Although they have been in hundreds of engagements and campaigns since 1775, only a handful of fights are noteworthy enough to have shaped the Marine Corps for generations and echo throughout history, becoming as much bywords among those who have earned the Eagle Globe & Anchor as “Valhalla” was to Norse warriors.
The storming of Chapultepec Castle in 1847 (“From the Halls of Montezuma”), Presley O’Bannon’s Marines at Derne in 1805 (“To the Shores of Tripoli”), Belleau Wood in 1918 (“Teufel Hunden“), Guadalcanal in 1942 (The Southern Cross constellation), Iwo Jima in 1945 (raising the U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi), the “Frozen Chosin” in 1950, Hue City in 1968 (the Dong Ba Tower and the later personification of “Animal Mother” and the gang) will endure with the Marines much as the Royal Scots will always mark Waterloo, the Rifles (Gloucestershires) will remember the Imjin River, the Legion will celebrate Camerone Day, and the 101st/82nd Airborne will “own” Overlord.
Operation Phantom Fury, the six-week so-called Second Battle of Fallujah fell broadly on the shoulders of four Marine rifle battalions (3rd Bn/1st Marines, 3rd Bn/5th Marines, 1st Bn/8th Marines, and 1st Bn/3rd Marines) and a LAV company (Charlie Company “Warpigs,” 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion) in November-December 2004, will surely join that pantheon.
With that in mind, check out the most current 88-page USMCU history on the subject, and these deep dive videos (some over an hour in length and very well done) that were recently dropped in the past week.
Official wartime caption: “Pvt. James L. Poust, Hughesville, Pa., displays a mud-covered face after having carried wounded men over mired and muddy roads of eastern France, 13 November 1944.”
If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi
Warship Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024: The Ones That Got Away
Above we see the period depiction by renowned German maritime artist Willy Stöwer of the armed sailing ship (segelschiff) SMS Ayesha off Hodeida (now Al Hudaydah, Yemen) in January 1915, to the warm welcome of allied Ottoman troops. Stöwer, best known for his decades of painting battleships, cruisers, and U-boats, apparently made an exception for the humble Ayesha, as she had an incredibly interesting story that began some 110 years ago this week.
And a tale rather different from the one shown above.
The Background
Part of Admiral Maximillian von Spee’s Eastern Squadron, the 4,200-ton Dresden class of light cruiser SMS Emden was detached from the rest of Von Spee’s force to become an independent raider in the Western Pacific, as the main force of five cruisers made for the Eastern Pacific and, ultimately, the South Atlantic. In doing so, Emden was sort of a sacrificial rabbit to draw away the British, Australian, French, Russian, and Japanese hounds as Von Spee made his exit.
In an epic 97-day patrol, Emden captured 23 merchant ships (21 Brits, one Russian, one Greek) with 101,182 GRT of enemy shipping, sending 16 to the bottom, releasing three, and keeping as four as prizes. In each encounter with these unarmed merchies, Emden practiced “cruiser rules,” in which all passengers and crew on board these ships were brought to safety. She took off the kid gloves and accounted for two warships by sucker punching the 3,500-ton Russian light cruiser Zhemchug and the 300-ton French destroyer Mousquet as they slumbered in Penang harbor in British Malaysia.
German cruiser SMS Emden off Madras. Artwork by Hans Bohrdt. Courtesy of the Library of Congress
Fire from Bombardment of Madras by SMS Emden
Emden also bombarded oil depots in Madras, India, sending shivers through the Raj, and tied up dozens of allied warships in running her to ground. This included four brawlers– any of which could make short work of the smaller German warship– that had closed the distance to within just 50 miles of the raider: the 14,600-ton British armored cruiser HMS Minotaur, the 16,000-ton Japanese battlecruiser Ibuki, and the twin 5,400-ton Australian light cruisers HMAS Sydney and Melbourne.
This game all cumulated in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands on 9 November 1914.
Direction Island
The remote Cocos (Keeling) Islands, two desolate flat, low-lying coral atolls made up of 27 islets in the Indian Ocean some 800 miles West of Sumatra, in 1914 only had a population of a few hundred. The British colony was defacto ruled by the Clunies-Ross family, which had settled the archipelago in the 1850s, and whose paterfamilias generally served as the resident magistrate and Crown representative.
Modernity had reached this corner of the British Empire, with the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company, in 1901, establishing a cable station on Direction Island on the top of the Cocos chain with submarine cables eventually running to Rodrigues (Mauritius), Batavia (Java), and Fremantle.
By 1910, this had been complemented by a Marconi wireless station, making it a key link in the communication chain between India and Australia.
A link worthy of breaking, in the mind of Emden’s skipper, Fregattenkapitän Karl von Müller.
Arriving just offshore of the Cocos over a deep trench– Emden needed at least 18 feet of seawater under her hull to float– in the predawn of 9 November, a landungskorps was assembled and ready to go ashore, seize the station, wreck it, and withdraw with any interesting portable supplies to feed the cruiser’s 360-member crew.
Going ashore at dawn in a steam pinnace and two whaleboats was Kpt. lt Hellmuth von Mücke, Leutnants Schmidt and Gysling, six petty officers, and 41 ratings, including two signalmen who knew what to destroy and a former French Foreign Legionnaire who was good with languages (among other things). Expecting resistance from a company-sized garrison at the colony, Mücke raided Emden’s small arms locker, taking four Maxim guns– each with 2,000 rounds of ammunition– 29 dated Gewehr 71 rifles, and 24 Reichsrevolvers.
With a strange warship offshore, disguised by a false fourth funnel, overhearing a coded signal from Emden to her prize ship-turned-tender Buresk, and three small boats filled with armed men headed in from the sea, the wireless station went into alert and started broadcasting at 0630 about the unknown man-of-war, only to be jammed by chatter from Emden’s powerful Telefunken wireless set turned to maximum power.
However, the part of the message broadcast before the jamming– “SOS strange ship in harbor,” and “SOS Emden here”– reached HMAS Sydney, escorting a convoy some 50nm away. The Australian cruiser replied that she was on the way to investigate. Her call letters, NC, led Emden’s signalmen to think she was the cruiser HMS Newcastle, which ironically was also in the Far East just nowhere near Emden, and they estimated by her signal strength and bearing that she was over 200 miles away.
In short, Emden’s skipper thought they had more time, but was very wrong.
Once landed, Von Mücke’s shore party got busy wrecking. Local photographers A.J. Peake and R. Cardwell, apparently EETC employees, began snapping photos documenting the activities of the landing party over the next two days.
The force soon captured and wrecked the undefended telegraph office without a shot– the island’s entire arsenal amounted to a “few 12 bore guns and two small and ancient pea-rifles”– cut three of four underwater cables, and felled the station’s transmission mast via explosives. This caused collateral damage as coral shot around like shrapnel, holing buildings and destroying the island’s supply of scotch.
Emden’s launch grappling for cable at Direction Island. NLA obj-149336815
The Eastern Extension Telegraph Company office after the German raid, 9 November 1914. NLA obj-149337412
The bottom of the mast with the wireless hut at the back. NLA obj-149338323
The wireless mast as it lay across the garden. NLA obj-149338122
More shots of the destroyed cable station. Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, AWNS-19150107-39.
Under the German flag, Direction Island, November 1914. Note the sun helmet and Mauser of the German sailors. NLA obj-149336272
At 0900, with Emden spotting an incoming ship and soon acknowledging it was not her tender Buresk, the cruiser cleared decks and signaled her shore party to return immediately.
“Landing party having been recalled by the Emden, leaves the jetty but turns back on seeing Emden putting to sea.” In the background is the copra schooner Ayesha, owned by the Clunies-Ross family.” Note the white-uniformed officer complete with pistol belt. NLA .obj-149337219
“The Emdens’ landing party left the island on their futile attempt to rejoin their ship, Direction Island, 1914.” NLA obj-149336127
Not able to catch up to the withdrawing Emden, her away force returned to the docks on Direction Island. Soon signs of a battle could be seen over the horizon.
View from the beach of Direction Island with the battle between the SMS Emden and HMAS Sydney in the far distance. NLA obj-149338507
Unknown to Von Mucke and his men, nor to the colonists on Direction Island, Emden, and Sydney clashed between 0940 and 1120 in a one-sided battle that left the German cruiser grounded and ablaze on North Keeling Island with more than half of her 316 men aboard dead, missing, or wounded.
German raider, SMS Emden is sunk by Australian Cruiser, HMAS Sydney, RAN collection.
German cruiser SMS Emden beached on Cocos Island in 1914
Sydney suffered four fatalities and a dozen wounded.
Von Mucke knew that Emden was either sunk or had fled over the horizon and that the only warship coming to collect them would likely be an enemy. He set up his Spandaus on the beach and waited.
A German Maxim gun and ammunition boxes were set up to repel landings at Direction Island, on 9 November 1914. NLA obj-149337513
Meet Ayesha
The local coconut and cargo hauler, the 97-ton, 98-foot three-master schooner Ayesha, was anchored just off the docks on Direction Island, with Von Mucke’s crew passing close by on their way to the island that morning. She was a fine-looking vessel, for a coastal lugger, and typically sailed the local waters with a crew of five or six mariners and a master.
The schooner Ayesha, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, November 1914. NLA obj-149336020
Ayesha in open water State Library of Australia PRG-1373-29-15
The solution, to Von Mucke, was to seize the schooner, requisition supplies from the station, and load his men on board with the hope of heading to Dutch Sumatra, some 800 or so miles away, where they could figure out the next steps.
He boarded her with one of his officers for an inspection.
From a June 1915 New York Times interview with Von Mucke translated from the Berliner Tageblatt:
I made up my mind to leave the island as soon as possible. The Emden was gone the danger for us growing. I noticed a three-master, the schooner Ayesha. Mr. Ross, the owner of the ship and the island, had warned me that the boat was leaky but I found it a quite seaworthy tub.
“Schooner Ayesha commandeered by Germans being prepared for the voyage” Sails have been bent to the booms and forestays. AWM P11611.027.002
Germans commandeer cable station stores to provision the yacht Ayesha, owned by the Clunies-Ross family after the German raider SMS Emden was driven ashore at North Keeling Island by HMAS Sydney on 9 November 1914. On the evening of 10 November 1914, a party from the Emden used the Ayesha to escape from the island. AWM P03912.001
A German landing party at Direction Island, preparing to go aboard the yacht Ayesha, after their ship the German raider SMS Emden was destroyed by HMAS Sydney on 9 November 1914. AWM P03912.002
The master and mate were released from their duties, although they warned Von Mucke the ship’s hull, thin, “worn through” and overgrown, could not handle an ocean voyage. Inspecting the hold, the wood was indeed “red and rotten, so much so, indeed, that we stopped our scratching as we had no desire to poke the points of our knives into the Indian Ocean.”
On the evening of 10 November, the Germans used the Ayesha to escape from the island.
The locals– according to both German and British reports– actually gave the Germans three cheers as they left. Von Mucke said they went even further and asked for their autographs. Emden’s fame had proceeded them.
“Steam pinnace taking last of Germans aboard the Ayesha. The Germans are waving to the British, who have given them three cheers.” NLA obj-149339081
It wasn’t until the next day, 11 November, that sailors and Marines from HMAS Sydney arrived at Direction Island to find out that the Emden’s shore party had come and gone, with a decent head start.
A party of armed sailors from HMAS Sydney lands on Direction Island, on 11 November 1914. A party from the German raider Emden had landed and taken possession of the cable station on the island, but on the evening of the 10th, they escaped in the schooner Ayesha, which belonged to the owner of the island. AWM EN0390
Von Mucke raised their small war flag and christened the schooner SMS Ayesha (Emden II) to three hurrahs from her new crew. Nonetheless, she struck her flag soon after and sailors soon went over the side to paint over the ship’s name. Word had to have gone out and the British were no doubt looking for her.
Ayesha’s navigational equipment was limited to a sextant, two chronometers, and a circa 1882 Indian Ocean Directory, filled with quaint old high-scale charts and notes made as far back as the 1780s. With 50 men crowded onto a ship designed for five, they fashioned hammocks from old ropes and slept in holds and on deck.
Even more limited was the crew’s kit, as the men had landed on Direction Island for a raid and only had the clothes on their backs and cartridges in their pouches.
The whole crew went about naked in order to spare our wash…Toothbrushes were long ago out of sight. One razor made the rounds of the crew. The entire ship had one precious comb.
Further, Ayesha’s canvas was old and rotten, and three of the schooner’s four water tanks had been contaminated with salt water.
She had enough canvas to rig fore and aft sails on the main and mizzen and two square sails on the foremast. Still, these were threadbare and had to be patched constantly as they “tore at the slightest provocation.”
One condemned sail was rigged over the ballast for use as a shared bed by ratings, which sounds almost enjoyable until you find out that the schooner leaked so bad that water rose over the ballast at sea and typically sloshed around just below the sail bed.
From Von Mucke’s later book, as translated in 1933 and republished by the USNI:
Below deck, aft of the hold, were two small cabins originally fitted with bunks, but in these, we were compelled to store our provisions. Swarms of huge cockroaches made it impossible for human beings to inhabit them.
Another old sail was rigged up to catch and filter rainwater into three repurposed Standard Oil cans for drinking which was rendered palatable by “a dash or lime juice of which we had fortunately found few bottles among the provisions of the former captain.”
Gratefully, it turned out that the crew’s former Legionaire was a crack chef and managed to cobble together decent meals from the larder of rice and tinned beef.
At night, the only light was two oil lamps that “gave off more smoke than light.”
Most of the armament was secured down below, with the Spandaus concealed and arranged to fire through loopholes on deck should they be needed.
Leaving the steam pinnacle behind for the islanders to use, Von Mucke originally towed the two cutters from Emden behind the Ayesha, as there was no tackle available to bring them aboard nor deck space to house them but eventually, they were lost. Soon all they had in terms of small boats were a pair of jolly boats that the schooner carried in small davits, each able to hold two men. At times of doldrums, they were put out to tow the schooner with the help of Emden’s lost cutter’s long oars.
After 16 days at sea wandering towards Sumatra and keeping over the horizon from steamers, Ayesha was intercepted by the Dutch Fret-class destroyer Lynx (510 tons, 210 feet oal, 30 knots, 4×3″, 2xtt) on 26 November and was escorted into Padang in Wester Sumatra the next day.
Given 24 hours in port, Von Mucke was warned by Lynx’s Belgian-born skipper “I could run into the harbor but whether I might not come out again was doubtful.”
Von Mucke related that at the time he “felt truly sorry for the Lynx. It must have been very irritating to her to have to trundle behind us at the wonderful speed of one knot, a speed which, with the light breeze blowing, the Ayesha could not exceed.”
The Dutch did not allow Ayesha to take on clothes, charts, or tackle, as they could have added to the warship’s effectiveness. What was allowed were some tinned provisions and ten live pigs, the latter stored in a makeshift pen around the chain locker.
They left the Dutch port with reinforcements as two reserve officers, LTs Gerdts and Wellman, who had been interned at Pandang on German steamers earlier in the war and wanted to cast their lot with Von Mucke. Once smuggled aboard under darkness via rowboat, as berthing was already a problem, their spaces were found on the deck under the mess table.
The German schooner was towed back out to sea on the evening of the 28th. She was followed out of territorial waters by the Dutch cruiser De Zeven Provincien.
Another bright spot of her brief stay in the Dutch East Indies was that the local German consul managed to smuggle the crew a small bundle of chocolate, cigarettes, and German newspapers. There was also a promised rendezvous location out to sea in a fortnight or so with a German merchant steamer that was still afloat and filled with enough coal to steam anywhere on the globe.
With a few weeks’ worth of food left from the stockpile removed from Direction Island, but relying largely on rainwater for drinking and bathing, the schooner spent the next two weeks wandering West into the Indian Ocean, keeping hidden while drifting towards her promised rendezvous.
Finally, in heavy seas near South Pagai in the Dutch Mentawai Islands on 14 December, Ayesha spied the Norddeutscher Lloyd (NDL) freighter Choising (ex-Madeleine Rickmers), a slight vessel of just 1,657 tons. Still, she was the best Christmas present Von Mucke could ask for.
The meeting, in the fog and mist, was probably traumatic to the complement of the steamer whose ship’s officers and engineer were German, and most of the crew were Chinese.
Up flew our ensign and colours. The steamer ran up the German flag. The crew climbed aloft into the shrouds, and three cheers rang from deck to deck. As usual, our men were dressed in the manner customary in thc Garden of Eden, a costume which necessity had forced upon them. The men of the Choising confided to us later that they were speechless with astonishment when suddenly, out of the fog, emerged a schooner, the shrouds of which were filled with naked forms.
Having sailed Ayesha for 1,709 sea miles, the crews waited until the waters calmed on the 16th to transfer to the steamer then scuttled the schooner, Emden’s final victim. They removed Ayesha’s wheel and figurehead and took them along to their new ship.
Willy Stöwer – Ayesha im Indischen Ozean nach Treffen mit Choising
The overloaded Choising set out West across the Indian Ocean towards Yemen on the Arabian peninsula, part of the now-German allied Ottoman Empire. Thumbing through Choising’s Lloyds book, the freighter assumed the identity of the Italian steamer Shenir, which was similarly sized and had the same general layout.
This included painting Shenir, Genoa on her bow and crafting an approximated Italian flag from sailcloth and a green window curtain from the captain’s cabin.
They stayed out of the shipping lanes, celebrated a low-key Christmas and New Year at sea, and after entering the Bab-el-Mandeb, passing close abreast of two British gunboats in the darkness, made it to Hodeida on 5 January 1915, having crossed 4,100 miles of the Indian Ocean successfully.
Cruise of the Emden, Ayesha, and Choising. Bestanddeelnr 22032 010
Arabian Nights
With the French cruiser, Desaix spotted near Hodeida, Von Mucke and his men bid Choising farewell. With no Ottoman naval officials to turn to, she went across the straits to Massawa in Eritrea which was under Italian control and still neutral, intending to link up with the cruiser SMS Konigsberg which they thought was still off the coast of Africa but was trapped upriver in the Rufiji.
Choising, remaining in Somaliland, would go on to be seized by the Italian government once that former German ally declared war against the Empire in May 1915. This led to her final service as the Italian-flagged Carroccio. As part of a small Italian convoy, she was sent to the bottom of the Adriatic Sea on 15 May 1917 off the coast of Albania by the Austrian destroyer Balaton in a messy surface action known today as the Battle of the Strait of Otranto.
Meanwhile, contrary to early rosy reports that the Turks welcomed Von Mucke with open arms in Hodeida and soon spirited them via train up the Hejaz railroad to Constantinople and from there to Germany, it would be five long months of slogging across Arabia to Damascus before the Germans had any sort of safety.
Overland from Hodeida, from Von Mucke’s book
The reason for choosing the port was simple:
Our only knowledge regarding Arabian ways and customs was a ” round the world’ guidebook that would have answered the purposes of a sight-seeing couple on their honeymoon very well. From it we learned that Hodcida is a large commercial city, and that the Hedjaz railway to Hodeida was in course of construction. As the book was some years old and as one of my officers remembered that years ago he had met a French engineer who told him that he had been engaged in the construction of a railway to Hodeida, we took it for granted that the railway was completed by this time.
Nonetheless, the word would precede them, hence Willie Stower’s fanciful depiction of the long-scuttled Ayesha arriving at a big red carpet Ottoman welcome at Hodeida.
Another such propaganda piece from 1915:
With the railway incomplete, the journey, which is a bit off subject for a Warship blog, included a three-day firefight with a battalion-sized force of Arab rebels, unruly camel caravans with wary Bedouins watching from the dunes, creeping up the uncharted coast on local fishing dhows (zambuks), and avoiding being kept as “guests” by local Turkish garrison commanders and sheiks looking to add the Teutonic travelers to their muscle.
SMS Emden crew is attacked by Arabs on their desert hike to Jeddah, Der Krieg 1914/19 in Wort und Bild, 35. Heft
Finally arriving at the terminus for the Hejaz railroad at Al Ula, a trek of 1,100 miles from Hodeida on 7 May, the force met Berliner Tageblatt correspondent Emil Ludwig, who was waiting for them, and within days they were being hosted by the German counsel in Damascus. By this point, their firearms cache had been whittled down to one machine gun, a few revolvers, and just 13 rifles, the rest bartered along the way for food, safe passage, boats, and camels; or lost in zambuk wrecks.
The photo of the Damascus meeting shows the Emden’s men complete with crisp new Turkish uniforms and fezes!
Besatzungsmitglieder von SMS Ayesha im Garten des Kaiserlichen Konsulats in Damaskus 11. Mai 1915. 2) Kapitänleutnant Hellmuth von Mücke, 3) Konsul Walter Rößler. Note the Gewehr 71 Mausers.
Then came an even larger show in Constantinople, attended by foreign legations and German RADM Wilhelm Souchon, former commander of the Kaiser’s Mediterranean Squadron and current unofficial commander of the Ottoman fleet. Souchon had a gift for the men: Iron Crosses sent directly from Berlin.
Six of the 50-man forces that had landed at Direction Island six months prior had been left behind, three killed by rebels, and three by assorted diseases and accidents. Of Emden’s 360 crew, virtually all except Von Mucke’s detachment were dead or POWs by this point in the war– to include the Kaiser’s own nephew. The same could be said broadly for all the fine young men of Von Spee’s squadron.
The arrival of Captain Mücke with the SMS Emden’s landing party in Constantinople
Captured German photograph of the captain and officers of the Ayesha being presented to the Turkish authorities by the American Ambassador. Figures from right to left are (1) Enver Pasha; (2) German Ambassador; (3,5,6) Officers of the raider Emden; (4) Provost of Town; (7) Admiral Suchow Pasha of Goeben. AWM A011403
Captured German photograph showing the arrival of the officers who escaped from the raider Emden after commandeering the yacht Ayesha, with the German flag which saved them from falling into the hands of the enemy. AWM A01402
They were lucky.
Soon after Von Mucke’s trip up the Arabian peninsula, another group of Von Spee’s men, elements of the crew of the river patrol boat SMS Tsingtau including Kptlt. Erwin von Möller, LtzS Hans von Arnim, Vizesteuermann Heinrich Deike, Karl Gründler, Heinrich Mau, Arthur Schwarting plus Turkish ship’s cook Said Achmad, sailed the coastal schooner Marboek for 82 days from Sumatra where they were interned to the Arabian coast at Hadramaut, then headed out overland for Sana, much like Von Mucke.
They were all killed in the desert by rebels on 25 May 1916.
Epilogue
Von Mucke, whose interviews with Emil Ludwig soon circled the globe, spent some time as head of a Turko-German river flotilla in the Euphrates, then finished the war back in Germany as head of the Danube Flotilla. You could say the Kaiserliche Marine wanted to keep him from being lost at sea. Sadly, half of the men who had returned with him from Emden had been killed later in the Great War.
His mug was snapped often and widely distributed. A dashing hero with a romantic tale.
Capt. Von Mucke & bride & sailors of EMDEN LOC ggbain-20400-20461v
Kpt. Von Mucke in Berlin LOC ggbain-19500-19578v
He also penned two thin wartime books, one on each of the vessels he served on during the conflict.
Postwar, retired from the Navy after an 18-year career, he had six children and earned a living in Weimar Germany through writing and conducting lecture tours, retelling his story. Turning to politics, he briefly held a seat in the Saxon state parliament, flirted with the Nazis (membership number 3,579) before they rose to power, then by 1930 had become an outspoken pacifist and member of the Deutschlandbund, an anti-Nazi group. Banned from writing after 1933, he was labeled a communist and tossed into concentration camps on at least two occasions. Despite the fact his naval pension had been suspended, he volunteered for combat with the Kriegsmarine in 1939 at age 58 but was rejected because he was considered politically unreliable.
Remaining in East Germany post-WWII, Von Mucke wrote pamphlets against the rearmament of West Germany for the communists but soon fell out with them as well. He passed in 1957 at age 76 and is buried in Ahrensburg.
As she sat in shallow water along the reefs off Keeling and was extensively salvaged over 40 years, literally tons of souvenirs of Emden exist, primarily in Australia, where her bell and several relics are on display at the AWM in Canberra while two of her 10.5 cm (4.1 in) SK L/40 guns are in parks in the Canberra and Sydney.
Relics from Sydney and Emden’s battle on display at the Australian War Memorial
It is also likely that many tons of her good Krupp steel armor plate were recycled for use by the Japanese Combined Fleet, as her salvors for long periods in the 1920s and 30s were from Yokohama.
However, little, if anything, survives of Ayesha other than period photographs and romanticized postcards, along with the works of Von Mücke.
She is remembered in postal stamps of the Cocos Islands, for obvious reasons.
The small 4×6 Reichskriegsflagge flown over Keeling by Emden’s Landungskorps, then our subject schooner and brought back to Germany in 1915 with Von Mücke and the gang at some point was put on display in the Marienkirche (St. Mary’s Church) in Lübeck.
Then in the 1930s, it was passed on to Kapt. Julius Lauterbach. A HAPAG reserve officer who had served on the liner Staatssekretär Kraetke before the war and as Emden’s 1st navigation officer during the conflict. He left the cruiser with a 15-man prize crew put aboard the captured 4,350-ton British steamer Buresk in September 1914 to serve as a tender. Captured after Emden was destroyed and Buresk scuttled, he escaped along with 34 other Germans held by the British in Singapore during the Sepoy Mutiny in February 1915. Returning to Germany on his own, (like Von Mücke he also wrote a thin book published during the war, “1000£ Price on Your Head – Dead or Alive: The Escape Adventures of Former Prize Officer S. M. S. Emden”) he was given command of a trap ship (German Q-ship), and subsequently the raider SMS Mowe. In 1955, Lauterbach’s widow donated the flag to German militaria collector Karl Flöck who placed it on display at the Gasthaus zum Roten Ochsen in Cologne for years until it went up to auction in 2009. It is now in private hands.
The tale of Emden has been told numerous times in numerous ways, but it generally left out that of Von Mucke and his refugees. Of note, a 2013 German film, Die Männer der Emden, included it. The trailer includes camels, suffering, and a bit of swashbuckling, as it should.
Ships are more than steel and wood And heart of burning coal, For those who sail upon them know That some ships have a soul.
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International.
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.
Near La Neuveville, France. 25 October, 1944. Official wartime caption: “Infantrymen relieved from combat for rest, await removal to a rest camp.” 314th Infantry Regiment, 79th Infantry Division. Left to right: Pfc. Arthur H. Muth, Allentown, Pa.; Sgt. Carmine H. Sileo, Brooklyn, N.Y., and Sgt. Kelly C. Lasalle, Jeanette, Pa.
Signal Corps Archive. SC 195623-S
Note the mix of M1 Carbine (Muth) and M1 Garands (Sileo and Lasalle) along with camo-netted M1 helmets and E-tools. Also note the NCO (Lasalle) has binos and a map case, as befitting his role.
The men are likely of 1st Bn, 314th, who are noted to have bedded down in after the regiment captured three 88mm guns, three 75mms, five 20mms, four half-tracks, four sedans, a 10.5 cm leFH 18 (Sf.) auf Geschützwagen 39H(f), a C&R, car, and a 1/2 ton truck earlier than day– a fair sampling of the enemy’s ordnance.
As part of Patton’s 3rd Army, the 314th Inf Rgt was the first across the Seine River and helped liberate France, having landed in Normandy at Utah Beach on D+8 with its parent 79th “Cross of Lorraine” Inf Div and helped push the Kriegsmarine out of Cherbourg. Then came the Battle of the Bulge and the push into the Rhineland where they occupied Dortmund on 13 April 1945 before pushing into Czechoslovakia.
You are now entering Germany, courtesy of the 79th Inf. Div
In all, they spent 329 days on the Continent during the war, with 262 of those in combat. They suffered 5,057 casualties in that period (862 killed, 4139 WIA, 59 missing), against an authorized strength of 3,118 officers and men– a casualty rate of 162 percent. In exchange, they accounted for 11,822 enemy POWs and earned two MoHs, 3 DSCs, 282 Silver Stars, and 757 Bronze Stars, among other decorations.
Official Caption: “Homeward Bound. Sicily, Salerno, and Normandy are on the log of this LCI flotilla making its triumphant homecoming at an East Coast port. Invasion craft sailed for the European coast nearly two years ago. Twenty of the original 24 craft returned—four were knocked out during the Normandy invasion. Vessels are manned by Coast Guard crews.”
Coast Guard photo from the Allison collection, MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History.
The slow-moving self-escorting convoy left Falmouth, England, on 5 October for Charleston, where they arrived on the 24th. The convoy included the 20 surviving USCG-manned Landing Craft Infantry (Large) of LCI Flotilla Four (Capt. M. E. Imlay, USCG), which were returning from Europe, where the further likelihood of U.S. amphibious landings was slim.
Of the above landing craft, 13 were found to be worth being refurbished and sent on to the Pacific to join the all-USCG LCI Flotilla Thirty-Five. They would perform well in the Okinawa campaign, where one, USS LCI(L)-90, would take a kamikaze to the bridge in June 1945.
The once 24-strong flotilla had entered service with the Tunisian operation in June 1943. Then came the Husky Landings off Sicily in July 1943, the Avalanche Landings in Salerno, and the Overlord Landings in Normandy, where four: USS LCI(L)-85, 91, 92, and 93 would be lost to a combination of mines and German coastal artillery.
USCG LCI Invasion craft, in camouflage, sailing in convoy formation during WWII 80-G-42482
LCIs, including several of the USCG’s LCI Flotilla Four, massed at Bizerte, Tunisia, on 6 July 1943 while loading troops for the invasion of Sicily. The shallow-draft 158-footers could carry a reinforced company to the surf line, capable of beaching their bows in water just 32 inches deep. US Army Signal Corps photo # 176486, now in the collections of the National Archives.
“The Coast Guard-manned landing craft LCI(L)-85 approached the beach at 12 knots. Her crew winced as they heard repeated thuds against the vessel’s hull made by the wooden stakes covering the beach like a crazy, tilted, man-made forest… The Coast Guard LCI(L)-85, battered by enemy fire after approaching Omaha Beach, prepares to evacuate the troops she was transporting to an awaiting transport. The “85” sank shortly after this photograph was taken. The LCI(L)-85 was one of four Coast Guard LCIs that were destroyed on D-Day.”
Crews from the other returning ETO landing craft, after rehabilitation leave, were dolled out as “old salts” to the 36 newly commissioned USCG-manned LSTs added to the fleet between August and November 1944 that formed LST Flotilla Twenty-Nine, under Capt. C. H. Peterson USCG (’25) in the Pacific.
USS LST-831 is seen approaching the beachhead at Okinawa on D-Day, 1 April 1945. (Note: the unauthorized letters “USCG” are stenciled on her inner hull above the main ramp. US Coast Guard photo from the collections of the Office of the US Coast Guard Historian.
LSTFlot29 would be destined to take part in the landings in the Detachment Landings (Iwo Jima) and Iceberg Landings (Okinawa) in 1945.
If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi
Warship Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024: A Tough Little Wolf
Nationalmuseet, Danmark, asset THM-3367
Above, we see the Danish Soridderen (Sea Knight) class torpedobåden patrol boat Søulven(Sea Wolf)—also cited in the West as Soloven, Soeulven, and Søulv —as she passed near the Trekroner Søfort at the entrance to the Copenhagen harbor before 1920.
A small boat with a fearsome name, her skipper and crew proved all-heart during the Great War, and a noteworthy British admiral doubtlessly owed his life to her pluck.
The Søridderen trio
Between 1879, when Hajen, Torpedobaad Nr.4, joined the fleet through Svaerdfisken, which entered service in May 1913, the Royal Danish Navy fielded 40 assorted torpedo boats across several different classes to include designs from British (Samuel White, Yarrow, Thornycroft), French (Forges & Chantiers), German (F. Schichau) and domestic (Burmeister & Wain, Orlogsvaerftet) yards. No less than 17 of these were still in service by the time Gaviro Princep caught up to Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, and set the world alight.
In 1911, a program of three new German Schichau-designed boats and a matching set of three British Yarrow-designed boats were ordered. The lead ship would be built overseas in each case, and the two follow-on units would be constructed domestically. This led to the Schichau-designed and built 250-ton Tumleren (and Orlogsvaerftet-constructed sisters Vindhunden and Spaekhuggeren) and the 230-ton Yarrow-designed and built Søridderen (accompanied by the Burmeister & Wain-constructedFlyvefisken and Soulven).
The ships were competing designs of similar size, armament, and capability with the Tumlerens running 250 tons, 186 feet long, 18 feet on the beam, and with a 6-foot draft while the Søridderen went 181x18x6 feet.
The German-built Danish torpedobåden Tumleren. Note her trainable torpedo tubes. THM-3340
Both classes were coal-fired steam turbine-driven and fast (27.5 knots), as well as armed with five 18-inch torpedo tubes (one fixed in bow and four trainable on deck) and two 12-pounder 3″/52 M.07 QF guns.
Danish Torpedobåden Tumleren i Svanemøllebugten, 1915, by Christian Benjamin Olsen. These boats were notoriously smokey especially when using the thrifty Danish navy’s (preferred) cheap coal to stretch training dollars.
The Søridderens went a bit faster than designed on trails, hitting 28.3 knots.
Søridderen class member Flyvefisken, seen in a color period postcard. THM-30779
Søridderen member Flyvefisken, the port view seen underway. THM-4490
Jane’s 1914 listing for the Søridderen class.
The British-designed ships were also seen as more seaworthy than the German-designed boats. However, the events of 1914 precluded further orders.
Meet Soulven
Our subject carried a traditional Danish navy moniker and repeated one used by one of the Scandinavian country’s first batch of torpedo boats, a little 95-footer built in France that remained in service until 1911.
Photo showing the first torpedo boat Søulven, Torpedobaad Nr.5, launched in 1880 at anchor in Copenhagen. The picture also shows the visiting German armored battery ship Heligoland and the French cruiser Chateau Renault. Photographed Sep 8, 1891. THM-9524
The second Danish torpedo boat Soulven joined the fleet in 1911, likely recycling most of the crew of her namesake which was decommissioned at the same time.
Note her forward bow tube and trainable singles.
She would spend her first three years as a training ship, and there are some great images of her pier side conducting training with Madsen light machine guns complete with massive 40-round detachable box magazines. A treat for any gun nerd!
Soluven crew at Flådens Leje with Madsen LMGs THM-6173
Soulven note bridge and Madsens THM-6175
THM-6175 inset
War!
When the Great War began in August 1914, Denmark armed-up to protect her neutrality, having just fought Germany in 1864 and the Brits in 1807. This meant mobilizing 52,000 reserves and new drafts to add to the professional 13,000-man Army and building the 23 km-long Tunestillingen line of defenses outside of Copenhagen. Likewise, the Danish Navy dusted off its guns and torpedo tubes and began to actively patrol its waters.
With that, Soulven left her training duties behind and became the flagship of 1. Torpedobådsflotille, assigned to patrol in the Oresund, the strait that separates Denmark and Sweden.
Torpedo inspection on board Soulven 1914 THM-4687
Her skipper at this time, and dual-hatted commander of the 1st TBF, was Kapt. Eduard Haack, 43, a career regular with 28 years of service on his seabag that included tours in the Danish West Indies (Virgin Islands) on the old steam frigate Jylland, Med cruises on the gunboat St. Thomas and cruiser Hejmdal, a stint as an officer instructor at the service’s NCO academy, service aboard the coastal battleships Iver Hvitfeldt and Herluf Trolle, command of a section of the naval mine corps (Søminekorpsets), and command of the icebreaker/OPV (inspektionsskibet) Absalon on the Greeland-Iceland-Faeroes beat.
Haack was a professional.
Haack, on Iver Hvitfeldt before he war. THM-4745
The E-13 Affair
It was during this time that the British started sending small E-class submarines through the Skagerrak and the Kattegat around Jutland then through the Oresund and across the Baltic to the Tsarist port of Revel in the Gulf of Finland. HMS E-1 and E-9 made it by October 1914, while E-11 turned back. They would soon be joined by HMS E-8, E-18, and E-19. One of their less fortunate sisters was HMS E-13.
Around 2300 on 17 August 1915, while E13 was attempting to make the passage through the Oresund to join the other British Submarines operating with the Tsar’s Navy, she experienced a gyro compass failure and ran aground in the mud on the Danish Island of Saltholm, her hull surrounded by nine feet of water.
English submarine E13 grounded on Saltholm THM-12243.
Spotted by the old (circa 1888) Danish Thornycroft-built torpedo boat Narvalen at 0500 on the morning of 18 August, the Dane dutifully notified E13 they had 24 hours to get unstuck or be interned for the duration. LCDR Geoffrey Layton, RN replied that he understood and would work to free his boat. His executive officer, LT Paul Leathley Eddis, was sent ashore to see if he could arrange a tug.
Soon after, at 0620, two German S90-class large torpedo boats on patrol, SMS G132, and G134, likewise spotted the disabled British sub, with her crew resting atop E13’s casing. The 215-foot S90s were really more destroyer than TB, and ran large at 535 tons, carrying an 88mm gun, two 2″/40 guns, and three torpedo tubes.
S90-class Hochsee-Torpedoboot SMS S-125, a good representative of her class. Photographed by A. Renard of Kiel, probably before 1911. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command NH 45400
To guard the beached sub, flotilla leader Søulven arrived on the scene at 0845 with Narvalen’s sister Støren. The Danish bathtub battleship Peder Skram, armed with 9.4-inch guns and swathed in as much as 8 inches of armor, was just over the horizon and making steam for the area.
With the greenlight from RADM Robert Mischke, head of the Küstenschutzdivision der Ostsee, by radio, at 1028 the German torpedo boats went on the offensive.
Signaling “Abandon Ship Immediately,” G132 and G134 heeled over and made maximum revolutions for the grounded E13, sailing into Danish coastal waters with their guns blazing. Some 15 British submariners were killed outright.
English leave E13 after the shelling, 19 Aug. 1915 THM-4679
Despite being outgunned by the two larger German boats, Søulven’s skipper, Kapt. Haack gave the order to move his boat directly between E13 and the German guns to shield the British, with the Dane calling on the Germans to halt. The maneuver worked and at 1035, the German boats turned away and left Danish waters, having closed to within 300 yards of the submarine. Haack noted that the German commander of G132 raised an arm in the air as a sign that the protest was accepted.
The Danes soon went to work rescuing the survivors of E13, including Storen’s boatswain, one AFP Olsen, who reportedly dived into the frigid water and pulled a wounded Tar, Leading Seaman Herbert Lincoln, off the bottom. Olsen would be awarded an Albert Medal by the British government for his action, but not allowed by the Danish Foreign Ministry to accept it.
The wounded were passed on to Peder Skram, who would take them to Copenhagen. The recovered bodies of 14 of the 15 men lost were loaded aboard Søulven’s sister Søridderen and brought to Lynettehavnen. The 15th was later recovered and joined his shipmates.
The reaction in the British and Scandinavian press to the German violation of neutrality was understandable.
What occurred over the next several days in Denmark was an outpouring of mourning for the British submariners who were killed in their waters. This included some 200 Danish sailors providing an honor guard for the recovered bodies during a funeral procession in Copenhagen where the survivors of E13, clad in Danish dress uniforms, were assisted in carrying their shipmate’s coffins to the refrains of Handel’s Dead March. The proceedings were well-attended by the international legations.
Photos from the event show Haack and his men prominently.
THM-3427
Note the Remington falling block 1867s with sword bayonets. THM-3426
THM-3421
While most foreign bodies recovered in Danish waters during the war– such as Jutland sailors buried at Frederikshavn cemetery– were simply interred in Danish soil with military honors, London approved a Danish ship to carry the E13 crew remains to return speedily to England.
This led the procession solemnly to the Det Forenetede Dampskibsselskab (DFDS) steamer SS Vidar (1,493 tons) while a crowd of thousands of Danes stood by to observe in procession, with Dannebrogs lowered at half-mast across the country.
Vidar carried the remains to Hull, accompanied by the Danish torpedo boats Springeren and Støren as escorts. Vidar carried a Danish Ministry of the Navy’s representative, CDR Rørd Regnar Johannes Hammer, a Knight Commander Dannebrogorden, with 39 years of service on his record, who was responsible for the steamer’s grim cargo. Most were later interred at the Haslar Royal Naval Cemetery. CWGC in Hampshire.
The British consul in Denmark, Robert Erskine, commended the Danish authorities for the dignity and efficiency with which the handling of the dead was conducted.
As for the survivors, interned for the duration of the war under international law, they were put up at the Copenhagen Naval Yard under very loose custody– referred to by the Danes as engelske orlogsgaster (“English military guests”)– and allowed to travel around the city on their own recognizance.
The crew of the English submarine E13 before leaving for Russia in 1915. Half of these men would perish in Danish waters and the other half would cool their heels in Copenhagen for the duration. Had it not been for Soulven, their story would have been likely very different. THM-4680
The Danes likewise “entertained” assorted German naval personnel as well during the war, such as the crew of Zeppelin L.3.
German Navy zeppelin LZ-24 (Luftschiff.3) participated in 24 reconnaissance missions over the North Sea, including the first raid on England on 20 January 1915. She was scuttled by her crew after a forced landing caused by an engine failure during a snowstorm on Fanø Island, Denmark on 17 February 1915. The crew were interned. Remnants of the zeppelin are displayed in a museum in Tonder, Denmark.
Rather than enjoy this comfortable prison, E13‘s skipper, LCDR Layton, accompanied by his No. 1, LT Paul Leathley Eddis, released himself from polite custody/parole, leaving a note behind to explain his actions, and made his way back to England via Sweden three months later.
The rest of E13’s crew remained in Denmark until after the Armistice. The sub’s third officer, Sub-LT William Garriock, RNR, was left behind to command these marooned submariners.
Largely to prevent the Germans from attempting to do so, the Danes recovered E13 and towed it to Copenhagen.
E13 grounded at Saltholm, 1915 THM-6768
Shell-wrecked English submarine, E13, beached at Saltholm THM-12244
Salvage work on English submarine E13 at Saltholm THM-12245
English submarine E 13 under tow between pontoons and salvage steamers Odin and Thor. 1915. THM-4482
Her shell and shrapnel-ridden hull were on public display for the world to see.
English submarine E13 at Copenhagen harbour THM-12255
As were recovered relics including her pierced periscope and a shot-up prayer book.
The sub was put in drydock at Orlogsvaerftet, with her interned sailors allowed to come and claim personal property and mementos. Several even reportedly helped in the ultimately futile three-year effort to repair the vessel and place it in Danish service.
Ultimately, E13 was refloated and tied up alongside the Danish submarine tender Helka in 1918, used for training purposes.
U-bådsstationen, Cophenhangen. Petty officers aboard the Danish submarine tender Hekla in 1918. The group was photographed on deck in front of the ship’s stack. To the right is the tower of the salvaged HMS E13. THM-3494
In February 1919, after the Danish Navy washed their hands of the hulk, the British sold it to a local Danish company for its scrap value.
But back to our Søulven.
Continued Service
Søulven, returning to her role in protecting Denmark’s territorial sea, conducted several rescues and police actions in the Oresund before the end of the war, including capturing Swedish smugglers on two different occasions.
Photo showing the bridge of a torpedo boat with her bow 3″/52. To the left of the picture is the torpedo boat Soulven underway, seen from the front to port. Taken in the 1920s. THM-22312
Transferred to the reserves in 1929, along with her two sisters, Søridderen and Flyvefisken, and the three rival Tumlerens, they were collectively stricken in 1935-1937 and disposed of after they were replaced by the new and very strongly armed torpedo boats of the Dragen and Glenten classes.
Their hulls were stripped of anything usable and scrapped, with their 3″/52s recycled for use as coastal artillery around the Danish littoral for another decade.
Danish Den næstnordligste 7,5 cm kanon i Hørhaven from old torpedo boats
Epilogue
Of our cast of characters, Soulven’s skipper and commander of the 1st TBF during the Great War, Eduard Haack, finished the war as head of coastal defense for Northern Denmark. He retired from the Navy in 1920, with his last post as inspector of lighthouses. He became chief ship inspector at Statens Skibstilsyn, the Danish Shipping Authority, the next year, and remained in that post until 1936. He then helped organize the Icelandic Shipping Authority and received, among other things, a knighthood in the Icelandic Falcon Order (Islandske Falkeorden) and was made a commander of the Dannebrogordenen order. Capt. Haack passed in 1956 and is buried at St. Olai cemetery in Kalundborg, aged 85.
The German admiral who gave the go-ahead for the attack on E13, Mischke, would end the war as a vizeadmiral and pass in 1932. His family is the owner of Lahneck Castle, which he purchased in 1907.
The two torpedo boats used in the attack on E13, G132, and G134, at the end of the war were disarmed and served as minesweepers out of Cuxhaven. Retained briefly by the Reichsmarine they were scrapped in 1921.
E13’s skipper went on to be known as ADM Sir Geoffrey Layton, GBE, KCB, KCMG, DSO. After returning to England via Sweden in time for Christmas in 1915, he was given command of the experimental steam submarine HMS S-1. Transitioning to capital ships in the 1930s, he started WWII as commander of the 1st Battle Squadron, consisting of the battleships HMS Barham, HMS Warspite, and HMS Malaya. Sent to command the ill-fated China Station in September 1940, he handed it over to Tom Phillips just before the Japanese went ham in the Pacific in December 1941. He went on to command British forces in Ceylon through 1945. Retiring in 1947 as head of Portsmouth, he passed in 1964.
ADM Layton
Layton’s XO, LT Paul Eddis, survived continued submarine service in the Great War only to be killed when his boat, HMS L24, was tragically lost with all hands in a collision with the battleship HMS Resolution off Portland on 10 January 1924. Subs are a dangerous game even in peacetime.
Speaking of which, the funeral transport for E13’s 15 recovered sailors, the Danish steamer Vidar, was herself sent to the bottom during WWII while traveling from Grimsby to Esbjerg via the Tyne with coal and general cargo, torpedoed by the German submarine U-21 (Kptlt. Wolf-Harro Stiebler) in the North Sea in January 1940– four months before Germany invaded neutral Denmark. In tragic irony, she carried 15 of her crew to the bottom.
The very well-marked Vidar. Photo courtesy of Danish Maritime Museum, Elsinore
The Danes would recycle the name of Soulven for use with a new class of fast torpedo boats ordered in the early 1960s from Britain (heard that before?). This Danish third torpedo boat Soulven (P 515) would serve from 1967 to 1990.
Danish Sea Lion Class Vosper PT boat MTB P 515 Søulven (The Sea Wolf)
Ships are more than steel and wood And heart of burning coal, For those who sail upon them know That some ships have a soul.
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International.
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.
If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi
Warship Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024: Skill and Perseverance
Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-272783
Above we see, some 80 years ago this week, the Cleveland-class light cruiser, USS Houston (CL-81), making like a submarine with her decks nearly awash. This is not an optical illusion. She is seen under tow on 17 October 1944, after she had been torpedoed twice by Japanese aircraft during operations off Formosa. The first torpedo hit Houston amidships on 14 October. The second struck the cruiser’s starboard quarter just 43 hours later while she was limping away.
A ship with a standard design displacement of 11,744 long tons, it was later estimated that, in the above image, she was so full of water that she was at some 20,900 tons.
The Clevelands
When the U.S. Navy took off the shackles of the London Naval Treaty and moved to make a series of new light cruisers, they based the design on the last “treaty” limited 10,000-ton Brooklyn-class light cruiser, USS Helena (CL-50), which was commissioned in 1939 (and was torpedoed and sunk in the Battle of Kula Gulf in 1943).
The resulting Cleveland class was stood up fast, with the first ship laid down in July 1940. Soon, four East Coast shipyards were filling their ways with their hulls.
The Cleveland class, via ONI 54R, 1943
The changes to the design were mostly in the armament, with the new light cruisers carrying a dozen 6″/47 Mark 16 guns in four triple turrets– rather than the 15 guns arranged in five turrets in Helena as the latter’s No. 3 gun turret was deleted.
The modification allowed for a stronger secondary armament (6 dual 5″/38 mounts and as many as 28 40mm Bofors and 20 20mm Oerlikon guns) as well as some strengthening in the hull. Notably, the latter may have worked as one of the class, USS Miami (CL-89), lost her bow to Typhoon Cobra but lived to tell the tale.
Much overloaded at more than 14,000 tons when fully loaded, these ships were cramped and top-heavy, which led to many further mods such as deleting catapults, aircraft, and rangefinders as the conflict went on to keep them from rolling dangerously.
Although 52 hulls were planned, only 27 made it to the fleet as cruisers while nine were completed while on the craving dock to Independence-class light carriers. A further baker’s dozen (of which only two were completed, and those too late for WWII service) were reordered as Fargo-class cruisers, which was basically a Cleveland with a single funnel and a redesigned, more compact, superstructure.
Remarkably, although the Clevelands saw much hard service in WWII, none were lost in action. No other cruiser design in history has seen so many units sail off to war and all return home.
The Cleveland class in the 1946 edition of Jane’s.
Meet Houston
Our subject is the third U.S. Navy warship to carry the name of the Lone Star State’s city which itself is named in honor of Sam Houston.
Originally slated to be named USS Vicksburg, CL-81 was renamed on the ways to honor the sacrifice of the Northampton-class heavy cruiser USS Houston (CL/CA-30)which was tragically lost in a storm of Japanese torpedoes during the Battle of Sunda Strait on 1 March 1942, a vessel whose legacy is cherished in her home state. That ship’s 1,000-man crew all either perished or were “rescued” from the sea by the Japanese and sent to hellish POW camps.
That doomed cruiser had a special link to her “hometown” and would visit it three times between 1930 and 1939, collecting a special Silver Service donated from public subscription from city leaders.
USS Houston (CA-30) view taken at Houston, Texas, in late 1930, when the ship visited the city after which she had been named. Courtesy of Captain Henri H. Smith-Hutton USN ret., 1976 NH 85177
Two months after CA-30 was lost, 1,000 young men, the “Houston Volunteers,” mustered for service to replace those lost on the cruiser and, sworn in by RADM William A. Glassford before a local crowd of 150,000, unveiled a 60-foot model of the vessel before leaving directly for Naval Training Center San Diego aboard five special trains.
Likewise, the Harris County War Bond Drive raised over $85 million, enough to not only replace the USS Houston but also to build the light carrier USS San Jacinto (CVL-30). Don’t mess with Texas, indeed.
30 May 1942. Caption: “1000 men of Houston, Texas are sworn into U.S. Navy in a mass enlistment ceremony to replace 1,000 lost on cruiser ‘Houston’.” University of Houston Libraries Special Collections. do8941zg26p
Building the new USS Houston (CL 81) at Norfolk Navy Yard, Norfolk, Virginia, for launching on June 19, 1943. Workmen lifting a steel deck plate weighing many hundreds of pounds into place. Photograph released May 31, 1943. 80-G-68627
Building the new USS Houston (CL 81) at Norfolk Navy Yard, Norfolk, Virginia, for launching on June 19, 1943. Looking through the huge anchor-eye are John W. Jackson and Wilson Majors, both steamfitters. 80-G-68632
When it came time to find a sponsor for this new cruiser, Mrs. Claud Hamill, who led the campaign to raise funds for the second cruiser Houston, was the logical choice. She led a group of 20 Houstonians to the event and christened the vessel “on behalf of the people of Houston who ensured the perpetuation of a beloved American name in a great fighting ship!”
“Norfolk, Va., 19 June 1943– Mrs. Claude Hammill, of Houston, Texas, smashes a bottle of champagne against the bow of the new cruiser, Houston, as the ship starts down the ways at her launching 19 June 1943 at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co., Newport News, Va. In the picture reading from the extreme left are Senator Tom Connally, of Texas, Governor Coke Stevenson, of Texas, Jesse Jones, Secretary of Commerce, Mayor Otis Massey, of Houston, Lieutenant Commander Wilson Starbuck, Public Relations Officer of the Fifth Naval District, and (front) Rear Admiral O.L. Cox, Supervisor of Shipbuilding at the Yard.” University of Houston Libraries Special Collections. do9829b816n
Future USS Houston (CL-81) Being christened by Mrs. Claude Hamill at Newport News, Virginia, 19 June 1943. 19-N-47116
USS Houston (CL-81) launched, at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company shipyard, Newport News, Virginia, 19 June 1943. 19-N-47114
Commissioned on 20 December 1943, she would spend the next four months conducting shakedown and training cruises ranging from Boston to the Caribbean.
Her first skipper was Capt. William Wohlsen Behrens, a 45-year-old Mustang who had served during the Great War as an enlisted man on submarine patrol off the Atlantic Coast later picked up his butter bar after attending Temple University.
And his cruiser was beautiful!
USS Houston (CL-81) off the Norfolk Navy Yard, Virginia, 11 January 1944. She is painted in Camouflage Measure 32, Design 1d. Photograph from the Bureau of Ships Collection in the U.S. National Archives. 19-N-60240
Same as the above. Note her extensive radar fit including SG, SK-2, Mk 13, and twin Mk 25 radars. 19-N-60241
Same as the above. Just a great example of Measure 32, Design 1d for modelers. 19-N-60239
USS Houston (CL-81) vertical photograph of the ship underway off Norfolk, Virginia, 12 January 1944. This gives a fantastic view of her dozen 6″/47s, dozen 5″38s, 24 40mm Bofors, and 21 Oerlikons as well as her twin stern cats. 80-G-214194
USS Houston (CL-81) off Norfolk, Virginia, 12 January 1944. She is painted in Camouflage Measure 32, Design 1d. 80-G-214200
USS Houston (CL-81) underway off the U.S. East Coast, on 26 January 1944 on shakedown. NH 50219
War!
Catching orders to head to the Pacific, Houston arrived at Pearl Harbor on 6 May 1944 via the Panama Canal and San Diego and by the end of the month would join VADM Marc Mitscher’s fast carrier Task Force 58 at Majuro Atoll.
Her baptism of fire would occur in June as she screened those flattops on their raids of the Marianas and the Bonins— losing one of her Kingfishers to an accident on the 12th– before turning to Saipan for the Marianas campaign by mid-month.
After spending two weeks screening TF 58 as its carries haunted Saipan from 90 miles offshore during “The Marianas Turkey Shoot,” Houston was dispatched on 27 June, along with sister USS Miami (CL-89) and six escorting destroyers, as a surface action group with orders to shell Japanese-occupied Guam and Rota.
Houston let her big guns sing for the first time, delivering 542 6″/47 HC shells and 313 of 5″/38 AA Common. Her spotting planes reported her guns to have knocked out a dozen aircraft on the ground and set alight a factory building and three large fuel storage tanks.
Of this action, Behrens noted that “While the expenditure of ammunition was high for the results obtained on targets other than the airfield, I consider it well spent, in view of the experience gained by all hands. Firing at the radio or radar stations at Rota and Guam eliminated the nervousness apparent in firing at these first targets on both islands. The performance of all personnel was most satisfactory.”
Early September found her on another sortie with USS Miami, this time joined by sister USS Vincennes (CL-64), to plaster Japanese positions on Angaur, Peleliu, Ngesebus, and Palau. This time she spent 884 6-inch and 661 5-inch shells. Miami narrowly beat her, ripping off 900 of each.
Houston then rejoined her carrier task force and screened it during airfield reduction strikes in the Philippines before returning to Peleliu to support the forces landing there in mid-September.
October saw her weather a 60-knot tropical storm at Ulithi Atoll on the 3rd before standing out against Nasei Shoto and Formosa as part of Task Group 38.2– the fleet carriers USS Bunker Hill, Intrepid, and Hancock; the light carriers USS Independence (loaded with night fighters) and Cabot; the battlewagons USS Iowa and New Jersey; and the anti-aircraft cruisers USS San Diego and Oakland. By the 10th, the TG was sending aircraft on raids against Okinawa.
On 11 October, Houston’s deck log noted “several enemy snoopers” probing the TG’s boundary and at least one unidentified submarine was spotted.
Behrens noted, “It does not appear that tomorrow’s strike on Formosa will be a complete surprise to the Japanese.”
Indeed, 12 October saw much excitement, with Houston splashing four Japanese land-based torpedo bombers while filling the air with 5,000 rounds of AAA and suffering two men with shrapnel wounds. The aircraft included new radar-equipped Mitsubishi Type 4 Ki-67 Hiryu (flying dragon)(“Peggy”) Army twin-engine heavy bombers of Imperial Army Air Force (IJAAF) Air Combat Group (Hiko Sentai) 98.
Houston helped repel another attack the next day, in which the brand-new Baltimore-class heavy cruiser USS Canberra (CA-70) suffered damage. The leviathan, part of nearby Task Group 38.2, was holed by a Type 91, Mod. 3 torpedo that hit below her armor belt at the engineering spaces and blew a jagged hole in her side, killing 23 men outright. Due to the location of the wound, a whopping 4,500 tons of water flooded her after fireroom and both engine rooms, leaving the cruiser dead in the water and had to be taken under tow by the cruiser USS Wichita (CA-45).
With Houston ordered to take the limping Canberra’s spot on the screen the next day, just after sunset on the 14th, the flying dragons of Hiko Sentai 98 caught up to her as night fell. She struck down three of the attackers but caught a tough-to-fight torpedo directly under her hull.
USS Houston (CL-81) view looking aft, showing damage to the ship’s stern area resulting from a torpedo hit amidships received off Formosa on 14 October 1944. This photo was taken while Houston was under tow, but prior to the second torpedo hit on 16 October. Note the OS2U floatplane that had been jarred off the port catapult, breaking its wing on impact with the aircraft crane. 19-N-106304
From Behrens’ report:
The Excruciating Limp
As with the stricken Canberra, which was being slowly pulled away from Formosa by Wichita, a heavy cruiser, USS Boston (CA-69), came to the stricken Houston’s aid and took her under tow on the morning of the 15th. By midnight both Canberra and Houston were under tow to Ulithi for repairs at a stately 5 knots.
Houston transferred no less than 776 of her officers and men to escorting destroyers while a force of 450 remained behind to attempt to save their home. The radio room was ordered to destroy most of the ship’s codes and ciphers in case she had to be abandoned.
A destroyer alongside the damaged USS Houston (CL-81) (right) on 15 October 1944, removing excess crewmen after she was torpedoed by Japanese aircraft off Formosa. Photographed from USS Boston (CA-69). Note OS2U floatplane on Boston’s port catapult. 80-G-272781
Her men waged war against the sea and their home’s own warren of twisted steel and buried their found dead in the briny embrace of the warm and unforgiving blue Pacific. Among the dead was her engineering officer, CDR William H. Potts (USNA 1927), killed when Main Engine No. 1 was wrecked. Two other men trapped in the after fire room had been killed by fatal burns.
USS Houston (CL-81). Burial at sea for crewmen killed when the ship was torpedoed off Formosa on 14 October 1944. Photographed while Houston was under tow on 15 October. 19-N-110835.
With an 8-degree starboard list and a draft of 34 feet (against a normal mean maximum of 25 feet), Behrens ordered the cruiser’s port anchor jettisoned and her port chain payed out to 90 fathoms to keep the ship as even as possible.
Everything quickly got primitive as the ship was flooded to the third deck and the heat of the tropics set in:
The fleet tugs USS Munsee (ATF-107) and Pawnee (ATF-74) assumed the tows of Canberra and Houston on 16 October.
Then, that afternoon, the Japanese caught up to Houston once again and she soon caught another torpedo that wrecked her hangar and flooded her steering compartment.
Japanese aerial torpedo explodes against the ship’s starboard quarter, during the afternoon of 16 October 1944. Houston had been torpedoed amidships on 14 October, while off Formosa, and was under tow by USS Pawnee (ATF-74) when enemy torpedo planes hit her again. USS Canberra (CA-70), also torpedoed off Formosa, is under tow in the distance. The original photograph is in the USS Santa Fe (CL-60) Log, a very large photo album held by the Navy Department Library. NH 98825
Behrens noted that, “In the midst of the action, our towing vessel, Pawnee, sent us a very encouraging message saying, ‘We’ll hold on,’ and continued to make the usual 5 knots in the right direction.”
Later that afternoon, Behrens ordered more of his crew taken off by escorting destroyers. By dusk, there only remained 48 officers and 152 men left on board– with six of them too gravely wounded to risk moving. With sick bay in the dark and with no ventilation, the cruiser’s guest cabin was converted to a hospital, and the wounded were brought on deck whenever conditions permitted.
On the 17th, assisted by four gasoline-driven pumps sent over by Pawnee, Houston decreased her draft to 32.5 feet and her list to 6 degrees.
This slow parade continued for days, with the Diver-class rescue and salvage ship USS Current (ARS-22) arriving alongside and sending over experts and the fleet tug USS Zuni (AT-95) taking Houston in tandem tow with Pawnee.
With almost zero reserve buoyancy left, the days were spent lowering–by hand, block, and rope– 130-pound 6″/47 shells from the shell decks of the four main turrets to the lower handling rooms to help shift the cruiser’s center of gravity.
Armored doors were unbolted and, wrestled above deck, were cast overboard. Searchlight and gun director platforms were torched off and either used for patching material or thrown over the side as were many 20mm and 40mm guns. Abovedeck ammo stores were tossed. Anything too vital to Deep Six was transferred to LCVPs and whaleboats to give to escorting destroyers to store. Rank didn’t exist and officers worked on the repair parties alongside ratings.
Luckily, fresh water had been stored in forward voids as ballast and was siphoned off for cleaning and drinking. Behrens observed, “It had a strong paint and rust taste but did much to quench the thirst.”
On the morning of 27 October, with the help of several tugs, a still very wet and soggy Houston slipped through the Mugai Channel and moored alongside the repair ship and floating workshop USS Hector (AR-7) at Ulithi Atoll, wrapping a 1,250nm mile tow that took 13 days, at an average rate of 4 knots.
Behrens finished with this observation:
USS Houston (CL-81) alongside USS Hector (AR-7) at Ulithi Atoll, 1 November 1944. She was under repair after being hit by two Japanese aerial torpedoes on 14 and 16 October, during operations off Formosa. An LCM is passing by in the foreground. 80-G-373678
After temporary repairs, Houston proceeded to Manus on 14 December under tow by the tugs USS Lipan and Arapaho and escorted by a screen of three destroyer escorts and a coastal minesweeper. Making 6.5 knots, the little convoy (Task Unit 30.9.14) made Manus six days later.
The advantage of having a forward-deployed Advanced Base Sectional DryDock (ABSD) became readily apparent. After waiting in Seeadler Harbor over the Christmas holidays, Houston entered ABSD No. 2. after USS Reno (CL-96) floated out on 7 January 1945.
Overhauls of two light cruisers at a Pacific Base inside ABSD, circa 1944-45. USS Reno (CL-96) and USS Houston (CL-81) 80-G-K-2963
USS Houston (CL-81) damage to the ship’s hull, amidships, from a Japanese aerial torpedo hit received off Formosa on 14 October 1944. The torpedo struck the ship on her bottom, inboard of the starboard bilge keel, while she was in a turn, producing the inward displacement of bottom plating seen here. Photographed in an ABSD floating drydock at Ulithi Atoll while Houston was under repair, circa November 1944. 19-N-105803
After three weeks in dry dock, Houston floated out on Valentine’s Day 1945 and, with only No. 2 and 3 main engines and Nos. 1, 2, and 4 boilers available, she was able to operate under her own steam for the first time in four months and logged a remarkable speed of 23.4 knots.
By 16 February, along with the wounded but patched up Reno and the tin can USS Bowers (DE-637), Houston and company left Manus for Pearl Harbor, zig-zagging at 16 knots. Arriving in Hawaii on 24 February, after a three-day port call and much-needed libo, Reno and Houston set course for San Pedro, California on 27 February.
Crossing through “The Ditch” a much different cruiser than when she passed just 10 months prior, Houston eventually steamed to the New York Navy Yard, arriving on 24 March 1945. Reno followed her almost the whole way, only peeling off at Charleston three days prior.
Six months later, with an extensive rebuilding almost complete, the war ended with Houston still in New York.
Houston received three battle stars for World War II service.
Capt. Behrens was relieved and was assigned duty as Commander, Naval Training Center Bainbridge, Maryland, and served there in the rank of Commodore.
Peacetime Showboat
Her repairs complete, our subject visited her namesake city just after VJ Day to show the flag and line the decks for Navy Week in October 1945. Besides, she needed to show the taxpayers and Bond buyers what they paid for back in 1942.
Crowd on shoreline along the Houston Ship Channel to welcome the USS Houston (CL-81) light cruiser during Navy Week, October 1945. University of Houston Libraries Special Collections. do66558f697
Civilians along the Houston Ship Channel welcome the USS Houston (CL-81) light cruiser during Navy Week, October 1945. Sailors in uniform line the decks. University of Houston Libraries Special Collections do26967446b
Civilians along the Houston Ship Channel welcome the USS Houston (CL-81) light cruiser during Navy Week. Sailors in uniform line the decks. The cruiser carries two new Curtiss SC-1 Seahawk floatplanes– a type that only entered service in October 1944– with their wings folded. University of Houston Libraries Special Collections do5460qs96s
From April to December 1946, Houston was sent on a European and Mediterranean cruise, visiting cities in Scandinavia, Portugal, Italy, and Egypt.
Stockholm. Ships include the elderly (circa 1915) 6,700-ton Swedish coastal battleship (Pansarskeppet) HSwMS Sverige along with the light cruiser sisters USS Houston and USS Little Rock (CL-92), while the new Gearing class destroyers USS Perry (DD-844), Glennon (DD-840), Warrington (DD-843) and Cone (DD-866) are arrayed at pier side and in the distance, along with Swedish jageren (destroyers). Eskaderbild.eskader på Stockholms Ström 11. Juli 1946. Sjöhistoriska museet. Fo219541
Following a second Med cruise with Cruiser Division 12 in 1947, upon returning to Philadelphia, Houston decommissioned 15 December 1947.
Placed in reserve, she swayed on Philly’s redlead row until, stricken from the Navy List on 1 March 1959, she was sold for scrap to Boston Metals on 1 June 1961 and scrapped.
Epilogue
The Clevelands, always overloaded and top-heavy despite their hard service and dependability, were poor choices for post-war service and most were laid up directly after VJ Day with only one, USS Manchester (CL-83), still in service as an all-gun cruiser past 1950, lingering until 1956 and seeing much Korean War duty, successfully completing three combat tours with no major battle damage.
Six went on to see further service as Galveston and Providence-class missile slingers after an extensive topside rebuild and remained in service through the 1970s. One of these, USS Little Rock (CL-92/CLG-4/CG-4) has been preserved at the Buffalo Naval & Military Park, the only Cleveland currently above water.
The third USS Houston has a marker at the National Museum of the Pacific War.
She is remembered in maritime art and scale models.
That Houston survived two torpedo hits which produced a precarious stability condition, extensive flooding, serious loss of structural strength amidships and a severe gasoline fire is due for the most part to the intelligent approach of her personnel to the damage control problems with which they were confronted and the skill and perseverance with which they carried out the control measures initiated.
USS Houston (CL-81) Plate I, Torpedo Damage. Formosa. 14-16 Oct. 1944. Profile of Vessel Heeled 30° to Port
As for her wartime skipper, RADM Behrens retired from the Navy in 1947, capping a 30-year career across two World Wars. Not bad for a Mustang.
He earned a Navy Cross for his time on Houston:
“For extraordinary heroism as Commanding Officer of the USS Houston, during action against enemy Japanese forces off Formosa on October 14, 1944. With his ship dead in the water and listing violently in the heavy seas following an enemy aerial attack, Commodore (then Captain) Behrens remained steadfast and calm, efficiently directing damage control measures and the removal of personnel to other ships in the formation before his crippled ship was taken in tow by another cruiser. With his ship again under attack by hostile aircraft two days later, he inspired his officers and men to heroic effort, maintaining control and contributing in large measure to his ship’s successful return to a friendly port. By his valiant leadership, determination, and grave concern for the safety of his ship and her crew. Commodore Behrens upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.”
His son, VADM William Wholsen Behrens, Jr. (USNA 1943), survived WWII service in the Submarine Force with six war patrols and a Silver Star to prove it then was involved in 28 amphibious operations during Vietnam. He capped his service as the first head of the newly organized National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 1972 and passed in 1986. He is also in Arlington. Good genes in that family.
The fourth USS Houston (SSN-713) was an early Flight I Los Angeles class hunter killer. Launched in 1981, this submarine was christened by Barbara Bush, wife of then Vice President George Bush which was appropriate as, while a Navy Avenger pilot (of a plane he named “Barbara”) in WWII, Bush crashed in the Pacific and was rescued by a submarine. The luckiest of her namesakes, she served a long career (33 years, 11 months, and 1 day) without loss and was decommissioned in 2016.
USS Houston (SSN-713) port quarter view of the nuclear-powered attack submarine USS Houston (SSN-713), foreground, and the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kenney (CV-67), background, departing Hampton Roads for a patrol. August 17, 1982. DN-ST-89-01391
The Navy desperately needs a fifth Houston, and maybe a first USS Behrens.
Ships are more than steel and wood And heart of burning coal, For those who sail upon them know That some ships have a soul.
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International.
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.
Following up on our Warship Wednesday this week, which covered the Great War-era Admiralty Strath-class “battle trawler” HMT William Barnett (3632) and its later life as the French Navy’s auxiliary minesweeper Roche Noire during WWII, how about a great series of related period maritime art?
British portrait painter, landscape artist, and printmaker Francis Edgar Dodd, RA, turned 40 as the “lamps are going out all over Europe.”
Volunteering to serve as an Official War Artist during World War I, he spent some time at sea with the hired trawler HMT Mackenzie (Adty No 336) during the conflict.
One of more than 1,400 British trawlers taken up from trade— some dating back to 1880– Mackenzie was built in 1911 (Hull-reg H.349) and retained her original name while in naval service. A craft of some 335 tons, she was hired in August 1914 and would remain in RN service, armed with a single 6-pounder Hotchkiss gun, likely taken from an old torpedo boat or battleship fighting top.
Primarily serving as a minesweeper, Mackenzie was returned to her owner in 1919.
She was one of the lucky ones. Of the 1,456 hired trawlers used by the British during the war, 266 were lost during the conflict including no less than 142 to enemy action. They fought a war very much as real as those with the Grand Fleet at Jutland.
Dodd captured the life on Mackenzie in great detail. You can almost smell the pipes’ smoke and coal dust.
An unusual sight in North Carolina’s Hurricane Helene devastated areas are volunteer mule teams.
With hundreds of miles of roads washed out and no guarantee of helicopter LZs in some places, folks like the Mountain Mule Packer Ranch are stepping up.
If you think that a few mule trains can’t help, remember how much baby formula, insulin, med packs, diapers, and other critical items can be crammed into those big packs. At least it’s a band-aid until the more large-scale operations get ramped up.
Here we see the Free Dutch Navy’s onderzeeboot Hr.Ms O 19 (N 54) as she enters Dundee, Scotland during WWII, circa October 1943 to June 1944. Note the oversized frog emblem on her conning tower, specially made for her skipper, the grinning Luitenant ter Zee 1e klasse (LTZ 1c= LCDR) Armand van Karnebeek.
Fotoafdrukken Koninklijke Marine, via NIMH Objectnummer 2158_016200
Note the 88mm Bofors deck gun and a British sloop in the background. NIMH 2158_016202
Born in Soerabaja, Java, in 1909, Van Karnebeek earned the nickname “De kikker” (The Frog), reportedly for his large mouth, while a naval cadet in the late 1920s. Opting for the submarine service, by October 1939 he was the skipper of Hr.Ms. K XV (N 24) in the Dutch East Indies.
Taking command of O 19— which was in the Far East when the War started and pulled six combat patrols against the Japanese before catching orders to shift to Scotland for refit– in 1943, Van Karnebeek had the self-designed frog emblem applied to his boat.
Onderzeeboot Hr.Ms. O 19, in Loch Long, Scotland, NIMH 2158_016211
O 19, a near sister of the Dutch-made Polish subs Orzel and Sep, under Van Karnebeek, deployed back to the Far East via the Med and the Suez then completed her 7th and 8th War Patrols out of Freemantle in 1944, bagging several small Japanese coasters and sampans in the Java Sea via naval gunfire.
When Van Karnebeek left the boat in December 1944, replaced by LTZ 1c Jacob Frans Drijfhout Van Hooff, the new captain ordered the toad painted over.
It may have taken the boat’s luck with it, as, less than six months later, Van Hooff grounded O-19 on a reef in the China Sea so hard she had to be destroyed via demolition charges, torpedoes, and gunfire from USS Cod.
As for The Toad himself, Van Karnebeek retired from Dutch naval service as a vice admiral in 1961 after 32 years of service and passed in 2002, aged 92.
