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Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) Aug. 15, 2024: One Tired Hound

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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

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Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) Aug. 15, 2024: One Tired Hound

Library and Archives Canada MIKAN 3374382

Above we see Able Seaman Carl Carlson of the F (River) Class destroyer HMCS Qu’Appelle (H69) on 16 August 1944 mugging with one of the bulkheads of his ship that had been neatly peeled open by an enemy 88mm shell during an action against three German VP boats off Brest the month prior. The plucky tin can gave as good as she got and left her assailant at the bottom of the Bay of Biscay before she headed back across the channel.

The well-traveled Qu’Appelle had inflicted worse on the Kriegsmarine earlier in the war– but that was when she was known by a different name.

The E&F’s

Moving on from their Great War-era tin cans, the Admiralty ordered a pair of modern destroyer prototypes in 1927– HMS Amazon (1,352 tons, £319, 455) and Ambuscade (1,173 tons, £326,616), each capable of making 37 knots on superheated oil-fired steam turbine plants and armed with four old-style BL 4.7″/45 Mk I dual purpose guns and six 21-inch torpedo tubes.

The 1927 program destroyer type, of which the Royal Navy would keep in production into 1940. M0064

Further, these ships were super modern for their time and were among the first built with all-steel (rather than fabric) bridges, had a higher freeboard and improved cabin accommodations, and a larger radius of action than preceding classes. Moreover, induced ventilation could be supplied throughout the vessel, for service in the Tropics.

With a little tweak to include more torpedo tubes and newer 4.7″ guns, these became the circa 1928-29 Programme 20-ship A&B class (1,350 tons std, 328 feet oal, 35 knots, 4×4.7″, 8xtt+ depth charges), so referenced as the ships generally used names that started with As and Bs. Every 10th ship was built as a slightly larger flotilla leader with space for a commodore and staff.

This quickly followed with the minimally improved 14-ship (including two flotilla leaders) circa 1929–1931 Programme C&D class (1,375 tons std, 329 feet oal, 36 knots, 4×4.7″, 8xtt+ depth charges).

This naturally led to the 18-ship (including two flotilla leaders) circa 1931-32 Programme E&F class (1,405 tons std, 329 feet oal, 35.5 knots, 4×4.7″, 8xtt+ depth charges), which, as Worth describes, “closely resembles the D class with increased subdivision.” In short, they had an improved hull form over the preceding C&Ds and had three boiler rooms instead of two as well as other minor updates.

The RN similarly kept this incrementally improved line going with the 24-ship (including two leaders) circa 1934-35 Programme G&H class (1,370 tons std, 323 feet oal, 35.5 knots, 4×4.7″, 8xtt+ depth charges), which is beyond the scope of this post, but you can easily see the lineage of these 78 closely related interwar produced British destroyers

The E flight (Echo, Eclipse, Electra, Encounter, Escapade, Escort, Esk, Express, and flotilla leader Exmouth) and F flight (Fame, Fearless, Firedrake, Foresight, Forester, Fortune, Foxhound, Fury, and flotilla leader Faulknor) were constructed in just 26 months between March 1933 and June 1935 because contracts were placed at 10 different yards simultaneously — HM Dockyard Portsmouth, Wm Denny, Hawthorn & Leslie, Scotts, Swan Hunter, Yarrow, Parsons, Cammell Laird, J. Samuel White, and John Brown.

With a full load that approached 2,000 tons in wartime, like the rest of the A&B, C&D, and follow-on G&Hs, the E&F’s main battery was four 4.7″/45 (12 cm) Mark IX guns, arranged curiously to where they could only elevate some 40 degrees, which gave them poor AAA performance.

HMS Foxhound off Freetown, Sierra Leone in August 1943. One of the many British destroyers built during the 1930s with 4.7″/45 (12 cm) Mark IX guns. These are CPXVII mountings which allow elevations of +40 degrees. IWM Photograph A 18772.

Anti-ship punch was in the form of two quadruple 21-inch torpedo tubes on amidships turnstiles, with no reloads. The standard torpedo across all of these destroyer classes was the Mark IX, which was designed in 1928 and introduced in 1930. It carried a 750-pound warhead to 10,500 yards at 36 knots. By 1939, the updated Mark IX** which had a larger 805-pound Torpex warhead and a 15,000-yard range was the standard.

HMS Foxhound’s torpedo crew practice with fish in the tubes. In charge (in white shirt) is the Torpedo gunner. Note the Carley float and water jar lashed to the tubes to save space in the destroyer. IWM (A 18779)

Rounding out the armament for the class were two quad Vickers .50 cals (subsequently added to after 1940), two depth charge throwers, depth charge racks for 20 ash cans, and mechanical minesweeping gear. Importantly, they left the builder’s yards with a Type 121 sonar, a good set with a range of some 2,500 yards, installed.

Meet Foxhound

Our subject was the sixth in Royal Navy service to carry the “Foxhound” moniker going back to an 18-gun Cruizer-class brig-sloop during the Napoleonic Wars. As apt for the name of the small and fast English hunting dog, the Admiralty reissued the name several times in the 19th Century to swift little warships. This legacy gave her two existing battle honors (Basque Roads 1809, Dardanelles 1916) to carry forward.

The fourth and fifth HMS Foxhound, respectively, a 125-foot Forester-class 4-gun screw gunboat launched that served from 1877 through 1897 (but endured in the commercial trade on the Thames until 1975!); and a Beagle class destroyer (H16) that served in the Dardanelles with distinction during the Great War and was sold to the breakers in 1921. (IWM Q 40750 & RMG collection)

HMS Foxhound (H69) was constructed alongside sister HMS Fortune (H70) at John Brown, Clydebank, and, unlike the rest of their sisters, this pair received Brown-Curtis geared steam turbines rather than the more standard Parsons sets for no downgrade in speed (36 knots), performance (36,000shp), or range (6350nm at 15 on 471 tons of fuel oil).

Foxhound was commissioned on 6 June 1935 after a 22-month construction period, just five weeks off from her John Brown-made sister Fortune.

She was sleek and beautiful.

Foxhound H69, prewar Valentine Postcard

Foxhound, pre-war, with her glad rags flying.

Another nice prewar view of Foxhound

With the Es assigned to the Home Fleet’s 5th Destroyer Flotilla while the new Fs made up the 6th DF, Foxhound, and her sisters saw service in the tense period just before WWII, including flotilla-sized cruises to the Red Sea– where the Royal Navy was keeping tabs on the Italian invasion/occupation of Ethiopia–and off Spain where the Civil War was raging.

The Royal Navy at Gibraltar, 1938. Including elements of the Mediterranean Fleet (light grey) and the Home Fleet (dark grey). In addition to the 6 battleships (HMS Nelson, Rodney, Warspite, Malaya plus two R-class), 2 battlecruisers (Hood and Repulse), 2 carriers (Glorious and Furious), and 11 cruisers, whole flotillas of destroyers can be seen including our own Foxhound, to the right, and her shipyard twin sister Fortune, to the left. (click to big up) 5495×1295

War!

Just five months before the outbreak of war in September 1939, the Es in the 5th DF and the Fs in the 6th DF were changed on paper to the 7th and 8th Flotillas respectively.

Our destroyer was in the group that sank the first of 1,162 German U-boats sent to the bottom in the war, just a fortnight after Hitler sent his troops into Poland.

Operating as a screen for the carrier HMS Ark Royal (91), Foxhound along with sisters HMS Faulknor and Firedrake, sent the Type IX U-boat U-39 (Kptlt. Gerhard Glattes) to the bottom on 14 September 1939 west of the Hebrides. In a case rare for what was to come, Glattes and all 43 of U-39’s crew survived the encounter and were among the first German POWs in England.

A beam view of HMS Foxhound with her war paint on. IWM (A 18777)

Foxhound soon became very well-traveled.

Besides 14 convoy runs between the time she joined Halfax-to Clyde TC 01 in December 1939 and left MKF 022 in September 1943, including the vital Suez to Sydney Pamphlet convoy in February 1943 that carried 30,000 Australian troops back home from Egypt once the Japanese entered the war, our little destroyer seemed to be everywhere.

Foxhound H69

She was in Norway, harassing German shipping early in the war in Operation SK and looking for the seized American merchant vessel SS City of Flint (which a German prize crew from the pocket battleship Deutschland sailed to then-neutral Murmansk).

Masthead look-out of HMS Foxhound goes aloft in sou’wester and oilskin. IWM (A 18778)

She was with the force, centered around HMS Rodney, that chased the battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst in February 1940. Later that year, in December, she would search for the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper. She was also in the great Hunt for the Bismarck in May 1941, screening the carrier HMS Ark Royal.

She took part in Operation Du, a cruiser-destroyer anti-shipping raid into the Skagerrak in which Foxhound chased down several vessels– which all turned out to belong to neutrals.

Foxhound underway IWM FL 13264

Foxhound returned to Norway in early April 1940, where on the 13th she took part in the second Battle of Narvik where nine British destroyers, supported by Swordfish from the aircraft carrier HMS Furious and the offshore guns of the battleship Warspite, ended the Kriegsmarine’s plans for U-64 (the first sunk by aircraft), and eight desperately needed German destroyers, all of which were sunk or scuttled by the end of the day.

Foxhound rescued 11 survivors of the destroyer Erich Giese Z12 from the freezing water that day but two would succumb to their injuries.

Kriegsmarine Zerstörer Z19 Hermann Künne on fire in Trollvika, 13. April 1940

Burning wreck of the destroyer Erich Giese (Z12) 13. April 1940

In June 1940, with the fall of France imminent, Foxhound found herself in Gibraltar as an escort for Ark Royal and battlecruiser HMS Hood. On 26 June, the carrier, battlecruiser, and their hounds were sent towards the Canaries looking for the curiously missing French battlewagon Richelieu, which eventually made for Dakar in the French West African colony of Senegal.

With relations deteriorating with the now kind-of-out-of-the-war French, Foxhound soon found herself with VADM Somerville’s strong Force H off the French Force de Raid’s Algerian anchorage at Mers-el-Kebir in July 1940 (Operation Catapult).

In this, Foxhound, with Capt. C.S. Holland, of the Ark Royal (formerly Naval Attaché at Paris) along with two other officers recently employed as liaisons with the French fleet, was detailed to sail forward and parley with VADM Marcel-Bruno Gensoul. When negotiations fell through, Somerville ordered the shameful bombardment of the anchored French ships, a one-sided gunfight that left 1,300 French sailors dead. Sadly, Foxhound was close enough to see it all– observers in her motorboat recorded the fall of shell– although she suffered no damage.

French battleship Bretagne, on fire and visibly low by the stern, at Mers-el-Kébir, 3 July 1940

She continued to fight against the Vichy with Operation Ration in which Foxhound and four other destroyers intercepted the Casablanca-to-Oran French convoy K 5 in 30 December 1940. They seized the cargo liner Chantilly (9986 GRT), tanker Octane (2034 GRT), and freighters Suroit (554 GRT) and Sally Maersk (3252 GRT), sailing with them back to Gibraltar. K5’s sole escort, the armed trawler La Touilonnaise (425 GRT) offered no resistance and was allowed to continue to North Africa, sans convoy.

Foxhound sailed on several Malta relief missions (Operations Hurry and Operation White in 1940, Operations Splice, Tracer, Railway, and Rocket in 1941), escorting carriers bringing Hurricane fighters and Skua bombers to the embattled island as well as other runs in the Med.

For help fighting off Italian and German bombers, Foxhound and almost all of her remaining sisters had four Oerlikon and a 3-inch/45 QF Mk I AAA installed in place of their quad Vickers .50 mount and one set of torpedo tubes. They also picked up Type 271 Air Search and Type 286/M/P radars.

In February 1941, she helped screen the battlewagons HMS Renown and Malaya, along with the cruiser HMS Sheffield, during Operation Grog, the bombardment of Genoa that left four Italian cargo ships sunk in the harbor.

On 18 June 1941, Foxhound, along with sisters HMS Faulknor, Fearless, Forester, and Foresight, bagged her second U-boat of the war, Oblt. Franz Gramitzky’s Type IID U-138, which was sunk just west of Gibraltar off Cadiz, Spain. Like U-39 prior, Gramitzky and all his crew were saved by the British destroyers, then dutifully interrogated and placed in a POW camp for the duration.

By March 1942, Foxhound was assigned to the Eastern Fleet operating in the Indian Ocean to blunt the sortie of the 1st Japanese Carrier Fleet. She would remain in the region for over a year, operating from Colombo to Durban to Bombay to Aden on convoy support missions, adding such exotic ports as Kilindini, Diego Suarez, and Mombasa to that list.

Foxhound H69 IWM A 18776

Recalled to the Atlantic in May 1943, she sailed back home by working slow long-range convoys as part of West Africa Command to Freetown and Gibraltar, finally arriving at Rosyth three months later.

Foxhound, LAC 3199021

She then put into Humber for a refit as an anti-submarine escort destroyer that would see one of her 4.7-inch guns landed to make room for a 24-cell Hedgehog ASW RL device, two more K-gun depth charge throwers, and another 70 depth charges (for a total of 125!). She was also to receive a Type 291 air-warning radar and an American SG-1 surface-search radar, along with a Type 144 sonar.

By August 1943, Foxhound had tallied some 240,000nm since the beginning of the war, ranging from the Bay of Bengal to Iceland and back. This brought an Admiralty photographer to the ship at Sheerness to document the “fine fighting record” of this hardy little vessel and her U-boat-busting crew.

The Quartermaster sounding “eight bells” on the Foxhound’s bell while at Sheerness. Note the Fox’s brush hanging from the clapper. It was presented by one of her officers. August 1943 IWM A 18775

An officer of HMS Foxhound, a South African, watching a British port come into sight as the destroyer completed her 240,000 miles of record steaming. IWM (A 18774)

While in British service, our little hound earned five battle honors (Atlantic 1939-41, Narvik 1940, Norway 1940, Malta Convoys 1941, and Mediterranean 1941).

Canadian Service

To help make good on the loss of the Canadian destroyers HMCS Fraser (H48), Margaree (H49), and Ottawa (H60) earlier in the war, the Admiralty decided in the summer of 1943 to transfer three (very well-used) E&Fs.

These ships included HMS Express (H61) and the shipyard sisters Fortune and Foxhound. The trio, in line with Canadian naming conventions, took on North American river names and became, respectively,  HMCS Gatineau, HMCS Saskatchewan, and Qu’Appelle while retaining the same pennant/hull numbers.

HMCS Qu’Appelle (H69), fresh from her refit, was commissioned in the RCN on 8 February 1944.

HMCS Qu’Appelle, 1944, with her new Western Approaches style camo scheme. LAC 3921890

Soon after she was assigned to Escort Group 12, which was forming up in the Channel ports for the planned Overlord/Neptune invasion of Normandy in June. Foxhound spent the next three months in a series of ASW exercises off Tobermoy and Lough Foyle.

EG 11 and EG 12 were “all Canadian” in makeup and would patrol off Falmouth and Lands End to the deep water curve off the Brittany Coast on D-Day and immediately after.

While supporting the landings on D+2, on 08 June 1944, Qu’Appelle was reportedly attacked Gnats from U-953 (Oblt Karl-Heinz Marbach) with the acoustic torpedoes exploding in the ship’s wake leaving with no damage to the destroyer.

U-953 and a second German boat stalked EG 12 ruthlessly but without joy due to defective torpedoes, as detailed in Normandy 1944: The Canadian Summer: 

Lieutenant Commander Alan Easton RCNR, the commanding officer of EG-12’s HMCS Saskatchewan [ex-HMS Fortune] recalled in his memoir, 50 North, that the evening of 7 June was like a “summer excursion” as the group patrolled northeast of Ushant: The four of us were gliding along in line abreast, listening for the sound of U-boats beneath the quiet sea. It was like drawing a net through the water, stretched tightly between the ships, so that it would snag the big fish while letting through the small unwanted ones. But the net did not always hang down as it should temperature gradients sometimes interfered with it.

In the late evening, however, “a low rumble was heard, the unmistakable sound of an underwater explosion.” Presuming it to be a torpedo hitting the bottom or exploding prematurely, EG-12 searched but saw or heard nothing else. An hour later a violent blast shook Saskatchewan, and 70 meters off the ship’s port quarter “a solid column of water shot a hundred feet in the air “when a torpedo exploded just before reaching the destroyer.

By the grace of “a miracle,” in Easton’s words, “this fast-moving, fish-like machine had self-triggered when only four seconds short of wreaking havoc in the bowels of its target.” As the destroyers continued to hunt through the night and the following morning, two other torpedoes exploded close by while another narrowly missed Skeena.

Easton described his frustration:

Where was the enemy who was so persistently endeavoring to sink us? Where were the other U-boats? We had not the slightest idea except that we knew the one who attacked us was probably within a mile or so. The ASDIC could pick up nothing except useless echoes. It was extremely aggravating.

On D+12, Foxhound, with sister Fortune/Saskatchewan and fellow Canuk tin cans HMCS Restigouche and HMCS Skeena, escorted the battleship HMS Anson from Scapa Flow to Plymouth, the latter on her first leg to head to the Pacific.

By July, the primary Kriegsmarine assets in the Bay of Biscay were 50~ Vorpostenboote (Outpost Boats) of 7. Vorpostenflotille, armed trawlers typically equipped with an 8.8cm Flak or two as well as some smaller guns and some primitive chain-based minesweeping gear. They screened the remaining U-boats in Brest whenever they came and went.

Your typical Vorpostenboot, of which the Germans fielded hundreds. Bild 27479778312

Foxhound and her three fellow Canuk DDs, as part of Operation Dredger in the Bay of Biscay off the Pierres Noires lighthouse on the night of 5/6 July, scrapped it out with three German VP-boats that were trying to escort U-741 out to sea. The running battle left V 715 (Alfred I) sunk and V 721 (Neubau 308) crippled and beached. U-741 would be chased down and sunk by British destroyers a month later. Both Saskatchewan and Qu’Appelle caught hits from the VP boats but suffered no casualties. Radar-equipped destroyers vs armed trawlers is almost a predetermined outcome.

By late July, Qu’Appelle was assigned to Operation Kinetic, a plan to ramp up the blockade of the Bay of Biscay by ending the semi-regular German coastal convoys off the west coast of Brittany between Brest and La Rochelle.

As part of Kinetic, on the night of 10/11 August 1944, Qu’appelle, along with Skeena, Restigouche, and HMCS Assiniboine, dismantled a German convoy in Audierne Bay near Brest. Those sunk included the Vorpostenboot V-720 (Neubau 720/307) while two trawlers were forced ashore by a burning farmhouse and the ersatz minesweeper Sperrbrecher 157 (1,425 tons) limped off only to be sunk three days later by the light cruiser HMS Mauritius. However, in the confusion of the running night surface action fought in shallow waters at close range, Skeena’s bow collided with Qu’Appelle’s stern as the Canadian destroyers retired.

This photograph shows the damage to the destroyer HMCS Qu’appelle after a collision with HMCS Skeena during a night-time battle off the French coast. Sailors, including one standing within the ship’s hull (lower right), examine the damage. George Metcalf Archival Collection. CWM 19830436-011

Personnel examining the damaged tiller flat of HMCS Qu’Appelle (H69), England, 16 August 1944 LAC 3596854

Following repair, Foxhound arrived “home” in Canada for the first time on 29 November 1944 when she arrived at Halifax. Sent to Pictou for refit in preparation for service in the Far East, she emerged again on 31 March 1945.

Rather than ship out for the Pacific, Qu’Appelle served as a troop transport on four trips between Greenock and Halifax, bringing Canadian forces back from Europe, and, post-VJ-Day, was paid off on 11 October 1945.

By the 1946 Jane’s, Saskatchewan/Fortune had already been disposed of and the E&Fs in RCN service were listed as the “Gatineau class.”

Qu’Appelle lingered around for another at the Torpedo School at Halifax, serving as a stationary training ship and sometimes tender to Canada’s two captured German Type IXC/40 U-boats, HCMS U-190 and U-889. 

Broadside view of the snow-dusted HMCS Qu’Appelle (H69) 28 February 1947, likely with HMCS U-190 alongside. In October 1947, the Canadian Navy sank U-190 as a target during Operation Scuttled, a live-fire naval exercise off Halifax. LAC 3209066

Added to the disposal list on 12 Jul 1947, Qu’Appelle was sold later that year for breaking up at Sydney, NS.

HMCS Qu’Appelle earned three battle honors (Atlantic 1944, Normandy 1944, and Biscay 1944) while in Canadian service, adding to her five battle honors earned with the RN earlier in the war.

Epilogue

Some relics of Qu’Appelle endure in Canada, including her 1944 marked bell that she carried off Normandy and in the Biscay blockade. It is preserved at the CFB Esquimalt Naval and Military Museum.

While she has “Qu’Appelle” on the front, it is the destroyer’s original bell, and still says “Foxhound 1935” on the reverse side.

Her RCN service is commemorated in an excellent For Posterty’s Sake page.

Speaking of which, the Canadians recycled her name for a Cold War-era Mackenzie-class destroyer escort (DDE 264) who, in a salute to the old Foxhound, carried an insignia and logo was the head of a fox. She also utilized the old WWII H69’s bell.

HMCS Qu’Appelle (DDE 264) was in service with the RCN from 1963 until 1992, almost all of it in the Pacific.

After DDE-264 was gone, the name was used for the Royal Canadian Sea Cadets Summer Training Centre and is still retained by the Cadet’s Manitoba division as the Qu’Appelle River meets the Assiniboine River in Manitoba.

Of Foxhound/Qu’Appelle’s 17 E&F class sisters, ten were lost during the war: Exmouth, Eclipse, Electra, Encounter, Escort, Esk, Fearless, Firedrake, Foresight, and Fury, with the Germans, Italians, and Japanese all accounting for the job. Post-war, besides the three sent to Canada, Fame was sold to the Dominican Republic, and Echo was loaned to Greece. All in Commonwealth service were scrapped by 1947 while the Greek and Dominican sisters endured until 1956 and 1968 when their runs were terminated.

Korvettenkapitän Gerhard Glattes, the skipper of U-39 which Foxhound and company bagged in September 1939, spent more than seven and a half years as a POW, only being released in April 1947. His stint was the second longest imprisonment of any U-boat commander, beaten only (by one day) by Kptlt. Günther Lorentz of U-63 (Busch and Röll, 1999). The three torpedoes Glattes fired at Ark Royal— which had no hits– were his only shots of the war. Glattes returned to a very different Germany and passed in 1986, aged 77. He had been preceded in death by U-138’s Kptlt. Gramitzky, who only served five years as a POW passed in Germany in 1978.

Meanwhile, the destroyer Z12 Eric Giese is a popular dive spot in Narvik. 

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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A Pipe & a Novel

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A bearded crewman sitting benignly on some Mark VII depth charges, smoking his pipe and reading a novel on board the K-class destroyer HMS Kelvin (F37) during WWII. As each ash can carries 700 pounds of TNT, the rating is relaxing about a smooth ton of high explosive. 

Royal Navy official photographer, LT Christopher John Ware, RNVR, IWM A 1534

Ware– a skilled press agency portrait photographer who volunteered his services to the RN during the war– captured this rating from two different angles, with the second clearly showing it as a posed shot with other tars looking on amused.

IWM A 1533

Kelvin is perhaps the best photographed British tin can of WWII as Ware was apparently aboard her for most much of 1940 and 1941 and captured no less than 380 images while embedded with her crew, some of them rather hamming it up for the camera.

ON BOARD THE DESTROYER HMS KELVIN. 1941. (A 3855) Seaman gunner carrying two belts of 2 lb pom-pom ammunition. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205138210

THE NAVY SETS AN EXAMPLE IN READINESS FOR GAS ATTACKS. FEBRUARY 1941, ON BOARD THE DESTROYER HMS KELVIN, IN PLYMOUTH SOUND. DURING A GAS DRILL WHICH LASTED THREE-QUARTERS OF AN HOUR. ALL DUTIES WERE CARRIED OUT WITH GAS MASKS. (A 3187) Sailors on the mess deck wearing gas masks while reading and writing letters when off duty. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205137601

Commissioned 27 November 1939, Kelvin survived the war– unlike many of her J-, K- and N-class sisters and half-sisters– and earned no less than 8 battle honors: Atlantic (1940), Spartivento (1940), Crete (1941), Mediterranean (1941–43), Sirte (1942), Malta Convoys (1942), Normandy (1944), and Aegean (1944).

HMS Kelvin (F37) Underway in the Clyde. IWM FL 3886

BRITISH FLEET OPERATIONS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN. NOVEMBER 1940, ON BOARD THE DESTROYER HMS KELVIN. (A 2463) A depth charge dropped by the destroyer during a submarine attack exploding astern of the ship. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205136839

Post-war, the worn-out tin can was soon laid up and disposed of, sold to the breakers in 1949, just shy of her 10th birthday.

Warship Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2024: Oft Overlooked Essex

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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

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Warship Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2024: Oft Overlooked Essex

U.S. Navy photo 80-G-282724 in the National Archives, Identifier: 276538368

Above we see the brand new Essex-class fleet carrier USS Bennington (CV-20), decked out in Measure 32, Design 17A camouflage, photographed in the busy shipping lanes off New York on 25 September 1944 by Navy Blimp ZP-12 with the troopship SS Nievw Amsterdam in the foreground. She would go on to become one of the last of her class in Navy custody but first had to earn battle stars off Japan and Vietnam as well as pluck a space capsule from the sea.

Meet Bennington

One of eighteen Essex-class carriers completed during World War II, CV-20 was the second U.S. Navy warship named after the little-known 1777 New York battle during the Saratoga campaign that occurred near the Vermont city of Bennington.

The first USS Bennington (Gunboat No. 4) was a hardy little vessel probably best known to history for taking formal possession of Wake Island for the United States in 1899.

(Gunboat # 4) Dressed with flags in a harbor, probably while serving with the Squadron of Evolution, circa 1891-1892. Courtesy of Donald M. McPherson, 1969. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 67551

Ordered a week after Pearl Harbor on 15 December 1941, our second USS Bennington was the first of her class built in the Empire State (which makes her name choice logical) and was laid down on 15 December 1942 at the New York (Brooklyn) Navy Yard.

Bennington was also the first American fleet carrier constructed wholly in a dry dock, rather than on a builder’s ways, and at her launching on 26 February 1944, the dock gates were opened to allow the Hudson to flow in. She was sponsored by the wife of eight-time U.S. Rep. Melvin Maas (R-Minn) who, a Great War Marine aviator, was back in uniform as a colonel on MacArthur’s staff.

Bennington being prepared for launching in a building dock at the New York Navy Yard, 23 February 1944. She was christened three days later. Courtesy of Mr. James Russell, Philadelphia Pennsylvania, 1972. NH 75631

USS Bennington (CV-20) being floated out of drydock at the New York Navy Yard, on 26 February 1944, following her christening. NH 75632

The same yard was soon turning the lessons learned in constructing CV-20 to good use and would build three sisters (Bon Homme Richard, Kearsarge, and Oriskany) while a fourth, USS Reprisal (CV 35) was canceled just after launch.

Bennington was one of the last of the “short bow” designed Essex class carriers completed, with later vessels having a longer clipper bow. Remember this in a minute.

Starting in May 1944, her crew gathered at Naval Training Station Newport and Brooklyn Navy Yard for pre-commissioning training while her inaugural carrier group, the brand new CVG 82, was likewise coming together at the fields around Norfolk.

She was commissioned on 6 August 1944– 80 years ago this week– and her plankowners and baby Airedales boarded her for the first time in front of a crowd of 8,000 people. Her first skipper, T/Capt. James Bennett Sykes (USNA 1919), came from the captain’s cabin of the very successful U-boat-busing USS Card (CVE-11) whose embarked VC-9 squadron bagged an incredible eight boats between August and October 1943.

Her wardroom also included 32-year-old LT John Aloysius “Buddy” Hassett, formerly a first baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Boston Bees/Braves, and New York Yankees. He naturally pulled down the collateral duty of Bennington’s athletic and recreation director and coach of the carrier’s baseball team and would remain with the vessel until the end of the war.

Hassett would leave the Navy in November 1945 as an LCDR.

CVG-82 was made up of the “Fighting Fools” of VF-82 (36 F6F-5 Hellcats), VB-82 (15 SB2C-4E Helldivers) and VT-82 (15 TBM-3 Avengers). This would be beefed up by two Marine Corsair squadrons, VMF-112 and VMF-223, with a total of 36 F4U-1Ds and 54 flying leatherneck pilots. Likewise, a night fighter det of six radar-equipped F6F-5N, six pilots, two ground officers, and seven enlisted ground crew joined VF-82 at the same time, landing six of the more standard Hellcats to make room.

Thus equipped, CVG-82 sailed for the Pacific in January 1945 with a very fighter-heavy 73 F models, 15 dive bombers, and 15 torpedo bombers, as opposed to the more traditional “Sunday Punch” of 36-36-36 of each type. This was to counter the onset of the kamikaze waves, which started in October 1944, and the general decline of floating and ashore targets on which to expend torpedoes and bombs.

By this point in the Pacific campaign, close-in air support had largely been passed from fast carriers to the Navy’s growing force of CVEs and CVLs, with the CVs tasked instead with providing a robust fighter umbrella over the fleet.

USS Bennington (CV-20) photographed from a plane that has just taken off from her flight deck, during the ship’s shakedown period, 20 October 1944. 80-G-289645

USS Bennington (CV-20) at anchor in Gravesend Bay, New York, 13 Dec 1944

USS Bennington (CV-20) ferries aircraft to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii while on her maiden voyage to fight in World War II in January 1945

War!

Steaming through the Panama Canal and calling at San Diego and Pearl Harbor on her way to Ulithi Atoll Fleet Anchorage by 7 February 1945, CVG-82 managed to chalk up 3,000 landings along the way, although crack ups were to be expected.

Firefighters battle flames engulfing a Marine F4U Corsair after a crash on the flight deck of the carrier Bennington (CV 20) on 14 February 1945. According to Bennington’s War Diary, the plane was of Marine 38, which crashed into the island and “created a stubborn gasoline fire” until it was jettisoned over the side. Its pilot, 2LT W.M. Browning, USMCR, escaped with “minor lacerations.” NNAM photo.

Underway as part of TG 58.1, Bennington/CVG-82’s baptism of fire came on 16 February when she took part in the first large-scale Navy air raids of the Japanese home islands, sending 130 combat sorties in “two deck load strikes” into the area around Tokyo Bay, flying missions against installations at Mitsune and Mikatagahara Airfields on Hachijo Jima, Nanpo Shoto. During the raid, she was the Westernmost carrier– the one closest to Japan.

At the end of the day, 10 aircrew were listed missing. They would not be the last.

From her War Diary for 16 Feb 1945:

She then pivoted south to support the Iwo Jima landings, plastering Chichi Jima on 18 February (D-1). Then came a four-month cycle that saw Bennington pivoting back and forth between supporting landings and operations on/over Iwo and Okinawa and Home Island raids.

This would include joining in, with air groups from 14 other carriers, on the 7 April hammering of the world’s largest battleship, Yamato (with Admiral Seiichi Itō on board), the light cruiser Yahagi, and four of the Emperor’s destroyers into the East China Sea.

Note Bennington’s hits

U.S. Navy deck crewmen aboard USS Bennington (CV-20) maneuver a Curtiss SB2C-4 Helldiver of bombing squadron VB-82 into position on the carrier’s flight deck. VB-82 operated from Bennington during the period February to June 1945. Note Bennington’s arrowhead geometric air group identification symbol on the SB2C’s wings and tail. U.S. Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation photo No. 1996.253.357

Bennington launching TBM Avengers from VT-1 during operations in early 1945. USS Harrison (DD-573), a Fletcher-class destroyer that received 11 battle stars for World War II service, steams past in the background. She would later serve in the Mexican Navy as Cuauhtemoc (E-01) until 1982. 80-G-K-5103

Japanese plane being shot down by gunfire on 14 May 1945 while approaching USS Bennington (CV 20). Image taken from USS Hornet (CV 12). The ships were serving as part of Task Force 38 off the Kyushu, Japan area. Sky is decorated with anti-aircraft fire. 80-G-331622

USS Bennington (CV-20) Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat fighters of VF-82 prepare for takeoff, circa May 1945. 80-G-K-4946

This high tempo continued until 5 June 1945 when Connie, a “small and tight typhoon overtook TG 38.1, which passed through the eye of the storm at 0700 that morning,” hitting the group with winds clocked at over 100 knots and seas of up to 50 feet. The storm damaged almost every ship in the TG and wrecked or washed away 76 aircraft from the group’s three assembled carriers.

Bennington got some of the worst of it, having her forecastle deck flooded, leaving living spaces a “shambles,” buckling a 25-foot section of her flight deck, and putting both catapults out of commission. Hornet, operating in TG.38.1 along with Bennington, suffered almost the exact same damage.

Nonetheless, she was still capable of putting up strikes– sending 26 Hellcats and 11 Corsairs to bomb and strafe Japanese airfields on Southern Kyushu on 8 June– and mount a CAP over her task group.

Bennington was forced to retire to Leyte Gulf off Tacloban Field where she underwent 20 days of emergency repairs courtesy of the forward-deployed repair ship USS Ajax (AR-6), which cut away her collapsed flight deck.

Workers from the floating workshop USS Ajax, (AR-6) repaired the bow of the carrier USS Bennington, (CV-20) off Leyte Island in June 1945. Virgil Cowart Collection. UA 539.11

CVG-82 made their 10,744th and final landing on Bennington on 10 June. In their four months in combat on CV-20, they had an impressive tally that included helping to break the back of the Imperial Air Force– claiming 386 Japanese aircraft destroyed in the air or on the ground– as well as contributing to ending the last surface threat of the Imperial Navy.

In return, CVG-82 lost an incredible 127 aircraft (remember that they sailed from California in January 1945 with 103!) along with 53 aviators and aircrew, a quarter of their complement, across 7,304 combat sorties.

Bled white in terms of both men and material, CVG-82 was pulled off Bennington on 17 June and sent back to the states on the homeward-bound jeep carrier USS White Plains (CVE-66). They would not be ready to deploy again until October 1946, when they shipped out on a Med cruise aboard Bennington’s sister, USS Randolph (CV-15).

CVG-82s scorecard from their 1945 cruise with Bennington:

Likewise leaving Bennington at this time was Capt. Sykes who was sent to take command of the Naval Ordnance Test Station (later NAWS China Lake) at Inyokern, California. His place was taken by Capt. Boynton Lewis Braun (USNA 1921B), a career naval aviator who earned his wings on the old USS Lexington and had formerly commanded the escort carrier USS Manila Bay (CVE-61).

With CVG-82 gone, Bennington soon picked up the recently reorganized Carrier Air Group One (CVG-1) which, formed in 1938 as the “Ranger Air Group” had a lineage that dated back to the Navy’s first purpose-built flattop. Consisting of VF-1 (Hellcats including photo and night fighter variants), VBF-1 (Corsairs) VB-1 (Helldivers), and VT-1 (Avengers), they arrived in the Philippines in mid-June 1945 on White Plains, the same jeep carrier which would tote CVG-82 home.

CVG-1 stood some 163 pilots and 98 aircraft strong.

Starting flight operations on 1 July, they would soon get a bite at the decaying Japanese apple, striking Tokyo just 10 days later. CVG-1 would spend the next five weeks hammering industrial, military, and naval targets across Honshu in what could really be looked at as mopping up operations.

Nonetheless, this allowed the group, and by extension Bennington, to put the final nails in the Imperial Navy’s coffin, logging hits on the 22,000-ton Unryū-class fleet carriers Amagi and Katsuragi; the hybrid carrier-battleships Hyuga and Ise, and the cherished battlewagon Nagato, among others taking refuge in the mine-blocked Inland Sea.

Salvaging parts of a damaged VBF-1 Corsair Aboard the USS Bennington (CV-20), 4 July 1945. 80-GK-6176

Raids on Japan, 1945. Japanese carrier Amagi under attack at Kure, on 24 July 1945. Photo by USS Bennington (CV-20). 80-G-490165

Raids on Japanese Home Islands, July 30, 1945. Japanese carriers of the Amagi-Katsuragi class hit by bombers at Kure Bay, Japan. Radio photograph. 80-G-490169

One of CVG-1’s most hard-felt losses was that of VB-1’s squadron commander, LCDR Andrew B Hamm (USNA ’39) when his SB2C-4E Helldiver was shot down by anti-aircraft fire over Kure on 28 July. Hamm’s folks in Alabama were given his posthumous Navy Cross, earned on a previous raid when he landed a 1,000-pound armor-piercing bomb on the carrier Amagi. He was one of 26 pilots and aircrewmen listed killed or missing from the group in their short time on Bennington— almost one per day.

A CVG-1 Corsair launches from the deck of the carrier USS Bennington CV-20 on 14 August 1945. Note the battleship on the horizon

When the Emperor threw in the towel on 14 August, Bennington and her air group spent the next two weeks jogging up and down the coast from Northern Honshu to Southern Hokkaido and back, cataloging 11 Allied POW camps around the region, many of which were not previously known.

Captured by one of CVG-1’s F6F-5P recon birds

They dropped 5.5 tons of supplies from TBMs using canopies repurposed from parachute flares with “more than one pilot expressing his deep satisfaction in making a perfect drop to starving prisoners who by their enthusiastic gestures indicated how welcome their packages were to them.”

CVG-1 was able to clean up its planes and put 83 aviators in the air in everything that could get off the deck to spearhead the “show of force” overflight of USS Missouri during the surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay on 2 September although the carrier was still 100 miles offshore.

Bennington carried on with her role of patrol and mounting photo recon missions along the Japanese Home Islands until 10 September, when she finally steamed into Tokyo Bay and berthed for a weeklong rest.

There, on 13 September 1945, her crew celebrated the ship’s first birthday complete with entertainment and a “grand dinner.” As noted in her War History, “The birthday actually occurred a little more than a month previous of course (6 August but the celebration was necessarily delayed due to combat operations.”

Big Benn remained in the Far East until mid-October and then went back stateside for the first time since January, dropping off her low-mileage air group at Saipan. CVG-1 would later return to be disestablished at Alameda NAS via the east-bound jeep carrier USS Kwajalein (CVE-98). They had been on Bennington for 30,381 steaming miles in just over three months and made 3,323 landings on her decks.

CVG-1s scorecard for July-August 1945:

Entering San Francisco Bay on 7 November sans aircraft, Bennington remained there over the holidays until January 1946 when she set out for Pearl Harbor with a load of planes and a draft of men headed West for occupation duty.

USS Bennington (CV 20) – Pearl Harbor, Hawaii – January 1946

Remaining in the Hawaiian Islands for training for a few months, the carrier was given orders for Norfolk, via the Panama Canal, and arrived there on 22 April.

On 8 November 1946, she was decommissioned and berthed with the Atlantic Reserve Fleet along the James River.

Bennington earned three battle stars for World War II service: 1) Iwo Jima operation, 15 Feb – 4 Mar 1945, 2) Okinawa Gunto Operation, 17 Mar – 11 Jun 1945, 3) Third Fleet operations against Japan 10 Jul – 15 Aug 1945.

Another, Colder, War

Bennington’s mothball slumber lasts just under four years.

Reawakened in October 1950 due to the war in Korea, she was towed to her birthplace at New York Naval Shipyard for an extensive SCB-27A conversion to allow her to handle jets including a pair of new hydraulic Type H Mark 8 (H8) catapults. This upgrade took two grueling years and, once it was finished, she recommissioned on 13 November 1952.

In this, she had been reclassified as an “Attack Aircraft Carrier” to differentiate her from her unconverted sisters and redesignated CVA-20.

Her first jet-and helicopter-equipped air group, CVG-7, composed of VF-71 (F2H Banshee) and VF-72 (F9F Panthers), VF-74 (Corsairs), and VA-75 (AD-4 Skyraiders), along with a det of HUP-2 whirlybirds, arrived on board in February 1953 for Bennington’s Caribbean shakedown cruise and subsequent September 1953- February 1954 Med deployment for NATO exercises.

A F9F-4 Panther from NATC at NAS Patuxent on USS Bennington (CVA 20) 19 April 1954.

It was during this period that she suffered an explosion in her No. 1 fireroom on 27 April 1953 that claimed the lives of 11 men and put her in the yard for two weeks of repair.

She would soon suffer far worse.

Just after returning from the Med, while conducting flight operations off Narragansett Bay with Air Group 181 on 26 May 1954, a series of explosions rocked the carrier after her port catapult accumulator burst and filled the air with vaporized lubricating oil which detonated, immolating the wardroom and crew’s mess which were in the compartments directly above. The fire killed 91 men outright while another 12 succumbed to wounds. Over 200 were injured. twelve would die later from their injuries.

Had it not been for the fact that helicopters and small boats were able to rapidly medevac 82 critically injured sailors ashore to the nearby Naval Hospital in Newport, surely more would have perished.

Sailors injured in the below-deck explosions and fires on board the USS Bennington are carried by elevator to the flight deck for transport to Newport Naval Hospital, 26 May 1954.

The Bennington explosion, almost totally forgotten by the public today, was the second worst U.S. Navy accident during peacetime in terms of lives lost, only surpassed by the 1952 collision between USS Hobson (DD 464) and USS Wasp (CV 18) that left the destroyer cut in half and with 176 men killed or missing.

Her deck bulged in numerous places and with most of the front third of the ship with twisted I beams and blackened compartments, Bennington returned once more to New York Naval Shipyard under her own power on 12 June 1954, where she completed a longer SCB-125 conversion that added an enclosed hurricane bow– to lessen the potential for damage in heavy weather– and of an angled flight deck to improve the efficiency of air operations.

She looked very different upon completion of this, her second major overhaul and conversion in five years. 

USS Bennington (CV-20) off Point Loma near the entrance to San Diego Bay in the late 1950s

Bennington emerged from NYNSY on 19 March 1955 and would embark a new air wing, Air Task Group (ATG) 201, that September for an eight-month “around the Horn” West Pac cruise.

Bennington with ATG-201 embarked, in 1956, seen simultaneously landing an AD Skyraider and catapulting an FH Phantom. Note that she has an enclosed bow now but no bridle catchers handing over. 

Bennington, as modernized. NH 67558

Then, in rapid succession, came another new group ATG-181 for a 1956-57 West Pac cruise.

F9F-8 Cougar of Fighter Squadron (VF) 174 launches from Bennington (CVA 20) as another squadron aircraft prepares to maneuver onto the catapult during flight operations in 1956. NNAM collection.

A U.S. Navy North American AJ-2 Savage of heavy attack squadron VAH-6 Det. N Fleurs landing on the aircraft carrier USS Bennington (CVA-20). VAH-6 Det. N was assigned to Air Task Group 181 (ATG-181) for a deployment to the Western Pacific from 15 October 1956 to 22 May 1957. U.S. Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation photo No. 1996.253.3301

F2H-3 Banshee of Marine Fighter Squadron (VMF) 214 pictured while making touch-and-go approaches on board the carrier Bennington (CVA 20) on 2 November 1956. NNAM collection.

Talk about the recruiting poster! Stern of USS Bennington (CVA-20) at Hong Kong, showing her 3″/50 Mk 33 AAA twin mounts. Bennington, with assigned Air Task Group 181 (ATG-181), was deployed to the Western Pacific from 15 October 1956 to 22 May 1957.

San Francisco Naval Shipyard with USS Hancock (CVA-19), the USS Oriskany (CVA-34), and the USS Bennington (CVA-20), 3 October 1957. K-23227

A U.S. Navy North American FJ-4B Fury (BuNo 143574) from Attack Squadron VA-146 Blacktails after landing aboard the aircraft carrier USS Bennington (CVA-20) during carrier qualifications off Southern California (USA) in April 1958. VA-146 was assigned a the time to Carrier Air Group 14 (CVG-14) aboard the much larger supercarrier USS Ranger (CVA-61). NNAM No. 1996.253.7230.017

Fly Navy! FJ3 Fury of VF-173 on board of USS Bennington during the middle of the 50s. (US Navy)

Official U.S. Navy Photograph. Catalog #: USN 1036055

The angled deck USS Bennington (CVA-20) passes the wreck of USS Arizona (BB-39) in Pearl Harbor on Memorial Day, 31 May 1958. Bennington’s crew is in formation on the flight deck, spelling out a tribute to Arizona’s crewmen who were lost in the 7 December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. USN 1036055

Her final West Pac cruise as a CVA (August 1958 through January 1959) came with ATG-4 embarked.

USS_Bennington_(CVA-20)_underway_c 1958 with ATG 4

Air Task Group 1 (ATG-1) embarked on USS Bennington (CVA 20) in 1958 off Hawaii. Note how big those Savages look!

On 30 June 1959, Bennington was reclassified as an “Antisubmarine Warfare Support Aircraft Carrier” (CVS), a designation that eight of her sisters (Essex, Yorktown, Hornet, Randolph, Wasp, Intrepid, Kearsarge, and Lake Champlain) would share.

The big change that this meant, besides switching to an air group made up of S-2 Trackers and SH-3 Sea Kings with a few AD-5W (EA-1E) Skyraiders for airborne early warning, was having a bow-mounted SQS-23 sonar installed in a SCB-144 conversion.

Five Essex-class flattops at Long Beach Navy Yard. USS Bennington, Yorktown, and Hornet (angled flight decks; no bridle catchers) are configured as ASW carriers; USS Bon Homme Richard (angled deck; with bridle catchers) is an attack carrier; USS Valley Forge (straight axial flight deck with heli zones marked) is serving as LPH-8

Her go-to anti-submarine air group (CVSG) during the 1960s, with which she made six West Coast deployment cruises, was CVSG-59. It was made up, in general, of the “World Famous and Internationally Traveled Screwbirds” of VS-33 and the “Red Griffins” of VS-38 (Trackers), the “Eightballers” of HS-8 (H-34/HSS-1 Seabat/SH-34G then later Sea Kings), and a det from the “Early Elevens” of VAW-11 (Skyraiders, later replaced with E-1B Tracers after 1965).

Note her red and blue H-34/HSS-1 Seabat/SH-34Gs of HS-8, which deployed on Bennington between October 1960 and August 1963 when the squadron switched to Sea Kings

USS Bennington (CVS-20) and USS Braine (DD-630) during an underway replenishment in the Pacific Ocean, circa in 1960. Note her wing of helos and Trackers

Bennington (CV-20), Benner (DD-807), USS Eversole (DD-789), Alfred A. Cunningham (DD-752), and O’Brien (DD-725), on 25 November 1963 honoring the passing of JFK.

Sent to Vietnam on four of her CVS West Pac cruises (Feb-Sept 1964, March-Oct 1965, Nov. 1966-May 1967, and May-December 1968) Bennington also carried a few A-4 Skyhawks for muscle.

Flight deck personnel stand by to prepare for the next launch as an A-4C Skyhawk of Antisubmarine Fighter (VSF) 1 roars down the catapult during carrier qualification aboard the antisubmarine warfare Bennington (CVS 20) 18 November 1967. NNAM photo.

USS Bennington (CVS-20) underway off the coast of California, 25 November 1967. Photographed by Dolenga. NH 97582

Bennington (CVS-20) in Pearl Harbor 17 May 1968

USS Bennington (CVS-20) at Pearl Harbor, in May 1968 while outbound on her last Vietnam cruise. She has CVSG-59 aboard. USN KN-1702

USS Mauna Kea (AE-22) high lines ammunition to the USS Bennington (CVS-20) in the Gulf of Tonkin, the 10 September 1968. Our carrier has nine S-2E Trackers, two E-1B Tracer “Stoof with a Roof” models, and at least four SH-3A Sea Kings on deck. This would be Bennington’s final deployment and would end on 9 November. USN 1137061

A visiting USAF HH-3 Jolly Green Giant tagged on Bennington’s decks, likely off SE Asia

In between West Pac cruises, Bennington also clocked in in the 1960s for runs along the California coast in which she served as a training carrier for qualifications and handled experimental aircraft.

She served as the floating testbed for the big Ling-Temco-Vought XC-124A, a wild tri-service tilt-wing cargo aircraft that predated the CV-22 by decades.

Able to carry 32 equipped troops or 4 tons of cargo with a 470nm combat range, it had a max T/O weight of 45,000 pounds (about twice that of the C-1 Trader carrier delivery aircraft) and a 67-foot wingspan. While this sounds crazy, the C-2 Greyhound went to 50K pounds and had an 80-foot span, but then again nobody wanted to land a C-2 on an Essex-class carrier anyway.

It was thought that as many as 25 folding-wing navalized XC-124s could be carried on the deck of an 18,000-ton Iwo Jima-class LPH (or on an old Essex class CVA/CVS in a pinch), capable of lifting an 800-man Marine battalion landing team ashore in one go– again, predating the LHD/MV-22 concept by a good bit.

Bennington would host the No. 5 XC-124A airframe for 44 STOL take-offs and landings and 6 full VTOL cycles in wind conditions ranging to 30 knots.

An XC-124A after landing aboard the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Bennington (CVS-20) off San Diego, California (USA), on 18 May 1966. Note the Sikorsky SH-3A Sea King in the background.

She also pitched in with the Apollo program, picking up the first module launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

USS Bennington (CVS 20) Apollo 4 spacecraft November 9th, 1967

The Apollo Four Command Module is hoisted onboard USS Bennington (CVS-20) following splashdown at 3:37 pm., 934 nautical miles northwest of Honolulu. Damage to the heat shield from the extreme heat of reentry is evident. Photograph released November 9, 1967. 428-GX-K-45494

With the Navy looking to pare down its WWII-era carriers, then rapidly pushing through their 20s, in favor of a new (Nimitz) class of CVNs, Bennington was decommissioned on 15 January 1970 and placed in mothballs at Bremerton in Puget Sound.

She had spent 18 years with the fleet and earned three battle stars in WWII and five during Vietnam. 

Kept on the bench

The Navy retained four Essex class carriers in reserve on the Naval List through the 1980s: Bennington, Bon Homme Richard, Hornet, and Oriskany.

It was thought, semi-realistically for a while, that they could be a mobilization asset to run S-3 Vikings (if the catapults worked), SH-3/SH-60s, and Marine AV-8 Harriers from them as a “sea control ship” on convoy support in the event of a WWIII Red Storm Rising type of event– given enough lead time.

Plans were even floated in 1981 by SECNAV Lehman to bring back Oriskany to active duty as a “strike carrier” in peacetime, equipped with a wing made up totally of Marine A-4M Skyhawks (2 squadrons= 48 aircraft) and 4-6 SH-3 helicopters, as well as possibly Harriers, ideally to support Marine operations ashore.

The GAO kind of filled that concept full of holes: 

With it thought that Oriskany had 10-15 years left in her, the fact that Skyhawks were on their way out (only 118 were on hand in 1981 and the last active Marine A-4 squadron shuttered in 1990), and the 24-month/1.1 million man-hour reactivation overhaul was estimated to cost $500 million in 1981 dollars, the Navy pulled the plug on that concept.

Still, Big Benn and her four sisters languished in the ordinary for two decades. 

As Bennington and Hornet were SCB.27A ships, with hydraulic instead of steam catapults, they likely would have been reactivated without their cats, leaving them restricted to Harriers and SH-3/SH-60s, but that still could satisfy as an ASW carrier.

Hornet and Bennington in the 1973 Janes.

She even looked good, despite the fact she was on red lead row.

Four decommissioned aircraft carriers, Naval Inactive Ships Maintenance Facility, Bremerton, Wash. ex-USS Hornet (CVS-12), ex-USS Oriskany (CV-34), ex-USS Bennington (CVS-20), and ex-USS Bon Homme Richard (CVA-31)

Pacific Reserve Fleet, Bremerton, Washington, July 1974. The major units here are USS Missouri (BB-63), New Jersey (BB-62), Hornet (CVS-12 and Bennington (CVS-20).

Bremerton Washington Mothball Fleet, 1989: USS Hornet, USS Chicago, USS Oriskany, USS Bennington, USS Bon Homme Richard and USS Nimitz in the distance, 

USS Bennington (CVS 20) laid up at the Naval Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility Jan 25 1990 DN-SC-90-03981

1992: USS Hornet, USS New Jersey, USS Oriskany, USS Bennington, USS Midway. Mothball Fleet, PSNS Bremerton, plus minesweepers and destroyers

However, nothing lasts forever and, with the end of the Cold War, the Navy moved to divest itself of the last of its lingering steam-powered warships from battleships through frigates.

Bennington was stricken on 20 September 1989, just days before the Berlin Wall came down, and sold for scrap in January 1994 to a breaker in India.

Her island and masts were shorn, and armament and sensors removed, then towed to Alang in March 1995 for scrapping by hand.

Bennington became only the second fleet carrier to be sold for scrap outside the United States, following sister USS Shangri-La (CV-38) which had been sent to a yard in Taiwan in 1988. Subsequent flattops disposed of by dismantling including the Forrestal and Kitty Hawk-class supercarriers recycled in the past 20 years have all gone to Texas for breaking.

When Bennington was gone, the Navy only had two other Essex class carriers still in mothballs and one of those, USS Hornet (CV-12) went on to become a museum shortly after while Oriskany (CV-34) was sunk as a reef off Pensacola in 2006. Other sisters preserved include Lexington, Intrepid, and Yorktown— all of which had the same 1950s SCB-125 conversion and subsequent 1960s CVS service as Bennington, so they are all great representations of what the old girl looked like.

Epilogue

Bennington’s WWII War Diaries are in the National Archives as is her War History and those of CVG-82 and CVG-1.

There has not been another naval vessel named Bennington.

Big Ben is remembered fondly by the Bennington Reunion Group, which has a superb online presence that dates back to 1999. Sadly, they do not seem to have held a reunion since 2017, as their members are no doubt dwindling. Keep in mind an 18-year-old bluejacket on her crew list when she was decommissioned for the last time is now pushing age 75.

On 26 May 2004, a bronze plaque was installed at Fort Adams State Park in Rhode Island, near the spot where Bennington had her terrible catapult explosion and fire, to memorialize the event and the crewmembers lost.

Likewise, the city of Bennington has had custody of her bell for the past several decades and includes it in a ceremonial parade and ringing on the town green every Independence Day. 

Of Bennington’s historic WWII air groups, CVG-82 was redesignated to CVAG-17 and later CVG-17 before being disestablished in 1968. CVG-1, which earned two Presidential Unit Citations during the war, has served aboard nine different carriers since then and today, as Carrier Air Wing One (CVW-1), is based at NAS Oceana and is assigned to USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75).

Her primary CVS air group, CVSG-59, after Bennington was mothballed, went on ship out with sisters Yorktown, Hornet, and Ticonderoga— and took part in the recovery of Apollos 8, 11, 12, 13, 16, and 17– before it was disestablished in June 1973.

Finally, her plankowner skipper, RADM James Bennett Skyes, who earned a Navy Cross while in command of the carrier in 1945, retired from the Navy in 1953. He passed at his Texas home in 1981, aged 86, and was survived by two daughters, four grandsons, and three great-grandsons.

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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Mighty Mo, Stretching Her Sea Legs

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If you have followed this blog for more than five minutes, you know I am a sucker for period Kodachromes and classic warships, so this superb 80-year-old photo essay of the brand new Iowa-class battleship USS Missouri (BB-63) on her shakedown cruise alongside the large (not “battle”) cruiser USS Alaska (CB-1), circa August 1944, should not come as a shock. 

Enjoy.

Missouri In port during her shakedown cruise, circa August 1944. USS Alaska (CB-1) is in the left distance, with a K-type blimp overhead. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the U.S. National Archives. 80-G-K-4523 (Color)

Missouri anchored in port during her shakedown cruise, circa August 1944. A K-type blimp is overhead. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the U.S. National Archives. 80-G-K-4576 (Color)

Missouri was photographed while on her shakedown cruise, in August 1944. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the U.S. National Archives. 80-G-K-4575 (Color)

USS Alaska (CB-1) maneuvers in front of USS Missouri (BB-63) during their shakedown cruise, circa August 1944. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the U.S. National Archives. 80-G-K-5584

40,000 tons at 30+ knots! View along the battleship’s port side, during a high-speed run while on her shakedown cruise, circa August 1944. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the U.S. National Archives. 80-G-K-4533 (Color)

Missouri’s signal flags flying from her port halyards during her shakedown cruise, circa August 1944. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the U.S. National Archives. 80-G-K-14527 (Color)

Signal flags fly from her port side halyards, as the battleship speeds along during her shakedown cruise, circa August 1944. Note 5/38 twin gun mounts below. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the U.S. National Archives. 80-G-K-4571 (Color)

The pilot of a Vought OS2U floatplane unstraps his flight log from his leg, after returning from a flight. The airplane is on the catapult behind him. Photographed during the ship’s shakedown cruise, circa August 1944. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the U.S. National Archives. 80-G-K-4597 (Color)

Missouri Electricians’s Mate First Class Kenneth McNally and Seaman First Class George Skiratko operate a 36-inch searchlight, during the ship’s shakedown cruise, circa August 1944. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the U.S. National Archives. 80-G-K-4560 (Color)

Missouri Fire Controlman Third Class James Tucker adjusts the canvas bloomer on a 16/50 gun while standing on the gun turret’s face plate ladder. Photographed during the battleship’s shakedown period, circa August 1944. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the U.S. National Archives. 80-G-K-4535 (Color)

Missouri fires the center 16/50 Mk.VII guns of each of her forward turrets, during a shakedown cruise night gunnery practice, circa August 1944. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the U.S. National Archives. 80-G-K-4549 (Color)

This looks so crisp and sharp that it could have been taken in the 1990s! “Missouri fires a salvo from the forward 16/50 gun turret, during her shakedown period, circa August 1944. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the U.S. National Archives. 80-G-K-4546 (Color)”

Missouri Fires her 5″/38 secondary battery during a shakedown cruise night gunnery practice, circa August 1944. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the U.S. National Archives. 80-G-K-4550 (Color)

The old man: Captain (future VADM) William McCombe Callaghan (USNA 1918) the ship’s Commanding Officer, on the navigating bridge during her Summer 1944 shakedown period. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the U.S. National Archives. 80-G-K-4600

A bit of light reading occupies the spare time of one of the ship’s crew members, during Missouri’s shakedown cruise, circa August 1944. His booklet is the Public Affairs Committee publication What About Girls?. Note helmets stowed on the 40mm gun tub shield behind the sailor. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the U.S. National Archives. 80-G-K-4541 (Color)

WAVES Yeoman Third Class Betty Martin exiting the rear door of a 5/38 twin gun mount while touring the ship in an east coast port during Missouri’s shakedown period, circa August 1944. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives.

Lieutenant Rival Joe Hawkins, Chaplain, leads a congregation of sailors in prayer, during services on the battleship’s fantail. Photographed during her shakedown period, circa August 1944. Note the portable organ at the right, the 16-inch triple gun turret in the center background, and the censored ship (which is USS Alaska, CB-1) at the right distance. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the U.S. National Archives. 80-G-K-4531 (Color)

The Brooklyn-built battlewagon conducted her cruise down the Eastern Seaboard to the Chesapeake, then left Norfolk after post-shakedown availability on Veteran’s Day 1944, headed to her destiny in the Pacific.

Smokey’s Lucky Witch

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Twenty-year-old Ens. Darrell C. “Smoke” Bennett, USNR, stands beside “Smokey’s Lucky Witch”, his FM-2 Wildcat, onboard the ill-fated Casablanca class escort carrier USS Gambier Bay (CVE-73), August 1944. The young aviator strikes a jaunty pose carrying an M1911A1 pistol in a shoulder holster, along with a mag pouch and survival knife on his gun belt, as he leans on the fuselage and exhaust-frosted engine cowling, a Composite Squadron Ten (VC-10) insignia painted below the cockpit windshield, and his plane number (White 27) on the starboard wing.

Note the exhaust-streaked cowling and nose art. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-243864

Just three months after the above image was snapped, Gambier Bay was lost during the “Sacrifice of Taffy 3” in the Battle off Samar on 25 October 1944– the only American aircraft carrier sunk by enemy surface gunfire during WW II.

Bennett was in the air at the time and was able to divert to nearby Tacloban Field, where the Army was setting up a base for P-61s and P-38s. The field, only partially constructed and very recently liberated from the Japanese, turned into muddy chaos as dozens of homeless Wildcats and Avengers were forced to land there throughout 25 October. Not to be deterred, pilots helped Army aerodrome personnel refuel and reload with anything available, then took back off to try and chase away the Japanese surface group.

After continuing to operate from fields around Leyte, VC-10, which had lost 10 men on 25 October as well as most of its planes, was shipped back home to be reconstituted at NAAS Ventura and would end the war on one of Gambier Bay’s sisters, USS Fanshaw Bay (CVE-70).

Bennett would survive WWII as well as later service in Korea, continue his Navy career as a pilot, a flight instructor, and as Commander Fleet Air Miramar, retiring in 1965. CDR Bennett received the following decorations: Air Medal (5), Presidential Unit Citation, Navy Unit Citation, Korean Presidential Unit Citation, WWII Victory Medal, Navy Occupation Service Medal (Europe), National Defense Service Medal, Asiatic Pacific Campaign Medal, Korean Service Medal, and the United Nations Service Medal.

Retiring to the Florida panhandle after a second career as a corporate and personal pilot to Hollywood types, CDR Bennett was a well-known supporter of the Pensacola National Naval Aviation Museum, where one of his former airframes was on display, and the USS Gambier Bay Association. 

CDR Bennett passed in 2020, aged 96, and is interred at Barrancas National Cemetery, Pensacola, leaving behind “two sons, seven grandchildren, and 15 great-grandchildren.”.

For more on Taffy 3, be sure to check out “The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors” by James D. Hornfischer.

Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) Aug. 1, 2024: Going Dutch on a (Baby) Flat-top

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday to 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

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 (on a Thursday) Aug. 1, 2024: Going Dutch on a Baby Flat-top

Nederlands Instituut voor Militaire Historie 2158_005349

Above we see a big Vliegtuigsquadron 860 (VSQ 860) Fairey Firefly Mk. I of the Dutch Marine Luchtvaartdienst, her quad 20mm Hispano Mk.V cannons clearly visible on her folded wings, as the strike aircraft is being made ready to launch from the deck of Hr.Ms. Karel Doorman (QH 1), Holland’s first vliegkampschip (aircraft carrier), to join operations against rebel forces on Java on 13 October 1946.

It was the jeep carrier’s second war.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Meet Nairana

The Tasmanian word for a huge (and endangered) wedge-tailed eagle local to those seas, the first HMS Nairana got her name honest– she was born with it as the Huddart Parker Lines passenger ferry TSS Nairana, ordered from the Scottish firm of William Denny & Brothers in January 1914. While still on the ways, the 352-foot/3,000-ton passenger steamer was converted to handle seaplanes and commissioned into the Royal Navy in 1917.

Outfitted with a 95-foot flying platform, she could carry as many as eight single-engine floatplanes and finished the war with the Battle Cruiser Force before heading to North Russia to support the Allied intervention there during the Russian Civil War. Returned to her original owners in 1921, she worked in the commercial trade in Australia until 1948, including troopship service in WWII.

The first HMS Nairana, a seaplane tender, in her 1917-1918 dazzle pattern camouflage. Note her forward flying deck, stern recovery boom, hangar, and several small Sopwith floatplanes. IWM SP 1292, photo by Surgeon Oscar Parkes

Our subject had much the same backstory, just a 1940s version.

Laid down in November 1941 as a fast refrigerated cargo/passenger carrier by the Scottish shipbuilding firm of John Brown & Company on the Clydebank for Port Lines, she instead was diverted to Admiralty use once the new war got going. Acquired by the Royal Navy in 1942, she was soon finished as an escort carrier, HMS Nairana (D 05). Her only sister was the similarly converted HMS Vindex (D 15) while a third ship, HMS Campania (D 48), is more of a half-sister.

Nairana line drawing by Dr. Dan Saranga

Commissioned on 26 November 1943, Nairana went 17,000 tons (fully loaded) with an overall length across the flight deck of 528 feet while her beam ran 68 feet wide. Armament was two twin QF 4″/45 cal DP Mk XVI guns, four quad 40mm Mk VII QF pom-poms (possibly the most British of AAA guns), and eight twin 20 mm/70 Oerlikon Mark Vs.

Belowdecks was a 231-foot hangar serviced by a single centerline elevator. She had a single C-II catapult installed, which was capable of launching a 6.4-ton aircraft from a standstill to 70 knots. Her avgas capacity was 62,000 gallons, enough to fuel an empty Swordfish 370 times or a Martlet (Wildcat) 452 times. It was thought this sufficed to support a wing of as many as 20 single-engine aircraft.

Speed was 17 knots on her economical marine diesels, with a cruising range of 13,000nm at 15 knots– a convoy escort dream!

They would ultimately carry Type 277, Type 281В, and Type 293 radars.

Nairana and her sister(s) were a little larger and a couple knots faster than the most numerous RN escort carriers– the 34 American-built Bogue-class CVEs sent over via Lend-Lease and known as the Ameer, Attacker, Ruler, or Smiter class in British service depending on their arrangement. However, the Bogues had a second elevator and were thought capable of operating as many as 28 aircraft despite their smaller hangars and flight decks.

War!

The Royal Navy Research Archive has a great entry on Nairana’s WWII service but we’ll do more of a sum up for brevity.

HMS Nairana, escort carrier, 17 February 1944, Greenock, Scotland. Note the abundance of Carley floats and an embarked airwing. Photo by LT SJ Beadell, IWM A21848

Embarking her first air group of 12 Mk. II Swordfish and the personnel of the Fleet Air Arm’s 838 Squadron on 17 December 1943 (soon changed out to a mix of nine Swords and a half dozen Sea Hurricane Mk. IIcs of 835 NAS), our little carrier was nominated for service in the Western Approaches with the Liverpool-based 2nd British Escort Group. The role: Atlantic convoy defense.

Between 29 January 1944 when she tapped in on OS 066KM and 27 February 1945 when she left RA 064, Nairana helped escort no less than 21 convoys. These ran the gamut from the Freetown, Sierra Leone to Liverpool runs (SL & OS convoys) to Mediterranean runs (KMF, KMS, and MKS convoys) to the very dangerous Kola Pen/Murmansk runs (JW and RA convoys).

HMS Nairana, escort carrier, June 1944, view from one of her planes looking back. Note her camouflaged flight deck. IWM A 24131

HMS Nairana, an escort carrier, underway. Note what appears to be five 835 Squadron Sea Hurricanes forward, which should put this image in January-June 1944. IWM FL 12664

Her air group- which by October 1944 had grown to 14 Mk. III Swords and 6 Mk.VI Martlets of 835 NAS– in particular was very successful, downing at least two Bv138 long-range reconnaissance flying boats and numerous JU88s on the Russia run, along with three giant Junkers Ju 290s of FAGr 5 over the Bay of Biscay. They also reportedly attacked at least two surfaced U-boats (though without any confirmed sinkings).

In between convoy runs, Nairana served as a temporary home to the Barracuda of 768 DLT squadron and the Fireflies of 816 squadron for workups and was tasked with three different anti-shipping raids off the coast of occupied Norway (Operations Sampler, Winded, and Prefix/Muscular) in early 1945.

Of the Norway raids, Winded proved the most successful with Nairana’s Swords, operating alongside those of her sister Campania’s embarked 813 Sqn, managing to blitz four coasters on 28 January off Larsnes/Vaagsö, sinking the J.M. (164 GRT) and Varp (114 GRT) with rockets and bombs. Nobody said ani-shipping operations were glamorous.

By late March 1945, with the Soviets knocking on the door of Berlin and the Western Allies crossing the Rhine, the Atlantic convoy game was starting to wind down. 835 Naval Air Squadron, Nairana’s go-to air group, was disbanded on 1 April 1945 at RNAS Hatston, her Swords put to pasture in favor of Avengers and Barracuda, while her Martlets were handed over to 821 Sqn.

Meanwhile, eyes turned to the Pacific.

From King to Queen

With the British Pacific Fleet getting very muscular in 1945– the RN had six large armored fleet carriers, four light carriers, two maintenance carriers, and nine escort carriers (with over 750 embarked aircraft) along with five battlewagons and 100 escorts arrayed against the Japanese– realization came that the campaign to liberate the Dutch East Indies would soon be underway.

Keep in mind it wasn’t until July 1945 that the first Oboe-series landings in the Japanese-occupied DEI occurred at Balikpapan and it was felt that the campaign to root the Emperor’s forces out would likely take upwards of a year, based on what the U.S. Sixth Army was facing in the Philippines. This coalesced with the thinking that the planned final Allied landings in the Japanese home islands, Operations Downfall, Olympic, and Cornet, would see fighting lasting through most of 1946. Remember, there were still squad-sized units of Japanese surrendering on Hollandia and Morotai as late as 1956– with the latter island where the last holdout wouldn’t be caught until December 1974! 

Therefore, to give the Dutch some carrier power, starting in June 1945, Nairana began a series of operations off Scotland with an embarked squadron (VSQ 860) of the Free Dutch Navy along with officers and senior NCOs to be used as a cadre to operate their own carrier.

The squadron, formed in June 1943, had previously flown Swordfish from two Royal Dutch Shell-owned and manned tankers, MV Gadila and MV Macoma, which had been given flying decks to perform as Merchant Aircraft Carriers. They rode shotgun on 45 convoys.

Gadila (left) and Macoma (right), were converted to MAC carriers in June 1944. They still carried their oil cargo but also embarked 4-to-6 of NAS/VSQ 860’s Swordfish on convoy overwatch through April 1945. Macoma served as a MAC on 24 convoys and Gadila on 21.

Using Fairey Barracuda transferred hot from the RN FAA’s 822 Squadron, the Dutch of VSQ 860 got in their first carrier cats and traps as a squadron from Nairana.

A Fairey Barracuda MK II of NAS/VSQ 860 on the elevator of HMS Nairana, circa November-December 1945. NIMH 2158_102013

A Dutch deck party moving around a NAS/VSQ 860 Barracuda on HMS Nairana, circa November-December 1945. NIMH 2158_102018

A RATO-equipped Fairey Barracuda of Vliegtuigsquadron 860 lifts off from HMS Nairana, rolling over the stowed aircraft barrier. NIMH 2158_102038

A flaps-down NAS/VSQ 860 Barracuda comes in to trap on HMS Nairana under the control of a paddle-equipped LSO, circa November-December 1945. NIMH 2158_022771

A better look at that Dutch LSO, with Nairana’s eight arrestor wires and barricade in the background. Not a lot of room for error on a straight-deck 500-foot CVE! NIMH 2158_102040

A NAS/VSQ 860 Barracuda traps on HMS Nairana, circa November-December 1945. Notably, she had eight arrestor wires while her near-sisters Vindex and Campania only had six. NIMH 2158_102012

HMS Nairana with her hangar deck filled with Barracuda of Vliegtuigsquadron 860, circa November-December 1945. NIMH 2158_102014

Nairana was formally transferred to Dutch control in a quiet ceremony at Gareloch, Scotland on 20 March 1946. The British flag (Union Jack) was lowered and the Dutch Prinsengeus hoisted, with appropriate salutes and honors rendered from both sides.

The changeover NIMH 2158_101372

Her new name, Hr.Ms. Karel Doorman (QH 1), came as a salute to RADM Karel Willem Frederik Marie Doorman, killed in the Battle of the Java Sea in 1942 when his flagship was torpedoed during the battle and he elected to ride it to the bottom rather than abandon ship.

Dutch WWII poster, depicting Admiral Karel Doorman and his flagship light cruiser De Ruyter

Her first Dutch skipper was Capt. Alfred de Booy, a Java-born career naval officer with 28 years of service who had formerly commanded the frigate Hr.Ms. Johan Maurits van Nassau (which was sunk in May 1940) and served as naval attaché in London. 

Karel Doorman on the day she was transferred, 20 March 1946. Note her D 05 hull number she wore as Nairana has been painted out. NIMH 2158_025456

Karel Doorman, 20 March 1946, in rough shape but with her Prinsengeus flying, and her old British D 05 hull number. NIMH 2158_000829

Hr.Ms. Karel Doorman (QH 1) at the Royal Naval Dockyard Rosyth, where she was dry docked for the first three weeks of May 1946 just after the transfer. NIMH 101450

Fresh out of dry dock. Note she still retains her wartime camouflage and Carley floats and has her new QH 1 hull number applied to her bow. NIMH 2158_000845

Note her pennant number has been more haphazardly applied to her starboard side. NIMH 2158_000846

Kaarel Doorman Janes 1946

I found this short (silent) video of her in the NIMH archives from this period. 

Another War!

Following four months of refit and puttering around the North Sea, it was decided to send the country’s first aircraft carrier to its ongoing liberation and pacification efforts in the Dutch East Indies, where Japanese die-hards and Indonesian insurgents were embroiled in a war of independence. Seen off by Prince Bernhard, she would leave Holland in August 1946.

Honor guard, equipped with British Pattern 37 kit and .303 caliber SMLEs, present arms for the visit of Prince Bernhard to the carrier at Rotterdam’s Merwehaven, 6 August 1946. NIMH 2158_101511

Getting right with her gunnery, just in case. Note the peculiar arrangement of the twin Oerlikons on Hr.Ms. Karel Doorman, complete with early aiming computer. NIMH 2158_101519

She proceeded to Glasgow to pick up 15 new (to the Dutch) Firefly Mk Is, transferred from Royal Naval Air Station Fearn, which would be assigned to VSQ 860. Besides the aircraft, Karel Doorman would also pick up some 2,000 tons of parts, tools, and ordnance, as well as 130 aircrew and enlisted.

Another 15 Firefly Mk Is, sold to the Dutch from FAA stocks just after Karel Doorman left Glasgow would go on to equip VSQ 861, then eventually be reassigned to 1 Sqn in the Dutch Antilles. In 1947, the Dutch purchased another 40 upgraded Firely FR.4s, which would be used by 1, 2, 4, 5, and 7 Sqns. This would be augmented by 14 Mark NF.V radar-equipped night fighters delivered in 1949. The final Fireflies acquired by the Dutch were a quartet of ex-Canadian Navy aircraft purchased in 1952. 

Karel Doorman at the George V Docks in Glasgow, 26-to-29 August 1946 giving a good shot of her aft 4″/45 twin mount. NIMH 2158_025464

A VSQ 860 Firefly Mk I, one of 15, being stowed in Karel Doorman’s hangar on 26 August 1946. Note it still carries RN FAA roundels. NIMH 101445.

Observe the small Dutch orange and black triangle national marking applied near the cockpit. This style had already been replaced by the current four-color (blue, white, red, and orange) roundel. NIMH 101375

Leaving Glasgow on 1 September, her crew crossed the equator and called at Simonstown on the way to Java.

Crossing the Line ceremony on board Hr.Ms. Karel Doorman with Captain A. de Booy receiving the “Grand Cross in the Order of the Floating Bar” from Neptune, 11 September 1946. NIMH 101459

While near the Cocos Islands, her Fireflies launched on 13 October and flew some 500 km to the Kemajoran airfield near Batavia, with almost all arriving safely (one cracked up on landing without casualties).

MLD Firefly coming up the elevator on Hr.Ms. Karel Doorman, 13 October 1946. It still has its mix of British and obsolete Dutch markings. NIMH 2158_005348

Fairey Fireflies Mk.I taking off from Karel Doorman. NIMH 2158_000834

A group of four Fairey Fireflies Mk.1 airborne over Hr.Ms. Karel Doorman on their way to Kemajoran airfield. On the left is the frigate Hr.Ms. Van Galen. NIMH 2158_101547

Een formatie van drie Fairey Firefly I carrier-jager-verkenners, behorend tot de vloot van 860 Vliegtuigsquadron. NIMH 2158_012904

Soon afterward, VSQ 860 flew on to Morokrembangan, near Soerabaja in the east of the island, and the Dutch assumed responsibility for air support in the East Indies from the RAF, which had been hard at work doing it since before VJ Day.

Our carrier then commenced in a series of port calls in the region, stopping at Surabaya, Makassar, Moena, Ambon, and Banda.

While at Tandjong Priok near Jakarta, she picked up two captured Japanese floatplanes to be taken back to Holland for tests and display: a Kawanishi N1K (Rex) and an Aichi E13A (Jake).

Hr.Ms. Karel Doorman with a Japanese Aichi E13A floatplane on her deck on 7 November 1946. NIMH 2158_000839

A view showing both the N1K and E13A. NIMH 2158_005346

It was important for the Dutch to police up these former Japanese military planes as the local Indonesian forces (the TKRO) were gathering as many as they could for the coming struggle against the colonial forces. Of note, the Fireflies of VSQ 860 spoiled this in a big way on 27 July 1947 when they destroyed 36 Indonesian aircraft including seven very dangerous Ki-43-II Oscars on the ground at Maguwo airfield, leaving the TKRO in the area just four working aircraft to their name: two Yokosuka K5Y1 Willow (Cureng) biplane trainers, one Mitsubishi Ki-51 Sonia bomber, and one remaining Hayabusha. Interestingly, some of these still survive in the Indonesian Air Force Museum.

On the way back to Europe, by way of Dakar and Casablanca, Karel Doorman visited South Africa from 8 to 18 January 1947, where she was swamped by a local outpouring from the ethnic Dutch Boers.

Hr.Ms. Karel Doorman, sans visible aircraft, at Cape Town with Tafelberg in the background, January 1947. Note her hull numbers have been down-sized from the big white numbers seen earlier. NIMH 2158_000843

Back in Holland, the carrier had a brief refit at NV Dok en Werf Maatschappij Wilton-Fijenoord in Schiedam.

In het dok bij de NV Dok en Werf Maatschappij Wilton-Fijenoord, Hr.Ms. Karel Doorman. 18 February 1947. NIMH 2158_005336

NIMH 2158_005341

She then ventured out to make a series of port calls in Western Europe, in particular visiting London for a week in April. There, she received a silver salver from Albert Victor Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Hillsborough, KG, CH, PC, then the 1st Lord of the Admiralty.

Right 1st Viscount G.H. Hall, First Lord of the Admiralty, talking to Capt. A. de Booy, commander of Hr.Ms. Karel Doorman 18 April 1947. De Booy would go on to become the Dutch Navy’s CNO in 1950 and retire as a vice admiral in 1956. He passed in 1990, aged 89. NIMH 101443

This was followed up with a series of tactical exercises and a trip to Norway and Iceland with the River-class frigate Hr.Ms. Johan Maurits van Nassau (ex-HMS Ribble) and D-Day veteran gunboat-turned-training ship Hr.Ms. Soemba as escorts.

Karel Doorman at Eidfjord, Norway, where she called 18-20 July 1947. NIMH 0018_101559

Hr.Ms. Karel Doorman on the piles at Maashaven, Rotterdam, 7 October 1947. Note she doesn’t have a camo flight deck any longer but still has her side camo. NIMH 2158_005338

In October 1947, she took members of Parliament and government ministers to sea for a series of trials with the country’s first naval helicopter, a Sikorsky S.51/H-5 (“Jezebel”), and Auster liaison aircraft.

The MLD’s Sikorsky S-51 Air Sea Rescue (ASR)/training helicopter H 1 “Jezebel.” In U.S. Navy service, the type was classified as the HO3S and saw much service in Korea on C-SAR missions for downed aircrew. NIMH 2158_026176

A second trip to the Dutch East Indies in the winter of 1947 saw her bring some replacement Fireflies to the country– three (F-22, F-24, and F-27) had been lost to ground fire and one to an accident– along with several Austers.

Taylorcraft Auster Mk.IIIs coming up from Karel Doorman’s hangar to fly ashore at Java. Note the new style roundels. NIMH 2158_005337

Taylorcraft Auster Mk.III taking off from Karel Doorman. NIMH 101381

A group photo of OVW members in front of the OO accommodation of the Marine Air Base Morokrembangan after the arrival of the aircraft carrier Hr.Ms. Karel Doorman in the Dutch East Indies, late 1947. NIMH 2158_025462

Three Fairey Firefly fighter-reconnaissance aircraft of VSQ 860 at Maospati airfield during the so-called Second Police Action (Operation Megatan). Also visible in the photo is an Auster AOP Mk.3 reconnaissance aircraft and a MLD-Catalina maritime patrol flying boat. NIMH 2158_023056

Review of Karel Doorman on 20 December 1947 by Vice-Admiraal Albertus Samuel Pinke, the commander of the naval forces in the Dutch East Indies from 1946 to 1949. Note the height-finding radar on a short tower by the deckhouse. NIMH 2158_101504

Repatriation

On 9 March 1948, Karel Doorman left Holland for the last time, returning to Plymouth where she was returned to the Royal Navy’s custody. Disarmed and with her sensors removed, she was sold for pennies on the pound to Port Line, the shipping company that had originally ordered her in 1941.

Following a conversion back to her more or less planned configuration at Harland and Wolff in Ireland, ex-Nairana/ex-Karel Doorman embarked on her third life as MV Port Victor in September 1949.

She continued her commercial service until 1971 when the well-traveled ship and twice-former aircraft carrier was sold to a breaker in Taiwan.

Her two near-sisters, Vindex and Campania, were the final two escort carriers in RN service.

Vindex and Campania in the 1946 ed of Jane’s.

Like Nairana/Doorman, Vindex was sold back to the Port Lines as the unimaginatively named MV Port Vindex in October 1947 and scrapped at Kaohsiung in August 1971.

Campania, decommissioned in December 1952 after supporting British atomic testing in the Pacific, was scrapped in 1955.

Epilogue

Karel Doorman is remembered fondly by the Dutch Navy as she was essentially the cradle of their sea-going naval aviation.

Maritime art of Hr.Ms. Karel Doorman in the Dutch Naval collection. NIMH 2158_005340

The second Hr.Ms. Karel Doorman (R81), the 19,000-ton former Colossus-class light carrier HMS Venerable, was commissioned into the Dutch Navy on 28 May 1948 and operated until 1970 when she was third-handed to the Argentines as the Veinticinco de Mayo.

Vliegkampschip Hr.Ms. Karel Doorman (R 81) ligt gepavoiseerd op de boeien. 2158_009425

The third Hr.Ms. Karel Doorman (F827), commissioned in 1991, was the lead ship of a new class of ASW frigates for the Dutch. She retired in 2006 and continues to serve the neighboring Belgians as Louise-Marie (F931).

Fregat Karel Doorman (F 827) 2158_009637

The fourth Hr.Ms. Karel Doorman (A833), a 27,000-ton is a replenishment and logistic ship, commissioned in 2015 and is the largest ship to ever serve in the Dutch fleet.

Zr.Ms. Karel Doorman (A833)

As for VSQ 860, they continued flying air support missions over the Dutch East Indies until Indonesian independence in December 1949. After chalking up more than 2,000 sorties over the islands, the 11 remaining Karel Doorman-delivered Fireflies were shipped out.

The Dutch continued to use the type on Biak and Curacao in the West Indies. The last time the Firefly was deployed in anger by a European nation was in 1962 when the MLD flew its remaining aircraft in Biak against Indonesian forces encroaching on Dutch New Guinea before its transfer to Jakarta the next year.

A period Kodachrome of a full-color radar-equipped Firefly FR.Mk.IV night fighter of the Marine Luchtvaartdienst at Biak, Nederlands Nieuw-Guinea, ready to roll, circa 1961. In all, the Dutch operated some 80 Fireflies of all types during the Cold War, losing 25 to accidents and three (all of VSQ 860) to combat, withdrawing the last one in 1963. NIMH 2158_012906

Today– after flying Hawker Sea Fury FB.50s (5 July 1950 – 25 June 1956) and Sea Hawk FGA.50s (18 Sept 1957 – 30 Oct 1964) from the second Hr.Ms. Karel Doorman–860 is in the rotor wing business and has flown Wasps, Lynx (from the third Hr.Ms. Karel Doorman), and now NH90s, which it occasionally flies from the fourth Karel Doorman.

Some things never change.

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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The Bells, The Bells

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Trinity Marine recently auctioned off a ton of historic RN ship’s bells, primarily from the 20th Century, from the Ferrers-Walker Royal Navy Collection. These were formally on loan to the RN’s Portsmouth Dockyard museum but never put on display (“Most of his collection was acquired directly from the shipbreakers where most of the WW2 fleet were getting scrapped after the War, notably Thomas Ward in Inverkeithing, after which he continued his hobby buying from auctions and private collections right up to the 1990’s”).

While it is sad that the bells are not preserved in a museum on public display, at least it is good to know that they weren’t scrapped or otherwise deep-sixed and lost to history over the years. Plus, it always opens the possibility that these relics may find their way to museums at one point in the future.

HMS Dumbarton Castle (P265) Patrol Ship bell

HMS Kittiwake 1937 Sloop bell

HMS Sharpshooter 1917 Destroyer bell

HMTB 29 1909 Torpedo Boat bell

HMS Cairo (D87) Cruiser bell

HMS Amphitrite 1899 Cruiser bell

HMS Surf 1943 Submarine bell

HMS Jupiter 1899 Battleship bell

HMS Rinaldo 1901 Sloop bell

HMS Royalist 1915 Cruiser bell

HMS Matchless 1914 Destroyer bell

HMS Minos 1914 Destroyer bell

HMS Scott 1939 Minesweeper bell

HMS G4 1915 Submarine bell

HMS Newfoundland (59) Cruiser bell

HMS Rodney 1927 Battleship bell

HMS Trident 1915 Destroyer bell

HMS Vengeance 1944 Aircraft Carrier bell

HMS Vesper 1918 Destroyer bell

HMS Wild Swan 1919 Destroyer bell

Also hitting the block were a series of treadplates, name boards, gun tompions, screen badges, and ship’s badges. In all, some 160 artifacts were turned back out to the wild.

Omaha’s Trip Home

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For your approval, a scenic peacetime view some 90 years ago this month, showing the class-leading baby cruiser USS Omaha (CL-4) at anchor in Commencement Bay in Puget Sound at the end of July 1924. “The Omaha had streamed into the Bay on Monday, 28 July for a week’s stay. The 550-foot ‘scout cruiser’ was accompanied by a squadron of six destroyers.”

Northwest Room at The Tacoma Public Library, Marvin D. Boland Collection, B10599

Omaha was built by Todd Dry Dock of Tacoma and launched on 14 December 1920, commissioning in 1923.

Serving a quiet peacetime career, she gave hard if somewhat unsung service in WWII, ranging far and wide and capturing German blockade runners, earning but a single battle star.

Decommissioned on 1 November 1945, Omaha was stricken from the Navy Register on 28 November 1945.  She was scrapped at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard by February 1946.  

Big Rick off Sumatra

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Some 80 years ago today, the curious shot of the mighty (Free) French battleship Richelieu, sailing as part of the British Eastern Fleet in the Indian Ocean, slewing her pointing her over-bored 380 mm/45 (14.96″) Model 1936 guns at Japanese-occupied Sabang (Sumatra) in the Dutch East Indies during Operation Crimson, 25 July 1944.

The Crimson operation, Task Force 62, had a three-hit punch that day:

First, built around two British carriers (HMS Illustrious and HMS Victorious) each filled with Corsairs, strafed and mutilated the Japanese airfields around Sabang.

Meanwhile, a bombardment group— battleships HMS Queen Elizabeth, HMS Valiant, Richelieu, battlecruiser HMS Renown, heavy cruiser HMS Cumberland, light cruisers HMS Nigeria, HMS Kenya, HMS Ceylon, HMNZS Gambia and the destroyers HMS Rotherham, HMS Relentless, HMS Racehorse, HMS Rocket and HMS Rapid, lit of some 1,300 shells (294 – 15″, 134 – 8″, 324 – 6″, ca. 500 – 4.7″ and 123 – 4″).

Finally, a daring little surface action group made up of the destroyer-sized Free Dutch cruiser HrMs Tromp and the destroyers HMS Quilliam, HMS Quality, and HMAS Quickmatch, entered Sabang harbor for a high-speed shoot-up.

In all, Crimson cost just two Allied lives: a war correspondent killed on Quality and a petty officer on Quilliam, both due to hits from Japanese coastal batteries.

Richelieu, who escaped German capture or British destruction immediately after the fall of the Second Republic in June 1940 with only 296 shells to her name (and 198 quarter charges), served the Vichy French in colonial African ports– ruining three of her guns in the Battle of Dakar against the British in November 1940– until November 1942 when said ports went over o the Allies.

Her sister, the incomplete Jean Bart, famously lost an artillery duel with the USS Massachusetts at Casablanca and, using her guns, American shipyards were able to (sort of) get Richelieu back in the fight, specially making some 900 shells and providing Navy multi-tube SPD charges.

Richelieu, after she arrived in New York Harbor for repairs and refitting, on February 11, 1943, note her wrecked turret. 80-G-40855

The refurbished Richelieu aerial port, off New York Harbor, New York, August 26, 1943. 80-G-78789

As detailed by Navweaps:

During Richelieu’s refit in the USA in 1943, her three ruined guns were replaced by guns removed from Jean Bart’s Turret I. It is apparently untrue that Richelieu’s guns were bored out to 15.0″ (38.1 cm) during this time, as French records indicate that they remained at 380 mm (14.96″). Sometime after this refit, new APC projectiles designed to meet French specifications were specially built for her by the Crucible Steel Company of America.

“The US designed-and-manufactured APC projectiles were externally identical to the French design and weighed the same, with the exact same cavity shape and percentage. The base fuze was the US Mark 21 BDF. The filler was Explosive “D”, not TNT. The base plug was the standard US Navy design, as was its threaded sides and other details. The biggest visual difference in the blueprints between the US and original French APC projectiles was that the AP cap and nose shape was that of the US Navy 14″ Mark 16 Mod 8 AP projectile: Oval nose under the cap and a flat-tipped-cone-faced, moderately thick, moderately hard (circa 555 Brinell maximum) AP cap with the windscreen threaded to near its softened (circa 225 Brinell) lower skirt edge just above the forward bourrelet, not at the maximum-hardness upper-face edge as with most foreign and later US Navy AP shells (even the 14″ Mark 16 MOD 10 AP shells had the new-model, short-windscreen AP caps late in World War II). This odd-ball late-1930’s US Navy standard cap and windscreen design allowed the windscreen-holding threads to be cut into softer metal — less expensive — and made the windscreen several inches longer than later designs (also slightly heavier, of course); there was a narrow gap between the inside of the lower windscreen and the slightly-narrowed AP cap side above the threaded area. The caps were soldered on with a ring of 8 (I think) shallow pits in the nose at the bottom edge of the cap having the cap edge bent into them (forming “dimples”), reinforcing the solder; identical to the US AP cap attachment method. The windscreen might have had the plugged cut-outs for an internal dye bag used in US World War II large-caliber AP projectile to allow water to ram though the windscreen on water impact and dye the splash, but I am not certain; it most certainly did not use the French “K” dye-bag design.”

Warship Wednesday, July 24, 2024: To the Sea, to the World

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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

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, July 24, 2024: To the Sea, to the World

Official U.S. Navy Photograph, from the Naval History and Heritage Command collections. Catalog #: NH 97002

Above we see khaki-clad officers of the newly-formed Republic of Korean Navy standing by as their country’s first large warship, the PC-461-class subchaser Baekdusan (also seen as Bak Dusan, Bak Du San, Pak Tu San, and Paktusan) (PC-701) has her teeth installed– a 3″/50 DP gun– at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, March 1950.

Bought via subscription and a tax on the service’s sailors (!) she would soon sail into harm’s way and the history books.

The PC-461 Class

Designed to provide a beefy little sub-buster– similar to Britain’s corvettes and sloops– that could float in shallow enough water (10-foot draft) to perform coastal operations but still have enough sea-keeping abilities and range (4,800 nm at 12 knots) to escort cross-ocean convoys without needing the same anti-ship capabilities as found on patrol frigates and destroyer escorts, the Navy ordered some 400 small submarine chasers based on a modified design of one of the pre-war Experimental Small Craft program’s “X-boats” the diesel-powered USS PC-451.

USS PC-451 was designed in 1938 and commissioned on 12 August 1940. Some 173 feet long, the 270-ton steel hulled diesel-powered subchaser could carry two 3″/50 DP guns, six 20mm guns, two Mk 20 Mousetrap projectors, two depth charge racks, and two K-gun depth charge throwers, all while making nearly 19 knots and just requiring a 65-man crew.

The follow-on PC-461 went a bit heavier and, carrying twin 1,440 bhp diesel engines, could break 22 knots (when clean) and tote essentially the same armament, and ship out with QHA sonar (as well as small set SF or SO or SCR-517A radars after 1942).

PC-461 was laid down in July 1941– just five months before the attack on Pearl Harbor– and eventually, some 343 of her class would be constructed by March 1945 across 13 small shipyards, all non-traditional to the Navy.

Camouflage Measure 32, Design 12P drawing prepared by the Bureau of Ships for a camouflage scheme intended for application to 173-foot submarine chasers (labeled on the drawing as PC-578 class). This plan, approved by Captain Torvald A. Solberg, USN, is dated 19 July 1944. It shows the ship’s starboard side, exposed decks, and the superstructure ends. 19-N-73643

USS PC-483 is underway in a Navy Kodachrome. Note the ship’s camouflage pattern. 80-GK-00428_001

USS PC-546 underway off the U.S. East Coast, circa 1942. Interestingly, these ships carried a false stack, as the diesel exhaust was routed through the hull sides. 80-G-K-13278

USS PC-546 from the stern.

Another stern shot of the 546 boat, note her thin 23-foot beam, welded hull, and already thinning hull black applied in a rush, sloppy fashion.

USS PC-472 underway near Hampton Roads, Virginia, 31 August 1942. Note her armament layout including a 3″/50 forward, another aft, two 20mm Oerlikons on the bridge wings, two stern DC racks, and two K guns. NH 96481

The PC-461s were some of the smallest U.S. Navy ships to carry a legit sonar listening set.

Undergoing a course of instruction with Naval sonar equipment aboard the USS PC 592 are two Naval Reservists, Seaman First Class F.C. Semkin and Apprentice Seaman G.S. Jackson, Naval Base, SC. Accession #: L55-03

Depth Charges (probably Mk. 6 type) mounted on a “K-gun” projector, and on ready service holders, on the stern of a 173-foot submarine chaser (pc). Taken at the sub-chaser training center, Miami, Florida, 11 May 1942. Note depth charge racks in the background. 80-G-16048

Depth Charge explodes in the wake of a U.S. Navy submarine chaser (PC) during World War II. The photo was taken before April 1944. The 173s could carry as many as 30 depth charges, with a cumulative “throw” of some 5 tons of high explosives. 80-G-K-13753

Submarine chasers and crew. (PC-483, 461, 466), Key West. As the number of AAA guns expanded, crews would grow to as many as 80 officers and enlisted, against a planned complement of 65. 80-GK-00427_001

A motor whaleboat was carried amidships along with a small crane to launch and recover it.

USS PC-620 is seen in Key West in this LIFE Kodachrome. Note her whaleboat, crane, after 3″/50, and depth charges galore.

“Easy Does It!” Crewmen of A 173-foot submarine Chaser (PC) stowing their craft’s dory, after hoisting it from the water, circa 1942. Note Camouflage paint on the boat. The photo was received from the Third Naval District on 17 May 1943. 80-G-K-16426

The PC-461s ranged far and wide, seeing service in every theatre. Four (PC 566, PC 565, PC 624, and PC 619) claimed kills on German U-boats, two (PC 487 and PC 1135) with sinking Japanese fleet boats, three (PC 558, PC 626, and PC 477) with scratching German and Japanese midget subs, two (PC 545 and PC 627) with killing Italian torpedo boats, and two (PC 1129 and PC 1123) with stopping Japanese suicide boats.

“USS PC 565 shown a short time after sinking German U-boat, U-521, with a depth charge, only the Commanding Officer escaped. The vessel fell away from his feet as he climbed out of the conning tower, June 2, 1943.” 80-G-78408

When it comes to the butcher’s bill, six PC-461 class sisters were lost to a combination of enemy action and accidents during WWII while another 24 were seriously damaged.

Meet PC-823

Laid down by the Leathern D. Smith Shipbuilding Company, Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, on 8 November 1943, USS PC-823 was launched the following January and commissioned on 24 July 1944. The yard was very busy, cranking out Type N3 and Type C1 Liberty ships, Tacoma-class patrol frigates, and net layers besides 42 PC-461s.

Smith Shipbuilding in 1944, with at least eight PCs under varying stages of construction. Today the yard is run by the Fincantieri Marine Group and builds LCSs and the Navy’s new Constellation-class frigates. (Photo: Andy Laurent, Greenbay Route)

PC-843, early after her commissioning, likely still on the Great Lakes in the summer of 1944. via the Historical Collections of the Great Lakes.

War!

Assigned to the western Atlantic during the tale-end of World War II, apparently assigned to air-sea rescue duties, PC-823 doesn’t have a page in DANFS nor any war diaries/history on file with the NARA, but it is known that she was in Bermuda on VJ Day.

She did not earn any battle stars and was decommissioned on 11 February 1946, custody transferred to the Maritime Commission for further use, while retained on the Navy List.

King’s Point

With the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at King’s Point on Long Island losing the series of loaned tall ships it had used for training during the war, the low-mileage PC-823 was disarmed, painted a gleaming white and transferred on 18 May 1948 for use as a training ship.

Rather than pick up the now-traditional name of TS Kings Pointer, she was instead re-named Ensign Whitehead, in honor of one of the alumni of the USMMA who had been lost during the war while serving with the Navy.

Via the King’s Point Alumni Association:

The Wall of Honor includes the name of Fredrick Cowper Whitehead, Jr., a Kings Pointer who graduated on December 24, 1943. Soon after graduation, he was sworn in as an Ensign, USNR. On January 27, 1944, he was assigned to the USS Lansdale (DD 426), currently operating in the Mediterranean. Whitehead reported aboard the Lansdale on March 26 in Oran. The ship was serving as a convoy escort with radio jamming equipment intended to thwart German radio-guided bombs.

On April 20, about two dozen German bombers attacked the convoy. The bombs and torpedoes hit the SS Paul Hamilton. Silhouetted by the explosion of the SS Paul Hamilton, the Lansdale became the target of the second and third wave of bombers. The torpedoes struck the Lansdale in the starboard engine room, where Whitehead was on watch. The ship ultimately foundered and the Captain ordered the crew to abandon ship. A count of the survivors showed 47 men, including Fredrick Whitehead Jr., as missing and presumed dead.

Ensign Whitehead, USNR was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart and the European-African-Middle East Area Campaign Medal. Based on his service as a Cadet/Midshipman, he was also awarded the Atlantic War Zone Bar, the Mediterranean-Middle East War Zone Bar, the Victory Medal, and a Presidential Testimonial Letter.

However, the USMMA soon found better ships available for use and by the end of 1949, she was laid up at the Academy, pending disposal.

Meanwhile, in Korea…

The South Korean Navy (Daehan-minguk Haegun) was formed on 11 November 1945 as the “Maritime Affairs Association” (Haebangbyeongdan) in the American-occupied zone of the formerly Japanese-occupied Korea. As such, it is the senior service of the Republic, with the ROK Army not formed until 1948 and the ROKAF in 1949. Numbering just 70 members led by former merchant mariner Sohn Won Yil, it inherited a series of small coastal craft at the former IJN yard at Jinhae and served in a brown water coast guard role with a modicum of American support until South Korea became independent in August 1948. It was then that it morphed into the Republic of Korea Navy (ROKN), with now-Admiral Sohn becoming its first CNO.

By early 1950, the force had grown to 7,500– including 1,200 ROK Marines. Its naval list counted 11 former Japanese Cha-1 class 85-foot wooden-hulled auxiliary submarine chasers (the Daejeon class in Korean service), two slow 13-knot 140-foot Japanese-designed gunboats (Chungmugong I & II) left incomplete on the ways at Jinhae that were finished in 1947, as well as 17 YMS-type small minesweepers (dubbed the Kang jim or Geumgangsan class in Korean service, with MSC pennant numbers) from the U.S. Navy. The largest weapons were single-barreled 40mm Bofors fitted on the YMSs in place of their original 3″/50s.

Between 1947 and 1950, the backbone of the nascent ROKN was 17 136-foot wooden-hulled coastal minesweepers transferred from the U.S. Navy. The first two are seen here, Geumgangsan (MSC 501) ex-YMS354; and Gyeongju (MSC-502) ex-YMS358. Of the 17 transferred, two defected to the DPRK in the late 1940s, two were lost at sea, and two were lost to mines in 1950. Those left would remain in service into the 1970s.

In short, it was still firmly a near-shore operation. Their primary concern was to clear the thousands of sea mines left over in their local waters dating as far back as 1904, police against Chinese pirates, and keep roaming Japanese fishing boats away.

By late 1949 the five-year-old ROKN felt it was ready for some blue water, or at least some green water, ships.

Headed Home

The solution for the cash-strapped force was to hit everyone’s paycheck for seed money which would be augmented by selling scrap metal left over from the war, officer’s wives tending laundry, and donations from lawmakers including President Syngman Rhee himself.

As detailed in a February 1950 edition of Time magazine:

A year ago a group of Korean enlisted men at Navy headquarters in Seoul got the idea of chipping in each month to buy a man-o’-war. They sounded out Commander in Chief Admiral Sohn Won Yil, who promptly queried his base commanders to see what their enlisted men thought of the idea. They liked it.

Soon afterward 5% of each enlisted man’s $10 a month and 10% of each officer’s pay was deducted to fill the purchase kitty. Meanwhile, Korea’s ambassador to Washington was told to start looking for a ship. Last September Korea’s government plunked down $18,000 of hard-won cash to buy a sturdy little 175-ft. patrol craft, the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy’s training ship Ensign Whitehead.

Some 16 hand-picked officers, led by Captain (future CNO) Park Ok-gyu, were flown to New York and then spent two weeks at King’s Point getting the gist of how to run their new sub-chaser. With their ship moored at Harbor Boat Building Company’s yard, the officers invested sweat equity into a new coat of haze gray and a new hull number, PC-701. Shifted to the USCG’s Pier 8 (Rector Street) in New York on Christmas Eve, custody was transferred on 26 December 1949 in a small ceremony that included the South Korean Ambassador (and future prime minister) Chang Myon.

The ROKS Baekdusan, named for the highly revered Baekdu (Paektusan) or “white-head mountain,” was Korean.

Fantail of the Baekdusan the day the ship transferred from the USN to the RoK Navy in 1949, with ROKN officer raising the Taegeukgi. (RDML Lauren McReady, USMS – Lauren McReady Collection, American Merchant Marine Museum, Kings Point, NY.)

Spending New Year in Miami and transiting the Panama Canal, the little ship put into Hawaii on 24 January where one 3 anti-aircraft gun and six .50 caliber machine guns, authorized for transfer by the Secretary of Defense, were installed at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard.

Leaving Pearl for Korea on 20 March 1950, she stopped briefly at Guam to purchase a whopping 100 3-inch shells and fuel from the U.S. Navy base there before heading to South Korea. When she arrived at Jinhae Bay on 10 April, she was the first significant warship under Korean control since the country’s Joseon-era navy was disbanded in 1905.

Note the Taegeukgi stenciled on her wheelhouse

Photo of the 60-strong crew of the Baekdusan ship taken at Jinhae Pier 2 on 20 May 1950. Note the mix of American-style officer’s khakis and blues balanced by Japanese-style jumpers and flat caps for the ratings. 

And just in time, too, because then came…

Another War!

When the North Koreans unleashed their military against their neighbors to the South, Baekdusan earned the distinction of sinking a 1,000-ton Soviet-supplied transport ship that was trying to destroy the Pusan Port wharf facilities in the Korean Strait.

Vectored to the mystery ship in the late hours of 25 June, she chased it down between the Oryukdo Lighthouse and the Tsushima Lighthouse and began hailing it repeatedly to stop. Closing to within 90 meters of the interloper, the two ships soon began exchanging fire, swapping 3-inch shells for incoming 85mm shells and heavy machine gun fire from the Nork vessel. After a four-hour running fight, in which Baekdusan fired 50 shells before her main gun seized up, the black smoke-belching mystery ship sank at 0:30 a.m. on 26 June, reportedly carrying some 600 highly-trained North Korean commandos of the 766th Independent Infantry Regiment with it to the bottom.

Baekdusan, riddled with shrapnel and machine gun hits, suffered four wounded and two– Private First Class Kim Chang-hak and Private First Class Jeon Byeong-ik– killed.

Battle of the Korea Strait (Photo source: War Memorial of Korea, Korean Cultural Information Service)

Has Pusan been wrecked by a battalion-sized assault on the first day of the war, the 400,000 shells and 2.5 million rounds of ammo landed there by USAT Sgt. George D. Keathley and USNS Cardinal O’Connell on 28 June, followed by the 24th Infantry Division starting on 3 July, probably wouldn’t have happened. Had that not occurred, the war may have been lost in the first month.

As detailed by Samuel J. Cox, Director NHHC:

The “Battle of the Korea Strait,” as the ROKN would call it, had major strategic importance. At the time, the port of Pusan was very poorly defended. Had the North Korean surprise operation succeeded, the outcome of the war might have been very different, because by the beginning of August, Pusan was the last remaining port in South Korea that had not fallen to the North Koreans. It would be the only initial entry point for the U.S. forces that prevented the North Koreans from overrunning the entire Korean Peninsula.

She would go on to perform yeoman work for the rest of the war, including at the pivotal Inchon Landings (Operation Chromite) in September.

Inchon Invasion, September 1950. The first wave of U.S. Marines headed for the landing beach in LCVPs, on 15 September 1950. This landing is probably on Red Beach, on the northern side of the Inchon invasion area. PC at the far right is a unit of the Republic of Korea Navy. NH 96877

Ultimately, the U.S. Navy transferred another five PC-461s to the ROKN during the war– no cash required! These included ex-PC 799 (Geumgangsan), ex-PC 802 (Samgaksan), ex-PC 810 (Jirisan), ex-PC 485 (Hanlasan), and ex-PC 600 (Myohyangsan), added to the South Korean naval list as PC-702 through 705. Of these, Jirisan was sunk by a mine off Wonsan in 1951 while Hanlasan was later lost in a typhoon.

Kum Kang San/Geumgangsan (South Korean submarine chaser, formerly USS PC-799) At the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, California, on 16 June 1950, following transfer to the South Korean Navy. She is flanked by her sister ships Chiri San/Jirisan (Korean PC-704) to the left and Sam Kak San/Samgaksan (Korean PC-703) to the right. USS Polaris (AF-11) is in the right background. Note men working on a 3″/50 dual-purpose gun mounted on Kum Kang San’s foredeck as well as American ensigns from the mainmast and small Taegeukgi on the bridge wings. NH 85494

Kum Kang San/Geumgangsan P-702 (South Korean submarine chaser, formerly USS PC-799) with her Taegeukgi flying off the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, 17 June 1950, following transfer to the South Korean Navy. NH 85482

Chiri San/Jirisan P-704 (South Korean submarine chaser, formerly USS PC-810) underway off the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, California, 17 June 1950, with her Taegeukgi in the wind following transfer to the South Korean Navy. NH 85490

Sam Kak San/Samgaksan (Korean Submarine Chaser, # 703, formerly USS PC-802). The crew fires the ship’s 3″/50 gun “at the Communist-led North Koreans along the west coast of Korea” (quoted from the original caption). The photograph is dated 18 December 1951. Note the American kapok life jackets, Army OD fatigues, and M1 helmets. NH 97332

Baekdusan along with sisters Geumgangsan and Samgaksan, were decommissioned on 1 July 1959, due to corrosion and the general aging of the ships. Myohyangsan, found to be in better condition, was retained. 

The ROK Navy’s 173s via the 1960 edition of Janes

The three stricken subchasers were soon stripped of usable equipment and scrapped, their place on the ROKN naval list taken by three newly transferred sisterships: ex-USS Winnemucca (PC 1145), ex-USS Grosse Pointe (PC 1546), and ex-USS Chadron (PC 564) giving the South Koreans a four-pack of PC-461s on patrol into 1975, by which time they were replaced by a six-pack of larger (1500-ton, 306-foot) Rudderow-class destroyer escorts.

Epilogue

The “disposable” PC-461 class, besides the U.S. and ROK navies, served under the flags of more than 20 other countries. They remained in service around the globe until the late 1980s when the last two in active, ex-USS Susanville (PC 1149) and ex-USS Hanford (PC 1142), were retired by Taiwan.

Some 40,000 bluejackets sailed on the PCs during the “Big Show” and immediately after. The chronicle of their war is the 400-page PC Patrol Craft of World War II: A History of the Ships and Their Crews by William J. Veigele, a former PC sailor, first published in 1998.

It’s a good read if you can find it

The class is remembered by the Patrol Craft Sailor Association.

Several relics endure of Baekdusan.

Her main mast was installed at the Republic of Korea Naval Academy in 1965 and is preserved there, as is her 3″/50.

Her plans are in the U.S. National Archives.

The two ROKN bluejackets killed on Baekdusan that night in June 1950 had their names given to new Yoon Youngha class missile boats, ROKS Kim Changhak (PKG-727) and ROKS Jeon Byeongik (PKG-732).

ROKS Kim Changhak (PKG-727)

The ROKN very much remembers their story and that of their ship.

Today, the ROKN has grown to over 70,000 personnel and operates 160 vessels, putting it squarely as one of the largest and most modern naval forces on the planet.

The country’s first flat-top, the 45,000-ton Kyunghyang CVX-class lightning carrier, is planned to be named after the humble Baekdusan and her fearless crew.

The motto of the ROK Navy is 바다로, 세계로 (badalo, segyelo= To the sea, to the world).

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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