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Warship Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023: The Busy Bee

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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

Warship Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023: The Busy Bee

Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-K-2849

Above we see a beautiful period original Kodachrome of the 6-inch/47 caliber Mark 16 guns blooming on the new Cleveland-class light cruiser USS Biloxi (CL-80) as she was underway on her shakedown cruise in October 1943, some 80 years ago this month.

In less than two years in service, she would steam 202,126 miles and earn nine battle stars in the Pacific, shooting down eight Japanese aircraft, contributing to the sinking of three enemy ships including two destroyers, and delivering naval gunfire on the regular– while proving “double lucky” when the Empire struck back and only suffering a single bluejacket wounded in enemy action during her career.

The Clevelands

When the U.S. Navy took off the shackles of the London Naval Treaty and moved to make a series of new light cruisers, they based the design on the last “treaty” limited 10,000-ton Brooklyn-class light cruiser, USS Helena (CL-50), which was commissioned in 1939 (and was torpedoed and sunk in the Battle of Kula Gulf in 1943).

The resulting Cleveland class was stood up fast, with the first ship laid down in July 1940. Soon, four East Coast shipyards were filling their ways with their hulls.

The Cleveland class, via ONI 54R, 1943

The changes to the design were mostly in the armament, with the new light cruisers carrying a dozen 6″/47 Mark 16 guns in four triple turrets– rather than the 15 guns arranged in five turrets in Helena as the latter’s No. 3 gun turret was deleted.

The modification allowed for a stronger secondary armament (6 dual 5″/38 mounts and as many as 28 40mm Bofors and 20 20mm Oerlikon guns) as well as some strengthening in the hull. Notably, the latter may have worked as one of the class, USS Houston (CL-81) survived two torpedo hits and remained afloat with 7,000 tons of seawater sloshing around inside her frames, and another sister, USS Miami (CL-89), lost her bow to Typhoon Cobra but lived to tell the tale.

Much overloaded at more than 14,000 tons when fully loaded, these ships were cramped and top-heavy, which led to many further mods such as deleting catapults, aircraft, and rangefinders as the conflict went on to keep them from rolling dangerously.

Although 52 hulls were planned, only 27 made it to the fleet as cruisers while nine were completed while on the craving dock to Independence-class light carriers. A further baker’s dozen (of which only two were completed, and those too late for WWII service) were reordered as Fargo-class cruisers, which was basically a Cleveland with a single funnel and a redesigned, more compact, superstructure.

Remarkably, although the Clevelands saw much hard service in WWII, none were lost in action. No other cruiser design in history has seen so many units sail off to war and all return home.

The Cleveland class in the 1946 edition of Jane’s.

Meet USS Biloxi

Our subject is, for some unknown reason, the only warship to have ever carried the name of the hard-partying pearl of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, a city that traces its origin to D’Iberville’s landing in 1699 and past that to the Indian tribe that lived in its coastal marshes.

Laid down on 9 July 1941 at Newport News, USS Biloxi was launched on 23 February 1943, christened by the mayor’s wife, Katherine G “Kate” Jones Braun, and commissioned on 31 August 1943. The 25-month gestation period was a record for the class at the time and her construction bill ran $19,272,500.

Launching of the future USS Biloxi (CL 80) at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, via Navsource. She was one of eight Clevelands built at Newport News including Birmingham, Mobile, Houston, Vicksburg, Duluth, Amsterdam, and Portsmouth.

USS Biloxi (CL-80) underway at sea, circa late 1943. Note she doesn’t have her floatplane complement aboard. NH 45698

USS Biloxi (CL-80) early in her career, likely in September 1943 while in the Chesapeake. Her armament can be well-judged by this photo and the one above. NH 98263

By October, the brand-new cruiser was shaking the bulkheads in her initial training cruise in Chesapeake Bay then made for Trinidad to spend the first three weeks of October in battle drills. It was during this period that an amazing series of images were captured.

USS Biloxi (CL-80) on shakedown in October 1943 as her crew airs their bedding over the rails. Photo from the Allison collection, MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History.

USS Biloxi (CL-80) underway during her shakedown cruise, in October 1943. She is painted in Measure 21 (overall Navy Blue) camouflage. 80-G-K-2826-A

USS Biloxi (CL-80) steams in a turn, during her shakedown cruise, October 1943. 80-G-K-2826-B

USS Biloxi (CL-80). Ship’s 1,200~ crew and 80 officers in full summer/tropical whites, during her shakedown period, October 1943. They are posed on her forecastle and forward superstructure. 80-G-K-2834

USS Biloxi (CL-80) Firing her 6″/47 cal main battery guns while steaming in a turn, during her shakedown cruise, in October 1943. 80-G-K-2850

USS Biloxi (CL-80) 40mm quad-mounted guns were fired during battle practice while the ship was shaking down in October 1943. The view looks forward along the ship’s port side, with a 5/38 twin gun mount beyond the 40mm guns. 80-G-K-2844

USS Biloxi (CL-80) 40mm quad-mounted antiaircraft machine guns in action, during a shakedown cruise battle practice, October 1943. 80-G-K-14526

USS Biloxi (CL-80) one of the cruiser’s 40mm quad guns in action during her shakedown cruise, circa early 1943. Note shell cases being ejected to the deck before the gun mounting, and loaders feeding fresh shells. 80-G-K-14525

USS Biloxi (CL-80) view of signal flag “Bags” from atop the forward superstructure with the starboard forward quad 40mm gun mount beyond. Taken during the ship’s shakedown cruise, in October 1943. Note signal lamp and RDF loop. 80-G-K-2830

USS Biloxi (CL-80) personnel inspection on the ship’s afterdeck, during her shakedown period, circa October 1943. Note her aircraft catapults, with Curtiss SO3C-1 Seamew floatplanes on top, and her hangar hatch cover. Between the twin cats and their below-deck hangar, the Clevelands could carry as many as five aircraft as designed although typically carried half that complement. 80-G-K-2832

USS Biloxi (CL-80) prepares to catapult a Curtiss SO3C-1 Seamew from her starboard catapult, during her shakedown, circa October 1943. Note that the port catapult and plane have been turned to clear the launching area, before training the starboard catapult. 80-G-K-2838

USS Biloxi (CL-80) turns into the wind, as she prepares to catapult a Curtiss SO3C-1 Seamew while on shakedown, circa October 1943. Only 171 SO3C-1s were built and, with an eight-hour endurance, were mainly for gunfire correction and recon, although they could carry up to 325 pounds of small bombs or depth charges under the wings. 80-G-K-2837

USS Biloxi (CL-80) catapults a Curtiss SO3C-1 Seamew floatplane, during her shakedown period, circa October 1943. Note the plane’s national insignia, with the red surround briefly used in mid-1943. 80-G-K-2836

USS Biloxi (CL-80) catapults a SO3C-1 Seamew while on shakedown, circa October 1943. The cruiser lost one of her four SO3Cs during these ops while in a landing attempt off the port beam. Both the pilot and passenger, Ensign H. Jolly and ACMM J. Phagan, were rescued and the wreck was destroyed by gunfire as a hazard to navigation. 80-G-K-2835

Check out a typical naval gunfire support floatplane operation when calling shot: 

Floatplane calling fire USS Biloxi Wotje Jan 30, 1944, from Biloxi’s war diary

War!

Biloxi sailed south for San Francisco via the Canal Zone on 20 November, where she swapped out her quartet of SO3C Seamews or a pair of Vought OS2U Kingfishers, then, after more exercises, put to sea for the Marshall Islands after the New Year to take part in Operation Flintlock, the invasion of Kwajalein.

USS Biloxi in the Pacific, 1944. US Navy Photo 117-20

Working the Marshall Islands in late January-early February 1944 as part of Task Group 53.5, alongside sisters USS Sante Fe and USS Mobile and accompanying destroyers, Biloxi bombarded Wotje and covered the landings on Roi. This saw Biloxi fire a whopping 4,354 6″/47 and 5″/38 shells while her two floatplanes dropped 10 100-pound bombs on targets of opportunity.

Check out these tracks while delivering fire over two days. 

She also tasted Japanese steel off Wotje, receiving fire from shore-based 4.7-inch coastal guns from about 10,000 yards with several salvos coming “uncomfortably close” and one near miss hitting the water just 50 yards from the ship, breaking up and ricocheting into the forward superstructure.

Injured was Biloxi’s only wartime casualty from enemy fire, Fireman 1c Walter Henry Grunst, 8748444, USNR, of Toledo, Ohio, wounded slightly by shrapnel in “the right buttock” with the disposition noted in Biloxi’s report that he was to be “retained aboard” for recovery rather than transferred out to a hospital ship or ashore.

Poor guy.

Off Saipan in two days (Feb 19-22) while screening carriers, Biloxi endured four large Japanese air raids, downing at least one aircraft with her 5-inch battery.

Covering the carrier USS Bunker Hill during the invasion of Saipan, Biloxi’s gunners accounted for two D4Y Yokosuka Judy dive bombers on 19 June 1944 during the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, splashed by 56 rounds of 5″/38 AA, 1,360 40mm shells, and 1,197 20mm shells. She claimed another kill the next day.

On Independence Day 1944, Biloxi, sailing with sister Sante Fe and destroyers, lit up Iwo Jima with 531 6″/47 and 389 5″/38 shells.

During an anti-shipping sweep against a reported enemy convoy and bombardment raid of Chichi Jima with Task Unit 58.1.6 (sisters Santa Fe, Mobile, and Oakland, destroyers Izard, Burns, Brown, and Charrette) on 4 August 1944, Biloxi engaged what it thought at the time was a Japanese destroyer and cargo vessel.

The ships wound up being the collier Ryoku Maru (5626 tons) and the Japanese escort destroyer Matsu (1,262 tons) of Japanese Convoy 4804. The dawn brought an ineffective Japanese air attack from two high-level Betty bombers, as well as the bombardment of the island by Biloxi and company the next day.

Another raid of Chichi Jima & Iwo Jima at the end of the month going into September was productive, with Biloxi firing another 875 rounds of 6″/47 and 363 of 5″/38 on an array of ashore installations and sheltered vessels.

Further raids on the Ryukyu Island and on Formosa set the stage for preparation for the Leyte landings, the liberation of the Philippines, and one of the largest naval clashes in history.

As part of this, on the night of 26 October, Biloxi, sailing as part of CruDiv 14 in line with sisters USS Vincennes and Miami and DesDiv 103’s Miller, Owen, and Lewis Hancock, engaged what was believed to be a Japanese cruiser. In 10 minutes– with breaks for maneuvering and checking fire–Biloxi alone “smothered the target” with 170 6″/47 steel cap HCs as viewed through the Mark 8 radar screen, all done at a range between 18,050 yards for the first salvo and 16,375 yards for the last.

The contact turned out to be the Japanese destroyer Nowaki, crowded with survivors from the lost Tone-class heavy cruiser Chikuma (which in turn had sunk the escort carrier Gambier Bay earlier in the week). Nowaki was sent to the bottom with all hands during this surface action, 65 miles south-southeast of Legaspi.

The lesson learned was dramatic.

On 29 October, Biloxi, screening the carrier USS Intrepid off Morotai, was credited with two shared kills against a swarm of Judys and Zekes.

Moving to support the landings in the Eastern Philippines in November, screening along with sisters USS Mobile and Sante Fe, and battleships USS Washington and North Carolina, of the fast carriers USS Essex, USS Ticonderoga, and light carrier Langley, Biloxi had to fill the air on several occasions with 5″/38, 40mm and 20mm ack-ack, credited with downing a Japanese dive bomber just off of Essex on 25 November.

Task Group 38.3 Enters Ulithi Anchorage After Strikes in Philippines Islands, 12 December 1944. USS Langley (CVL-27), USS Ticonderoga (CV-14), USS Washington (BB 56), USS North Carolina (BB-55), USS South Dakota (BB-57), USS Santa Fe (CL-60), USS Biloxi (CL-80), USS Mobile (CL-63), and USS Oakland (Cl-95). 80-G-301352

Same as above, showing USS Washington (BB 56), USS North Carolina (BB-55), USS South Dakota (BB-57), USS Santa Fe (CL-60), and USS Biloxi (CL-80), 80-G-301351

January 1945 had Biloxi tag along to screen Slim McCain’s fast carrier strikes on Japanese-occupied French Indochina and Hong Kong, losing one of her bluejackets, S1c Daniel A. Little, to a rogue wave– the first loss of life suffered by Biloxi’s crew.

February brought the Operation Detachment landings at Iwo Jima, which included suppressing fire on D-day, calling fire on D+1 and D+2, and harassing night fires. In this, she let fly almost 2,400 5-inch and 6-inch shells in three days.

It was during this period on 21 February that the ship was hit by its own shells, with No. 5 5″/38 mounts being hit and the gun captain of the No. 5 40mm mount, BM2c Leroy Vannatter, knocked out by concussion and dazed, S1c Ralph Henry suffering a compound fracture, and S1c Cecil Ott left with shrapnel wounds. All were retained aboard but the No. 5 5″/38 mount was knocked out.

The heavy cruiser USS Pensacola (CA-24) was photographed against Suribachi on the morning of 21 February 1945. On the right is the USS Biloxi (CL-80). Note the planes in formation overhead. Barely visible. Of note, while P-Cola was ostensibly a heavy cruiser and carried 8-inch guns rather than 6-inchers, Biloxi outweighed her by over 3,000 tons by this stage of the war.

Then came Operation Iceberg, the landings on Okinawa.

On 27 March off Okinawa, Biloxi participated in repulsing a kamikaze attack in which she expended 100 rounds of 5″/38, 897 of 40mm, and 2,653 of 20mm against an incoming wave of six Vals and Irvings. It was a swirling mess that lasted 15 minutes but left four of the five planes splashed. However, one of these planes wound up leaving Biloxi with one heck of a souvenir.

It was a wild event: 

Official caption: On the morning of March 27, 1945, during Okinawa preparations four suicide planes attacked the light cruiser, USS Biloxi. Three were shot down in flames but the fourth broke through the umbrella of ack-ack to smash itself against the cruiser’s side. Later investigation revealed a 1,100 bomb that failed to explode. Rendered harmless, the bomb became the prized possession of the quarterdeck where it is shown being examined by Major Anthony V. Ragusin (right) of Biloxi, Miss., and Ensign Jack Fisher, USNR, of Natchitoches, La., both of whom are attached to the staff of the Commander in Chief Pacific Ocean Areas.

She shrugged off her wounds and continued fighting off almost daily kamikaze runs, typically by single aircraft, and downed at least one more, a radar-assisted kill on a night bomber on 16 April utilizing the Mk. 37 and Mk. 1 computer for solutions. In all, during her nearly month-long duty off Okinawa, she fired over 6,000 rounds at incoming aircraft.

USS Biloxi (CL-80) shelling Japanese positions on Okinawa, 30 March 1945. USS Portland (CA-33) is in the left background, also taking part in the bombardment. Photographed from USS West Virginia (BB-48). 80-G-315085

Cruisers maneuver into the battle line to bombard Okinawa. Seen from the battleship USS West Virginia (BB-48). The nearest CL should be USS Biloxi beyond her maybe USS Pensacola. These two cruisers were in the same group as BB-48. 80-G-K-3831 (Color)

In 26 days on the line off Okinawa from 26 March to 20 April, Biloxi fired over 9,700 rounds of 5 and 6-inch shells in shore bombardment (as well as 1,048 40mm shells when she got within 3,000 yards of the beach to support UDT operations). Her NGFS included night harassment fire missions, covering landings, call fire for support from ground troops ashore, and interdiction, and that above total doesn’t even count 837 5-inch star shell illumination rounds.

A rundown of her directed bombardments in Okinawa:

Her only casualty off Okinawa was one of her OS2U floatplanes, lost on 28 March during recovery, with the pilot rescued by a nearby destroyer (USS Foreman) on plane guard and returned via Highline.

In all, she logged 18,082 shells of all calibers fired in her month off Okinawa.

More than three weeks after she caught her kamikaze bomb, Biloxi shoved off for the West Coast, capping a 16-month extended first cruise, arriving at San Francisco via Pearl Harbor on 11 May for refit and repair.

On 8 August 1945, while headed back from the West Coast to Ulithi to rejoin the fleet, she hit occupied Wake Island along with the cruiser Pensacola, soaking the atoll with 282 6″/47 HC rounds and 249 of 5″/38 AAC. In this, she received counterbattery fire from Japanese 4.7-inch and 8-inch guns dug in ashore with some shells coming as close as 700 yards and her spotting plane was riddled with AAA but the Busy Bee, true to form, had no casualties.

Her targets were varied: 

Biloxi was at anchor in Buckner Bay, Okinawa on VJ-Day, clustered among seven sisters of CruDiv 12 and 13. She got underway on 5 September as part of RADM Fahrion’s POW Evacuation Group (TG 55.7) and proceeded to atom-bomb devastated Nagasaki soon after, using her Marine detachment as ashore security.

She took on 217 RAMPs (Recovered Allied Military Personnel) from the U.S. (11), Britain (17), Australia (1), Canada (1), and Holland (187) on the 18th and took them to Okinawa for further repatriation home from there.

Wrapping up occupation duty, Biloxi sailed from Nagoya on 8 November with 10 extra officers and 289 enlisted passengers for Okinawa where she took on another 15 officers and 74 enlisted passengers on the 11th then let out for San Francisco via Pearl Harbor, arriving in California just after Thanksgiving 1945 with her ~400 odd passengers and 1,285 man crew.

Not able to enjoy Christmas at home, Biloxi was sent back to Okinawa on 2 December on a magic carpet run at “capacity personnel,” returning to San Francisco on the 29th.

Just after the New Year, she shifted to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard where, upon decommissioning on 29 October 1946, she joined the Great Grey Reserve Fleet and never lit her boilers nor fired her guns again.

She earned nine battle stars for her wartime service:

And has a memorial marker at the National Museum of the Pacific War (Nimitz Museum)

Epilogue

The Clevelands, always overloaded and top-heavy despite their hard service and dependability, were poor choices for post-war service and most were laid up directly after VJ Day with only one, USS Manchester (CL-83), still in service as an all-gun cruiser past 1950, lingering until 1956 and seeing much Korean War duty, successfully completing three combat tours with no major battle damage.

Six went on to see further service as Galveston and Providence-class missile slingers after an extensive topside rebuild and remained in service through the 1970s. One of these, USS Little Rock (CL-92/CLG-4/CG-4) has been preserved at the Buffalo Naval & Military Park, the only Cleveland currently above water.

As for our Biloxi, she was stricken in 1960 and sold in 1962 to Zidell Explorations, Portland, for dismantling.

Biloxi is seen being tugged to the breakers’ yard near Portland, Oregon, in 1962. (Dave Schroeder and John Chiquoine via Navsource)

Her war diaries, deck logs, and war history are digitized online in the National Archives.

Linberg paid homage to the Busy Bee with a scale model that kiddies of the day could get in conjunction with Alfa Bits cereal.

The Library of Congress has several oral histories collected from her wartime crew similarly available.

Meanwhile, the University of Southern Mississippi maintains the USS Biloxi Collection of articles, photos, and papers. The USS Biloxi Association, whose members have almost all passed the bar, established a scholarship at USM to a graduating senior from Biloxi High School that endures.

The town of Biloxi and the Mississippi Gulf Coast in general wholeheartedly adopted “their ship” and the area was awash with USS Biloxi artwork in calendars, postcards, and posters for decades even after the ship was mothballed.

She graced the cover of the First Bank of Biloxi’s calendar for years. Note this is a stylized version of US Navy Photo 117-20, above.

Lots of elements from Biloxi were salvaged for preservation including her bell, boiler and builder’s plates, and a 45-foot section of her main mast. These were shipped back home to Biloxi for installation by the City. Whereas the bell and small items have floated around various city buildings ever since, the mast was installed at what is now Biloxi’s Guice Park, located beachside on U.S. 90 at the Biloxi Small Craft Harbor, arranged by a battery of old French colonial cannon that had long ago been pulled from the bayou.

The Seabees of NMCB 121, located in nearby Gulfport, installed the mast in 1967 just before it deployed to Phu Bai, South Vietnam, and it has since been joined by a Purple Heart and Gold Star monument.

Via NMCB 121’s 1967-68 cruise book.

The mast has since survived direct hits from Hurricanes Camille (1969), Frederic (1979), Elena (1985), Georges (1998), Katrina/Rita (2005), Nate (2017), and Zeta (2020), showing that the ‘Bees of NCB-121 knew what they were doing. Of course, the mast gets love not only from the City but also from the Navy, with the Naval Oceanography Operations Command in nearby Bay St. Louis adopting the monument as a community service project.

(Photo: Chris Eger)

And these days, with the giant Hard Rock Casino now parked next door, is home to a large osprey nest that has been built on the mast’s long-empty radar platform. (Photo: Chris Eger)

The bell, plates, muzzle caps, telegraphs, binnacle, and other relics are well preserved and on public display in the recently rebuilt (post-Katrina) Maritime & Seafood Industry Museum which has had custody of the items since the 1980s.

(Photo: Chris Eger)

(Photo: Chris Eger)

(Photo: Chris Eger)

Along with a four-foot scale model of the USS Biloxi in her 1944 appearance. (Photo: Chris Eger)

If only the Navy would bestow the name to another USS Biloxi, we’d be set.

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

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Warship Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023: The Duel of the Deputado and the Knight

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

Warship Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023: The Duel of the Deputado and the Knight

Above we see the humble ocean patrol boat (patrulhas de alto mar) Augusto de Castilho of the Portuguese Navy around 1918. If she looks a lot like a cod trawler with a couple of pop guns bolted on as an afterthought, you are correct.

However, her crew was filled with lions, and led by a lawmaker, she foiled one of the Kaiser’s best, some 105 years ago this week.

The Marina do Portugal in the Great War

When the lights went out across Europe in August 1914, Portugal had a decent modern fleet…planned. This included a naval program with a pair of British-built 20,000-ton dreadnoughts, three new cruisers to scout for them, a dozen new 820-ton destroyers to screen for them, and a half dozen new submarines to do underwater stuff.

What they had on hand was a bit different.

The force consisted of the circa 1875 coastal defense “battleship” (cruzador-couraçado) Vasco da Gama and five smallish cruisers (none newer than 1898). Exemplified by prior Warship Wednesday alum Adamastor (1757 tons, 2×6″, 4×4.7″, 2 tt, 18 kts), these cruisers were slow and slight, meant primarily to show the flag in the fading empire’s overseas African and Asian colonies. Augmenting these aging cruisers were a handful of destroyers, torpedo boats, colonial gunboats, and a single Italian Fiat-made submarine.

“Navios da Marinha de Guerra Portugueza no alto “Mar 1903 by Alfredo Roque Gamerio, showing the revamped fleet with the “cruzadors” Vasco da Gama, Don Carlos I, São Rafael, Amelia, and Adamastor to the far right. Note the black hulls and buff stacks/masts. The fact that these ships were all ordered from British, French, and Italian yards at the same time had to have made for some awkward fleet operations, not to mention logistics and training issues.

Meanwhile, the Portuguese merchant fleet, consisting of 66 steamers (totaling 70,000 tons) and 259 sailing ships (totaling another 44,000 tons), needed protecting in the event of a modern anti-commerce U-boat war while offering few vessels ideal to convert to auxiliary cruisers and escorts.

While German and Portuguese colonial troops in Africa were soon fighting each other, and Portugal interned over 30 German and Austrian merchant ships trapped in its ports in 1914– saving them from British and French capture– the three countries did not officially exchange declarations of war until March 1916. That does not mean that little Portugal’s steamers and sailing ships were safe by any means.

The first Portuguese-flagged merchant lost to the conflict was the 248-ton 3-masted schooner Douro sunk off the Wolf Lighthouse in the Scilly Islands on 3 April 1915 (although some sources report the 1,633-ton steamer Mira was sunk on 24 November 1914). In all, no less than 89 Portuguese merchant vessels were lost during the war.

This sets the stage for our story.

Meet Augusto de Castilho

The Bensaúde-owned four-masted fishing schooner Argus, which ranged from the Azores to the Grand Banks searching for cod along with near sisters Creoula and Hortense. Working these vessels the old way was hard, using small dories that would run lines as long as 20 hours a day and return home to Sapal do Rio Coina in Portugal with cod loaded to the gunnels. The Bensaúde family harvested fish this way going back to the 1820s and by 1909 were looking to change.

Our subject was ordered by the firm of Parceria Geral de Pescarias, Lda. (PGP. trans: General Fisheries Partnership), Lisbon, a commercial fishing enterprise founded in 1891 and run largely by the Bensaúde family. Chiefly operating in the Azores, PGP in the early 1900s embarked on a move to modernize its operations by ordering steel-hulled ships for its fleet and beginning the use of artificial drying for cod harvesting.

The company’s first steel-hull steam trawler designed for cod, named the Elite, was ordered from Cochrane & Sons, Selby in Yorkshire as Yard No 453. Launched on 22 April 1909, she was delivered to PGP that same July.

Lloyds lists her as a steel-hulled steam trawler of some 487 tons with an overall length of 160 feet, a beam of 27 and a draft of just over 14. She had an Amos & Smith triple expansion steam engine that could generate 117 nhp on a single shaft, good for 12 knots. Deeply framed, she had electric lighting and a steam-powered hoist.

I cannot find an image of Elite in her PGP days. This is probably because they were brief as she was requisitioned by the Portuguese navy on 13 June 1916, three months after Lisbon, Berlin and Vienna exchanged official declarations of war.

War!

The Portuguese navy requisitioned eleven large trawlers and used eight of these as minesweepers (caça-minas) while three (República, Almirante Paço D’Arcos, and Augusto de Castilho) were equipped for both patrol and sweeping.

Elite entered service soon after as Augusto de Castilho, after Admiral Augusto Vidal de Castilho Barreto e Noronha, who capped a 49-year career in 1908 by becoming minister of the navy and overseas possessions (Ministério da Marinha e Ultramar) before passing in 1912 at age 71. He was also the brother of noted journalist and writer Julio de Castilho, and son of scholar António Feliciano de Castilho, known for developing the Castilho Method of teaching.

ADM Augusto de Castilho (1841-1912)

The fishing vessel’s transformation to a warship simply saw her land her fishing gear, add a paravane that could be used for mechanical minesweeping through the assistance of her existing blocks and hoist, and then mounted a 47mm/40 M1885 QF 3-pounder Hotchkiss over her stern. Later a French-made 65mm/50 M1891 Schneider 9-pounder was installed forward.

So converted and manned by a 41-member crew (nominally two officers, 3 NCOs, 36 enlisted), she reported a top speed of just 9 knots.

Her first skipper, LT Augusto de Almeida Teixeira, while escorting the steamer Loanda between Lisbon and Funchal on 23 March 1918, reportedly opened fire on a German U-boat which immediately dived.

Her next skipper also had a brush with an enemy submarine, with 1LT (Primeiro-tenente) Fernando de Oliveira Pinto, on 21 August 1918, opening fire on a U-boat on the surface off Cape Raso.

Augusto de Castilho’s third skipper, 1LT José Botelho de Carvalho Araújo, assumed command of our little minesweeper in late September 1918. The 37-year-old career naval officer joined the naval academy as a midshipman in 1899 and had served in most of its surface ships including the old ironclad Vasco da Gama, the cruisers Adamastor and São Rafael, the gunboats Zambeze, Liberal, Diu, and Lúrio; the tug Bérrio, and on the transport Salvador Correia.

He was also a political creature, having taken part in the Navy-led revolutions in 1908 and 1910, was elected as a deputado to the Assembleia Constituinte to form the Portuguese Republic in 1911, and again to represent the city of Penafiel in the Portuguese Congress of 1915.

Carvalho Araújo was also appointed a district governor in Mozambique for 18 months, the latter a common task for promising naval officers as at the time the colonies were under the administration of the navy. For campaigning against the Germans in Africa in 1914-15, he earned the Medalha Militar de Prata.

Araujo’s last command before joining the crew of Augusto de Castilho was the minesweeper Manuel de Azevedo Gomes, who detected and destroyed four German mines near the Lisbon bar in early September 1916.

Araujo onboard Augusto de Castilho. The only other officers assigned to the vessel in October were three midshipmen– Manuel Armando Ferraz, Samuel da Conceição Vieira, and Carlos Elói da Mota Freitas. The crew was fleshed out by six NCOs, a telegraphist, a cook, a corpsman, four teenage cabin boys, and 38 assorted enlisted ratings and sailors, many of whom were recent enlistments.

Although the war was winding down in October 1918, with the Kaiser’s High Seas Fleet in near-mutiny, his Army in France on the verge of catastrophe, the Bulgars quitting the conflict, and the Austrians and Ottomans planning on doing so themselves, the U-boat arm was still very much in the game and Germany’s greatest submarine ace was on the prowl.

The new cruiser submarine, SM U-139, unofficially named Kapitänleutnant Schwieger by her skipper, the aristocratic Kptlt. Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière, was on its first war patrol. Make no mistake that it was a green crew or skipper, however, as Arnauld de la Perière had made 14 patrols in the smaller SM U-35, sinking a staggering 189 merchant vessels and two gunboats for a total of 446,708 GRT before he took the helm of U-139, earning the EK1, EK2, and the coveted “Blue Max” Pour le Mérite in the process.

U-139 claimed her first kills with the sinking of the 3,309-ton British steamer Bylands, and the 2,691-ton Italian freighter Manin, then damaging the RN boarding steamer HMS Perth, on the first day of October off Cape Vilano while haunting convoy HG109. The next day, she sank the 300-ton Portuguese three-master Rio Cavado via naval gunfire some 290 miles off Cape Prior. Arnauld de la Perière was very much a fan of using his deck guns rather than spending a torpedo and took most of his targets in such a manner.

Then, on 14 October, U-139, some 100 miles SW of the Azores, came across a juicy target, the Dixon-built 3,200-ton mixed cargo/passenger paquete liner San Miguel of Portugal’s Empresa Insulana de Navegação (EIN) line.

San Miguel in her peacetime livery. In 1918 she was clad in a mottled zigzag camouflage.

With accommodations for 135 passengers, San Miguel was overloaded with 206 souls in addition to her crew and, with a top speed not exceeding 12 knots, had little chance of outrunning a U-boat.

Sailing from Funchal to Ponta Delgada, San Miguel had the benefit of an escort– our Augusto de Castilho, capable of a blistering 9 knots. Placing his craft between U-139 and the liner, Carvalho Araújo and Arnauld de la Perière fought a two-hour surface gunnery duel as San Miguel lit her boilers red and made for the horizon, escaping undamaged.

With the much larger and better-armed U-boat– carrying a pair of 5.9-inch SK L/45 deck guns– versus the converted fishing boat’s lighter guns, the contest was never in any doubt. In the end, the battered Augusto de Castilho, ammunition exhausted, her telegraph and engine out of action, her wheelhouse peppered, her skipper and five men killed, along with another 20 men injured, struck her flag on the order of the wounded Midshipman Armando Ferraz.

Ever the old-school gentleman raider, Arnauld de la Perière allowed the crew of the surrendered vessel who had jumped ship to return to their vessel and stock two whaleboats with rations, a sextant, a compass, and charts.

The crew of U-139 captured images of the aftermath of the battle.

He then sent over a scuttling crew who found Carvalho Araújo on deck, the ship’s ensign covering his broken body, and sent the Portuguese man-o-war to the bottom with demolition charges.

Both whaleboats eventually made shore, with the larger, carrying 37 survivors, arriving at the island of Santa Maria in the Azores two days later with all but one still alive while the second craft with 12 survivors washed up on the more distant island of São Miguel the next week, having traveled 200 miles via paddle.

Arnauld de la Perière and his U-139 closed their final tally sheet with the sinking of Carvalho Araujo. Returning to Germany, U-139 surrendered to France on 24 November and post-Versailles became the French submarine Halbronn.

Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière survived the war, was retained in the Weimar-era Reichsmarine, taught at the Turkish Naval Academy for several years in the early 1930s, and went on to become a vizeadmiral in the WWII Kriegsmarine before perishing in a plane crash in 1941, aged 54. His record [195 ships sunk (455,871 tons) and 8 ships damaged (34,312 tons)] is unsurpassed, but his chance to add San Miguel to that list was spoiled.

1LT Carvalho Araujo was posthumously promoted to Capitão-Tenente and awarded the Cruz de Guerra de 1.ª Classe and the Ordem Militar da Torre e Espada, do Valor, Lealdade e Mérito.

Epilogue

Notably, the only other Portuguese warship sunk in the Great War besides Augusto de Castilho was NRP Roberto Iven, which was the PGB-owned fishing trawler Lordelo, lost in July 1917 between Cabo da Roca and Cabo Espichel to a mine laid by the German submarine UC-54.

As for PGB and the Bensaúde Group, the original owner of our tough little fishing vessel, they remained in the cod business until 1999 then transferred their archives to the Ílhavo Maritime Museum after they closed up shop. The yard that constructed Augusto de Castilho, Cochrane & Sons, faded into history in 1993 and was Selby’s last shipbuilder. The yard’s plans and files are preserved in the North Yorkshire County Record Office.

Augusto Castilho‘s fight with U-139 is remembered across Portugal in a series of maritime artworks.

Mural in the Museu de Marinha

SM U-cruiser U 139 in a battle with a Portuguese gunboat in October 1918. After a 2 hour battle, NRP Augusto Castilho

Combate do Augusto de Castilho com o U-139. Quadro de F. Namura. Museu de Marinha Portugal RM2572-506

Combate do Augusto Castilho by Elisa Felismino in the Museu de Marinha, showing the death of her skipper

Mural in the Museu de Marinha

In 1970, a corvette, NRP Augusto Castilho (F484) entered service to continue the name. She remained on active duty until 2003 and was disposed of in 2010.

BCM-Arquivo Histórico, corvette Augusto Castilho in Lisbon, April 25, 1999 BCM-AH_APEGM_12_41

As for the heroic lost naval hero Carvalho Araújo, streets in no less than 34 Portuguese municipalities bear his name while a bronze statue sculpted by Artur Anjos Teixeira was installed in Vila Real in 1931 and is frequently rendered military honors.

The statue of Carvalho Araújo has its hands clenched defiantly.

The EIN line, whose SS San Miguel survived the war and continued to operate until 1930, replaced her with a new 4,568 GRT Italian-built packet liner named SS Carvalho Araújo.

She continued to sail into the 1970s, and, fittingly for her namesake, often carried Portuguese troops back and forth to Africa.

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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They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find. http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

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What a Difference a Year Makes

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Laid down at Newport News on the 1st anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, 7 December 1942, CV-13 officially earned her name some 80 years ago today on 14 October 1943.

The future USS Franklin (CV-13) at launch was sponsored by the indomitable LCDR Mildred A. McAfee, USNR (Vassar 1920), then-director of the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, better known as the WAVES, and she smashed the bottle in full uniform, as shown in the below photo of the event.

Lieutenant Commander Mildred H. McAfee, USNR, Director of the Women’s Reserve, christens USS Franklin (CV 13) at its launching at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company. Released October 14, 1943. U.S. Navy photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 80-G-43444

And how about this great period Kodachrome of “Big Ben” floating out, with McAfee and eight of her fellow WAVES in the foreground.

PCU USS Franklin (CV-13). The ship floated out of her building dock immediately after christening, at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company shipyard, Newport News, Virginia, on 14 October 1943. 80-G-K-14015

The third USS Franklin was rushed to completion and commissioned just over three months later on 31 January 1944. Following a shakedown cruise, she crossed through the Panama Canal and reported for duty with TG 58.2 on 16 June 1944.

Quickly involved in the war, she supported the invasion of Saipan and of Peleliu, her planes raided Formosa and Okinawa, and by October she was taking part in the liberation of the Philippines which included the pivotal Battle of Leyte Gulf. In those not quite five months, her air group, CVG-12, logged 338 enemy planes damaged and/or destroyed, 409,500 tons of enemy shipping sunk and/or damaged, and 3,971 combat sorties flown.

It was on 30 October, just over a year past her launching, that Franklin encountered the Divine Wind off Samar Island.

As detailed by DANFS:

At 1405, VF-13 launched 12 Hellcats in response to an urgent request from a nearby fleet tanker that reported she was under attack by Japanese planes. Franklin’s crew went to general quarters and “no sooner had the fighters left the deck than Franklin was subjected to a bombing attack.” At the exact moment of the attack, the destroyer Bagley (DD-386) had been alongside Franklin taking on fuel, but quickly cast off. Six enemy planes identified as a mixture of Zekes and Yokosuka D4Y Suisei carrier bombers (Judys), came in at high speed “targeting the formation at about 3,000 feet.”

One of the planes, a Judy, “dove over Franklin,” just missing her starboard side, amidships. A Zeke, observed to still be carrying bombs then intentionally crashed into the carrier’s flight deck inboard of the No. 5 and No. 7, 5-inch mounts. A terrific explosion followed which caused a ferocious fire to sweep the nearby planes on the flight and hanger deck. A third low-flying plane attempted to bomb Franklin, but narrowly missed the carrier’s starboard side. The Japanese pilot then crashed his plane into the after portion of the Belleau Wood (CVL-24).

Two other Japanese planes crashed into the water as a result of errant suicide dives and a third one was shot down by Franklin’s gunners just as it was attempting to crash into Enterprise. Approximately 20 minutes after the attack on Franklin began additional fires broke out on the hanger deck and swept the second and third decks between frames 110 and 150. “All hands turned to,” and at about 1530 the flight deck fire was finally extinguished with the hanger deck fire lingering on until 1625. By 1800, all fires on board the carrier had been arrested with the exception of some that were still smoldering below decks. In total, casualties included 56 killed and 60 wounded.

USS Franklin (CV-13), at right, and USS Belleau Wood (CVL-24) Afire after being hit by Japanese Kamikaze suicide planes, while operating off the Philippines on 30 October 1944. Photographed from USS Brush (DD-745. Note flak bursts over the ships. 80-G-326798

The damage was considerable and she made for Puget Sound Naval Yard via Ulithi and Pearl Harbor for repairs, knocking her out of the war for four months.

USS Franklin (CV 13), damage to flight deck following Japanese kamikaze attack on 30 October 1944. 80-G-270814

USS Franklin (CV 13), damage to V-2 spaces following Japanese kamikaze attack on 30 October 1944. 80-G-270811

Heading back West in March 1945 with Carrier Air Group 5 embarked, Franklin would suffer through her much more extensive and well-known brush with the kamikaze shortly after.

As for the good LCDR McAfee, she would leave the Navy in 1946 as a full captain, the WAVES growing to some 80,000 in number. She went on to return to the presidency of Wellesley College, sit on the board of a number of different corporations, and passed the bar in 1994, far outliving “Big Ben” which, laid up post-war, was quietly disposed of in 1966.

Last of the Amazons

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The Pakistani Navy recently released a well-done (English language) short documentary about the third PNS Tariq (D 181), which is the former Amazon-class (Type 21) frigate HMS Ambuscade (F172).

Acquired by the Pakistani Navy in 1993 sans installed Exocet and Seacat missiles, she was initially laid down at Yarrow in Scotland (Yard No. 1008) in September 1971 and entered service in 1975.

Among a ton of Cold War exploits, Ambuscade took part in the Falklands War of 1982— firing hundreds of rounds of 4.5-inch shells in NGFS missions and chasing at least two suspected enemy sonar contacts– as well service on the old Armilla Patrol and as the Belize Guardship back in the day.

Of the eight Amazons commissioned in the late 1960s-early 1970s, two (HMS Antelope sunk on 24 May 1982 and HMS Ardent on 22 May 1982) were lost in the Falklands.

The remaining six were transferred to Pakistan after the fall of the Berlin Wall and saw much service there. They have since been decommissioned, with no less than four already disposed of in SINKEXs.

Tariq/Ambuscade was the last of her type to leave service, decommissioned on 5 August 2023, her name to be used for a new corvette.

This “final Amazon” will be sent back “home” for the first time in 30 years and converted to a museum ship on the Clyde along Glasgow’s waterfront, the only Falklands vessel preserved, I believe.

The Pakistan Navy has already donated the now 48-year-old frigate to the Cylde Naval Heritage Group and plans to bring her back to Scotland. 

The good news is that she is still in reportedly good material condition, and was steaming as late as this summer. Further, at just 2,800 tons and 384 feet oal, she has a small footprint. All positive signs for a budding museum ship. 

Let us all hope this works out. 

Warship Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2023: Sink Em All

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

Warship Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2023: Sink Em All

Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-35726

Above we see the Gato-class fleet boat USS Wahoo (SS-238) at Pearl Harbor, soon after the end of her Third war patrol, circa 7 February 1943. Her skipper, LCDR Dudley W. Morton, who would count four Navy Crosses in the war, is on the open bridge, in right-center while the officer to the left could be XO, LT Richard H. O’Kane, who would go on to earn the MoH.

If you will observe, there is a broom lashed to the periscope head, indicating a “clean sweep” of enemy targets encountered as well as an aloft pennant bearing the slogan “Shoot the Sunza Bitches” and eight small flags, representing claimed sinkings of two Japanese warships and six merchant vessels. What is not in the picture is the forward radar mast, which has been brushed out by wartime censors.

Just six months after this image was snapped, Wahoo would be broken on the bottom of the La Pérouse Strait, lost exactly 80 years ago today.

The Gatos

The 77 Gatos were cranked out by four shipyards from 1940 to 1944 for the U.S. Navy, they were impressive 311-foot-long fleet boats, diesel-electric submarines capable of extended operations in the far reaches of the Pacific. Able to swim an impressive 11,000 nautical miles on their economical power plant while still having room for 24 (often cranky) torpedoes. A 3-inch deck gun served for surface action in poking holes in vessels deemed not worth a torpedo while a few .50 and .30-cal machine guns provided the illusion of an anti-aircraft armament.

Developed from the Tambor-class submarines, they were the first fleet boats able to plumb to 300 feet test depth, then the deepest that U.S. Navy submersibles were rated.

Meet Wahoo

Our subject is the first U.S. Navy warship– and probably the first in any fleet– named for the wahoo, a beautiful (and delicious) sport fish in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, known for putting up a fight.

Laid down a half-year prior to Pearl Harbor on 28 June 1941 by the Mare Island Navy Yard in Vallejo, California, Wahoo was launched on Valentine’s Day 1942– a sweetheart gift to the Japanese Navy.

She was commissioned on 15 May 1942, LCDR Marvin Granville Kennedy (USNA 1930) in command.

Kennedy, who had served in a mix of both surface warfare and submarine billets, was XO of the huge “V-boat” USS Narwhal (SS-167) at the beginning of the war, aboard her when her gunners opened up at incoming Japanese planes over Pearl Harbor. Wahoo was his first command, and he would be at her attack periscope for her first two patrols.

The new boat and green crew spent the next three months fitting out and conducting initial training along the California coast then, after a post-shakedown repair at Mare Island, left headed for Hawaii on 12 August.

Wahoo off Mare Island Navy Yard, California, 10 August 1942. Note the barrage balloons over the yard and the City of Vallejo. 19-N-33836

USS Wahoo (SS-238) At the Mare Island Navy Yard, California, 10 August 1942. Circles and associated text mark recent alterations to the submarine. The lighter YF-239 is alongside the submarines in the right background. Note the antenna for an SJ radar mounted on the light mast in front of Wahoo’s periscope shears. 19-N-33839

USS Wahoo (SS-238) View from astern, taken off the Mare Island Navy Yard, California, 10 August 1942. 19-N-33837

War!

First War Patrol (23 Aug 1942, Pearl Harbor-17 Oct 1942, Pearl Harbor)

Her patrolling career began in August 1942 in the Carolines. On this patrol, Wahoo claimed the sinking of a freighter not confirmed by post-war review. Other attacks were spoiled by faulty torpedoes, a common refrain in the U.S. Submarine Force in the Pacific at this time.

Second War Patrol (8 Nov 1942, Pearl Harbor- 26 Dec 1942, Brisbane)

Her second patrol was in the Solomons, where she sank a freighter, the Japanese collier Kamoi Maru (5355 GRT) off Buin, on 10 December. Following this patrol, Kennedy, who earned a Silver Star for sinking the enemy collier, left the boat and joined the staff of Commander Service Force, Southwest Pacific.

Replacing the 37-year-old Kennedy was an old classmate of his from Annapolis, Florida-born LCDR Dudley Walker Morton, better known by his Academy nickname of “Mushmouth” or, just the simpler “Mush.” Morton had previously commanded the smaller boats USS R-5 (SS-82) and USS Dolphin (SS-169), then sailed as XO under Kennedy on Wahoo’s Second War Patrol. The new XO would be LT Richard Hetherington “Dick” O’Kane (USNA 1934)

It seemed like, in Wahoo’s case, that the third time was the charm when it came to patrols.

Third War Patrol (16 Jan 1943, Brisbane-7 Feb 1943, Pearl Harbor)

Wahoo conducted her third patrol from Australia through New Guinea to the Palau area of the Japanese-annexed Caroline Islands. She steamed 6,454 miles and expanded all her torpedoes.

Prior to leaving Australia, Morton reportedly told the crew:

“Wahoo is expendable. We will take every reasonable precaution, but our mission is to sink enemy shipping. . . . Now, if anyone doesn’t want to go along under these conditions, just see the yeoman. I am giving him verbal authority now to transfer anyone who is not a volunteer. . . . Nothing will ever be said about you remaining in Brisbane.”

Periscope photograph, taken by USS Wahoo (SS-238) on 27 January 1943. The view shows a refinery and large warehouse adjacent to a phosphate works on Fais Island (near Ulithi Atoll, Caroline Islands). Wahoo had intended to shell the latter, but had to break off when an enemy ship came on the scene. Official U.S. Navy photograph now in the collections of the National Archives, 80-G-39745.

She sank the destroyer Harusame on 24 January off Wewak, New Guinea.

Harusame’s back is clearly broken. Wartime intelligence evaluated this photo as showing one of the Asashio-class (see Photographic Intelligence Report # 82, 17 March 1943). However, the ship’s bridge structure identifies her as a Shiratsuyu-class destroyer, with the # 2 (single) 5 gun mount removed. Official U.S. Navy photo 80-G-35738 from the U.S. Navy Naval History and Heritage Command

Two days later chased down a four-ship convoy included sinking the large Japanese army cargo ships Buyo Maru (5447 GRT) and Fukuei Maru No.2 (1901 GRT) along with damaging the tanker Pacific Maru (5872 GRT).

Periscope photograph, showing Japanese transport Buyo Maru sinking after she was torpedoed by USS Wahoo (SS-238) north of western New Guinea on 26 January 1943. Official U.S. Navy photograph now in the collections of the National Archives, 80-G-39746.

The scene in the control room during Wahoo’s 27 January 1943 action with a Japanese destroyer. When the photo was taken the submarine was at 300 feet, rigged for depth charges. Six charges had just gone off and the crew was awaiting more. Lieutenant Commander Dudley W. Morton, Wahoo’s Commanding Officer, reported this action as “Another running gun fight … destroyer gunning … Wahoo running. Shaved head on crewman at right is a product of an Equator crossing ceremony three days previously.” 80-G-38602

Two views of the same action. LT Richard H. O’Kane, XO, at the periscope, and LCDR Dudley W. Morton, skipper, with another officer, in Wahoo’s conning tower during the boat’s attack on a Japanese convoy north of New Guinea, 26 January 1943. Several ships, among them the transport Buyo Maru, were sunk in this action. 80-G-37034 &80-G-37033

USS Wahoo (SS-238) Provides food and water to the crew of a becalmed fishing boat, circa January 1943. The original caption, released with this photograph on 3 March 1943, reads: “Act of Mercy While on the war patrol during which she sank a Japanese destroyer and a convoy of four ships, the submarine Wahoo, commanded by LCdr. Dudley W. Morton, USN, of Miami, Fla., came across a small fishing boat, becalmed. Three of the crew of nine aboard the fishing vessel had died when the submarine found her. Three remaining crew members were without food and water. This picture shows members of the submarine’s crew handing water and food to the men in the fishing vessel. A few days later the Wahoo destroyed the Japanese destroyer and convoy. View looks forward from Wahoo’s machinegun platform.” NH 42275

USS Wahoo (SS-238) arrives at Pearl Harbor at the end of her third war patrol, circa 7 February 1943. The original caption, released with this photograph on 3 March 1943, reads: “Hero’s Welcome A Navy band is on hand to greet the submarine Wahoo on her return to Pearl Harbor following a patrol during which she sank a Japanese destroyer and an entire enemy convoy of four ships. The battle with the convoy lasted for a period of 14 hours. Note that Wahoo’s radar antennas have been crudely censored out of the image.” NH 42274

Lieutenant Commander Dudley W. Morton, commanding officer of USS Wahoo (SS-238), at right, with his executive officer, Lieutenant Richard H. O’Kane, on the submarines open bridge, at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, after her very successful third war patrol, circa 7 February 1943. Official U.S. Navy photograph now in the collections of the National Archives, 80-G-35725.

Fourth War Patrol (23 Feb 1943, Pearl Harbor- 6 Apr 1943, Midway)

For her fourth patrol, Wahoo went to the Yellow Sea west of Korea and just ran amok, only returning after she expended all 24 of her torpedoes.

She sank the cargo ship Zogen Maru (1428 GRT) and damaged the freighter Kowa Maru (3217 GRT) east of Dairen on 19 March, sank the cargo ships Hozan Maru (2260 GRT) and Nittsu Maru (2183 GRT) on 21 March, on 23 March sent the cargo ships Teisho Maru (9849 GRT) and Takaosan Maru (2076 GRT) via torpedoes then finished up with the smaller Satsuki Maru (830 GRT) via gunfire.

Nittsu Maru (Japanese cargo ship) sinking in the Yellow Sea, off China on 23 March 1943. Periscope photograph taken from USS Wahoo (SS-238), which had torpedoed the ship. Official U.S. Navy photograph now in the collections of the National Archives, 80-G-60948.

She finished her run with the cable ship Yamabato Maru (2256 GRT) south of Kyushu, Japan, and two sampans.

Her claimed kills were a bit higher.

Fifth War Patrol (25 Apr 1943, Midway-21 May 1943, Pearl Harbor)

Going to the Kurile chain for her fifth patrol, Wahoo sank two confirmed freighters– Takao Maru (3204 GRT) and Jimmu Maru (1912 GRT) — off Kone Zaki, north-eastern Honshu on 9 May. She ended, again, with no torpedoes left, having steamed 6,828 nm.

Her 5th war patrol claims:

Following the end of the patrol, she was sent back to Mare Island for a much-needed overhaul, carrying almost 30,000 miles on her diesels and the effects of multiple depth charging runs from the Empire.

A series of photographs from the Bureau of Ships Collection in the U.S. National Archives remains to document her condition at this stage of her hard life.

USS Wahoo (SS-238) Off the Mare Island Navy Yard, California, 14 July 1943. 19-N-48937

USS Wahoo (SS-238) At the Mare Island Navy Yard, California

USS Wahoo (SS-238) At the Mare Island Navy Yard, California, 16 July 1943. Circles mark recent alterations to the submarine. The lighter YC-312 is alongside. YF-239 and YF-200 are in the left-center distance. 19-N-48941

USS Wahoo (SS-238) At the Mare Island Navy Yard, California, 16 July 1943. White outlines mark recent alterations to the submarine. The lighter YC-312 is alongside. 19-N-48942

Sixth War Patrol (2 Aug 1943, Pearl Harbor-29 Aug 1943, Pearl Harbor)

The sixth patrol of Wahoo, conducted in the target-rich Japan Sea, suffered from defective Mark 14 steam torpedoes. None of the 10 fish fired in nine attacks on enemy merchantmen resulted in a torpedo hit but she was able to sink a trio of sampans with surface gunfire.

The patrol reports of the failed attacks are crushing:

She made good in surface actions against fishing boats– at least her guns worked!

Across her first six patrols, she claimed 27 ships sunk, totaling 119,100 tons, and damaged two more, making 24,900 tons. Of these, most were on Mush Morton’s three patrols, in which Wahoo had sunk a claimed total of 93,281 tons of shipping in only 25 patrol days.

Leaving the boat was her talented XO, Dick O’Kane, who was called up to the big leagues and rewarded with a command of his own, the Balao-class boat USS Tang (SS-306).

Seventh (Last) War Patrol (9 Sep 1943, Pearl Harbor-lost on/about 11 October 1943, in La Perouse Strait)

Sent back to the Sea of Japan– armed with the new Mark 18 electric torpedo, instead of the hated Mark 14s– Wahoo was the only Allied warship active there when the fishing vessel Hokusei Maru (1394 GRT) was lost west of the Kuril Islands on 21 September, the gunboat Taiko Maru (2958 GRT) west of the Tsugaru Strait on 25 September, the freighter Masaki Maru No.2 (1238 GRT) in the Sea of Japan east of Hungnam on 29 September, the transport Konron Maru (7908 GRT) in Tsushima Straits on 5 October, the cargo ship Kanko Maru (1283 GRT) off Korea on 6 October, and the cargo ship Hankow Maru (2995 GRT) off the Oga Peninsula on 9 October. Good hunting!

However, the hunter became the hunted, and Wahoo never made it back to Pearl, with her war flags flying and crew beaming. Postwar, it was determined that Japanese E13A1 “Jake” floatplanes out of Wakkanai, supporting the submarine chasers Ch-15 and Ch-43, and minesweeper Wa-18, following up on the sighting of a strange submarine by the coast artillery battery on Soya Misaki, responded and chased Wahoo to the bottom of the in La Perouse Strait on the morning of 11 October 1943.

The wreck, found in 2004 resting 12 miles off the northeast coast of Hokkaido in the middle of the strait, confirms the place and cause of her destruction.

She was lost with all 80 hands. Declared officially dead in 1946, all are memorialized at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (Punchbowl) on the Court of the Missing.

“Going Home,” watercolor on paper by Georges Schreiber, 1943; accession # 88-159-JN as a gift of Abbott Laboratories.

Wahoo earned six battle stars for World War II service.

Wahoo is one of 64 American subs (52 from WWII alone) still listed as being on “Eternal Patrol,” remembered in markers across the country. Of note, Gato-class sisters USS Corvina (SS-226) and USS Dorado (SS-248) were both lost within days of Wahoo, with all hands. (Photo: Chris Eger)

For a deeper dive into USS Wahoo, please see Warfish.com.

In all, “Mush” Morton would be awarded four Navy Crosses, the final one posthumously.

Commander Dudley Walker Morton USN (USNA 1930) is remembered with a memorial stone at Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington Virginia, Memorial Section MH, Plot 669.

Epilogue

The fighting spirit of Mush Morton and the Mighty Wahoo would endure long after they were gone.

A billboard at Mare Island in late 1943, highlighting the exploits of the Yard’s famed sub, albeit in a PG-rated format. 80-G-K-15091

Wahoo’s plans, deck logs, and patrol reports (1-6) are digitized in the National Archives. 

Wahoo’s ship’s bell and commissioning pennant, which had been stored at Pearl Harbor while she was on her wartime service, are preserved at the USS Bowfin Submarine Museum & Park along with a marker honoring her.

In 1995, the Wahoo Peace Memorial cenotaph was dedicated in Japan at Cape Soya near Wakkanai overlooking the La Perouse Strait where the submarine was lost.

The Forrest Sherman-class destroyer USS Morton (DD-948) was named in honor of Wahoo’s most famous skipper. Built at Ingalls and nicknamed “The Saltiest Ship in the Fleet!” due to the obvious Morton’s Salt reference, she served until 1982, chalking up several stints off Vietnam including close-in NGF support and Sea Dragon operations off North Vietnam.

Dick O’Kane, who according to the NHHC took part in more successful submarine attacks than any other American officer across five patrols with Wahoo and five more in command of Tang, earned the Medal of Honor, three Navy Crosses, three Silver Stars, and the Legion of Merit with Combat “V.” After Tang suffered a sinking via a runaway torpedo in the Formosa Sea, O’Kane and four of his surviving crewmen were “rescued” by the Japanese. After surviving the war at just 88 pounds and testifying as a witness at the Japanese War Crime trials, he returned to duty, retiring in 1957 as a rear admiral after having punched tickets as COMSUBDIV 32 and as the Officer in Charge of the Sub School at New London.

RADM Dick O’Kane passed in 1994 and both he and his wife are buried at Arlington National Cemetery and is on the list of Top Ten U.S. Navy Submarine Captains in World War II by the total number and tonnage of confirmed ships sunk during the conflict, just ahead of Morton.

O’Kane’s legacy lives on. The USS O’Kane (DDG-77), a Navy destroyer, was commissioned in Pearl Harbor in 1999 and continues to serve based out of San Diego.

USS O’Kane (DDG 77) ‘s “Battle Cat” war flag is a Rising Sun flag trampled by the “kills” O’Kane chalked up in his career. Meanwhile, her ship’s crest includes dolphins, the MoH, and four Navy crosses

The former rear admiral’s Medal of Honor is kept at the USS Bowfin Submarine Museum and Park in Honolulu.

Further, his cribbage board, which he presented to the second Tang (SS 563) in 1957, is handed down to each oldest fast-attack submarine in the Pacific Fleet. Since that boat retired, it has been handed down to USS Kamehameha (SSBN 642), USS Parche (SSN 683), USS Los Angeles (SSN 688), USS Bremerton (SSN 698), USS Olympia (SSN 717) and now USS Chicago (SSN 721).

191022-N-KB401-0021 JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM Oct. 22, 2019 — Cmdr. Benjamin J. Selph, commanding officer, USS Olympia (SSN 717), plays a game of cribbage on the O’Kane board against Cmdr. Chance Litton, commanding officer, USS Chicago (SSN 721).

Wahoo’s legacy lived on as well. Two different Tench class submarines (SS-516 and then SS-518) were to have carried the name but never made it into service. A Tang-class boat, SS-565, did, however, in 1952. She served until 1980, one of the final diesel boats on active duty with the U.S. Navy.

USS Wahoo (SS-565) underway in the Pacific, 24 July 1978. USN 1174147

The famed original Wahoo’s battle flag and fairweather featured a Native American with a war bonnet with feathers for each Japanese ship the boat had sunk. The second Wahoo continued the tradition via the Al Capp character “Lonesome Polecat,” armed with a torpedo-tipped arrow.

A planned Block 5 Virginia-class submarine, SSN-806, will be the third USS Wahoo commissioned. Likewise, her sister SSN-805 will be the third USS Tang.

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

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find. http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO, has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships, you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023: Shipping Green

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

Warship Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023: Shipping Green

Photo by Gilbert Milne, Government of Nova Scotia Virtual Archives H.F. Pullen NSARM accession no. 1984-573 Box 2 F/34

Above we see one of the 67 hardy River class frigates used by the Royal Canadian Navy, HMCS Swansea (K328), shipping green in January 1944 while off Bermuda. As acknowledged by Jane’s in 1946 about the class, following hard wartime service: “These ships have shown very good endurance and sea-keeping qualities.”

While the crew of Swansea— commissioned 80 years ago today– may have had something to say about that, the tough environment of the North Atlantic wasn’t enough to slow their business of slaying U-boats– and business was good.

The Rivers

While today the Royal Canadian Navy is often seen as a supporting actor in the North Atlantic and an occasional cameo performer elsewhere, by the end of World War II the RCN had grown from having about a dozen small tin cans to being the third-largest fleet in the world— and was comprised almost totally of destroyers, frigates, corvettes, and sloops! The force traded 24 of its warships in combat for a butcher’s bill that was balanced by 69 Axis vessels but had proved decisive in the Battle of the Atlantic.

One of the most important of the above Canadian ships was the River-class frigates. Originally some 1,800 tons and 301 feet in length, they could make 20-knots and carry a twin QF 4-inch gun in a single forward mount as well as a modicum of 20mm AAA guns and a wide array of sub-busting weaponry to include as many as 150 depth charges.

In addition to her twin 4″/45 forward, Rivers also carried six 20mm Oerlikons in two twin mounts — one seen here in a LAC Kodachrome of HMCS Thetford Mines– and two singles. Note the wavy lines on the Canadian lieutenant’s sleeve, denoting his status as a reserve officer. The running joke in Commonwealth Navies that used the practice was so that, when asked by an active officer why the braid was wavy, the reservist would answer, “Oh good heavens, so no one would mistake that this is my real job.”

Produced in five mildly different sub-classes, some 50 of the 150ish Rivers planned were to be made in Canada with others produced for the RCN in the UK. This resulted in a shipbuilding boom in the Land of the Great White North, with these frigates produced at four yards: Canadian Vickers in Montreal, Morton in Quebec City, Yarrow at Esquimalt, and Davie at Lauzon.

River-class frigates fitting out at Vickers Canada, 1944

Canadian River-class frigate HMCS Waskesiu (K330) with a bone in her mouth, 1944. Kodachrome via LAC

Meet Swansea

Ordered in October 1941 from Yarrows Ltd., Esquimalt, our little frigate remains the only vessel ever named for the Lake Ontario-facing Swansea neighborhood of Toronto, which until 1953 was an independent village. Yard No. 83 was laid down on 15 July 1942, launched almost exactly five months later, and commissioned on 4 October 1943.

Her skipper had already accounted for German U-boats a few times before.

Fifty-seven-year-old A/CDR Clarence Aubrey King, RCNR, DSC, DSO, had served in the British merchant service then switched to the Royal Naval Reserve in the Great War where he served in “Q-ships” and commanded one of those dreaded U-boat killers for the last 15 months of hostilities. During this time, he was credited with “one sure kill and two probables,” earning the Distinguished Service Cross in June 1917. Rejoining the colors with the RCN when WWII started, he commanded the corvette HMCS Oakville (K 178) in her battle with U-94 in August 1942 which ended with the latter’s destruction. This earned him the DSO.

Shipping out from Victoria, B.C., where Swansea was brought into service, her crew did their shakedown cruise to Halifax via the Panama Canal, arriving six weeks later on 16 November.

War!

Swansea clocked in for the Battle of the Atlantic right away. Her first convoy was SC 154 from Halifax to Liverpool in February-March 1944 and, briefly, the West-bound HX 281.

From there, she was detached to join Escort Group 9 at Londonderry, Northern Ireland. EG9 was all-Canadian, including the frigates HMCS Matane, Meon, Port Colborne, St. John, and Stormont in addition to Swansea.

Her first “kill” was a Type IXC/40 German submarine, U-845 (KrvKpt. Werner Weber) on 10 March 1944. In this action, south-west of Ireland, Swansea’s depth charges– joined with those from the British destroyer HMS Forester, the Canadian destroyer HMCS St. Laurent, and the Canadian corvette HMCS Owen Sound– sent U-845 to the bottom, with the group picking up 45 waterlogged survivors, KrvKpt. Weber not among them.

Then came U-448, a Type VIIC, sunk on 14 April 1944 north-east of the Azores by depth charges and naval gunfire from Swansea and the British sloop HMS Pelican, who afterward picked up 42 survivors. 

HMCS Swansea # 2 gun in action SWN0228

CANADIAN FRIGATE HMCS SWANSEA GETS ANOTHER U-BOAT. 1944, HMCS SWANSEA ACCOUNTED FOR HER SECOND U-BOAT. A NUMBER OF SURVIVORS WERE RESCUED. (A 24331) U-boat survivors clinging to a yellow inflated life raft, wait to be picked up after the U-boat had made its death dive. In the lower left-hand corner SWANSEA’s sea-boat is coming alongside with survivors, and (top left) is the sloop HMS PELICAN which also picked up survivors. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205156236

CANADIAN FRIGATE HMCS SWANSEA GETS ANOTHER U-BOAT. 1944, HMCS SWANSEA ACCOUNTED FOR HER SECOND U-BOAT. A NUMBER OF SURVIVORS WERE RESCUED. (A 24329) SWANSEA’s seaboat alongside U-boat survivors helped out of the sea and onboard the frigate. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205156234

CANADIAN FRIGATE HMCS SWANSEA GETS ANOTHER U-BOAT. 1944, HMCS SWANSEA ACCOUNTED FOR HER SECOND U-BOAT. A NUMBER OF SURVIVORS WERE RESCUED. (A 24330) One of the U-boat survivors, still dazed, rests on the deck as his sea-soaked clothes are stripped off by men of the SWANSEA. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205156235

CANADIAN FRIGATE HMCS SWANSEA GETS ANOTHER U-BOAT. 1944, HMCS SWANSEA ACCOUNTED FOR HER SECOND U-BOAT. A NUMBER OF SURVIVORS WERE RESCUED. (A 24332) Petty Officer G Ardy, of London, Ontario, standing by the gunshield on which are painted symbols indicating SWANSEA’s U-boat kills. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205156237

U-448’s skipper, the Iron Cross-daubed Oblt. Helmut Dauter, was famously photographed walking off Pelican’s deck into captivity at Greenock, his war over.

U-BOAT PRISONERS ARRIVE AT A BRITISH PORT. 20 APRIL 1944, GREENOCK, THE ARRIVAL OF U-BOAT PRISONERS PICKED UP AFTER BEING SUNK BY HMS PELICAN. (A 22935) The Captain of the U-Boat (U448) Helmut Dauter, wearing an Iron Cross, leaving HMS PELICAN. Behind him is Liuet J Bathurst, the Captain of HMS PELICAN. Dauter, who earned the German Cross in Gold, would survive the war, and pass in 1987. The fact that the skipper and 41 of his crew lived through a four-hour-long creeping attack and 56 depth charges, with their boat’s batteries damaged and depth gauge broken, as well as a 6-inch hole in the after part of U-448’s pressure hull, then surfaced into heavy fire from both of the greyhounds that chased her down and were able to abandon ship to be recovered alive, was a small miracle. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205155072

Swansea’s third sub, U-311 (Kptlt. Joachim Zander), another Type VIIC, was sent to her eternal patrol on 22 April 1944 south of Iceland by depth charges from Swansea and her sister, HMCS Matane, with all hands lost.

22 April 1944, HMCS Swansea, commanded by A/Cdr Clarence A. King, DSO, DSC, RCNR, with HMCS Matane commanded by A/Cdr A. Frank C. Layard, DSO, RN, using depth charges, together sink U 311 south of Iceland. This was Commander King’s third submarine “kill” in 7 weeks. LAC photos

Then came another escort, that of Convoy OS 077KM, in May.

After that, she was detailed as part of EG9 to Operation Neptune, the naval component of Operation Overlord, the Normandy invasion.

HMCS Swansea was present on D-Day, assigned to Plymouth Command to cover the lift across the Channel, and for the next four months patrolled the Channel in support of the ships supplying the invasion forces, coming to the aid of downed Allied aircraft when she could.

It was in this mission that, on 1 September 1944 in the English Channel near Lands’ End, Swansea, and her sister HMCS Saint John, sent U-247 (Oblt. Gerhard Matschulat) to the bottom with all hands.

Depth charge exploding astern of HMCS Swansea, 1944

She rode shotgun on the tail end of HX 307 the next week, making sure it made Liverpool.

Swansea was also a lifesaver, and notably rescued seven men from an adrift Mulberry artificial harbor segment on 24 September.

November 1944 saw Swansea on outbound Convoy ON 264, sailing for Nova Scotia where she would be given a six-month refit and overhaul, where she was on VE Day.

The ship’s company of HMCS SWANSEA, pictured on 30 November 1944

Her crew marched in Halifax’s victory parade.

HMCS Swansea crew VE celebration parade in Halifax NS in 1945. Note the Great War era Ross rifles

Ordered to work up for a Pacific deployment where she would lend her guns to the march on Tokyo, instead VJ Day found her in the Caribbean on post-refit shakedown.

Swansea was paid off on 2 November 1945 to reserve in Bedford Basin. She earned three Battle Honors (Atlantic 1943–44, Normandy 1944, English Channel 1944).

Jane’s 1946 entry on the 18 Canadian Rivers still in RCN service, noting all but one was in mothballs.

As for the legendary Capt. King, who had been on the bridge of Swansea for three of her U-boat kills and Operation Neptune, he would add a bar to his DSC and commanded the frigates HMCS Prince Rupert and Runnymede before moving to the Retired List in 1946. He crossed the bar in 1964 at Osoyoos, British Columbia, aged 77.

What of her sisters?

Of the 90 assorted Canadian River-class frigates ordered, a good number were canceled around the end of WWII. Four (HMCS Chebogue, HMCS Magog, HMCS Teme, and HMCS Valleyfield) were effectively lost to German U-boats during the conflict. Once VJ-Day came and went, those still under St George’s White Ensign soon went into reserve.

Graveyard, Sorel, P.Q Canadian corvettes and frigates laid up, 1945 by Tony Law CWM

Several were subsequently sold for peanuts to overseas Allies looking to upgrade or otherwise build their fleets including Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Chile, Israel, Peru, and India.

Others were de-militarized and sold on the commercial market including one, HMCS Stormont, that became Aristotle Onassis’s famous yacht, Christina O. HMCS St. Lambert became a merchant ship under Panamanian and Greek flags before being lost off Rhodes in 1964. Still others became breakwaters, their hulls used to shelter others.

One, HMCS Stone Town, was disarmed and tasked as a weather ship in the North Pacific in the 1950s and 1960s.

But, Swansea still had some life left in her. 

A different war

Swansea, by benefit of freshly refitting right before she was placed in reserve, was twice re-commissioned (12 April 1948-September 1949 and May 1951- 10 November 1953) for the purpose of training officer cadets and new recruits.

These periods saw her range as far north as Baffin Island and Godthab, Greenland, a three-week Caribbean training cruise, a Med cruise to the French Riveria, and Queen Elizabeth II’s Spithead review (34th in Line E).

She was paid off on 10 November 1953 and returned to storage once again.

Swansea was then selected to be rebuilt from 1956 to 1957, as a Prestonian class ocean escort with “FFE” pennant numbers, with our vessel becoming FFE-306. This conversion included a flush-decked configuration, an enlarged bridge, and a taller funnel. Deleted were the 20mm Oerlikons in favor of some 40mm Bofors. Further, they had their quarterdeck enclosed to accommodate two hulking Squid anti-submarine mortars in place of the myriad of depth charges/Hedgehog formerly carried. The sensor package was updated as well, to include ECM gear. One, HMCS Buckingham, was even given a helicopter deck.

Swansea recommissioned on 14 November 1957, ready to mix it up with Soviet subs if needed.

Seen in 1959, the Second World War frigate HMCS Swansea has been considerably modified to improve its anti-submarine capabilities. Although frigates like Swansea had been effective anti-submarine vessels during the Second World War, by the mid-1950s their weapons and equipment were of limited effectiveness against newer Soviet submarines. This photograph shows a number of the modifications made to Swansea between 1953 and 1957, including new guns and a bigger bridge for commanding and operating the ship (center). Other changes included the installation of two Squid anti-submarine mortars that replaced many of the ship’s depth charges. George Metcalf Archival Collection CWM 19780155-001

Swansea’s subsequent Cold War service was quiet, typically just involving assorted NATO exercises that ranged from Europe to the Caribbean.

Canadian aircraft carrier HMCS Bonaventure and HMCS Swansea, pictured on 18 May 1959

HMCS Swansea, Autumn 1962, 9th Squadron’s visit to Churchill, Manitoba. Photo by Angus Gillingham

HMCS Swansea color postwar DND photo

HMCS Swansea postwar note Maple Leaf on funnel CTB025222

Swansea, steaming postwar, note her 306 pennant numbers

HMCS Swansea (306) in Halifax circa 1950s. The stern of the Tribal-class destroyer HMCS Iroquois (G89/DDE 217) is in the foreground. The big Duracell battery-looking things are three-barrel 12-inch (305 mm) Squid ASW mortars that could lob 440-pound shells out to 275 yards. Photo Courtesy of Claus Mathes, via For Posterity Sake. SWN0284

She was paid off for a final time on 14 October 1966 and broken up in 1967 at Savona, Italy.

Epilogue

Little of Swansea remains.

A scale model of her is on display at the Canadian War Museum while a very detailed For Posterity’s Sake site exists chronicling the ship and her crew. 

Most of the remaining Canadian Prestonian/Rivers were discarded alongside Swansea as the new St. Laurent– and Restigouche-class destroyers joined the fleet.

Two endured in auxiliary roles for a few more years: HMCS St. Catharines as a Canadian Coast Guard ship until 1968 and HMCS Victoriaville/Granby as a diving tender until 1973.

None of the Canadian-built ships were retained as museum ships, which is a shame. 

In the end, two Canadian Rivers still exist, HMCS Stormont/yacht Christina O, and HMCS Hallowell/SLNS Gajabahu, with the latter a training ship in the Sri Lankan Navy until about 2016 and possibly still afloat.

Starting life in WWII as a Canadian Vickers-built River-class frigate HMCS Stormont, Christina O was purchased in 1954 by Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, who transformed her into the most luxurious private yacht of her time. She went on to host a wealth of illustrious guests, ranging from Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra to JFK and Winston Churchill.

Canadian River-class frigate, ex-HMCS Strathadam, built in 1944 by Yarrow, Esquimalt. Sold 1947 to the Israeli Navy and renamed Misgav. Subsequently sold to the Royal Ceylon Navy as HMCyS Gajabahu. Photo via Shipspotting, 2007.

For more information on the RCN in WWII, please check out Marc Milner’s North Atlantic Run: The Royal Canadian Navy and the Battle for the Convoys.

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

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find. http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO, has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships, you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2023: Of Shorts & Hard Charging Jeep Carriers

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

Warship Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2023: Of Shorts & Hard Charging Jeep Carriers

Admiralty Official Collection, IWM A 25686

Above we see, resplendent in their tropical shorts and whites, a three-man Fleet Air Arm Avenger Mk. I (TBF-1) crew of 851 Squadron— LT (A) S S Laurie, RNVR, observer; squadron leader LCDR (A) Anthony Montague “Steady” Tuke, DSC, RN, pilot; and CPO F R Brown, Telegraphist air gunner– by the aft flight deck elevator of the Ruler-class escort carrier HMS Shah (D 21) in August 1944, with four of the big torpedo bombers arrayed behind them. The place is likely Kilindini Harbor, in Mombasa, Kenya, where Shah was preparing to escort a convoy to Aden.

Commissioned 80 years ago today, she accounted for at least one U-boat, took the fight to the Pacific where she helped track down and kill the Japanese heavy cruiser Haguro, and served as a great snapshot for the end of the war—then went on to get really busy.

The Bouge/AmeerAttacker/Ruler/Smiter class

With both Great Britain and the U.S. running desperately short of flattops in the first half of World War II, and large, fast fleet carriers taking a while to crank out, a subspecies of light and “escort” carriers, the first created from the hulls of cruisers, the second from the hulls of merchant freighters, were produced in large numbers to put a few aircraft over every convoy and beach in the Atlantic and Pacific.

Of the more than 122 escort carriers produced in the U.S. for use by her and her Allies, some 45 were of the Bogue class. Based on the Maritime Commission’s Type C3-S-A1 cargo ship hull, these were built in short order at Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation, Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, and by the Western Pipe and Steel Company of San Francisco.

Some 496 feet overall with a 439-foot flight deck, these 16,200-ton ships could only steam at a pokey 16 ish knots sustained speed, which negated their use in fleet operations but allowed them to more than keep up with convoys of troop ships and war supplies. Capable of limited self-defense with four twin Bofors and up to 35 20mm Oerlikons for AAA as well as a pair of 5-inch guns for defense against small boats, they could carry as many as 28 operational aircraft in composite air wings. They were equipped with two elevators, Mk 4 arresting gear, and a hydraulic catapult.

The U.S. Navy kept 11 of the class for themselves (USS Block Island, Bogue, Card, Copahee, Core, Nassau, Altamaha, Barnes, Breton, Croatan, and Prince William), all entering service between September 1942 and June 1943.

This left most of the Bogues (34 of 45) to go immediately to the Royal Navy via Lend-Lease, where they were known as the Ameer, Attacker, Ruler, or Smiter class in turn, depending on their arrangement. 

Meet Shah

Laid down on 13 November 1942 as the planned USS Jamaica (ACV-43/CVE-43) — after the bay on Long Island– under Maritime Commission contract by Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corp., she was launched 21 April 1943 and then handed over to the Royal Navy on 27 September 1943.

Our subject, once delivered to the British, was christened as the second ship in the RN to carry the name HMS Shah, with the first being a 19th-century 26-gun iron-hulled frigate that was significant for being the first naval vessel to fire a locomotive torpedo in action, the latter during an 1877 scrap with the Peruvian ironclad Huáscar, and lives on today in HMS Victory, who has carried her iron masts as her own since 1895.

The engagement between the Huascar and HMS Shah off Ilo, May 29, 1877, Griffin & Co, 1880, via National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London

The “Shah” name also dovetailed well into the naming convention for the Ruler class (HMS Emperor, HMS Empress, HMS Queen, HMS Khedive, et al) which made sense.

After entering RN service, the King’s newest carrier shipped gently north to HM Canadian Dockyard at Esquimalt B.C. to receive her British equipment and sensors, which kept her pier side for the rest of the year.

She would also embark 851 Squadron, 14 Avengers that had been formed at Squantum NAS the previous October.

When 1944 arrived, ordered to head across the Pacific to join the RN’s Eastern Fleet’s 1st Aircraft Squadron, Shah first diverted to San Francisco to pick up a load of aircraft bound for points East.

Overhead view of HMS Shah (D21), formerly Jamaica (CVE-43), moored at San Francisco in January 1944. The ship is ready to ferry a deck load of 29 Wildcats, 12 Avengers (which may be hers of 851 Sqn), and 22 Curtiss Warhawks (P-40) to Melbourne, Australia; Cochin, India; and Colombo, Ceylon. The carrier painted in camouflage Measure 21, moored on the opposite side of the pier, is sometimes identified as USS Rudyard Bay (CVE-81), but this is highly questionable given the date of the photo. A more likely candidate is the USS Prince William (CVE-31). (Photo: Navsource)

And while underway.

This cross-Pacific voyage included crossing the equator, and the required ceremony involved which was conducted after the aircraft were unloaded.

“The Ancient Mariners” performing during a fancy-dress parade on the flight deck of HMS Shah. IWM A 27858

WITH A CARRIER OF BRITAIN’S EASTERN FLEET. FEBRUARY 1945, ON BOARD THE ESCORT CARRIER HMS SHAH IN EASTERN WATERS. (A 27857) A fancy dress parade on the flight deck with ‘Potentate and his harem’ and ‘the Ancient Mariners’. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205159282

Getting into the war, for real

Wrapping up her assorted aircraft ferry missions by May 1944, Shah traveled to Colombo to reembark 851 Squadron (which had been at RNAS Colombo Racecourse since February) as part of Force 66. To her Avengers were added a half-dozen Martlets (Wildcats) for some extra muscle.

She would spend the next six months in serious trade protection duties across the Indian Ocean, tasked with searching for Axis blockade runners, raiders, and subs. This would include chasing the long-range Type IXD2 U-boat U-198 (Oblt. Burkhard Heusinger von Waldegg) to ground near the Seychelles over three days in August 1943 with her aircraft attacking the boat and her escorting frigates HMS Findhorn, Hedgehog, and the sloop HMIS Godavari sinking the sub with all hands (66 men).

“Steady” Tuke, 851’s shorts-clad commander in the first image of this post and the man who dropped a torpedo into the side of the Italian battleship Vittorio Veneto during the Battle of Matapan in 1941 while flying an Albacore off HMS Formidable, would add a bar to his DSC for U-198.

A Mk XI aerial depth charge is being loaded onto a Grumman Avenger aircraft on board the escort carrier HMS Shah in Eastern waters. IWM A 27853

By early 1945, Shah was clustered with the fellow escort carriers HMS Begum, Empress, Emperor, Stalker, and Attacker, to form Commodore Geoffrey Oliver’s 21st Aircraft Carrier Squadron of the East Indies Fleet at Colombo then, along with Empress, Shah was switched to Force 63 in April for Operation Bishop— a carrier raid and surface bombardment of Car Nicobar and Port Blair to provide cover for Operation Dracula (the amphibious landings off Rangoon).

WITH A CARRIER OF BRITAIN’S EASTERN FLEET. FEBRUARY 1945, ON BOARD THE ESCORT CARRIER HMS SHAH IN EASTERN WATERS. (A 27855) The escort carrier HMS BEGUM is in company. Avengers with folded wings are on the flight deck. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205159280

WITH A CARRIER OF BRITAIN’S EASTERN FLEET. FEBRUARY 1945, ON BOARD THE ESCORT CARRIER HMS SHAH IN EASTERN WATERS. (A 27850) Deck crews fuelling Avengers. One is standing by on the catapult. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205159276

WITH A CARRIER OF BRITAIN’S EASTERN FLEET. FEBRUARY 1945, ON BOARD THE ESCORT CARRIER HMS SHAH IN EASTERN WATERS. (A 27851) The guns of a Wildcat being serviced. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205159277

For Operation Bishop, the two “jeep carriers” would provide air cover for the Free French battlewagon Richelieu, the old dreadnought HMS Queen Elizabeth (flying the flag of VADM H.C.T. Walker), four cruisers (including the Free Dutch HrMs Tromp) and five destroyers.

This raid, from 27 April to 7 May, soon morphed into Operation Dukedom, to interdict Japanese surface ships trying to evac troops from the Andaman Islands in mid-May.

That led to Shah’s aircraft spotting the Japanese heavy cruiser Haguro and the destroyer Kamikaze north-east of Sabang and three of her Avengers from 851 NAS, operating from sister HMS Emperor due to catapult issues with Shah, making the longest Fleet Air Arm round-trip carrier-borne attack (530 miles) of the war on 15 May.

Early the next morning, a force of five greyhounds from Captain (later Admiral Sir) Manley L. Power’s 26th Destroyer Flotilla caught up to Haguro and sent her to the bottom in a brilliant night torpedo attack that rivaled anything the Japanese pulled off in the bad old days of 1942 off Guadalcanal.

July brought the planned landings in Malaya (Operation Zipper) which was postponed.

Shah was at sea with Force 61 for Operation Carson, a planned attack on enemy shipping and airfields in Penang and Medan on Japanese-occupied Dutch Sumatra, when news of the Japanese surrender hit on 14 August.

She was reportedly the first RN ship to enter Trincomalee after the news broke and was there for the celebrations that came. Fleet photographer Sub. Lt G. Hale captured a great series of images that covered the event.

(A 30202) Looking aft over the twin Bofors guns of HMS SHAH. Two other escort carriers, HMS KHEDIVE (leading) are coming up off the starboard quarter. All three carriers were out at sea when the end of WWII came. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205161379

(A 30204) Part of the ship’s company of HMS SHAH fallen in for entering harbour on the flight deck. The cruiser HMS CEYLON is in the background. It was the first time HMS SHAH made a peace-time entry into Trincomalee Harbour. It was taken at about mid-day on 15 August 1945, about 7 hours after the Prime Minister had broadcast the news that Japan had capitulated. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205161381

(A 30197) Sub Lieut (A) Murray Gordon White, RNVR, a Fairey Swordfish pilot of the Royal Navy, now assistant batman in HMS SHAH, batting on Avenger bombers on 12 August 1945, off the Andaman Islands. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205161374

(A 30203) Leading Seaman Alfred Charles Dennis of Plymouth enjoys a Victory cigar. He is indicating his approval not only with the quality of the cigar but with the occasion the photograph was taken, on board HMS SHAH on the day the Japanese capitulated (15 August 1945) Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205161380

(A 30201) A peep at a game of hockey under an Avenger bomber on the flight deck of HMS SHAH, at sea in the Indian Ocean. One of the destroyer escorts can be seen on the port beam. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205161378

(A 30198) VJ Day celebration in Trincomalee Harbour. Taken from the flight deck of HMS SHAH shows how the British East Indies Fleet reacted to the end of the Japanese war. The flagship HMS NELSON was the centre of attraction, she is seen with her Spithead Fairy lights twinkling, being subjected to a friendly barrage of Pyrotechnics from the other ships in harbour. An Avenger bomber can be seen in the left h… Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205161375

A particularly poignant image captures the men who were on duty when the war started in 1939. Of her total of over 700 embarked souls, this counted just 66 men. 

(A 30200) The Royal Navy had been at war, non-stop for six years, illustrated here unmistakably. Taken on board HMS SHAH on 15 August 1945, the day the Prime Minister broadcast the news that the Japanese had surrendered. A “pipe’ was made for all officers and men who were at sea on operations on 3 September 1939 to muster for a photograph on the flight deck. This is the result; 14 Officers and 52 ratings, 66 in all. The group includes the Captain and the Commander (centre) and the Chief Engineer. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205161377

Her war over, Shah embarked the men of the soon-to-be-disbanded 851 NAS and 845 NAS– sans their well-worn aircraft which were left in Ceylon– and set sail for “home” for the first time, arriving at Gourock on the Clyde on 7 October 1945.

De-stored, stripped of her British gear, and manned by a skeleton crew, she crossed the Atlantic for the first time and was turned back over to the U.S. Navy at Norfolk on 6 December.

Laid up at Hampton Roads, ex-Jamaica/ex-Shah was disarmed and sold on 20 June 1947 for use as a merchant provided her flight deck and hangar deck were stripped at the nearby Newport News shipyard.

She earned two RN Battle Honours: East Indies (1945) and Burma (1945).

By 1946, with the Royal Navy able to count a massive 23 purpose-designed flattops either under construction or afloat, it had no need to petition the Americans to keep any of the loaned jeep carriers. Jane’s that year only listed the RN with just two– British built– CVEs. 

HMS Campania and HMS Vindex, 1946

Civil heroics

Purchased for $8 million along with two other war surplus C-3-S-A1 Class hulls by the Compañía Argentina de Navegación Fluvial— the Dodero Line– ex-Jamaica/ex-Shah along with her former jeep carrier sister ex-SS Mormacmail/ex-HMS Tracker (D 24) were converted to economical passenger steamers, capable of hauling 1,328 passengers (all Third Class) and 175 crew members each on immigration runs from war-torn Europe to Latin America.

Shah became Salta while Tracker became Corrientes, operating on the Buenos Aires to Amsterdam and Hamburg runs and back.

Shah post-conversion to Salta via Karsten-Kunibert Krueger-Kopiske. 

Postcard showing Argentine mercantile Corrientes, ex-Mormacmail, ex-BACV 6, ex-HMS Tracker (D24), from the Ministerio de Transportes de la Nación, Flota Argentina de Navegación de Ultramar, Compañía Argentina de Navegación.

This continued until 1955 when the Dodero Line became part of the government-owned FANU (Flota Argentina de Navegación de Ultramar) line, which became ELMA in 1962.

It was during this service that Salta (with 1,014 of her own passengers aboard) came to the rescue of the old Dutch liner MS Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (then sailing as the Greek-flagged TSMS Lakonia) in December 1963 when the latter caught fire 180 miles off Madeira.

Lakonia burning

Receiving the SOS call through the then-new AMVER system while some 50 miles away, Salta’s skipper pushed her engines to the maximum and arrived alongside the smoking Lakonia three hours later. The American-built freighter/carrier/liner was the first vessel on the scene and rescued no less than 490 of the 1,022 souls aboard, most of whom were British. Five other ships, coming later, managed to save 404 between them.

The rescue was the highlight of the aging ship’s career and, suffering from mechanical issues, she was sold to the breakers at Río Santiago in 1966 for $640,000.

A plaque, presented by the survivors to Salta’s crew, along with a 40,000-peso accolade, is preserved in Argentina.

Epilogue

USS Jamacia/HMS Shah’s builder’s plans are in the National Archives.

The Royal Navy has not commissioned a third HMS Shah, and, likely never will for obvious reasons.

As for 851 Squadron, Shah’s hammer, its lineage passed on to the Royal Australian Navy. Recommissioned at Naval Air Station (NAS) Nowra on 3 August 1954, it flew a variety of types including sub-busting S-2 Trackers from the carrier HMAS Melbourne— appropriate for its past history– and remained in service for another 30 years until decommissioned in 1984.

851 Squadron S-2 Trackers in flight over Uluru S-2. 

Anthony Montague “Steady” Tuke, 851 Sqn’s WWII commander, retired from the FAA in 1947 and went on to live a long life.

His 2010 obituary noted, “In retirement Tuke, who regularly supported squadron reunions and Fleet Air Arm dinners, was group secretary for West Essex of the National Farmers Union; a lay tax commissioner; and a governor of his old school. At an old boys’ dinner in 2003, to a standing ovation, Tuke accepted a bill (in euros) for the damage he had done to Vittorio Veneto in 1941.”

Steady Tuke

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 Somber Visit to Kaga

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In a continuation of the footage coming out of the recent 27-day expedition by E/V Nautilus over the seabed of the Midway battlefield, the lost Japanese aircraft carrier Kaga was visited and extensively filmed.

As described in Combined Fleets, her death spiral took place over nine hours on 4 June 1942:

  • 1022 (0722 JST) As fighters prepare to launch, approximately 30 enemy dive-bombers overhead reported by HIRYU and also sighted by lookouts about to attack. KAGA takes evasive action to starboard, avoiding first three bombs but is struck by a minimum of one 1,000-pound (450-kg) and three 500-pound (230-kg) bombs from USS ENTERPRISE (CV-6)’s Douglas SBD “Dauntless” VS-6 and VB-6 led by LtCdr (later Rear Admiral) Wade McClusky (USNA ’26) inducing explosions among armed and fueled torpedo planes on the hangar decks, aggravated by unstored ordnance, starting a raging aviation gasoline fire. One of the bombs destroyed the bridge, killing most there including Captain Okada, Executive Officer Capt. Kawaguchi Masao (47), Navigator Cdr. Kodota Kazuharu, Gunnery Officer LtCdr. Miyano Tosaburo (52). As a result, KAGA is left with only surviving damage control officers, inexperienced personnel, and aviators to fight the fires. The fires are soon out of control. Switched to emergency steering. (At the same time, AKAGI and SORYU also set afire by bombing.)
  • 1130: Comcardiv 2 (Rear Admiral Yamaguchi Tamon on HIRYU) orders ComCrudiv 8 (Rear Admiral Abe Hiroaki) to assign one destroyer each to the three damaged carriers, and have the damaged carriers retire toward Yamamoto’s Main Body. The order is repeated at 1147. KAGA under supervision of the First Damage Control Officer attempts to comply, still making about 5-8 knots.
  • 1300 (1000 JST) About this time KAGA’s engine gang is either overcome, or ordered to stop the ship (Only a third of them would survive; 213 of them perished.) The carrier goes dead in the water. HAGIKAZE moves up to assist.
  • 1325: The Imperial Portrait is transferred via the forecastle to HAGIKAZE. Elsewhere, the senior surviving officer Air Officer Cdr. Amagai Takahisa (51) directs all non-essential personnel, particularly aviators, to abandon ship and jumps into the sea with them.
  • 1410: (1110 JST) KAGA is attacked by LtCdr (later Rear Admiral, retired) William H. Brockman’s (USNA ’27) submarine USS NAUTILUS (SS-168). One torpedo hits the starboard quarter, but fails to explode. Counter-attack by depth charge is made, but results unknown.
  • 1640 The situation judged hopeless, all remaining personnel are ordered (apparently by the First Damage Control Officer) to abandon ship. They are removed or subsequently rescued from the sea by destroyers HAGIKAZE and MAIKAZE.
  • 1715: HAGIKAZE reports to Nagumo that all remaining personnel on KAGA having earlier been ordered to abandon ship, have now been taken aboard the two destroyers.
  • 1750 Nagumo reports to Yamamoto: “KAGA is inoperational in (grid) position HE E A55. All survivors have been transferred to destroyers.”
  • 1800 Comdesdiv 4 on ARASHI orders HAGIKAZE to “keep a watch on KAGA until further notice.” He also asks KAGA and SORYU’s escorts if either carrier was starting to sink.
  • 1830: ComDesdiv 4, having received false report of approaching enemy forces, orders NOWAKI, HAGIKAZE, HAMAKAZE, and ISOKAZE to continue to screen their assigned damaged carriers, but if the enemy approaches, to engage them.
  • 1856: Sunset. Shortly after this time, KAGA and SORYU are apparently ordered scuttled. A final caretaker crew is removed from KAGA by a written order.
  • Sunk: 1925 (1625 JST) destroyer HAGIKAZE fires two torpedoes into her starboard side amidships aft. The KAGA begins to settle by the stern, yet remains on an even keel until she slides from sight in approximate position 30-23.3’N, 179-17.2′ W. She suffers a loss of 814 officers, petty officers, and men.
And so we remember. 
 
There are no roses on sailors’ graves,
Nor wreaths upon the storm-tossed waves,
No last post from the King’s band,
So far away from their native land,
No heartbroken words carved on stone,
Just shipmates’ bodies there alone,
The only tributes are the seagulls sweep,
And the teardrop when a loved one weeps.

Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday), Sept. 21, 2023: The Ajaccio Express

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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

Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday), Sept. 20, 2023: The Ajaccio Express

Naval History and Heritage Command photo NH 88998

Above we see the French Redoubtable (Pascal)-class submarine of the M6 series (Agosta type), Casabianca (Q183), on the surface in the late 1930s. She is responsible for landing the first Allied troops on Axis-occupied Metropolitan France, some 80 years ago this week, and has a fascinating story that sort of dispels a lot of smack talk about the Marine nationale in WWII.

The Redoubtables

In the 1930s, the French Navy put a lot of faith in submarines, with upwards of 80 boats on the rolls during the decade. While a lot of those were old “2nd class” submarines or former German boats, there was also a formidable force of 31 modern “Classe 1,500 tonnes” boats that formed the backbone of the fleet. Large ocean-going “sous-marins de grande croisière” (high cruise submarines, i.e., 1st class subs), these boats were decent by any measure of their day.

Hitting the scales at just over 2,000 tons (submerged), they ran 302 feet long and were capable of (at least) 17 knots while surfaced and had long enough legs for 30-day cruises. Armed with a single 4-inch (100/45 M1925) deck gun, a twin 13.2mm Hotchkiss AA mount, and 11 torpedo tubes (9 fat bow and stern 21.65-inch tubes and a pair of smaller trainable 15.75-inch tubes), they could easily be compared to the prewar 307-foot Tambor-class “fleet boats” of the U.S. Navy and thoroughly outclassed the Kriegsmarine’s smaller and slower Type VII U-boats. When stacked against the most numerous pre-war Royal Navy boats, the T class (or Triton class) subs, these French Redoutables also ran a good bit larger and faster.

1931 Jane’s covering the Redoutables, at which point some 25 were in service. 31 would be built by 1939.

The first two boats of the class, Redoubtable (Q136) and Vengeur (Q137) were considered the initial M5 series, powered by a 4,000 hp suite– capable of 17 knots on the surface. The second flight, or M6 series, starting with Pascal (Q138), had more powerful 7,200 hp engines– pushing them to 19 knots– while the last six of the class, starting with Agosta (Q178), count on 8,000 hp and a speed of over 20 knots. This latter variant is often sometimes referred to as the Agosta-class.

They were fast diving, capable of getting submerged in 30-40 seconds, and had superb periscopes, although their listening gear and habitability were reportedly problematic– the latter no doubt due to their large 71-man (5 officers, 14 petty officers, 52 enlisted) crew. Their operating depth was listed as 250 feet– which would have meant easy death in the Pacific but was acceptable in the Med.

Double-hulled and able to partially use ballast tanks for diesel storage, they could make 14,000 nm at 7 knots on the surface before needing to refuel. This allowed the class to roam extensively overseas, including to French colonies in the Pacific, where one member, Phénix (Q157), was lost in an accident off Indochina in 1939. Another, Prométhée (Q153), was lost in 1932 while on sea trials in home waters.

Meet Casabianca

Our subject, a fast third-flight M6 Redoubtable, was ordered as part of the 1930 Programme/Naval Program No. 153 and as such was laid down at Saint Nazaire on 7 March 1937. She was commissioned on New Year’s Day 1937, the last of the class by pennant number (Q183) although five other boats would join the fleet after her, with the final Redoutables, Ouessant (Q180) and Sidi-Ferruch (Q181) not entering service until early 1939.

French submarine Casabianca 2 February 1935 at launch at the Nantes Shipyard of Ateliers Et Chantiers De La Loire NH 88999

Casabianca was originally named for the 1907 landings at the Moroccan city of Casablanca but instead was renamed in 1934 before launch for the Corsican-born French naval hero Luc-Julien-Joseph Casabianca, the skipper of the 118-gunned ship of the line L’ Orient which took Napoleon on his expedition to Egypt in 1798. He would go down with his ship at the Battle of the Nile at the hands of Nelson but died with all the appropriate honor and elan.

Bust of Capt. Casabianca and the painting, “The destruction of the Orient during the Battle of the Nile, August 1, 1798, by George Arnald, National Maritime Museum, London.

War!

When the French Republic went to war with Germany on 1 September 1939 as part of its pact with Poland, which was then under attack, Casabianca was at Brest as part of the 2ème DSM. She was soon ordered to Spanish waters along with sisters Agosta (Q178), Ouessant (Q180), and Achille (Q147) to watch for German blockade runners, U-boats, and raiders, a mission that would be maintained into November, with the squadron beefed up by the addition of Redoubtable sisters Sfax (Q182) and Pasteur (Q139).

With the war heating up, the boats of 2ème DSM, Casabianca included, were attached to the Royal Navy for a series of operations including convoy escort (!) from Halifax to Ireland in the winter of 1939/40, and a May 1940 patrol off Norway that saw the boats poking their periscopes up off occupied Bergen, Stavanger and Egersund but not coming away with any “kills” largely because of the handicap of following very strict “cruiser rules” for taking enemy ships. The only success the class saw in 1939 was when squadron member Poncelet (Q141) captured the German freighter Chemnitz (5522 GRT) off the Azores on 29 September and a prize crew sailed her home.

French submarine Casabianca oversee the departure from Brest to Harwich, on April 17th, 1940. IWM

June 1940 brought the Fall of France and 2ème DSM was ordered to leave their home port at Brest for the perceived safety of Casablanca, escaping capture by the oncoming Germans. The force, including our Casabianca, Sfax, Poncelet, Bévéziers, and Sidi-Ferruch, would arrive there just escaping the armistice, redubbing 2ème DSM (Maroc).

Sisters Pasteur, Agosta, Ouessant, and Achille, left behind at Brest, were duly scuttled by their crews.

Vichy sideshow

Casabianca and her squadron would remain at Casablanca, making short day trips and coastal sorties into November, when Casabianca and Sfax were ordered south to Dakar in French Senegal to increase the Vichy force there against an Allied effort to flip the colony for DeGaulle’s Free French movement. She would remain there, with the occasional trip back to Morrocco, until August 1941 when she was ordered to Toulon to be disarmed and de-fueled in compliance with German demands.

By this point in the war, of the 31 Redoubtables completed, 13 had already been lost (two in pre-war accidents, four scuttled at Brest in June 1940, Persée and Ajax sunk off Dakar by the British in September 1940, Poncelet sunk off Gabon by HMS Milford in November 1940, Sfax lost by mistake to U-37 in December 1940, while Bévéziers, Le Héros, and Monge were sunk off Madagascar in May 1942 by the British).

In late October 1942, with the war in North Africa going bad for the Axis, the French admiralty, with the blessing of the German Armistice Commission, ordered eight subs to rearm, including Casabianca, with the plan to deploy them as reinforcement against a possible Allied push into French North Africa.

Escape from Toulon

With the Germans effectively canceling the Vichy regime following the Allied Torch landings in North Africa– in which the Redoubtable-class boats Le Conquérant (Q171), Le Tonnant (Q172), Actéon (Q149), and Sidi-Ferruch were sunk in combat with the Allies and sisters Archimède, Argo, Protée and Le Centaure captured– the great Sabordé occurred at Toulon in which the bulk of the French navy fell on its sword on orders to prevent their ships from falling into German hands.

Among the 77 vessels sent to the bottom by their crews were another 20 French submarines including the Redoubtable herself and her sisters Vengeur, Pascal, Henri Poincaré, Fresnel, Achéron, and L’Espoir.

27 Novembre 1942 ,Toulon. the crew of a Panzer IV of the 2nd SS Division, Das Reich, watch a burning French warship, cruiser Colbert via Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-027-1451-10 Vennemann, Wolfgang CC-BY-SA Libre de droits

However, five French subs got underway from the Mourillon docks at Toulon on the early pe-dawn of 27 November: our Casabianca, her sister Le Glorieux (Q168), the small (600 ton) Minerve-class boats Iris (Q188) and Vénus (Q187), and the aging 1,100-ton Requin-class submarine Marsouin (Q119).

With only seven of her 40-man crew aboard and damaged by harbor defenses, Vénus was scuttled in deep water once clearing the channel but blazed the way for the other four. The small Iris, with her fuel tanks nearly empty, was forced to stopover in Spain where she was seized and interned until the end of the war.

This left Casabianca, Le Glorieux, and Marsouin who, dodging German bombers and minefields, arrived unannounced off Allied-occupied Algiers on the early morning of the 30 November, with Casabianca’s skipper, 40-year-old Capitaine de Corvette Jean L’Herminier, to report to the American port captain that his boat was “fit for any mission.” 

Brave considering the Allies had been sinking French subs off that very port just a few weeks prior.

Indeed, L’Herminier had made it away from Toulon with all but two of his crew who missed the boat, even managing to bring along the ship’s mascot, a small gray dog named “Moussy.”

French Submarine Casabianca arrives Algiers after fleeing Toulon December 11 1942 IWM A 13154

Casabianca at Algiers after escape from Toulon. Note her trainable external sub-deck torpedo tube is out to port

French submarine Casabianca officers in Algiers after escaping Toulon with their boat. L’Herminier in center with cigarette

presentation of the Croix de Guerre to Frigate Captain L’Herminier December 1942 at Algiers by Admiral Darlan

Casabianca soon was detailed to the operational control of Capt. (future RADM) George Barney Hamley Fawkes’s 8th Submarine Flotilla of the Royal Navy, which had just moved its headquarters from Gibraltar to Algiers.

Cloak and Dagger work for the Allies.

While the bulk of behind-the-lines supply and liaison drops in occupied Europe came via airdropped parachute-delivered loads and small STOL planes such as the Lysander, Corsica proved almost immune to such deliveries due to its geography. The island’s built-up areas were so heavily garrisoned by the recently arrived Italian forces (80,000 troops overwatching a local population of 200,000) and the rural areas mountainous that airdrops were considered far-fetched.

This defaulted the effort to seaborne infiltration via small boats and submarines, the latter referred to as the so-called “Algerian Group” heavily involved in running “Le Tube” north to the Riveria and Corsica with the occasional side trip to land agents in ostensibly neutral Spain.

Sir Brooks Richards’s seminal two-volume work on clandestine Allied Sea transport operations in the Med during WWII, Secret Flotillas, spends about 50 pages detailing the 10-month groundwork for the ultimate liberation of Corsica (Operation Vesuvius) in 1943 and the role that the British and Free French submarine forces spent in making that happen. The name “Casabianca” appears in that section on almost every page.

While Casabianca wasn’t the only Free French boat running covert missions in the Med for Vesuvius– past Warship Wednesday alum the Saphir-class minelaying submarine La Perle (Q-184) was there as was Marsouin, Protée, Orphee, Sultane, Archimède, and Arethuse-– none matched CC L’Herminier’s workhorse who accomplished both the first mission and the chalked up the most trips to the island.

As detailed by Sir Brooks:

Casabianca’s displacement was more than twice that of the British S-class and larger than that of the T-class British submarines of the 8th Flotilla, so she offered great advantages in terms of carrying capacity for landing agents and supplies. This and the inspiring personality of her commanding officer [L’Herminier]…made her an obvious choice when a vessel was needed to carry a five-man mission, code-named Pearl Harbor, to Corsica in early December.

Elaborating on L’Herminier, Sir Brooks said:

He was in his early forties while British submarine captains were in their mid-twenties. The fact that Casabianca was not equipped with ASDIC and her torpedoes proved erratic meant that her offensive potential was not rated highly by the Royal Navy and Captain (S)8 was more than ready for her to be used for “cloak and dagger” missions.

Thus, Casabianca’s tasking came from the OSS/SOE’s “conspicuously successful” Massingham Mission and the Free French’s own Deuxième Bureau military intelligence organization under Colonel Paul Paillole.

To assist with the landings and beach recons needed for such operations, the French boat sent eight volunteers from the crew through an abbreviated Commando course conducted by Massingham at the Club des Pins while the boat herself would be fitted with American-supplied rubber rafts, quickly inflated on deck via a lead from the sub’s compressed air system. Later, a pair of lightweight plywood dories made at Helford specifically for such use as they were equipped with large removable kingstons to allow the dories to flood and drain as the submarine dived or surfaced when stowed topside. The Helfords would fit neatly when carried upside down atop Casabianca’s pressure hull, under the forward deck casing.

Finally, L’Herminier was all-in on risking his boat to get close to shore, typically grounding inshore close to the beach when conducting often all-night unloadings, then pulling off just before dawn to submerge on the bottom just offshore to surface again the following evening to do it all again. This was vital as the “delivery boats” were human powered and the crew was burdened by moving 70-pound packages chain gang style from every nook and cranny of the submarine where they were stowed, up to the deck via small hatches, and into the boats then over the beach and into the cache– all in the dark by feel with no lamps allowed.

CASABIANCA ESCAPED THE FRENCH SUBMARINE NOW HUNTS AXIS SHIPPING IN THE MEDITERRANEAN. 20 MARCH 1943, ALGIERS, CASABIANCA, ONE OF THE FRENCH SUBMARINES THAT ESCAPED FROM TOULON, HAS SINCE BEEN HUNTING DOWN AXIS SHIPPING IN THE MEDITERRANEAN. (A 15700) Sailors of the French submarine CASABIANCA mustered on deck for inspection. With them is the ship’s mascot, Moussy, which escaped with the ship and goes on all patrols. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205148727

CASABIANCA ESCAPED FRENCH SUBMARINE NOW HUNTS AXIS SHIPPING IN MEDITERRANEAN. 20 MARCH 1943, ALGIERS, CASABIANCA, ONE OF THE FRENCH SUBMARINES WHICH ESCAPED FROM TOULON, HAS SINCE BEEN HUNTING DOWN AXIS SHIPPING IN THE MEDITERRANEAN. (A 15698) Officers and crew of the French submarine line the deck as she comes in after another successful patrol. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205148725

A brief rundown on her Corsica operations, via Brooks, in which, in addition to her agent shuttling service, Casabianca landed no less than 61 tons of supplies across the beach in such a manner to the local resistance groups throughout seven sorties to the island:

Casabianca I/Pearl Harbor: Landing Commandant Roger de Saule (French intelligence officer), three Corsicans: wireless operator Pierre Griffi, Sgt. Maj Toussaint Griffi, and trade unionist resistance member Laurent Preziosi. Tagging along was mysterious Eastern European OSS agent “Frederick Brown.” Casabianca had been in Algiers less than two weeks when she left on Pearl Harbor on 11 December. After a two-night close recon to find the ideal beach at Anse-de Topiti on Corsica’s west coast, the group was landed with the submarine departing for Algiers again on 16 December– sans three of her crew that had been left behind to join the Pearl Harbor team when their dingy swamped.

Casabianca II/Auburn: February 1943. Landed three Deuxième Bureau, one OSS, and two SIS agents (Capt. Caillot, Lt. Guillaume, Fred Brown, Adj. Bozzi, and SGT Chopitel) on two different beaches (Bon Porte Bay and Baie d’Arone). Then landed 450 STEN guns and 60,000 rounds of 9mm ammo for local Resistance members while two more Casabianca sailors were left ashore.

Casabianca III/Pearl Harbor II: March 1943.A complicated multipart mission to pick up Casabianca’s five castaways who had been working with the local maquis, land three Deuxième Bureau agents, and pick up two French agents that had been landed in other operations. L’Herminier capped off the mission with an unsuccessful four-torpedo attack against the Italian steamers Francesco Crispi and Tagliamento off Bastia.

Casabianca IV: May 1943: Landed four unidentified Deuxième Bureau agents, and conducted a war patrol in the area.

Casabianca V/Scalp. July 1943. With an embarked four-man SOE conducting party (including the future Sir Brooks), landed 13 tons of stores and two agents across two nights at Curza Point– mostly Axis small arms salvaged from the huge stocks of the Afrika Korps recently surrendered in Tunisia. As noted by Brooks: “In one short summer’s night, L’Herminier and his crew had succeeded in landing and hiding eight tons of arms and explosives in hostile territory without any outside help. No British submarine captain would have been allowed to take his submarine inshore to the point to where she grounded, as a preliminary to sending the boats away.” On her way back, she fired three torpedoes at the freighter Champagne near Giraglia, which missed.

Casabianca VI/Scalp II: July-August 1943. Another 20 tons of stores landed at Curza Point for the maquis, with an embarked SOE conducting party assisting.

Casabianca VII/Scalp III: Early September 1943. Landed two agents and another 5 tons of arms and ammunition at Golfe de Lava. Extracted a Corsican resistance leader, Arthur Giovoni, bound for Algiers to consult with Allied leadership about the upcoming landings. Giovoni, alias “Luc,” had a detailed copy of the Italian defense plan for the island, which had been recently acquired.

Her seven Corsican missions. She circled the island.

In all, the Massingham SOE mission was able to filter 250 tons of arms and stores into Corsicaoverf almost eight months, of which Casabianca alone delivered nearly a quarter.

Vesuvius D-Day

By the time Operation Vesuvius kicked off, the Corsican resistance could count 20,000 armed members in the field– a force double the size of the 10,000-man light corps (1er Corps d’Armée) under Free French Lt. Gen. Henry Martin that would begin landing on 13 September to liberate the island.

Speaking of which, the very first landings of combat troops would be at Ajaccio, with Casabianca making her 8th trip to the island, delivering 109 members of 1er Bataillon de Choc, Gen. Martin’s door kickers, while two crack Moroccan goumier divisions (4e DMM and 2e GTM) were inbound on an array of French surface ships. The operation was allocated to be an (almost) entirely Free French affair. 

Free French soldiers from the Bataillon de Choc, a commando unit created in Algeria in early 1943. The Bataillon was decisive in the liberation of Corsica and Elba. This picture, with a recently repurposed camouflaged German 7.5cm Pak 40, was taken after they landed in Provence during Operation Dragoon, during the fight to free Toulon, in  August 1944. Note the mix of gear including British watch caps, American M1903 rifles, boots and gaiters, and Italian Beretta MAB 38sub guns. Also, note the open 75mm shell crate with two rounds ready.

French Troops training for the invasion of Southern France in North Africa, likely of the Bataillon de Choc. One holding an M1 Thompson sub gun and the others wielding M1903A3 rifles with bayonets attached, the three slash into barbed wire barricades set up on a beach. Photograph received on 27 September 1944. 80-G-59465

Bataillon de Choc in late WWII with the Marlin UDM42 SMG during the liberation of Grenoble 22 August 1944

In addition to the commandos, Casabianca’s 8th sortie landed a joint SOE-Deuxième Bureau team of senior officers to liaise directly with the local resistance forces and help tie the whole operation together, with the twine of previously landed wireless teams helping to sew the strange quilt together.

The sub was mobbed when she arrived. 

The fight was short, as the Italian garrison had (mostly) laid down their arms with the Armistice of Cassibile on 3 September, but there were still 10,000 Germans on the island as well as 32,000 Germans on nearby Sardinia that were evacuating through Corsica back to the Italian mainland.

French destroyers Tempête and L’Alcyon landing troops Ajaccio, Operation Vésuve Sept 17 1943 Corsica

The fighting didn’t conclude until the first week of October which ultimately saw some Italian troops cross over to the Allies and lend a hand to help speed up the operation. 

The STEN gun, both in the hands of Free French troops and Resistance forces, was key in the fighting for Corsica, and thousands of them were landed by Casabianca

Goumiers marocains, Libération de la Corse. Note the French cadre in more traditional dress.

September 21, 1943 first goumiers landed at Ajaccio, Corsica. Note these are still carrying French weapons and don’t have Brodie helmets yet.

Back to work

Casabianca would go on to conduct at least two further Deuxième Bureau covert missions– one, in November 1943, to embark agents from remote Cap-Camarat near Ramatuelle on the Riveria, and the second, in May 1944, to drop off and pick up agents in Spain.

Casabianca returns to port from a mission in the Mediterranean, on 23 June 1944. NARA 80-G-253640

RADM Andre Lemonnier, French Navy salutes from shore as the French submarine Casabianca returns to port from a mission in the Mediterranean, 23 June 1944. NARA 80-G-253638

She would also conduct several short combat patrols and managed to sink two German submarine chasers (UJ-6076, ex-Volontaire, on 22 December 1943 off Toulon and UJ-6079 off Provence on 8/9 June 1944). In addition, she pumped a torpedo into the freighter Chisone (6168 GRT, built 1922) off Cap-Camarat on 28 December, seriously damaging but not sinking the Italian merchant vessel.

By August 1944, with the Dragoon Landings moving inshore from the Rivera towards the French interior, Casabianca along with surviving sisters Archimède, Le Glorieux, and Le Centaure, were tapped for modernization in the U.S., leaving for Philadelphia NSY soon after. The refit saw HF/DF gear, radar (SD/SJ), and sonar (WDA, JP) sets installed while the twin 13.2mm Hotchkiss machine gun mount was replaced by a twin 20/70 Oerlikon.

Casabianca was not returned to service until the end of March 1945, when her war was officially over.

For the next six years, she participated in a series of Med cruises and experiments– to include launching a captured German Focke-Achgelis Fa 330 Bachstelze (Wagtail) rotor kite.

The 1946 Jane’s entry for what was left of the Redoubtable class, now dubbed the Archimède-class after the seniormost member.

Casabianca was decommissioned in February 1952 and sold for scrap in 1956.

Casabianca’s crew was cited seven times (l’ordre de l’armée de mer) and the submarine was decorated with the Croix de Guerre and the red fourragère of the Legion of Honor, for her wartime service.

Her British-style Jolly Roger marked her seven covert missions to Corsica, along with her surface and subsurface actions.

Note the Corsican flag, with the red dot for Ajaccio. The boat’s final Jolly Roger is proudly held in the French Navy Museum.

Epilogue

Casabianca’s fairwater was salvaged from her during disassembly and paraded through Paris.

It was eventually installed at Bastia in Corsica, where it remains today.

Similarly, a marker was emplaced at Ajaccio, celebrating the September 1943 landing there of Casabianca and the 109 commandos of the Bataillon de Choc.

She is well remembered in maritime art

A 42-minute documentary was filmed about her and is available online. 

Sadly, L’Herminier, suffering from thrombosis, left for the U.S. for medical treatment in August 1944, which led to the amputation of both of his legs. Nonetheless, the fearless submariner remained on the rolls in administrative functions until his death, writing two books and serving as an adviser to the film, “Casabianca, Pirate Ship,” about his sub’s Corsican exploits.

L’Herminier was portrayed by French actor Jean Vilar and was filmed aboard Casabianca’s sister, Le Glorieux. 

Decorated with the Grand Cross of the Légion d’honneur, Capitaine de vaisseau Jean L’Herminier passed in 1953 in Paris, at age 51, and several streets across the country were subsequently renamed in his honor.

The D’Estienne d’Orves-class aviso Commandant L’Herminier (F791) was commissioned in 1986 and was the only ship in the French Navy authorized to fly “le pavillon de pirate,” a replica of Casabianca’s Jolly Roger.

The flag was proudly a part of her crew’s patch. She was decommissioned on 7 March 2018.

As for the name Casabianca, it was reissued to a destroyer (D 631) of all things in 1954, then, more fittingly, to a Rubis-class nuclear attack submarine, Casabianca (S603), launched in 1984.

Casabianca (S603), which was just paid off in August, carried Casabianca’s Jolly Roger on her fairwater and her crew maintained a replica as well.

The sixth new Suffern-class SSN will become the next Casabianca (S640) when she commissions in 2029.

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

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A Haunting Look at the USS Yorktown and IJN Akagi

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E/V Nautilus, in a 27-day expedition funded by NOAA Ocean Exploration via the Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute, in conjunction with a whole alphabet soup of other agencies and institutes (U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command, International Midway Memorial Foundation, Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, Office of Hawaiian Affairs, the State of Hawaiʻi, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, University of Maryland, University of Rhode Island, University of Hawaiʻi, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Air/Sea Heritage Foundation, and Japanese archaeological colleagues from Teikyo University, Tokai University, and Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology) has been surveying the deep sea bed related to the Battle of Midway.

With that, they have released an extensive 27-minute survey of the lost carrier USS Yorktown (CV 5), conducted on 9 September.

Via EV Nautilus:

Ocean Exploration Trust’s survey of USS Yorktown during our Ala ʻAumoana Kai Uli expedition was the first time the world could witness this Battle of Midway wreck in real-time. The site was discovered 25 years ago, located during a joint U.S. Navy and National Geographic Society expedition led by Dr. Robert Ballard, president and founder of Ocean Exploration Trust. All dives in the Battle of Midway battlefield were launched and closed with protocol ceremonies to honor this place and all who lost their lives in ways that reflected their significance to Kānaka ʻOiwi (Native Hawaiian), Japanese, and U.S. military families and communities.

This historic, noninvasive, visual survey dive was conducted during a 27-day NOAA-funded mission to explore never-before-seen deep-water habitats to collect baseline data needed to support management in the most remote and northwestern section of Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument (PMNM). PMNM is a UNESCO World Heritage site distinguished for both its cultural and natural significance, the only site with this special distinction in the U.S. It is currently being considered for national marine sanctuary designation to safeguard further its diverse natural, cultural, and maritime heritage resources for generations to come.

The day after they visited Yorktown, the expedition made the first visual survey of the lost IJN Akagi, the Queen of Japanese flattops, on 10 September.

Via EV Nautilus:

Ocean Exploration Trust’s visual survey of the Japanese aircraft carrier Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) Akagi 赤城 is the first time anyone has laid eyes on the vessel since sinking during June 1942’s Battle of Midway. Akagi was initially located during a mapping survey conducted by Vulcan, Inc. in 2019 that involved U.S. Navy participation. On September 10, 2023, E/V Nautilus team spent 14 hours surveying Akagi, examining battle and seafloor collision damage in the ship’s structure. The dive was launched and closed with protocol ceremonies to honor this place and all who lost their lives in ways that reflected their significance to Kānaka ʻOiwi (Native Hawaiian), Japanese, and U.S. military families and communities.

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