per the Monroe Doctrine for the U.S. to protect Greenland and keep it neutral.
Kauffmann met with his American counterparts in D.C. on 10 April 1940, the day after the Germans rolled into Denmark. The response was warm.
But first, there needed to be a U.S. presence in Greenland.
Comanche to the rescue!
With the State Department in high gear to recognize the new (if temporary) independent government in Greenland and with the blessing of the island’s local administrative councils, Comanche, then in New York City’s Pier 18, made ready to sail in early May 1940. This shortcutted the planned British “Force X” being organized in Canada to seize the island.
Comanche took aboard Consul James K. Penfield and Vice-consul George L. West on State Department orders. Also sailing on the cutter would be Maurice R. Reddy, the assistant director of the American Red Cross, tasked with assessing Greenland’s need for supplies as the last ship from Denmark had arrived the previous October. She also carried a detachment of five spare Coast Guard radiomen, which would be landed to operate the infant consulate’s radio station and provide security.
Every nook and cranny of the 165-foot cutter was packed with extra provisions, heavy on canned goods, salted meats, and tinned fish. The crew was issued heavy sheepskin coats and purchased commercial in the city’s garment district. Also included as cargo, as detailed by the New York Times, was a “complete outfit of office furniture for the consulate,” and a “fairly large quantity of lumber fastened down on the forward deck. It was supplied to the Red Cross and will be used to build sheds to shelter supplies sent later.”
The poor little 165-foot Comanche was so loaded down (thanks largely to the superhuman efforts of the Despatch Agent, Mr. Fyfe) that even the Captain’s shower was stuffed with boxes of books, skis, snowshoes, rubber boots and duffle bags full of parkas, woolen underwear and heavy socks. But in spite of its load it pitched and rolled its way to St. Johns with such gusto that we thought we’d never know the meaning of the word horizontal again, except in the very unsatisfactory relative sense of a body in a bunk (when it wasn’t pitched out onto the deck).
Leaving NYC on 10 May 1940– the same day Germany invaded neutral Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands on his sweep through the Lowlands while the British preemptively occupied Iceland for the Allies– the little overseas mission arrived at Godthab (now Nuuk), on Greenland’s west coast, on 20 May.
A thrilled-looking U.S. Consul James K. Penfield (right) and Vice Consul George L. West Jr. (left) arrive in Greenland aboard Cutter Comanche. (Acme News Pictures Inc. 1940).
Discharging her cargo and passengers, Comanche proceeded 200nm down the coast to become a station ship at Arsuk Fjord, directly adjacent to the cryolite mining concern.
Soon, 14 Coastguardsmen recently “discharged” from the service took up newly established positions as uniformed security guards on the staff of the Invigtut cryolite mine, paid a hefty $125 per month (the average non-rate in the USCG made about $50 a month) for the next 12 months with a $225 bonus for completing the contract, all paid by the local Greenland government. The funds to pay these guards, as well as to buy a “surplus” 3″/50 gun, eight Lewis guns, and 55 M1903 rifles landed via USCG cutter, along with shells and bullets for said ordnance, came from a $1 million cash deal from Uncle Sam for local goods negotiated by Brun in a delegation carried back to America by the USCGC Campbell.
This original detachment was soon joined by a 15th man, late from the interned training ship Danmark. A replacement shift of 20 similarly recruited “newly civilianized” USCG men would arrive in July 1941 and guard the mine until May 1942, when the U.S. Army took over the watch.
Comanche at Shipshaven, Ivigtut Greenland 1941
Besides Comanche, two larger cutters soon followed: the 327-foot Treasury class cutters Campbell (June 1940) and Duane (August), with both of the 5-inch gunned twin-screwed cutters suffering issues in the ice. By 10 September, both the 327s were sent back to the U.S. The icebreaking USCG Northland also arrived in August and would operate on the wild east coast of Greenland, where a plan was made with local officials to clear the remote Northeast coastline of its 20-odd inhabitants with the assistance of the Free Norwegian Navy gunboat Fridtjof Nansen.
Comanche was relieved at Ivittuut on 4 September 1940 by the 250-foot Lake class cutter Cayuga. By January 1941, Northland and Cayuga had returned to the U.S. for the worst of the winter, leaving behind the 15 guards at the mine and five radiomen at the consulate to hold down the island until April 1941, when Cayuga and Northland would return.
Meet the Greenland Patrol
On the first anniversary of Germany’s occupation of Denmark, 9 April 1941, the U.S. and Greenland entered into a formal defense agreement.
With a special U.S. survey team carried by Cayuga to Greenland, working from Ternen and the local Greenland administration’s motorboat JP Koch, coupled with Northland’s J2F Duck, efforts were made to map the coast. The 240-foot USCGC Modoc (WPG-46) arrived in May and joined the efforts– coming uncomfortably close to the running fight against the German battleship Bismarck and the Royal Navy in the process.
On 1 June 1941, the South Greenland Patrol, under USCG LCDR H.G. Beford, was established around Modoc (flag) Comanche, the 110-foot icebreaking harbor tug USCGC Raritan (WYT-93), and the famed polar schooner Bowdoin (commissioned in the Navy on 16 June as IX-50).
A week later, the sister organization, the Northeast Greenland Patrol, was formed in Boston around Northland, USCGC North Star, and the 70-year-old retired cutter Bear, the latter recommissioned in naval service as USS Bear (AG-29). The force would be led by now-LCDR Iceberg Smith, USCG.
With the two patrols consolidating in Greenland waters by mid-July, by early August, the first PBY flying boats were arriving, the first maritime aircraft based year-round on the island. The PBYs would eventually be operated by a dedicated unit, Patrol Squadron Six (VP-6 CG) as an all-Coast Guard outfit home-based at Narsarssuak (Narsarsuaq), Greenland, a base soon coded as Bluie West One (BW-1).
By early September, Comanche, with an Army survey team aboard, was back in local waters making reconnaissance patrols of the Southeast Greenland fjords. She would later go on to establish the lce Cap Station at Igtip Kangertiva, a bay on Greenland’s southeast coast that went on to be dubbed “Comanche Bay” for obvious reasons, as well as Weather Station Able (later Bluie West 7) at Gronne Dal (Grønnedal).
The survey work by these cutters and aircraft resulted in the 178-page volume “Greenland Pilot & Sailing Directions” by 1941.
Quietly, the entire Coast Guard was transferred to the Department of the Navy on 1 November 1941, by Executive Order 8929, although it should be noted that, under E.O. 8767 of June 1941, the USCG was authorized to operate as a part of the Navy.
USN ONI 56 Escanaba class 165As, including Comanche and Onondaga
Eventually, there were upwards of 25 Allied– primarily American– bases in Greenland during WWII.
At its height, some 5,500 military personnel were based on the island.
(Note Comanche Bay)
In 1942 alone, 86,000 tons of cryolite were shipped to the U.S. and Canada for use in aluminum production.
Meanwhile, on 26 June 1942, the first large-scale trans-Atlantic ferry flights of Allied military aircraft to Britain using Greenland and Iceland began. Comanche was there, as noted by her XO in a post-war interview, serving as the visual aide and radio beacon at the fjord entrance to the main airbase, Narsarsuak, for the first USAAF trans-Atlantic flight of B-17s. The ship logged the arrival of 26 B-17s on that first day, from 2:40 am to 10:30 pm.
The so-called North Atlantic Route saw three fields in Greenland– Narsarssuak (BW-1), Angmagssalik (Bluie East 2), and Sondrestrom (BW-8)– used as a stopover between Maine/Newfoundland and Iceland, trans-shipping as many as 300-400 aircraft per month, primarily B-17, B-24, and B-25 bombers, to Europe.
B-17s ferry flight through Greenland, Jan 1945 U.S. Air Force Number 122001AC 342-FH_000017
War comes to the Greenland Patrol.
Comanche was tied up at Ivigtut on 7 December 1941, a dry Sunday that saw local temperatures hovering around 34 degrees. By that point, she had spent most of the previous 19 months in the Danish colony’s waters.
While I can’t find that the Germans ever attempted a serious move against the cryolite mine at Invigtut, they did come to Greenland in search of something else.
As early as 11 September 1941, the cutter North Star, visiting Eskimonaes, had a report from local hunters of a flagless two-masted steamer poking around Young Sound. Chased down the next day, the steamer was the 105-foot Norwegian sealer Buskoe, which had delivered a German agent– Jacob R. Bradley– and meteorological personnel ashore.
With a need to help forecast the weather in Europe and the Atlantic, and being cut off from meteorological reports from Canada in 1939 and America in 1941, the Germans needed weather stations in the Arctic. This led to somewhat disjointed efforts by the German Army, Luftwaffe, and Kriegsmarine weather services to establish their own. Even the Abwehr got involved with their own hybrid weather/listening stations.
The Kriegsmarine sowed the icy Barents and Greenland Seas with at least 15 unmanned Wetterfunkgerät See (WFS) radio-transmitting weather buoys. While their employment would seem ideal, these 33-foot-tall buoys were not well-liked by the U-boat crews tasked with deploying them as they took nearly two hours of assembly on the surface in calm seas with the boat’s torpedo crane as muscle– and that’s if everything went right. Plus, they had a planned lifespan of 10 weeks once deployed, but most of them went dark well short of that.
Most of the 15 assorted manned stations were established in Svalbard (Spitzbergen) while one (Schatzgräber) was set up off Russia’s arctic coast on Franz Josef Land. An unmanned station was even set up (and only found decades later) on the coast of Labrador!
As part of this, the Kriegsmarine moved to establish no less than four fixed (Edelweiss I and II, Holzauge, and Bassgeiger) as well as one migratory (Zugvogel, on sea ice) weather station in Greenland during the war.
The counter to this was Greenland’s first and only army, the locally-recruited Nordøstgrønlands Slædepatrulje (Northeast Greenland Sledge Patrol), which blended Danish police officers and Danish, Greenlandic and Norwegian fur trappers into an irregular force, almost devoid of military training, that would get into at least two firefights with German weather troops along the 700-mile stretch of Greenland’s most rugged coastline.
The Northeast Greenland Sledge Patrol would grow to 27 members during WWII. Armed with their own hunting rifles and a few short M1889 Danish Krag engineer carbines (ingeniørkarabin) and uniformed only with an armband, one member of the patrol would perish in a fight with weather station Holzauge personnel.
The Germans, for their part, sometimes went on the offensive, with their own patrols burning down half of Greenland’s police stations, when they attacked the Eskimonæs station (BE-5) in March 1943, driving off the two Danes in residence at the time. While destroying radio and weather equipment, they were good enough to leave a storage shed with food largely untouched and the post’s Danish flag unceremoniously stuffed into a box
The station was attacked by a German force on the night of March 23-24, 1943. The Germans burned the main building but first took down the flag and left it in a box. Note the kennels of the sled patrol.
It was in this atmosphere that the Greenland Patrol carried on its war.
Original caption: White Phantoms of the Northern Seas. The breathless beauty of an iceberg floating from the Arctic holds the gaze of Coast Guardsmen, lining the rail of a combat cutter. Frequently, the sturdy Coast Guard Cutters on the Greenland Patrol encounter these floating islands of glistening ice – dazzling to look upon but hazardous to the ships that pass over the northern lanes.
Coast Guard in Greenland: USCG crew on a water-cooled .50 caliber Browning mans their gun on patrol. 17 October 1942. NARA 26-G-10-17-42(2) 205580166
Kungnat Bay, Greenland. Coast Guard sentry keeps watch as the armed trawler USCGC Arundel (WYT-90) lends assistance to a freighter in the middle distance, 1 February 1943. 26-G-3491
The ensuing so-called “Weather War” saw well-armed and J2F-4 amphibian-equipped USCG combat icebreakers round up 60 German POWs, smashing two weather stations in the process while capturing a third that was recently evacuated, and chasing down three armed Kriegsmarine trawlers– Kehdingen, Coburg, and Externsteine, taking the last as a prize in October 1944.
This image depicts a Coast Guardsman on watch aboard a vessel in Greenland, painted by Coast Guard Combat Artist Norman Millet Thomas, in February 1943. NARA 26-G-02-06-43(1)
This image depicts a USCG landing party from the cutter Northland (WPG-49) gathering captured German remote radio-weather station equipment that had been parachuted in on Northeast Greenland, in September 1943. Note the M1903 Springfields, shaggy dog, and the mixture of blue, grey, and OD Navy and Army gear. NARA 26-G-3501
German POWs on deck of the USCGC Northland (WPG-49) in 1944 as part of the Weather War off Greenland. These may be from the Cape Sussie weather station (Unternehmen Bassgeige), taken down in late July 1944, and landed by the German trawler Coburg.
Comanche at times also served as a floating kennel, running sled dogs from location to location in addition to her work clearing paths through the ice, standing guard at the cryolite mine, and escorting convoys.
From her July 1943 deck log:
Fighting Arctic Wolves
Besides the defense of the cryolite mine and the skirmishes of the Weather War already mentioned, it should be pointed out that the fight against German U-boats, even in these frozen waters off Greenland, was very real.
On 4 September 1941– three full months before Pearl Harbor, the destroyer USS Greer (DD-145) narrowly missed a torpedo fired by U-652 in Greenlandic waters while en route to Iceland.
Comanche served on numerous convoys (SG-19, SG-29, SG-30, SG-37, SG-52, SG-74, GS-27, GS-34, GS-39 et.al.) running ships from Newfoundland to Greenland and back, often tossing ash cans and Mousetrap rockets on suspect underwater contacts.
Comanche, still in her peacetime scheme, escorting SS Munago, 1941, South Greenland, Peary Museum
Comanche in her wartime outfit. She carried a QCL-2 sonar, SF radar, had her 6-pounders replaced with 20mm Orelikons, mounted two depth charge racks, carried four “Y” gun projectors (with allowance for 14 depth charges) had two 7.2-inch Moustrap ASW rocket devices installed.
The report from one such brush with a sonar contact incident:
She also had to pick up the pieces.
Such as in the rescue of freighter USAT Nevada in December 1943. The 950-ton cargo ship, part of Convoy 5G-36, en route from St. John’s to Narsarssuak, became separated in 20-foot high seas and 60-mile-per-hour winds, with snow squalls that ended with her holds flooded.
Comanche was the closest to her and went to work, catching up to her while still about 200 miles south of Greenland.
From her deck log :
Steamship Nevada (American Freighter, built 1915) photographed from the deck of the USCGC Comanche (WPG-76) as Nevada was foundering in the North Atlantic, circa 15-18 December 1943. Comanche was able to rescue twenty-nine of those on board Nevada, but thirty-four lost their lives during the abandonment of the storm-crippled ship. In 1918-1919 Nevada had briefly served as USS Rogday (ID # 3583). NH 66258
Her most famous rescue came during the sinking of the 5,649-ton USAT Dorchester, a pre-war M&MT cruise ship built for 314 passengers that had been turned into a 750-space troopship. On Dorchester’s fifth convoy run (third to Greenland), leaving outbound on 29 January 1943, she was assigned to SG-19 out of St. Johns bound for Narsarssuak with a complement of seven officers, 123 crewmen, 23 Navy armed guards, 16 USCG, 597 Army personnel, and 155 civilian passengers.
M&MT passenger steamer S.S. Dorchester (1926-1943) photographed during 1942 as a USAT SC-290583
Riding shotgun on SG-19 was Comanche and her sister USCGC Escanaba (WPG 77), as well as the larger 240-foot cutter USCGC Tampa (WPG-48). Also in the convoy were the Norwegian steam merchants Biscaya and Lutz, whose holds were full of cargo and building materials to construct bases.
Six days out, in heavy seas and rough weather while 150 miles southwest of Greenland’s Cape Farewell, U-223 (Kptnlt Karl-Jürg Wächter) crept in close enough at 0102 in the predawn of 3 February to fire five torpedoes at the largest vessel in the little arctic convoy– Dorchester— and the transport soon went down. While Tampa moved to shepherd Biscaya and Lutz to nearby Skovfjord (Tunulliarfik) on Greenland’s southern tip, Comanche and Escanaba stood by in the dark and frigid waters to pick up survivors.
Using the “rescue retriever” technique for the first time– which amounted to a rubber-suited volunteer on a line dropping overboard and coming back up with a person– Escabana scooped up 81 survivors from the water and rafts and 51 from one lifeboat. Lacking the same protective suits as used on her sister, nonetheless, three officers and nine enlisted men of Comanche personally picked up 41 survivors from another lifeboat and 57 from rafts and the freezing water.
After the Dorchester slipped beneath the waves on 3 February 1943, the USCGC Comanche and Escanaba rescued dozens of survivors from the doomed Army troopship. (Painting by Robert Lavin, via U.S. Coast Guard History Office)
Dorchester Torpedoed by Perry Stirling, showing Escanaba and Comanche picking up survivors (USCG painting)
Of the more than 900 souls aboard Dorchester, the sea claimed 674, largely due to hyperthermia, with men succumbing to the cold within minutes of hitting the water. The sinking of Dorchester is regarded by the Navy as the “heaviest loss of personnel suffered in any U.S. convoy during the war.”
Among those lost to Poseidon were four Army clergy members, all lieutenants– Methodist minister George L. Fox, Reformed Church in America minister Clark V. Poling, Catholic Church priest John P. Washington, and Rabbi Alexander B. Goode– who voluntarily gave up their own life jackets when the supply ran out then reportedly joined arms, said prayers, and sang hymns as they went down with the transport.
They are well-remembered as the “Immortal Chaplains” and were posthumously granted the Chaplain’s Medal for Heroism in 1961.
Speaking of heroism, one of Comanche’s fearless retrievers, STM 1c Charles Walter David, Jr., 25, suffering from hypothermia and pneumonia, died in a hospital ashore in Greenland after the rescue operation, and he was interred in the permafrost. In addition to saving Dorchester survivors, he is also credited with bringing Comanche’s XO, a fellow retriever, back after the officer was suffering exposure.
His widow, Kathleen W. David, and newborn son, a young son, Neil Adrian David, were presented with his Navy and Marine Corps Medal, posthumously.
Further illustrating the danger of the waters around Greenland during the war, Escanaba was lost on the early morning of 13 June 1943 in an explosion off Ivigtut, with the official conclusion that she was struck by either a torpedo or a mine. Only two of her crew survived. Another smaller cutter, the converted trawler Natsek (WYP-170) would vanish without a trace in December 1942 while out of Narsarssuak bound for Boston. Meanwhile, Northland sighted and attacked a U-boat in the Davis Strait on 18 June 1942 reportedly almost catching a German torpedo for her trouble.
All in all, nearly 50 American warships served on the Greenland Patrol during the conflict, almost all of these Coast Guard assets. Of those cutters, four of Comanche’s five Algonquin class sisters clocked in, with the only exception being USCGC Onondaga (WPG-79), which spent the war fighting the Japanese in Alaskan waters.
Upwards of 300,000 U.S. military aircraft were produced during the war, with the rare mineral harvested from the Greenland shale a big part in making that happen.
Post-war service
VE Day found Comanche at the USCG Yard at Curtis Bay, Maryland, undergoing a much-needed 30-day overhaul that she entered on 17 March 1945. Once she emerged, she received orders to proceed to Iceland for air-sea rescue duties from June through September 1945.
Once the Coast Guard transferred back to the Treasury Department from the Navy on New Year’s Day 1946, Comanche had her wartime armament removed, and her homeport shifted to Norfolk. However, the service, flush with very new ships (13 255-foot Owasco class cutters were commissioned in 1945-46) shoehorned into a peacetime budget, soon put all the remaining Algonquins into storage in an “in commission, in reserve” status, with reduced crews.
Comanche decommissioned 29 July 1947. Cleared for disposal, she was sold on 10 November 1948 to the Virginia Pilots Association, who used her as a floating office and barracks boat until 1984, when the 50-year-old historical cutter was donated to the Patriots Point Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, for use as a floating museum.
The nuclear-powered freighter NS Savannah, the retired 327-foot Treasury-class cutter USCGC Ingham (WPG 35), and the former USCGC Comanche, all the way to the right, are almost unrecognizable after 35 years as a pilot boat, at Charleston’s Patriots Point Naval Museum in the late 1980s. Savannah has been in Baltimore since 2008, and Ingham is now at Key West.
Comanche’s career as a museum ship was short-lived, being seriously damaged by Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and closed.
This led to her donation to the South Carolina DNR for use as a reef in 1992.
She is located 22.5 miles North of Charleston Harbor at a depth of 110-120 feet and is a popular wreck dive.
Epilogue
Comanche’s war diaries are digitized in the National Archives, although she is sometimes listed incorrectly as USS Comanche.
A few stirring interviews with her wartime crew remain. One of these is with EM 2c Richard N. Swanson, one of the volunteer retrievers on the Dorchester rescue, who earned his Navy and Marine Corps Medal the hard way.
Patriot’s Park saved some of the relics still aboard the Comanche in 1992 and has them at the park. They also donated one of her wartime 2,100-pound anchors to the Florence Veterans Park ashore in SC.
The cutter’s 1934-marked bell has been at the Arlington, Virginia, barracks of the Coast Guard Ceremonial Honor Guard since at least 1999, where it is used in annual remembrances and individual “ringing out” ceremonies.
The Honor Guard was established in 1962 and performs an average of 1,200 ceremonies each year across the United States. It is housed in the Coast Guard’s old Washington Radio Station in Alexandria, and Comanche’s well-polished bell is on its quarterdeck.
The service recycled the name for a third Comanche.
The Coast Guard acquired the former Navy 142-foot Sotoyomo-class auxiliary ocean tug USS Wampanoag (ATA-202) and placed her in commission as the medium endurance cutter Comanche (WMEC-202) in February 1959. Based in California except for a two-year stint in Corpus Christi, Texas, she was involved in several high-profile blue water rescues across a 21-year second career.
The third Comanche (ex-Wampanoag) is preserved as a floating museum in the Seattle area.
On 16 November 2013, the Coast Guard officially commissioned the USCGC Charles David Jr (WPC 1107) in honor of Comanche’s lost Dorchester retriever. His body had been reinterred at Long Island National Cemetery post-war.
His granddaughter was the ship’s sponsor.
Rear Adm. Jake Korn, Coast Guard Seventh District commander; Sharon David, granddaughter of the cutter’s namesake and sponsor of the Coast Guard Cutter Charles David Jr; and Chris Bollinger, president of Bollinger Shipyards, look at information about Charles W. David Jr. before the commissioning ceremony. Steward’s Mate 1st Class Charles David Jr. was posthumously awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for his part in saving the lives of nearly 100 U.S. Army soldiers and members of his own crew during World War II. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Mark Barney.
Likewise, former Comanche plank owner, the sub-busting LCDR Maurice Jester, has his name on a sistership of David, USCGC Maurice Jester (WPC-1152).
In 1951, the Danish Naval Station Grønnedal was established as a year-round home for Greenland Command, since 2012 the Arktisk Kommando, which has a permanent staff of 36 civilians and military personnel in a big blue building in Nuuk.
Arktisk Kommandos hovedkvarter in Nuuk
In the summer, a force of three modern 1,700-ton Knud Rasmussen class OPVs, augmented by another four 3,500 Thetis-class OPFs, roam the Greenlandic littoral.
Danish patrol vessel HDMS Knud Rasmussen (P570) ice-breaking in Greenland waters, December 2022, around Narsaq, Narsarsuaq, and Qassiarsuk
The Greenland Police is still seen as a district of the Danish state police, numbering 300 members. There is no local territorial defense force.
The Danish Home Guard (Hjemmeværnet), which numbers some 44,000 volunteers in Denmark, has activated small groups to support operations in exercises in Greenland in recent years, but doesn’t have HJV units among Greenland’s cities and towns.
The six-month Arktisk Basisuddannelse course, open only to Greenlanders, mimics the Danish military basic training course and blends field and classroom instruction
The program has been recruiting youth from among 13 towns and settlements across Greenland and graduated its first 19 students in November 2024.
Arktisk basisuddannelse (Arctic Basic Education) students, Greenland’s first “home guard” style class. While many may go on to join the Arktisk Kommando or Greenland police and fire agencies, it isn’t a requirement.
When it comes to U.S. bases, the Americans pulled out of most of the BW/BE stations by 1947 with a few exceptions: BW-1 (Narsarsuaq) closed in 1958 and Stromfjord (BW-8) in 1992, while Pituffik Space Base (formerly Thule AB, formerly BW-8) is still very much a thing, supported by the USCG, MSC, and Canadian Coast Guard and operated by the Space Force. The Army had Camp Century (including a novel underground nuclear reactor) there in the 1960s. The USAF also had four unmanned DEW stations in Greenland between 1960 and 1990.
The Coast Guard, meanwhile, still frequently gets to Greenland waters where they continue to work with local and Danish forces.
USCGC Campbell transited south along the west coast of Greenland overnight with the Royal Danish Navy vessel HDMS Knud Rasmussen and rendezvoused in a position just offshore of Evighedsfjorden (Eternity Fjord). CGC Campbell received HDMS Knud Rasmussen’s Executive Officer, Commander Bo Ougaard, on board to serve as an ice pilot and provide local knowledge to assist CGC Campbell in safely entering and transiting Evighedsfjorden. Once inside Eternity Fjord, CGC Campbell launched their MH-65 Dolphin aircraft and proceeded up the fjord to the head where the glacier begins. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Seaman Kate Kilroy DVIDS 200907-G-NJ244-002
Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive
Ships are more than steel and wood And heart of burning coal, For those who sail upon them know That some ships have a soul.
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Saved from a planned gutting by the Falklands operation, the capability was preserved– and even enhanced– for a 35-year run that included very successful over-the-beach operations in 2000’s Operation Palliser in Sierra Leone and then during Operation Telic during the 2003 Iraq War– where the latter saw a full brigade-sized amphibious assault on the strategically key Al-Faw peninsula in south-east Iraq.
Royal Marine Commandoes from 42 Commando hit MAMYOKO BEACH from Sea King helicopters of 846 Naval Air Squadron, in a demonstration of amphibious power during Operation Silkman in Freetown, Sierra Leone 13 Nov 2000. MOD image by Royal Navy PO Jim Gibson (Click to big up)
By the late 1990s, the RNs phibs included 13 dedicated new vessels: a 21,000-ton LPH (HMS Ocean), two 20,000-ton LPDs– HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark, four 16,000-ton Bay-class landing ships of the civilian-manned Royal Fleet Auxiliary, and six 23,000-ton Point-class roll-on/roll-off merchant sealift ships permanently contracted to the MoD for use as needed. Basic math puts this at 263,000 tons of vessels dedicated to the ‘phib role, with about a quarter of that being RN manned and controlled.
However, this had been whittled away with the still-young HMS Ocean sold to Brazil– where she serves as that fleet’s proud flagship– and one of the four Bays (RFA Largs Bay) sold to Australia. Two of the Point-class RO/ROs have all been released from contract (while gratefully the other four have recently been retained on a new contract running until 2031).
Now, Maria Eagle, Minister of State for Defence, recently stated:
“All of the remaining crew from HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark have been reassigned: either to other platforms, to training courses, or into other positions supporting the Royal Navy’s highest priority outputs.”
Britain’s flagship HMS Albion (L-14), seen in the Java Sea, 2018. With a well deck capable of holding four LCU MK10s and another four LCVP MK5s can be held in davits, she can land 620 Marines on the beach in a single lift. Meanwhile, she can also accommodate three CH-47 Chinooks on her heli deck.
For reference, Albion and Bulwark only entered the RN in 2003 and 2004, respectively and the latter has been in an extended major refit to add 15 years of life to her! Both ships have been effectively in reserve since 2011, swapping places in reserve/high readiness conditions over that time, meaning both are low-milage vessels. The plan had been to retain them until at least the mid-2030s, but the Labor government has scrapped that idea.
The official disposal of Albion and Bulwark cuts the two most capable British “gators” from the fleet inventory, slashing 40,000 tons of sealift in the process. Coupled with the sale of HMS Ocean and RFA Largs Bay, and the release of MV Longstone and Beachy Head from the contract, the Royal Navy only has three Bays (two of which are laid up!) and four Points left on tap, representing 140,000 tons of shipping.
If the red button gets mashed in 2025, it looks like only one dedicated amphibious warship, the humble RFA Lyme Bay (L3007), would be able to take the call. Meanwhile, the Royal Marines have been reduced to just two deployable six-company battalion-sized units: 40 Cdo and 42 Cdo.
RFA Lyme Bay in the Mediterranean as she makes her way back to the UK after training with the Italian Navy, in November 2020. LPhot Barry Swainsbury MOD 45167525
Designed for 356 embarked Royal Marines, she can double that for short, uncomfortable, stints. Her tiny well deck can hold either a single LCU or two LCVPs while her heli deck (without hangar) can only support a limited amount of vertical lift. Her self-defense armament is limited to a pair of 20mm CIWS and a few light guns.
Besides the light battalion landed on the beach in five or six (hopefully unopposed) lifts by Lyme Bay’s sole LCU, anything else would have to be flown in by fixed-wing RAF assets to marry up with equipment brought in sometime later by the Point class RO/ROs to a seized local port. This can be alleviated a bit by the use of Mexifloat connectors– provided of course that the beach can handle the load and the deep water curve is close enough to the surfline to accommodate Lyme Bay’s 19-foot draft without grounding.
Churchill wept.
Since you came this far, enjoy this recent interview with retired MG Julian Thompson, CB, OBE, who got the call to take 3 Commando to the Falklands in 1982– back when the RN had a proper amphibious force.
Above we see the Balao-class fleet submarine USS Bergall (SS-320)upon her triumphal return to Freemantle, Australia, some 80 years ago this week, on 23 December 1944, on completion of her epic Second War Patrol. The path of a 278-pound 8-inch shell fired from the Japanese heavy cruiser Myokois clearly marked, having passed from port to starboard through the sub’s pressure hull.
But you should see the other guy!
The Balaos
A member of the 180+-ship Balao class, she was one of the most mature U.S. Navy diesel designs of the World War Two era, constructed with knowledge gained from the earlier Gato class. U.S. subs, unlike those of many navies of the day, were “fleet” boats, capable of unsupported operations in deep water far from home. The Balao class was deeper diving (400 ft. test depth) than the Gato class (300 feet) due to the use of high-yield strength steel in the pressure hull.
Able to range 11,000 nautical miles on their reliable diesel engines, they could undertake 75 day patrols that could span the immensity of the Pacific. Carrying 24 (often unreliable) Mk 14 Torpedoes, these subs often sank anything short of a 5,000-ton Maru or warship by surfacing and using their deck guns. They also served as the firetrucks of the fleet, rescuing downed naval aviators from right under the noses of Japanese warships.
Some 311 feet long overall, they were all-welded construction to facilitate rapid building. Best yet, they could be made for the bargain price of about $7 million in 1944 dollars (just $100 million when adjusted for today’s inflation) and completed from keel laying to commissioning in about nine months.
An amazing 121 Balaos were completed through five yards at the same time, with the following pennant numbers completed by each:
Cramp: SS-292, 293, 295-303, 425, 426 (12 boats)
Electric Boat: 308-313, 315, 317-331, 332-352 (42)
Manitowoc on the Great Lakes: 362-368, 370, 372-378 (15)
Mare Island on the West Coast: 304, 305, 307, 411-416 (9)
Portsmouth Navy Yard: 285-288, 291, 381-410, 417-424 (43)
Bergall was named for a small fish (Tautogolabrus adspersus) found along the East Coast.
Via the State of New York Forest, Fish, and Game Commission, 1901, painted by SF Denton.
Laid down on 13 May 1943 at Electric Boat in Groton, Bergall launched just nine months later and commissioned on 12 June 1944, her construction running just 396 days.
Electric Boat Company, Groton, Connecticut. Shipway where future USS Bergall (SS-320) is under construction, circa summer 1943. Two welders are at work in the foreground. 80-G-K-15063
Her plankowner skipper, T/CDR John Milton Hyde, USN, (USNA 1934), had already earned a Silver Star as executive officer of the Salmon-class submarine USS Swordfish (SS-193) across four Pacific war patrols that bagged 11 Japanese ships and commanded that sub’s sister, Snapper (SS-185) while the latter was under overhaul.
Bergall carried out shakedown operations off New England for three weeks then, following post-shakedown availability at New London, set out for the Pacific via the Caribbean and the Panama Canal, pausing to rescue the two fliers of a crashed Army training plane in the Mona Passage off Puerto Rico.
She arrived at Pearl Harbor on 13 August and was soon ready for battle.
War!
Made the flagship of SubRon 26’s SubDiv 262, Bergall departed from Pearl Harbor on 8 September 1944 on her First War Patrol, ordered to hunt in the South China Sea.
Arriving off Saipan on the 19th, she soon had her first encounter with the Empire’s fighting men:
Her first contact with the enemy came a day and a half west of Saipan when in the high periscope she sighted a small boat containing five Japanese infantrymen. Bergall closed, attempting rescue, but the efforts were abandoned when the Japanese made gestures that indicated that they wanted us to leave them alone and that we were the scum of the earth. The Americans marveled at the pride and insolent bearing of the enemy, admired their courage, and pitied their stupidity.
Continuing West, she damaged a small Japanese transport vessel with gunfire east of Nha Trang, French Indo-China on 3 October with an exchange of 5-inch (20 rounds) and 40mm (40 rounds) gunfire, and six days later sank a small (700-ton) Japanese cargo vessel just south of Cam Ranh Bay with a trio of Mark 14 torpedoes.
She followed up on that small fry on 13 October by stalking a small four-ship convoy off the coast of Vietnam and sent the tanker Shinshu Maru (4182 GRT) to the bottom via four Mk 23s– and survived a five-hour-long depth charging in retaliation.
On the 27th, she torpedoed and sank the big Japanese tanker Nippo Maru (10528 GRT) and damaged the Japanese tanker Itsukushima Maru(10007 GRT, built 1937) south-west of Balabac Strait, a heroic action seeing the two vessels were protected by a thick escort of four frigates.
On her way back to Freemantle on 2 November, she sank, via 420 rounds of 20mm, a small junk loaded with coconuts and chickens east of the Kangean Islands. Hyde noted in his patrol report “Regret the whole affair as picayune.”
Bergall’s very successful First War Patrol ended at Freemantle on 8 November 1944, covering 15,702 miles. Seventh Fleet authorized a Submarine Combat Insignia for the patrol and credited the boat with sinking 21,500 tons of Japanese shipping.
Not a bad first start!
Hyde would pick up his second Silver Star while the boat’s XO, LCDR Kimmel was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with Combat “V.”
Cruiser Shootout
On 2 December 1944, Bergall departed Fremantle for her Second War Patrol, ordered once again to hunt in the South China Sea.
On 13 December, nearing sunset, our boat spotted a large ship at 35,000 yards off Royalist Bank and made a plan to attack after dark.
Over the next couple of hours, running in just 12-to-14 fathoms of water, she fired six Mk 23s while on the surface and received gunfire back. It turned out she blew the stern off the heavy cruiser Myoko and left her dead in the water. In return, the surfaced submarine was bracketed by shells typically credited as being 8-inchers from Myoko but more likely 5-inch shells from the escorting Japanese destroyer Ushio. One of these zipped right through Bergall’s pressure hull, a disaster that kept the submarine from surfacing while floating some 1,200 miles inside Japanese territory.
Her patrol report on the attack:
While the shell impact left no personnel casualties, the sub was severely damaged and, with no welding capability, repairs consisted of a mix of brazed and bolted plates, plugged with pillows and mattresses:
With all guns manned, demolition charges set for scuttling, and her damage patched up as best as possible, Bergall headed for home and was grateful when, on the morning of 15 December, she rendezvoused with the Gato-class submarine USS Angler (SS-240).
Transferring 2/3rds of her crew (54 men and one officer, the junior ensign) to Angler, Hyde noted of the attempt to make the Karimata Strait:
“if mandatory we could dive in shallow water and sit on the bottom. With Angler near at hand the enterprise didn’t seem too bad for the skeleton crew and officers. To have scuttled our ship in itself seemed unthinkable and it wasn’t much further to deep water in the right direction that it was in the wrong. The weather was very much in our favor too. The sky was heavily overcast with rain storms coming from the west-northwest.”
The men who remained aboard, all volunteers, comprised eight officers and 21 crew, the latter including at least three chiefs. This allowed an underway watch bill with two officers on the bridge, two men (helm and radar) in the tower, three (Chief of Watch, Aux, and I.C.) in the control room, and one EM in the maneuvering room.
By the end of the 16th, Bergall and Angler cleared the Karimata Strait without incident.
By the 18th, they cleared the Lombok Strait– just skirting Japanese patrol boats in the dark.
Making Exmouth on the tip of Western Australia’s North West Cape on the 20th, Bergall was able to remove the lightly brazed plating from the torpedo loading hatch and had new plates arc welded in place, enabling her to make for Freemantle on the 23rd where she ended her abbreviated patrol.
Hyde would receive the Navy Cross for the patrol and three other officers received the Silver Star.
The patrol was later dramatized in an episode of The Silent Service coined, “The Bergall’s Dilemma.” Hyde appears at the end of the episode for a brief comment.
As for Myoko, arriving at Singapore via tow on Christmas day, she would never sail again under her own power and surrendered to the Royal Navy in September 1945.
Japanese Heavy Cruiser Myōkō in Singapore four days after surrendering to Royal Navy units, tied up alongside the submarines I-501 (ex U-181) and I-502 (ex U-862) – September 25, 1945 IWM – Trusler, C (Lt) Photographer IWM A 30701
Captain Power visits the damaged Japanese cruiser. 25 September 1945, Singapore. In May 1944, five ships of the Twenty-Sixth Destroyer Flotilla attached to the British East Indies fleet, led by HMS Saumarez, with Captain M L Power, CBE, OBE, DSO, and BAR, as Captain (D), sank the Japanese cruiser Haguro in one hours action at the entrance to the Malacca Strait. When Saumarez entered Singapore Naval Base, Captain Power with his staff officers, paid a visit to Myoko, the sister ship of Haguro, now lying there with her stern blown off after the Battle of the Philippines. Crossing to the deck of the Myoko via the conning tower of a German U-boat, Captain Power and his party were met by Japanese officers who took them on a comprehensive tour of the ship. Two British naval officers examine what is left of the Myoko’s stern. IWM A 30703
However, with a short range (just 5,000 yards), the shallow-water Cuties had to be used up close to work. Carrying a warhead with just 95 pounds of Torpex, they were meant for killing small escorts.
Between 27 January and 7 February, Bergall made five nighttime attack runs with Cuties while in the Lombok, each time allowing a single slow (12 knots) Mk 27 to swim out at ranges as close as 200 yards. The result was in sinking of the Japanese auxiliary minesweeper Wa 102 (174 tons)– picking up two survivors and making them POWs– and damaging the store ship Arasaki (920 GRT).
Moving toward the Philippines, Bergall sank the Japanese frigate Kaibokan 53 (745 tons) and damaged the tanker Toho Maru (10,238 GRT) off Cam Ranh Bay.
Then, on 13 February, working in conjunction with fellow subs USS Blower and Guitarro off Hainan island, she came across a ripe target for any submariner– a pair of Japanese battlewagons– the hybrid battleship/carriers Ise and Hyuga.
She ripple-fired six Mk 14s in a risky daylight periscope attack from 10,000 yards– without success.
She ended her patrol on 17 February at recently liberated Subic Bay, PI, having traveled 6,070 miles.
The “Cutie Patrol” would be immortalized in an episode of The Silent Service, “The Bergall’s Revenge.”
The hits keep coming
The boat’s uneventful Fourth War Patrol (5 March to 17 April) which included a special mission (typically code to land agents) and rescuing four USAAF B-25 aircrew from the water, ended at Freemantle.
Bergall then left Australia on 12 May 1945 on her Fifth Patrol, bound to haunt the coast of Indochina.
On the morning of the 18th, she battered a small Japanese coastal freighter in the Lombok Strait but didn’t get to see it sink as enemy aircraft were inbound.
Joining up with an American wolfpack in the Gulf of Siam including USS Bullhead (SS-332), Cobia (SS-245), Hawkbill (SS-366), and Kraken (SS-370), she sighted a small intercoastal convoy of tugs and barges in the predawn moonlight of 30 May, and sank same.
Then, on 13 June, she swept a mine the hard way while chasing an enemy convoy.
Ironically, the minefield, a mix of three dozen acoustic and magnetic-induction type mines, had been laid by Allied aircraft out of India in March and was unknown to the Seventh Fleet command. While the mine, which had at least a 490-pound explosive charge, was believed to be some 90 feet away from the hull when it went off, and Bergall’s hull retained integrity, it nonetheless rocked the boat severely.
The impact of the detonation jarred the entire ship. Personnel were knocked off their feet, tossed out of bunks, and in the maneuvering room were thrown up against the overhead. Lighting failed in the maneuvering and after torpedo rooms. The overspeed trips operated on Nos. 2 and 3 main Diesel engines, which were on propulsion, and No. 1 main Diesel engine, which was charging the batteries, causing all three engines to stop and thereby cutting off power to the main propulsion motors.
However, just 20 minutes after the explosion, Bergall had restarted her engines and was motoring away. While still capable of operations, her engineering suite was so loose and noisy it was thought she would be unable to remain operational and she was ordered to Subic, arriving there on 17 June.
Quick inspection at Subic found that the facility was unable to effect repairs and Bergall was ordered to shlep some 10,000 miles back to New London via Saipan, Pearl Harbor, and the Panama Canal.
Arriving at New London on 4 August 1945, she was there when the war ended.
Bergall earned four battle stars and a Navy Unit Commendation (for her 2nd patrol) for her World War II service. Her unconfirmed record at the end of the war included some 33,280 tons of enemy shipping sunk across five sunken warships and five merchantmen along with another 66,000 tons damaged.
Her WWII battle flag carried an upside-down horseshoe with the number “13” inside of it since so many incidents in her service had occurred on the 13th day of the month.
CDR Hyde, when he left the vessel in September 1945, was given a farewell watch by his crew. Engraved on its back was a large “13.”
As for Myoko, she towed to the Strait of Malacca in 1946 and scuttled off of Port Swettenham (Port Klang), Malaya.
Cold Warrior
Finishing her repair and overhaul– she picked up new sensors including an SV radar– Bergall rejoined the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in December 1945 and, as part of SubRon1, would spend the next five years stationed in Hawaii. This typically involved a series of reserve training dives, simulated war patrols and cruises between the West Coast and Hawaii, ASW exercises with the fleet, and acting as a tame sub for maritime patrol squadrons.
From December 1948 through February 1949, she roamed to the West Pac, visiting Australia and Japan for a bottom mapping exercise, a cruise that earned her a Navy Occupation Service Medal and a China Service Medal.
Bergall at Brisbane in December 1948, note she is still largely in her WWII configuration. Via Navsource. Photo courtesy of John Hummel, USN (Retired).
Transferring to the Atlantic Fleet in June 1950, she had her topside streamlined, landing her deck guns and receiving a new sail, then, between November 1951 and April 1952, received a Fleet Snorkel conversion at Philadelphia Navy Yard.
Bergall circa 1950, with her topside streamlined but before her snorkel conversion.
The first, in 1949, was to a passing Van Camp tuna boat off the California coast.
The second, during LANTFLEX on Halloween 1954, had her periscopes and radar masts where sliced through by the destroyer USS Norris (DDE-859)’s bow, luckily without any casualties.
Ironically, USS Angler, the same boat that stood by Bergall after she was holed in the fight against Myoko a decade prior, stood by her and escorted the sub into port.
Bergall (SS-320) as a causality on 2 November 1954. Photo and text i.d. courtesy of Mike Brood, bergall.org.
Repaired, she completed two Mediterranean cruises (9 Nov 1955-28 Jan 1956 and 31 Aug -6 Dec 1957), and, once she returned, was reassigned to Key West Naval Station for preparations to be handed over at military aid.
Bergall 1958, returning from Bermuda just before she was handed over to a NATO ally as military aid. Via Bergall.org
Turkish Guppy Days
Between May 1948 and August 1983, the Turkish Navy would receive no less than 23 second-hand U.S. Navy diesel submarines, all WWII-era (or immediately after) fleet boats.
These would include (in order of transfer): ex-USS Brill (SS 330), Blueback (SS 326), Boarfish (SS 327), Chub (SS 329), Blower (SS 325), Bumper (SS 333), Guitarro (SS 363), Hammerhead (SS 364), Bergall (SS 320), Mapiro (SS 376), Mero (SS 378), Seafox (SS 402), Razorback (SS 394), Thornback (SS 418), Caiman (SS 323), Entemedor (SS 340), Threadfin (SS 410), Trutta (SS 421), Pomfret (SS 391), Corporal (SS 346), Cobbler (SS 344), Tang (SS 563), and Gudgeon (SS 567).
Our Bergall would sail from Key West on 26 September 1958, bound for Izmir, Turkey, where she would arrive 19 days later.
On 17 October, she was decommissioned and handed over in a warm transfer to the Turkish Navy in a ceremony that saw her renamed Turgutreis (S-342), officially on a 15-year lease.
The highlights of the handover ceremony, in Turkish:
Ex-Bergall/Turgutreis (S-342) in Turkish service. She would take part in the Cyprus War in 1974, among other operations with the Turkish fleet.
Turkey’s collection of Snorkel and GUPPY modified U.S. Navy fleet boats via the 1960 edition of Janes, to include Bergall/Turgutreis.
While in Turkish service, Bergall in the meantime had her name canceled from the Navy List in 1965 and was stricken from the USN’s inventory altogether in 1973, with ownership transferred to Istanbul.
Following the delivery of new Type 209 submarines from West Germany, Bergall/Turgutreis was no longer needed for fleet operations and in April 1983 she was decommissioned.
Renamed Ceryan Botu-6, she was relegated to pier side service at Golcuk Naval Shipyard for another 13 years, where she was stripped of parts to keep other American boats in operations while serving as a battery charging boat with a 15-man crew, primarily of electricians.
In June 1999, Ceryan Botu-6/Turgutreis/Bergall was pulled from service and sold for scrap the following year.
Turkey only retired its last two ex-USN “smoke boats,” Tang and Gudgeon, in 2004
Her wartime skipper, John Milton Hyde (NSN: 0-73456), retired from the Navy following Korean War service as a captain with a Navy Cross and three Silver Stars on his salad bar. He passed in 1981, aged 71, and is buried in Arlington’s Section 25.
“The Old Man” completed 12 war patrols, five of them on Bergall.
The Navy recycled the name of its rough-and-tumble Balao for another vessel, SSN-667, a Sturgeon-class hunter-killer built, like her namesake, at EB, ordered on 9 March 1965.
USS Bergall (SSN-667) conducts an emergency surfacing test off the east coast, in September 1969. K-77428
Commissioned on 13 June 1969 (!) her ship’s crest carried five stars in a salute to the old Bergall’s five WWII Pacific war patrols. In another, less Navy-approved similarity to her namesake, she suffered a casualty-free peacetime collision with the submarine rescue vessel USS Kittiwake (ASR-13).
Notably, SSN-667 was the first submarine in the fleet to carry the Mk 48 heavy torpedo on deployment, as well as the first east coast-based submarine to carry a DSRV, and earned two Navy Unit Commendations. She decommissioned on 6 June 1996.
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
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The crew from the USCGC Oliver Henry (WPC 1140) patrols the Northern Mariana Islands on the cutter’s 26-foot Over the Horizon (OTH-IV) cutter boat, April 23, 2024.
Coast Guard photo by Tim Cusak, courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. VIRIN: 240423-G-G0020-8601A
The 154-foot Sentinel (Webber)-class Fast Response Cutter is one of four assigned to U.S. Coast Guard Forces Micronesia at Santa Rita, Guam, and roams all across the Central and West Pac on 14 and 28-day patrols.
While the draft on the FRCs is just 9.5 feet, allowing them to operate well inside the Pacific littoral, its stern-launched OTH-IV, powered by a 500 hp Cummins diesel inboard with a Hamilton jet drive, can get inshore in style.
In March 2020, U.S. Marine Corps Commandant, Gen. David H. Berger, debuted his transformative Force Design 2030 which, within a decade, intended to recast the Corps from its traditional expeditionary Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF) model that it had used since the 1950s to something, well, a lot different.
First, the plan called to “divest to invest” which translated to cutting 12,000 billets, disbanding all seven of the Corp’s tank companies (dialing the clock back to 1941), getting rid of 16 of 21 cannon artillery batteries (thus losing over 2/3rds of its proven 155mm howitzers), halving the number of Assault Amphibian companies (from six big to four small), jettisoning all of the Corp’s bridging units, shuttering all three law enforcement battalions, casing the colors of three active and two reserve infantry battalions (and reducing each battalion left by over 200 billets), cutting the number of aircraft in its 18 fighter attack squadrons– converting from exhausted F-18C/Ds and AV-8Bs to F-35s– from 16 frames to just 10, and cutting eight entire tiltrotor/helicopter squadrons. Plus the Corps lost its famed Scout Sniper program.
U.S. Marines with 4th Tank Battalion, 4th Marine Division, Marine Forces Reserve, salute during the 4th Tank Bn. deactivation ceremony on Navy Operational Support Center and Marine Corps Reserve Center San Diego, in San Diego, California, May 15, 2021. The Marines bid their final farewell to the battalion as it was deactivated in accordance with the Marine Corps’ Force Design 2030 modernization and capabilities-realignment efforts in order to stay prepared for the future fight against near-peer enemies. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Jose S. GuerreroDeLeon)
Jesus wept.
But the payoff was supposed to be big.
The three active component infantry battalions would be recast as “Littoral battalions” in three new Marine Littoral Regiments, a sort of expeditionary anti-ship missile force, and 14 new rocket artillery (HIMARS) batteries would be stood up.
A Navy Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System launcher, a command and control vehicle and a Joint Light Tactical Vehicle are transported by a U.S. Navy Landing Craft Air Cushion from Pacific Missile Range Facility Barking Sands, Hawaii, out to U.S.S. San Diego, Aug. 16, 2021. The movement demonstrated the mobility of a Marine Corps fires expeditionary advanced base, a core concept in the Marine Corps’ Force Design 2030 efforts. U.S. Navy and Marine Corps units came together from across 17 time zones as they participated in Large Scale Exercise 2021. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Luke Cohen, released)
At the same time, the number of drone squadrons (VMUs) would be doubled (from three to six) and an extra aerial refueler squadron (VMGR) of KC-130s would be added to give the Corps some longer legs in the air. Three new Light Armored Reconnaissance (LAR) companies would be added, presumably to provide the three Littoral battalions some added muscle.
But the thing is, the big linchpin on moving these missile-armed Littoral Regiments around scattered atolls in the Western Pacific, would be a new breed of between 18 and 35 cheap and simple (remember that) shallow-draft amphibious landing ships akin to the old LSMs and LSTs of WWII and Korea.
Dubbed the Light Amphibious Warship by the Marines and the Landing Ship, Medium by the Navy, the idea would be a beachable 4,000-ton/200-400 foot vessel capable of landing 75 Marines and 8,000 sq. ft. of kit, with a cost of $100 million a pop.
A force of nine LAW/LSMs would be required to deploy a single Marine Littoral Regiment in one lift.
And there lies the rub.
The Congressional Research Service and GAO have been sounding the alarm on the progress of FD2030, which has been quick to get rid of the old Corps but slow to recast the new one.
Meanwhile, the Navy, tasked with buying and fielding the new class of LAW/LSMs, has all but iced the program, at least for now, canceling the RFP issued to the shipbuilding industry for plans as estimates are now putting the cost at something like $400+ million per hull.
“We had a bulletproof – or what we thought – cost estimate, pretty well wrung out design in terms of requirements, independent cost estimates,” Assistant Secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition Nickolas Guertin said at an American Society of Naval Engineers symposium last week.
“We put it out for bid and it came back with a much higher price tag,” he added. “We simply weren’t able to pull it off. So we had to pull that solicitation back and drop back and punt.”
If only the Marines had the tanks, howitzers, and infantry to form the landing teams and aircraft to carry them to form the MAGTFs for these new ‘phibs to carry…
Basic math tells you that the 21 remaining non-MLR Marine infantry battalions, on a 3:1 workup, would only be able to field 5.25 Battalion Landing Teams, the core of a deployable Marine Expeditionary Unit– now without any scout snipers, law enforcement personnel, bridging gear, or tanks, with fewer Amtracs, and possibly without howitzers. The number of helicopters on hand is fewer and even the prospect of having the MV-22 available at all is in the air. For the Navy’s lift part of that equation, only nine LHA/LHDs exist, augmented by 13 LPDs and 10 soon-to-be-decommissioned LSDs which, on the same 3:1 workup, allows just 2.6 three-ship Amphibious Ready Groups at sea on deployment. Even that number is going to tank in a couple of years with the retirement of the used-up LSDs.
As noted by Compass Points on the saga of the LSM being pulled.
This may spell the end of the Landing Ship Medium and is also, at a minimum, a tremendous setback for the Marine Corps’ long-stalled and controversial program to place small missile units on islands in the Pacific. If the value of building the LSM was clear, it would be built. But the value of the current LSM is not clear. This is a negative vote for the entire SIF concept. It is becoming accepted that the Marine missile concept is duplicative of missile capabilities the Navy, Air Force, and Army have already deployed. The Navy may be trying to get out ahead of DOGE by cutting the LSM now. There are still too many questions about the Marine Corps’ entire plan for island-based missile units.
“In a quiet inlet of the Bering Sea, a YP Boat gets a coat of paint and a sub ties up for fuel and provisions. The short Alaskan day is ending and lights may be seen in the barracks until total darkness requires a blackout.”
Painting, Oil on Board; by William F. Draper; 1942; Framed Dimensions 20H X 24W NHHC Accession #: 88-189-N
While the naval aspect of the Aleutians Campaign ended strong for the US, with RADM Charlie McMorris’ victory off the Komandorski Islands in March 1943 and the swansong of Operation Cottage five months later, it started rough, at the raid on Dutch Harbor in June 1942, and was a long uphill slog that, considering Nimitz’s big fleet problems in Guadalcanal, 5,000 miles on the other side of the Pacific, was always a backwater.
How about this great undated shot from the cabin of a Volksmarine (East German Democratic Republic Navy) Mi-8TB “Hip-C” in flight, looking out at a squadron of fellow travelers over its UB-32-57 unguided rocket pods. The 32-shot pods, filled with 57mm S-5 rockets mounted to six hardpoints on two outrigger pylons, gave the Hip a healthy dose of big medicine, especially in littoral use against NATO’s small fast attack vessels and landing craft.
The squadron is likely Marinehubschraubergeschwader 18 (MHG-18) Kurt Barthel, which flew from Parnow from 1976 through 1991. It consisted of a dozen camouflaged Mi-8TBs, six blue-painted Mi-14BT (NATO Haze) mine clearance helicopters, and eight blue Mil-14PL ASW birds.
By the time the NVA was disbanded, the Mi-14s of the MHG-18 had completed 14,782 flight hours, and the squadron’s Mi-8s had flown a total of 32,601 hours between 1975 and 1990.
Of note, post Cold War unification, MHG’s Hips and Hazes, now disarmed for coastal SAR use, remained in Bundeswehr service, and in particular, Marineflieger (German naval air arm) service, repainted a more peaceful navy blue livery, until 1995.
