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Warship Wednesday, July 7, 2021: Chatham’s Last Cruiser

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

Warship Wednesday, July 7, 2021: Chatham’s Last Cruiser

Photograph A 8166, taken by LT. EA Zimmerman, from the collections of the Imperial War Museums

Here we see Dido-class AA cruiser HMS Euryalus (42) elevate her forward 5.25-inch guns to shell the Italian Fleet while bound for Malta from Alexandria on 22 March 1942 during what would become known as the Second Battle of Sirte. Her sister ship, HMS Cleopatra (33), is cutting across her bow making smoke. While the Dido class didn’t do exceptionally well in their intended role, they did see lots of action, and Euryalus outlasted them all in Royal Navy service.

The Didos were very light cruisers indeed, designed in 1936 to weigh just 5,600 tons standard displacement, although this would later swell during wartime service to nearly 8,000. Some 512 feet long, they were smaller than a modern destroyer but, on a powerplant of four Admiralty 3-drum boilers and four Parsons steam turbines, each with their own dedicated shaft, they could break 32.5 knots on 62,000 shp. They were intended to be armed with 10 5.25″/50 (13.4 cm) QF Mark II DP guns in five twin mounts, three forward and two over the stern, although most of the class failed to carry this layout.

Bow 5.25″/50 turrets on HMS Hermoine as she enters Malta Harbor in September 1941. The muzzles of her third forward “Q” turret can just be seen above the crane at the upper left. She, along with Euryalus, Naiad, and Sirius, was the only Didos that completed with the full battery of five twin 5.25-inch mounts, largely due to a shortage of such guns. IWM A 5772.

The Dido class had provision for up to 360 rounds for “A”, “B” and “Q” turrets, 320 rounds for “X” turret and 300 rounds for “Y” turret and a properly trained crew could rattle them off at 7-8 shots per minute per gun out to a range of 23,400 yards or a ceiling of 46,500 feet when used in the AAA role. The fact that one of these cruisers could burp 70-80 shells within a 60-second mad minute gave them a lot of potential if used properly. However, this didn’t play out in reality, at least when it came to swatting incoming aircraft.

As noted by Richard Worth in his Fleets of World War II, “Often referred to as AA cruisers, the 16 Dido type ships shot down a grand total of 15 enemy planes. The entirety of British cruiser-dom accounted for only 97 planes, while enemy planes accounted for 11 British cruisers.”

Nonetheless, Euryalus carried extensive secondary AAA batteries as well. Originally fitted with two quad .50-caliber Vickers guns, these were augmented with five single 20mm Oerlikons whose numbers were further expanded until the ship carried over a dozen in twin mounts by the end of the war. She was also completed with three quadruple 2 pdr 40mm MK VIII pom-pom guns on Mk.VII mountings.

WRNS visit cruiser Euryalus of the Mediterranean Fleet, 3 May 1942, Alexandria. A Wren with her bearded Supply Petty Officer escort on the pom-pom platform. IWM A 8830 http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205142750

The Dido class was largely named after figures in ancient mythology with Euryalus carrying the moniker of the storied Augustan warrior of Jason and the Golden Fleece fame who, with his battle buddy Nisus, forfeited his skin for the sake of war booty. Our cruiser was the fifth such vessel to carry the name “Euryalus” in the Royal Navy since 1803, with past ships serving under Nelson, bombarding Ft. McHenry, serving as the ride for Prince Alfred and becoming immortalized at Gallipoli.

Laid down 21 October 1937 at the famous Royal Navy Dockyard in Chatham, which dated back to the mid-16th Century, Euryalus was the last cruiser completed by that facility. She commissioned 30 June 1941, roughly 80 years ago last week. At the time, just Britain and stood alone against the Germans and Italians, having only recently been joined by the Soviets due to the German invasion of Russia the week before.

British light cruiser HMS Euryalus at a buoy on completion. June 1941. IWM FL 5242

Two hard years in the Med

After a short shakedown, she was dispatched to the Med to join RADM Sir Philip Vian’s 15th Cruiser Squadron which was soon involved in a series of close convoy escorts between Gibraltar and Alexandria to increasingly besieged Malta.

HMS Euryalus (right) and HMS Galatea, with guns raised for firing while on patrol in the Mediterranean. 14 December 1941

Besides convoy work, she went to sea with the fleet on a few occasions for bombardment raids against Derna and Rhodes.

British cruisers and destroyers en route to bombard Rhodes. 14 and 15 March 1942, onboard the cruiser HMS Euryalus in the eastern Mediterranean. Sunday morning service onboard HMS Euryalus under the 5.25″ guns on the quarterdeck. IWM A 8580 Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205142517

In March 1942, Euryalus joined a covering group under Sir Philip to include four other light cruisers and 18 destroyers to protect convoy MW10 out of Alexandria, bound for Malta. The force was fresh out of battleships as HMS Queen Elizabeth and Valiant had just been sidelined after Italian frogmen attacks and HMS Barham was sunk by a U-boat the previous November.

The afternoon following the departure from Alexandria, a heavy Italian force that included the battleship Littorio (45,000t, 9×15″/50 guns) and heavy cruisers Gorizia (14,000t, 8×8″/53) and Trento (13,000t, 8×5″/50), which far outgunned anything the British had, made contact with the British in the Gulf of Sidra. Cutting the cargo ships to the South, Sir Philip ordered smoke and turned to charge the Italians.

Over the next five hours, an artillery and torpedo duel between the two squadrons swirled.

Six forward 5.25-inch guns of HMS Euryalus ready to fire on the enemy on 22 March 1942 at an extreme elevation. Facing the camera is Captain Eric W Bush, DSO, DSC, RN. IWM A 8172 (Zimmerman) Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205142147

As dusk set Second Battle of Sirte, the Italians had fired some 1,511 shells, almost all from Littorio and her companion cruisers, while the British, who were able to get their destroyers close enough to the action to lend their guns, were able to get off some 2,850 shells and at least 38 torpedoes. Damage to each fleet was slight but could have been much worse.

An ammunition supply party bringing up shells for the 5.25-inch guns, during a lull in the action, onboard HMS Euryalus, on convoy duty in the eastern Mediterranean. Both the SAP and HE variants of the shell weighed some 80-pounds. Photo likely March 1942. IWM A 11908

During the fight, Euryalus was straddled by 15-inch shells from Littorio— who roared 181 shells from her main battery towards the smoke-shrouded British warships– on two different occasions and was damaged by splinters. Importantly, the Italian surface fleet never got within range of the convoy itself.

The next convoy to Malta, Operation Vigorous, was less than successful and, running short of ammo after fighting determined waves of Axis air attacks, had to turn around 600 miles short of the battered island.

The guns of HMS Euryalus open on incoming enemy dive bombers during Operation Vigorous in the Mediterranean, 12th -16th June 1942. Note the 20mm Oerlikon at work and the flash gear on the gunner.

Euryalus continued in her tasks, running convoy support in the Eastern Med, shelling Axis positions– for instance plastering Mersa Matruh in July along with sister ship HMS Dido and a quartet of destroyers– and just generally trying to remain afloat.

Two officers of HMS Euryalus, with Commander Celal Orbay the nephew of the Turkish Ambassador in London. 11-12 August 1942. Note the high-angle 5.25-inch mounts and stack of ready life rafts. IWM A 11902 Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205145401

HMS Euryalus passing an Egyptian mine spotting post on the Suez Canal, 27 October 1942. IWM A 13496 Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205146792

8th Army Victory Helps Malta- Convoys, Protected from Libyan Air Bases, Bring Enough Supplies for Months. 4 December 1942, in the Central Mediterranean, Aboard HMS Euryalus. Note the details of the cruiser’s bridge and her forward 5-inch mounts. IWM A 13677 (Zimmerman)

Same official caption as above, taken through the silhouette of a 20mm Oerlikon. A few singles were fitted in late 1941 and by the end of the war, she carried six twin mounts of the same. IWM A 13680 (Zimmerman)

In January 1943, with the tide turning against the Axis in the Med, HMS Euryalus, sister HMS Cleopatra and four destroyers formed Force K, shelling the withdrawal of the German-Italian forces in Libya.

In the same vein, she was there for the Allied offensive, joining the Husky landings in Sicily that July where she supported the 1st British Infantry division’s seizure of the fortress island of Pantelleria (Operation Corkscrew).

Then came the Avalanche landings at Salerno in September where Euryalus, operating with Sir Philip’s Task Force 88, screened the British carrier group. Subjected to the hell of the Luftwaffe’s radio-controlled bombs off that shore, Euryalus stood by the heavily damaged battleship HMS Warspite (03) after she was hit by a Fritz X on 15 September. A week later, she embarked C-in-C Mediterranean, Sir Andrew Cunningham, for passage to Taranto for meeting with Italians to arrange disposal of Italian Fleet.

By the end of the month, with Italy sort of knocked out of the war, Euryalus was withdrawn to Clyde for a much-needed refit, having spent 24 months in the middle of some of the worst combat the Mediterranean Theatre had to offer.

Norwegian vacation

Spending eight months in the yard, she missed out on D-Day but emerged in late June 1944 much modified. She landed her Q mount, reducing her main armament to eight 5.25″/50s, and picked up additional 20mm guns in trade. The cruiser was also outfitted as an escort carrier squadron flagship and given an aircraft direction room, swapping out her radar for more advanced models.

HMS Euryalus post her 1943-44 refit. Note pom-pom in place of Q turret and extensive radar and fire control suite. 

After shakedown and repairs due to a galley fire, in October she joined a task force made up of the escort carriers HMS Trumpeter and HMS Fencer along with a half dozen destroyers to mine the Aarmumsund Leads off Norway as part of Operation Lucidas. She would head to Norway again the following month, shepherding the jeep carrier HMS Pursuer to attack enemy shipping off Trondheim.

Then, with the formation of the British Pacific Fleet, her number came up to switch from the Barents Sea to the Far East.

To Tokyo

In mid-December, Euryalus left Liverpool as an escort to MV Rimutaka, a steamer with “The Unknown Soldier,” Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester (brother of both Edward VIII and George VI), aboard, who was headed to Australia to take up his appointment as Governor-General. Making the Pacific by way of the Suez in mid-January, our cruiser left Prince Henry’s service and was soon tagging along with British armored carriers to raid Japanese occupied oil fields in Dutch Sumatra.

By March, she joined RN TF 57, which was detached to serve with the U.S. Fifth Fleet and arrived at Ulithi to ship out in the American-British carrier force to plaster the Japanese Sakishima-Gunto islands group in the lead up to the Iwo Jima operation.

April saw the U.S./UK group running amok off Formosa while May saw operations in the Philippines.

Task Force 57 at anchor, HMS Formidable (foreground) and HMS Indomitable with 4th Cruiser Squadron- (L-to-R) Gambia, Uganda, and Euryalus, San Pedro Bay, Leyte, April 1945

June saw the cruiser return to Australia to refit before shipping out again with TF57/37 for operations attacking the Japanese home islands from the Tokyo-Yokohama area to Northern Honshu and Hokkaido.

HMS Formidable and HMS Euryalus (center) being oiled from a tanker of the British Pacific Fleet Train. HMS Euryalus is transferring stores to HM destroyer Undaunted (right). July 1945. IWM A 30072 Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205161262

Upon the Japanese signal to surrender on 15 August, Euryalus chopped back to RN control from the Americans and was assigned to British Commonwealth Task Group 111.2 which liberated Hong Kong on 29 August, sailing into the harbor alongside the cruiser HMS Swiftsure and the Canadian armed transport HMCS Prince Robert.

Aerial view of HMS Euryalus in the Pacific in 1945, note the sunray and wingtip

HMCS Prince Robert arrives at the Kowloon docks in Hong Kong, August 1945. Members of the ship’s crew, most in tropical uniforms, crowd the ship’s rails, while an armed Canadian sailor can be seen in the foreground. (RCN Photo)

Shore parties from Prince Robert along with those from Euryalus and Swiftsure helped disarm Japanese military personnel, liberate survivors from Japanese prisoner of war camps, and maintain order ashore. Curiously, the rating in the front seems to be armed with a circa 1890s Lee-Metford .303 rifle (RCN Photo)

Euryalus would remain in Pacific waters for over a year past VJ Day, policing the region for British interests and supervising both the repatriation of Japanese POWs and the thorny reoccupation of British (as well as Dutch and French) overseas possessions. The cruiser only returned to the British Isles in February 1947.

Her Pacific deployment lasted for 792 days, 502 of which were spent underway.

Post War

Jane’s 1946 entry for the Dido class. Note, the publication separated the ships of the Bellona sub-class (“improved Didos”) into a separate listing as they carried eight 4.5-inch guns rather than the 8-to-10 5.5s of the class standard.

Six of the 16 Didos never made it to see peacetime service: HMS Bonaventure (31) was sunk by the Italian submarine Ambra off Crete in 1941. HMS Naiad (93) was likewise sent to the bottom by the German submarine U-565 off the Egyptian coast while another U-boat, U-205, sank HMS Hermione (74) in the summer of 1942. HMS Charybdis (88), meanwhile, was sunk by German torpedo boats Т23 and Т27 while during a confused night action in the English Channel in October 1943. HMS Spartan (95) was sunk by a German Hs 293 gliding bomb launched from a Do 217 bomber off Anzio in January 1944. HMS Scylla (98) was badly damaged by a mine in June 1944 and was never repaired.

Some of the rest were immediately sent to mothballs including HMS Argonaut (61), who had been seriously damaged by two Italian torpedoes and had undergone a seven-month rebuild in America that didn’t seem to be entirely successful. She would eventually be stricken in 1953.

Others went overseas. Smallish cruisers that could still give a lot of prestige to growing Commonwealth navies, several saw a second career well into the Cold War. Improved-Didos HMS Bellona (63) and HMS Black Prince (81) were put at the disposal of the Royal New Zealand Navy for a decade with simplified armament until they were returned and scrapped. HMS Royalist (89) likewise served with the Kiwis until 1966 then promptly sank on her way to the scrappers. HMS Diadem (84) went to Pakistan in 1956 as PNS Babur, after an extensive modernization, and remained in service there into the 1980s, somehow dodging Soviet Styx missiles from Indian Osa-class attack boats in the 1971 war between those two countries.

HMS Diadem (84)/PNS Babur’s listing in the 1973 Janes. At the time she was surely one of the last all-gun cruisers carrying a battery of anti-surface straight running torpedo tubes in the world!

Just four Didos continued with the Royal Navy past 1948, going on to pick up “C” pennant numbers: HMS Phoebe (C43), HMS Cleopatra (C33), HMS Sirius (C82), and Euryalus (C42). Of those, our cruiser was the last ship on the Admiralty’s active list, serving primarily on the South Atlantic station, in the Med, and in the Persian Gulf after a lengthy postwar modernization at Rosyth in 1947–48.

HMS Euryalus leaving Grand Harbour in C 1950.

HMS Euryalus leaving Grand Harbour in C 1952 note pom-pom in place of Q turret and extensive awnings, the latter a sure sign of peacetime duty 

HMS EURYALUS Malta 1951

HMS Euryalus band marching in Port Said 1952

HMS Euryalus in the 1950s, apparently identified by it being the sole Dido with Type 279 radar

Mothballs Devonport mid-1950s Fairmile D MTBs HMS Howe HMS Belfast and Dido class light cruiser, possibly HMS Euryalus

Still, the RN was cash strapped and, after the great drawdown following the Korean War from “East of Suez” operations, Euryalus was placed out of commission on 19 September 1954, having just served 13 years. She was subsequently sold to BISCO in 1958 and towed to the breakers.

Epilogue

The historic vessel is remembered in numerous works of maritime art.

Just a few years after our cruiser was sent to the scrappers, the Royal Navy commissioned the sixth and (as of 2021) final HMS Euryalus, a Leander-class frigate that gave over 25 years of hard service during the Cold War and was sold for dismantling in 1990.

Specs:

HMS Euryalus, circa 1942, via On the Slipway https://ontheslipway.com/gallery-euryalus/


Displacement: Standard: 5,600 tons; Full load: 7,600 tons
Length 512 ft overall
Beam 50 ft 6 in
Draught 14 ft
Machinery: Four Admiralty 3-drum boilers, Four Parsons steam turbines, Four shafts, 62,000 shp
Speed: 32.25 knots
Range: 1,100 tons fuel oil; 1,500 mi at 30 kn; 4,240 miles at 16 knots
Complement: 480 (designed) to 600 (wartime)
Sensors: Type 279 radar (1941), later replaced by Types 272, 281, 282, and 285 in 1943-44, later replaced by Types 279b, 277, and 293 by 1946.
Armor: belt: 76mm, bulkheads: 25mm, turrets: up to 13mm, deck: 51 – 25mm

Armament: (As-built)
5 x twin 5.25″/50 (13.4 cm) QF Mark II DP guns in A, B, Q, X, Y turrets
1 x 4-inch gun
2 x quad Vickers .50-caliber MGs
3 x quad 2-pdr 40mm/39cal MK VIII pom pom guns on Mk.VII mounts
2 x triple 21-inch torpedo tubes.

Armament: (1945)
4 x twin 5.25″/50 (13.4 cm) QF Mark II DP guns in A, B, X, Y turrets
15 x 20mm/70 Oerlikon Mk II/IV in six twin and two single mounts
3 x quad 2-pdr 40mm/39cal MK VIII pom pom guns on Mk.VII mounts
2 x triple 21 in torpedo tubes.

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The More Things Change, Maschinengewehr Edition

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Check out these two circa 1917 images of Austro-Hungarian Imperial and Royal Army (kaiserlich und königliche Armee or k.u.k.) troops fielding a Schwarzlose M.7 water-cooled general-purpose machine gun from carefully constructed trenches, “somewhere in Eastern Europe.”

Maschinengewehr in Gefechtsstellung, 11.1917. Via Bildarchivaustria

Maschinengewehr in Feuerstellung, 25.09.1917 Via Bildarchivaustria

Now contrast them with these three of a modern MG 74 maschinengewehr emplacement of the Austrian Bundesheer taken earlier this month.

Sure, the uniforms are different, and the MG 74 is much more effective– the Steyr-made MG 42/59 variant has a cyclic rate of fire is 850 rounds per minute while only weighing 23.5-pounds instead of the M.7’s 450rpm rate and 90-pounds– the general concept is remarkably the same, even 104 years apart.

Bicentennial Minuteman Corsairs

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Last July 4th, we covered the NAVAIR Bicentennial schemes of 1976 so this is a good turnaround.

A pair of Ling-Temco-Vought A-7D Corsair IIs of the New Mexico and Colorado Air National Guard, respectively, flying over the Rocky Mountains. The “Sprit of 76” is 70-1048 of the 188th TFS, 150th TFG, NMANG out of Kirtland AFB. It was one of two Air National Guard A-7s that wore a special bicentennial scheme.

70-1048 served in the New Mexico Air Guard, first in the 188th and then in the 146th TFS under a more traditional scheme until it was transferred to AMARC in 1991 when the unit switched roles to become a refueling squadron. It was scrapped in 1997.

The second “Independence Day” bird was 72-0223 of the Louisiana ANG from the 75th TFS, 23rd TFW, at England AFB.

72-0223 went on to serve in the Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia ANG and was sent to the boneyard at AMARC in 1991. It was scrapped in 1998.

And another 1976 holdover, since you came this far:

Beauty at the Hilt

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A sample of amazing Japanese sword tsubas, dating primarily to the 1700s, from the John Woodman Higgins Armory Collection at the Worcester Art Museum. 

  1. Tsuba (sword guard) with Ho (sail) Motif. Japanese, 1700s. Copper-gold alloy. 2014.404
  2. Tsuba (sword guard) with Dragon Design, Japanese, 1700s. Iron, silver, gold. 2014.538
  3. Tsuba (sword guard) of openwork design with stylized pawlonia theme. Japanese, the late 1500s–early 1600s. Russeted iron, lead plugs. 2014.536
  4. Tsuba (sword guard): Deer Belling at the Autumn Moon. Japanese, early to mid-1800s. Iron, gold, silver, shakudo, and other copper alloys. 1976.239.
  5. Tsuba (sword guard) with Peony Design. Japanese, 1600s. Iron, shakudo plugs, embedded flat gold inlay. 2014.401
  6. Nanban School, Tsuba with Dragons, Waves, and Tendrils. Japanese, 1700s. Iron with gold inlay. 2014.108
  7. Tsuba of Sukashi-bori (openwork silhouette) type. Japanese, the mid-1500s–early 1600s. Iron. 2014.103
  8. Yoshū Matsuyama Jū Shoami Molikuni, Tsuba (sword guard) with bridge scene. Japanese, the late 1700s–early 1800s. Iron and copper. 2014.405
    9 Tsuba with Design of Sho Ki Chasing a Demon. Japanese 1700s. Iron and shakudo (?) with gilding. 2014.110.

If you have never been to the WAM and seen the 2,500-piece Higgins Collection, you are missing out. If nothing else, check out the website, where they have many more striking items in photos. 

RIP Thunder’s Tavern

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To many followers of the page, including destroyermen, cruiser sailors, battleship sailors, and members of the Gator Navy– who have at one time or another passed through Pascagoula in the past 40~ years, assigned to PCUs in Spruance, Kidd, Burke, Tico, Iowa Tarawa, Wasp, San Antonio or America-class ships being built or modernized at Ingalls– the name Thunder’s rings a bell.

John “Thunder” Thornton, a Pascagoula High and Ole Miss football standout, returned home and opened his Tavern on South Market Street, just below Ingalls Avenue and only a few blocks up from the beach, in 1977.

Offering a military discount, Whisky Wednesdays, Drinking with Lincoln, a volleyball court, and, later, a pool, music venue (Johnny Joe’s), and a liquor store, it was always a popular and, sometimes, controversial hang out that hovered over the SUPSHIP “off-limits” list from time to time. Hell, when I was in high school in Goula, my friends and I would score a gallon of PBR draft at the drive-through window on Friday night, along with two styrofoam cups, for $5.

The next generation of bluejackets will not know of Thunders, as Thorton himself passed in 2019 and, this week, the recently-closed establishment was razed.

Still, you can bet old-school former red stripers everywhere will get a little misty-eyed through the halo smoke of their Camels once they hear the news, that last call at Thunder’s has come and went.

Germans Wheels Up from Afghanistan

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The Bundeswehr has reported that the last of its troops have left Afghanistan after almost 20 years of service. Three A400Ms carried the final 264-member contingent, made up of Kommando Spezialkräfte (KSK) commandos and their support echelon, from Kabul to Wunstorf air force base, not far from Hanover, arriving at 13:52 (CEST) today.

(Foto: Bundeswehr / Torsten Kraatz)

They then cased their field flag until needed later.

Die Truppenfahne wird in das Einsatzführungskommando nach Schwielowsee überführt und dort aufbewahrt. (Foto: Bundeswehr / Torsten Kraatz)

The Bundestag passed the initial Afghanistan mandate on 22 December 2001 and, just three weeks later, German soldiers took part in a patrol in Kabul for the first time. Since then, around 150,000 German troops have cycled through the country, like Americans often serving multiple deployments.

Spähzug mit ihren Fenneks während eines Trainings auf der Ausbildungsanlage “IED-Lane” im Camp Marmal, Mazar-e Sharif am 18.05.2016. (Foto: Bundeswehr)

No less than 59 German soldiers were killed there, 35 of them in combat. These included the first German reservists and the first German policemen to die in deployments abroad since 1945.

Importantly, the Teutonic troops sent back 65,000 cans of beer from Afghanistan as part of their evac from the country.

Leave no bier behind.

Berlin is not out of the country building just yet. Earlier this week 12 German troops were wounded by a suicide bomber while serving with the MINUSMA mission in Mali.

Warship Wednesday, June 30, 2021: Cleaning Up After the Queen

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger
 
Warship Wednesday, June 30, 2021: Cleaning Up After the Queen
 
 
Here, in this grainy still from a 16mm camera, we see one of the last organized surrenders of Japanese forces, some 70 years ago today– 30 June 1951– on the island of Anatahan to a whaleboat sent ashore by the Abnaki class fleet tug USS Cocopa, whose hull number (ATF-101) can be seen on the boat. The group of Japanese had previously refused to believe World War II ended in 1945, but surrendered to LCDR James B. Johnson, after losing their queen. 
 
But we will get to that. 
 
The 27 hulls of the Abnaki-class were intended for far-reaching ocean operations with the follow-on tail of the fleet. Constructed during the war, they were large for tugs, stretching out 205-feet in length and weighing almost 1,600 tons when fully loaded. Capable of 16.5 knots, they could steam a whopping 15,000 miles at half that clip on a quartet of economical GM diesels. Fairly well-armed for tugs, they carried a 3″/50 DP main gun, two twin 40mm/60 Bofors, and two Oerlikons. 
 

USS Abnaki (ATF-96) underway at Pearl Harbor, February 1952, showing the simple and effective layout of the class, which kept their WWII-era armament well into the 1950s. Cocopa surely emulated the above impression at Anatahan.

Named for Native American tribes, Cocopa carried the name of an Arizona tribe and was constructed by Charleston Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co., Charleston, S.C., commissioned 25 March 1944. 
 

Cocopas by Balduin Mollhausen, circa 1860. DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University

Her war history was largely skipped over by DANFS, with just 88 words dedicated it the period, but it was interesting if not the stuff of military legend, taking the tug from the Palmetto State to Shanghai with stops in the English Channel and brushes with German U-Boats while in two cross-Atlantic convoys. 
 
Via NARA: 
 
Amazingly, she did not earn a single battle star for her WWII service. 
 
Following a postwar overhaul at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, she was assigned to Alaskan waters, which at the time were still strewn in wartime wreckage and threats of mines. While operating out of Guam in 1951, she was dispatched to a far-off island to respond to the strange story of a group of Japanese holdouts that the war had forgotten. 
 

Anatahan

 
Located in the Northern Marianas, the natives there were removed by the Spanish in the 17th Century to turn the 8,300-acre volcanic island into a large coconut/copra plantation. This continued under the Germans, who picked up Spain’s remaining Pacific territories in 1899, and by the 1920s or so, the plantations had fallen into disrepair and, with the Japanese in charge, they stayed that way. 
 
 
Fast forward to June 1944 and U.S. air assets from the 15 carriers of VADM Marc A. Mitscher’s TF 58 found a Japanese convoy in the area, sailing from Tanapag to Japan.
 
 
Over the next three days, as a sideshow to the “Great Marianas Turkey Shoot” they had easy pickings, splashing the torpedo boat Otori, net layer Kokku Maru, transports Batavia Maru, Hinko Maru, Kamishima Maru, Imizu Maru, Nitcho Maru, Reikai Maru, and Tenryugawa Maru: the freighter Bokuyo Maru, Japanese Army cargo ships Fukoku Maru and Moji Maru, and the coaster Tsushima Maru.
 

Marianas Operation, 1944. Caption: Burning Japanese cargo ship that was attacked by USS LEXINGTON (CV-16) planes off Saipan, 14 June 1944. Description: Catalog #: 80-G-236902

In the aftermath, a group of some 31 Japanese soldiers and mariners including navy seamen, army privates, and four merchant ship captains, the survivors of several of the ships that were sunk, made it to the lush shores of Anatahan where they lived with a handful of locals who were leftovers from the old plantation days alongside Mr. Kikuichiro Higa, the Okinawan plantation manager, and one Japanese woman, Kazuko Higa, his common-law wife. The senior-most Japanese military member was Sgt. Junji Inoue. 
 
War came to the island when a Saipan-based B-29 Superfortress, T Square 42 (42-74248), from the 498th Bomb Group, 875th Squadron, 73rd Wing, crashed on 3 January 1945 on Anatahan, with no survivors. Meanwhile, the Japanese hid. 
 
On 10 May 1945, elements of the U.S. Army’s 24th Infantry Regiment, carried by the USS Marsh (DE-669), LCI(L)-1054 and LCI(L)-1082, landed on Anatahan and scouted around a bit, staying for a week. The Japanese continued to hide. 
 
In July 1945, the 6th Marine MP Battalion landed on the island and again the Japanese hid inland. They removed the 45 native Carolinians who remained in the village. Other Navy ships visited the island and, hailing the emperor’s remaining subjects there, urged them to surrender. 
 
After the war, in February 1946, a U.S. Army AGRS search party visited the island, located the crash site near the top of its 2,500 ft volcano, and recovered the remains of the crew. Still, the Japanese remained in hiding, despite messages to them that the war was over, including Japanese newspapers and magazines chronicling the peace, which were dismissed as a trick. 
 
As noted by the National Park Service, the Japanese eventually found the B-29, and their fortunes changed. 
 
Early in September 1946, Kazuko and Kikuichiro Higa were crossing the steaming 2,500-foot volcanic crater atop the island when they stumbled upon the wreckage of an American B-29.  Parachutes found in the aircraft yielded nylon for clothing and cord that was carefully unraveled, then rewoven into fishing lines. Using stone hammers, the men chopped away the duralumin plates and beneath them found aluminum, which was eventually formed into cooking utensils, razors, harpoons, fishhooks, spears, and knives. Wire from the springs in the machine guns was twisted into shark hooks. Oxygen tanks were modified for use as water catchments. Engine bolts were fashioned into chisels and other cutting and drilling tools. Plexiglass and strips of rubber were made into pairs of underwater goggles. Everything that could be carried away from this great prize was taken and zealously guarded.  When one man discovered a method for making a new implement, the less inventive of the group made copies. One man designed a model sailing vessel from duralumin and copper wire from the aircraft. Another produced several banjo-like samisens, traditional Japanese three-stringed instruments.
 
It also provided instruments of death: A pair of 45 caliber automatic pistols. The weapons were seized by two of Kazuko’s suitors. For the remaining months of their lives, the two reigned as kings of the island.
 
Soon, Kikuichiro was killed, as were no less than three other survivors, in a series of feuds over crab fishing and Kazuko, who became something of the Queen of Anatahan.  
 
In June 1950, LCDR James Johnson, Deputy Civil Administrator on Saipan, began to wage a hearts and minds campaign to get the Japanese on Anatahan to lay down their arms and go home. This included regular delivery of care packages under a white flag, amounting to letters from the soldiers’ relatives and Japanese authorities, Tokyo newspapers, magazines, food supplies, Japanese beer, and cigarettes.” 
 
This brought about the “surrender” of Queen of Anatahan, who was eager to leave her subjects behind. 
 

Kazuko Higa, the lone woman on Anatahan, the day of her surrender, June 1950. (N-1993.02). http://libweb.hawaii.edu/digicoll/ttp/ttp_htms/1993.html

 
Johnson kept up his efforts to get the last of the marooned Japanese off the island for eight months. After dropping leaflets promising the 18 men who were left would be returned to their families, a white flag appeared and our tug sailed from Guam, complete with a platoon of armed Marines and a LIFE journalist, Michael Rougier.
 
By Rougier, via the LIFE Archives: 
 
I found these two videos in the National Archives of the event and uploaded them to YT. They are silent but moving. 
 
 

Junji Inoue, the day of his surrender at Anatahan, June 1951. (N-1993.05). Inoue reads a document urging his compatriots to surrender. Scene aboard M.V. Cocopa, Anatahan, June 1951. Inoue’s personal implements. Note fiber zoris, coconut husk hat, knives fashioned from B-29 wreckage. (N-1993.07)

 
Once the men arrived in Guam, they were hospitalized for a week then flown to Japan. 
 

From the Aug. 1951 All Hands

 
The Lord of the Flies tale of shipwrecked soldiers and sailors fighting over a single queen while surviving on coconut wine and crabs was turned into several books and at least one internationally popular film, Josef von Sternberg’s Anatahan (1953).
 
 

Meanwhile, back to our ship!

 
With the war in Korea increasingly drawing in naval assets after the entrance of Chinese volunteers by the hundreds of thousands, USS Cocopa (ATF-101) was soon off to combat. Deployed to the region in the summer and fall of 1953, she was key in saving the Canadian Tribal-class destroyer HMCS Huron (G24), which had grounded while in range of Nork shore batteries. The mighty tug took the damaged Canuck, stern-first, to Sasebo. 
 
Cocopa did receive a battle star for Korea. 
 

USS Cocopa (ATF-101) moored pier side, date, and location unknown. Note The tug’s engineers have managed to paint their battle efficiency “E” on their ship’s tiny smokestack. NHHC

 
By 1954, she was supporting Operation Castle, a series of atomic tests at Bikini Atoll.
 
Then came numerous trips to Vietnam, deploying there five times between 1963 and 1972, earning five stars for her service in Southeast Asia. One of the most interesting taskings during her time there was as a “Yankee Station Special Surveillance Unit” to deceive and jam Soviet Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) and Electrical Intelligence (ELINT) trawlers that were monitoring American operations in the Gulf of Tonkin.
 

USS Cocopa (ATF-101) underway,1969, still with her 3-inch gun but with her Bofors and Oerlikons removed. L45-54.04.01

Decommissioned, 30 September 1978, she would go on to continue her service in more North American waters. 

Viva Armada!

 
Sold under the Security Assistance Program to Mexico, 30 September 1978, Cocopa was commissioned into the Republic of Mexico Navy as ARM Jose Maria Mata (ARE-03) until 1993, then as ARM Seri with the same hull number. 
 
She is still on active duty, based in Tampico. 
 

ARM Seri ARE03 Tampico Mexico 2016 via ShipSpotter IMO 7342691

Check out this video of her underway in 2017, looking good for her age. 
 
 

Epilogue 

 
Of Cocopa’s 26 Abenaki-class sisters, they have been very lucky with two exceptions– USS Wateree (ATF-117) was sunk during a typhoon, 9 October 1945 with a loss of eight crew members; and USS Sarsi (ATF-111) met her fate during Typhoon Karen in 1952 at the hands of a drifting naval mine off the coast of Korea. The rest lived to a ripe old age with the U.S. Navy, eventually being retired by Uncle Sam in the 1960s and 70s. While the last of her class in U.S. service, USS Papago (ATF-160), was disposed of in 1997, many were transferred overseas– such as Cocopa, who continues to serve alongside classmates ARM Yaqui (ex-Abnaki) and ARM Otomi (ex-USS Molala ATF-106). 
 
 
As for Anatahan, it is uninhabited these days but is still home to one very testy queen. Home to a stratovolcano that consists of the largest known caldera in the Northern Mariana Islands, it blew its top in 2003, producing a cloud that was seen 600 miles away and burying the island in ash. 
 
Specs:  
Displacement 1,205 t.(lt) 1,675 t.(fl)
Length 205′
Beam 38′ 6″
Draft 15′ 5″ (lim)
Propulsion: (As-Built) four Busch-Sulzer (mod 12-278) Diesel-electric engines, single propeller 3,000shp
Ship’s Service Generators: two Diesel-drive 100Kw 120V/240V D.C., one Diesel-drive 200Kw 120V/240 D.C.
Modernized: (the 1960s) four Alco Diesel engines driving four General Electric generators and three General Motors 3-268A auxiliary services engines
Speed 16.5 kts.
Radar: SPS-5
Complement 5 Officers, 80 Enlisted
Armament (as completed)
one single 3″/50 dual-purpose gun mount
two twin 40mm AA gun mounts
two single 20mm AA gun mounts
 
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They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find. http://www.warship.org/membership.htm 
 
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
 
With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
 
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Pan Am Clipper, Mariner Edition

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This beautiful original Kodachrome taken in January 1943, shows a Glenn L. Martin Company PBM-3R Mariner flying boat picking up dual Navy and Pan American Airways markings, likely at the manufacturer’s factory in Baltimore.

National Archives and Records Administration 80-G-K-1142

Pan Am operated a fleet of unarmed Navy-owned PBMs on regular NATS-organized transport runs between San Francisco and Pearl Harbor in the last three years of WWII. The airline had experience with big Martin seaplanes already, operating Martin Model 130s as “China Clippers” before (and later during) the war.

Martin PBM-3R “Mariner” transport aircraft. Caption: Scene in a Nats PBM-3R’s cockpit, during a flight to Jamaica, August 1943. Photographed by Lieutenant Junior Grade Wayne Miller, USNR. Catalog #: 80-G-377237

Some 31 PBM-3s were converted to the above “PBM-3R” transport configuration while 18 new-build PBM-3Rs were constructed as well.

As detailed by Airvectors:

These machines had armor and armament removed, with the turrets faired over; a reinforced floor, cargo doors, and a hoist; and removable seating for 20 passengers, though it was nothing unusual for them to carry 33 or more.

Deliveries began in the fall of 1942. Most PBM-3Rs served with the Naval Air Transport Service (NATS), where they were often flown by commercial pilots in Navy uniform.

MIG Alley

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70 Years Ago Today.

Air Guard in MIG Alley by William S. Phillips, via the U.S. Air Force National Guard’s Heritage Collection

MIG Alley, North Korea — June 26, 1951 — During the Korean War over 45,000 Air Guardsmen, in 22 wings and other units, were called into active Federal service. The 136th Fighter-Bomber Wing, Texas ANG, was among the first Air National Guard units to be called. Flying the F-84E Thunderjet, the Texas Guardsmen moved to Japan in May 1951 and, shortly thereafter, became the first Air Guardsmen to enter combat in the Korean War. During the winter and spring of 1951, the Chinese Communist Air Force mounted a major air offensive against the United Nations air forces. The major contested area were the skies over northwestern Korea known as MIG Alley.

The U.S. Air Force retaliated by mounting a counteroffensive aimed at destroying the enemy’s aircraft and bases. In June 1951 the 136th’s 182d Fighter-Bomber Squadron was given the mission of protecting B-29 flights on bombing missions over North Korea.

On June 26, 1951, the pilots of the 182d were escorting four B-29s to an enemy airfield near Yongyu when five MIG-15s attacked the American bombers. Although relatively new to combat, the pilots of the 182d turned back the veteran MIG pilots. During the ensuing dogfight, 1st Lt. Arthur E. Oligher, assisted by Captain Harry Underwood, shot down a MIG-15–the first Air Guard jet kill. The Air National Guard went on to make an impressive combat flying record.

Today’s 182d Tactical Fighter Squadron, Texas Air National Guard continues to add to its impressive flying record.

Desert Haka, 80 Years Ago Today

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Via Time to Go Home.

25 June 1941, Egypt: Members of the 28 (Māori) Battalion, Royal New Zealand Army, performing a haka, the ancestral Māori war cry.

“The four men in the foreground are (from left to right): Private John Manuel (he was killed in action six months after this picture was taken), Private Maaka White (he was killed in action five months after this picture was taken), Private Te Kooti Reihana (he was later wounded by enemy fire), and Lance Corporal Rangi Henderson (he was killed in action two years after this picture was taken).”

The 28th is recognized today as the most decorated Kiwi battalion during WWII, receiving battle honors: Olympus Pass, Crete, El Alamein, Tebega Gap, Takrouna, North Africa 1942–43, Orsogna, Cassino 1, The Senio, Italy 1943–45, Mount Olympus, Greece 1941, Maleme, Canea, 42nd Street, Withdrawal to Sphakia, Middle East 1941–44, Tobruk 1941, Sidi Azeiz, Zemla, Alem Hamza, Mersa Matruh, Minqar Qaim, Defence of Alamein Line, El Mreir, Alam el Halfa, Nofilia, Medinine, El Hamma, Enfidaville, Djebibina, The Sangro, Castel Frentano, Monastery Hill, Advance to Florence, San Michele, Paula Line, Celle, Saint Angelo in Salute, Santerno Crossing, Bologna and Idice Bridgehead, as a unit.

Its men would receive no less than 7 DSOs, 1 OBE, 21 MCs, 13 DCMs, and 55 MMs in addition to a U.S. Silver Star and at least one was recommended, but ultimately did not receive, a VC.

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