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Warship Wednesday, July 26, 2023: The Iron Woman

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

Warship Wednesday, July 26, 2023: The Iron Woman

USN photo by LCDR John Leenhouts. DN-SC-88-08301. National Archives Identifier 6430231

Above we see an air-to-air front view of a Spanish AV-8S Matador (Harrier) in flight over the Spanish aircraft carrier Dedalo (R01), below, in the Mediterranean Sea in the summer of 1988. If you think Dedalo looks much like a WWII light carrier, your hunch is correct, and she entered service under a different name and flag some 80 years ago this week.

“30/30” Ships

In 1942, the Navy had its ass in a bind.

Starting the war with just six large-deck fleet carriers, within the first six months of combat was down to just four, and by the end of the year; just a single one of these (Enterprise) was still afloat and operational.

While the first huge and ultra-modern 34,000-ton Essex-class carriers were building as fast as the riveters could rivet and the welders could chip slag, they would not be able to arrive in numbers until 1944. This put the Big Blue behind the Japanese 8-ball in naval warfare.

FDR, himself always a Navy man (he won a naval warfare essay contest while a teenager and slept with Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power upon History on his nightstand before being appointed Asst. Scty of the Navy during World War One), came up with the idea to convert a bunch of cruisers that were already partially complete at the New York Navy Yard over to flat-tops. Although the Navy balked, FDR was the commander and chief, so guess who won?

USS Cleveland CL-55 1942. The Navy wanted between 40-50 of these hardy little cruisers. They settled for much less, and nine of those became aircraft carriers while still under construction

USS Cleveland CL-55 1942. The Navy wanted between 40-50 of these hardy little cruisers. They settled for much less, and nine of those became aircraft carriers while still under construction

The 14,000-ton Cleveland class light cruisers were designed after the gloves came off in 1940 and the U.S. no longer had to abide by the Washington and London Naval treaties of the 1920s and 30s. As such, these were very large cruisers, at just a hair over 600 feet long, and very fast (33 knots). Designed to carry a dozen 6-inch and a supplemental dozen 5-inch guns, they were also heavily armed.

In all the Navy wanted something on the order of 40 of these cruisers to lead destroyer groups, escort convoys, scout ahead of battle groups, and screen carriers and battleships. Well, FDR carved nine whose hulls were nearing completion but did not have decks, guns, or superstructures installed yet.

A scale model of the Independence-class light carriers and the Cleveland-class light cruiser. Note the hulls.

A scale model of the Independence-class light carriers and the Cleveland-class light cruiser. Note the hulls.

It was not that hard of a concept. Many of the first carriers were auxiliaries, cruisers, and battleships that had their topside removed and covered with a flat top. Langley, the first U.S. carrier, was a collier. Lexington and Saratoga, the country’s second and third carriers respectively, were originally laid down as battlecruisers.

The first of the class of FDR’s “cruiser carriers,” laid down originally as the cruiser Amsterdam but commissioned instead as the USS Independence, was commissioned on 14 January 1943 and rushed to the fleet. Over the next nine months, eight sisters would join her, roughly one every 45 days on average. They were all constructed in the same yard to keep the program streamlined.

A “30/30” ship, they could make 30+ knots and carry 30+ aircraft while having legs long enough to cross the Pacific and operate on their own for a few weeks before she needed to find an oiler. While they were still much smaller than a regular fleet carrier such as the Enterprise that could carry 80-90 aircraft, they could still put a few squadrons in the air and fill lots of needs.

Simultaneously, they were much faster than the similarly sized quartet of converted oilers that had already been rushed into service and could keep up with a fast-moving battle force. Initially classified as normal fleet carriers (CV), all were re-designated “small aircraft carriers” (CVL) on 15 July 1943.

From U.S. Navy manual FM 30-50: Recognition Pictorial Manual of Naval Vessels, showing U.S. ship silhouettes showing the relative size of the various classes of aircraft carriers, battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. Note the big difference between the size of the large fleet carrier classes (top center), the assorted escort carriers (center to bottom) and the Independence class CVLs, which are right in the middle

Side-by-side comparisons show the principal fleet carriers of the Pacific War compared to an Independence-class CVL. Outside left are the prewar USS Saratoga (CV-3) and USS Enterprise (CV-6), moored near the short-hulled Essex-class USS Hornet (CV-12). Beyond the Hornet is moored the Independence-class USS San Jacinto (CVL-30). U.S. Navy photo 80-G-701512

Worth, in his Fleets of World War II, described the Indys as such:

These were not attractive ships. They had no deck edge elevator, just one catapult, and a small air group (usually 33 planes). Though meant to carry one or two 5-inch DP guns, they never received them. The armor layout provided modest protection, though the first two ships scrambled into service so hurriedly they never got their side armor. In spite of all of this, the design was a success. Not a war winner, it augmented the fleet’s main strength, having sufficient size and speed to bring modern aircraft into battle.

Meet Cabot

The name “Cabot,” after the English-employed Venetian explorer John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto), was one of the oldest in the Navy.

As far back as 5 January 1776, the first Continental Navy squadron under Commodore Esek Hopkins was ordered to sea by Congress to seek the British off coasts of the Carolinas and Rhode Island and in the Chesapeake Bay. The ships under Hopkins’s flag were Alfred, Columbus, Andrea Doria, Cabot, Providence, Hornet, Wasp, and Fly. Sadly, Cabot was also the first Continental naval ship captured by the British, which may be why the Navy waited until 1943 to reissue it.

The second Cabot was laid down as light cruiser USS Wilmington (CL-79) on 16 March 1942, by New York Shipbuilding Co. in Camden, then was reclassified to an aircraft carrier (CV-28) and renamed Cabot during her conversion.

USS Cabot (CV 28), launching at Camden, New Jersey. Photographed April 4, 1943. 80-G-41832

Launched on 4 April 1943, she was reclassified as a small aircraft carrier (CVL-28) just before her commissioning on 24 July 1943 —some 80 years ago this week.

Her first airwing was Carrier Air Group 31, made up of the “Flying Meataxers” of Fighter Squadron 31 (VF-31) and Torpedo Squadron 31 (VT-31), which came aboard in November 1943. CAG 31 would remain on Cabot until 4 October 1944, when CAG 29 (VF-29 and VT-29), late of the USS Santee, came aboard. In general, these CAGs would ship out with 9 TBM/TBF Avengers and 24 F6F-3/5 Hellcats, for a total of 33 aircraft.

They were good at their job.

VF-31 would end up with the highest kill ratio per pilot of any squadron in the US Navy, credited with 165.6 Japanese airplanes destroyed in aerial combat.

For a much deeper dive into her war record, please refer to the extensive 120-page War History completed in late 1945 and available in the National Archives.

We’ll get into the high points below.

Shipping out for the Pacific on 15 January 1944, she joined Task Force 58 and got into the fight for real.

USS Cabot, CVL-28 off Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. 27 AUG 43

Task Force 58 raids in the Carolines, July 1944. RADM J.J. Clark’s task group 58.1 reverses course during attacks on Yap, 28 July 1944. USS HORNET (CV-12) is in the center, with USS CABOT (CVL-28) in the left middle distance and USS YORKTOWN (CV-10) on the right. Six F6F fighters are overhead. Photographed with a K-17 camera from a HORNET plane. 80-G-367247

Crossing the line ceremony on USS Cabot, CVL-28

U.S. Marines drilling on the flight deck of USS Cabot (CVL 28). Photographed by the crew of USS Cabot, July 3, 1944. 80-G-263276

Hitting Truk, the Marshalls, raids on the Palaus, Yap, Ulithi, and Woleai; the Hollandia landings, the famous “Marianas Turkey Shoot,” the liberation of the Philippines, raiding Formosa, Indochina, Hong Kong, Kyushu, and Okinawa, Cabot and her airwing were hard at work.

Just look at this fighting chart chronicling her actions off Formosa, 13-18 October 1944.

Divine Wind

The class would take quite a beating from Japanese aircraft. Sister USS Princeton (CV/CVL-23) was destroyed following a bomb hit during the Battle of Leyte Gulf that sparked fires that got out of hand. Likewise, both sisters USS Belleau Wood (CV/CVL-24) and USS Independence (CV/CVL-22) endured significant damage but pulled through.

Cabot had her own turn in the barrel on 25 November 1944, two days after Thanksgiving.

USS Cabot (CVL-28) is hit by a Kamikaze while operating with Task Force 38 off Luzon, 25 November 1944. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, 80-G-289608

As detailed by DANFS

Cabot had fought off several kamikazes when one, already flaming from hits, crashed the flight deck on the port side, destroying the still-firing 20-millimeter gun platform, disabling the 40-millimeter mounts and a gun director. Another of Cabot’s victims crashed close aboard and showered the port side with fragments and burning debris. Cabot lost 62 men killed and wounded, but careful training had produced a crew that handled damage control smoothly and coolly. While she continued to maintain her station in formation and operate effectively, temporary repairs were made.

Damage to the catapult room of USS Cabot (CVL 28) caused by a crash dive by a Japanese plane. The hole through to the catapult room. The area formerly contained a generator station and crew shelters. 80-G-270879

From her war history:

Back in the fight

Patched up, Cabot returned to action on 11 December 1944, steaming with the force in support of the Luzon operations.

Ernie Pyle shipped out on the Cabot for three weeks and filed reports from her decks on the push to Tokyo.

Pyle, right, on the bridge of Cabot with the skipper –CAPT (later RADM) Walton Wiley Smith (USNA 1920)–during strikes in the North Pacific against Tokyo, February 1945. 80-G-262854-001

The only aircraft carrier he ever visited, Pyle publicized the nickname of the “Iron Woman.”

One of his reports from Cabot:

In the Western Pacific–An aircraft carrier is a noble thing. It lacks almost everything that seems to denote nobility, yet deep nobility is there….It doesn’t cut through the water like a destroyer. It just plows…

Yet a carrier is a ferocious thing, and out of its heritage of action has grown nobility. I believe that today every navy in the world has its No. 1 priority, the destruction of enemy carriers.

That’s a precarious honor, but it’s a proud one.

My Carrier is a proud one. She’s small, and you have never heard of her unless you have a son or husband on her, but still she’s proud, and deservedly so.

She has been at sea, without returning home, longer than any other carrier in the Pacific, with one exception. She left home in November of 1943.

She is a little thing, yet her planes have shot down 228 of the enemy out of the sky in air battles, and her guns have knocked down five Japanese planes in defending herself.

She is too proud to keep track of the little ships she destroys, but she has sent to the bottom 29 big Japanese ships.

She has weathered five typhoons. Her men have not set foot on any soil bigger than a farm-sized uninhabited atoll for a solid year.

They have not seen a woman for nearly ten months. In a year and a quarter out of America, she has steamed a total of 149,000 miles!

Four different air squadrons have used her as their flying field, flown their allotted missions, and returned to America. But the ship’s crew stays on– and on and on.

She is known in the fleet as “The Iron Woman”, because she has fought in every battle in the Pacific in the years 1944 and 1945.

Her battle record sounds like a train caller on the Lackawanna railroad. Listen— Kwajalein, Eniwetok, Truk, Palau, Hollandia, Saipan, Chichi Jima, Mindanao, Luzon, Formosa, Nansei Shoto, Hong Kong, Iwo Jima, Tokyo…and many others.

She has known disaster. Her fliers who have perished cannot be counted on both hands..She has been hit twice by Kamikaze bombs. She has had mass burial at sea..with dry-eyed crew sewing forty-millimeter shells to the corpses of their friends as weights to take them to the bottom of the sea.

Yet she has never even returned to Pearl Harbor to patch her wounds. She slaps on some patches on the run and is ready for the next battle.

My Carrier, even though classed as “light”, is still a very large ship. More than 1,000 men dwell upon her. She is more than 700 feet long…

She has been out so long that her men put their ship above their captain. They have seen captains come and go, but they and the ship stay on forever.

They aren’t romantic about their long stay out here. They hate it, and their gripes are long and loud. They yearn pathetically to go home. But down beneath, they are proud— proud of their ship and proud of themselves.

And you would be too.

Pyle left Cabot at the end of February 1945 and just six weeks later was killed on Ie Shima with the Marines when a bullet from a Japanese machine gun hit him in the left temple below the rim of his helmet.

Cabot would remain on the line until April 1945, when she was sent to Mare Island for a much-needed overhaul.

But before she left, her air group was able to get in some licks on the ill-fated Japanese super battleship Yamato.

USS Cabot (CVL-28) flies a long Homeward Bound pennant as she departs the Western Pacific for overhaul in San Francisco, California, on 13 April 1945. She had been operating in the combat zone since January 1944. The view looks aft from the ship’s island, with her SK-1 radar antenna at the left and other shipping in the distance. Aircraft on Cabot’s deck include (from right front): OS2U, SOC, TBM, SB2C, F4U, and F6F types. NH 96958

Sailing back to the front lines, her last combat missions were flown against Japanese-occupied Wake Island on 1 August while en route to Eniwetok.

USS Cabot (CVL-28) Underway at sea, 26 July 1945. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 80-G-262768

She then joined Task Group 38.3 to support the landings of occupation troops in the Yellow Sea area in September and October.

Embarking homeward-bound men at Guam, Cabot arrived at San Diego on 9 November, then sailed for the East Coast.

Cabot earned a Presidential Unit Citation and nine battle stars for service during WWII.

Her end of the war tally sheet, via her War History.

USS Cabot (CVL-28) close-up view of the ship’s port side bridge wing, showing her insignia, circa 1943-44. The design is based on the slogan of Cabot’s first Commanding Officer, Captain Malcolm F. Schoeffel: Up Mohawks, At ‘Em!. Mohawk was the ship’s voice radio call sign at the time. 80-G-263253

Cabot was placed out of commission in reserve at Philadelphia, Pa., on 11 February 1947.

Korean War Service

Independence class light carriers, Janes 1946

Recommissioned on 27 October 1948 after spending just 20 months in mothballs, Cabot was assigned to the nascent Naval Air Reserve training program. Operating first out of Pensacola, then NAS Quonset Point, she would embark NAR squadrons on summer cruises to the Caribbean and make herself available to the training command for carrier deck quals.

SNJ-5B Bu51927, coming to grief on the USS Cabot (CVL-28) sometime before late 1951

It was around this time that Cabot was given a series of quiet upgrades and strengthened flight deck supports that made her both suitable for helicopters and for the weight of larger aircraft such as the F8F Bearcat. The electronics fit was also updated.

Assistant Sec. of the Navy for Aviation, John F. Floberg, does a solo pass USS Cabot CVL-28 on April 18, 1952, in an SNJ Texan. Floberg would get his carrier quals. The cover is the June 1952 edition of Navy Aviation News

F8F-2 Bearcat Naval Air Training Command carrier qual on USS Cabot CVL 28 June 20, 1952

USMC H-19 Chickasaw on an elevator aboard the refit USS Cabot 1952

One of the young budding Naval Aviators she would qual would be the first man on the moon. Before transitioning to the F-9F Panther jet, which he would fly with VF-51 for 78 combat missions over Korea, Neil Armstrong, flying an F8F Bearcat, would make his first six carrier traps on Cabot in March 1950. By August, he had aced his carrier quals.

Armstrong, shown left on Cabot after his first trap. note the 40mm Bofors behind him.

Cabot even made an operational deployment of sorts, embarking COMCARDIV 14 in January 1952, loading a squadron of short-lived AF-2S/AF-2W Grumman Guardians from the “Duty Cats” of VS-24, adding a det of HUP-1 helicopters from the “Fleet Angels” of HU-2 for liaison work and plane guard roles, then setting out for a Med cruise. 

USS Cabot (CVL-28) underway, circa 1951–1952, with what appear to be two AF-2 Guardians from Antisubmarine Squadron (VS) 24 “Duty Cats.” NARA image.

same as above

same as above

She returned stateside on 26 March 1952 and went back into the training pipeline for a few more years. 

Newly-delivered PA-tail coded T-28B Trojan and T-34 Mentor over Pensacola NAS, note the CVL training carrier below, likely USS Monterey but possibly Cabot or USS Saipan– the latter one of two light carriers built on a Brooklyn-class heavy cruiser hull. The photo is likely from 1955-56. 

Cabot was again placed out of commission, in reserve, on 21 January 1955, and was later reclassified to an auxiliary aircraft transport (AVT-3) while mothballed.

Her career in the U.S. Navy had concluded.

A new flag

The Navy had previously transferred two of the remaining eight Indys to France in the 1950s– USS Langley (CVL-27) and USS Belleau Wood (CVL-24), which became La Fayette and Bois Belleau, respectively.

Meanwhile, the Spanish Navy had been chasing the dream of an aircraft carrier, going back to their seaplane tender and balloon carrier, Deadalo, which was active from 1921 through 1934, even getting in some carrier air raids during the Rif War.

With the general post-WWII rapprochement between a still very fascist Franco and the Western allies, the 1953 Madrid agreements thawed the chill between the U.S. and the country, opening it to military aid in return for basing.

Soon, the country would receive its first modern submarine, the snorkel-equipped USS Kraken (SS-370) (taken in service as Almirante García de los Reyes, E-1), later joined by three Guppy’d Balao-class smoke boats. Five Lepanto-class destroyers– WWII Fletcher-class tin cans– starting with USS Capps (DD-550) in 1957, were transferred. These were soon joined by five more FRAM I Gearing class destroyers, starting with USS Eugene A. Greene (DD/DDR-711) in 1972, as the Churruca class. By this time, the Spanish were also getting five new-made Baleares-class frigates, variants of the Knox class destroyer escort/fast frigates updated with Standard SAM suites.

In many ways, the Spanish fleet by the late 1960s was very American.

Looking for a helicopter carrier/amphibious assault ship and being rebuffed when they wanted the converted escort carrier USS Thetis Bay (LPH-6), and after taking a look at the laid-up USS San Jacinto (CVL-30) and passing, the Spanish went with Cabot as she had embarked and supported helicopters in the 1950s and had a better sensor and radio fit than just about any other mothballed flattop on the menu.

Cabot was loaned to the Spanish Navy on 30 August 1967, which renamed her Dédalo (R.01). She was then stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 1 August 1972, and sold to the Spaniards.

In Spanish operations, she would embark 16-24 helicopters in 4-packs starting with H-13 Sioux, H-19 Chickasaws, and Agusta-Bell 204s, then evolving to SH-3 Sea Kings, torpedo-carrying Hughes 500ASW variants, Agusta-Bell AB.212s, and AH-1 Cobras.

Ever thought you’d see a blue Cobra gunship on a WWII light carrier?

Look at how cute the Hughes 500ASWs are!

Spanish Marina ordered eight AH-1G Cobras and flew them in blue livery from Delado. They were the only country besides the US to operate the model

Dédalo, far right, and hospital ship Esperanza del Mar– the ex-4,000-ton WWII coastal minelayer USS Monadnock (ACM-10)– with one of the carrier’s SH-3D Sea King hanging out on her helideck– a tight fit!. Also, note the stacks of a Descubierta-class corvette to the left

Spanish Arma Aérea de la Armada SH-3D Sea King of Quinta Escuadrilla on Dédalo/Cabot with AS-12 missiles and a torpedo rigged for carry

Entry in Janes, 1973

By 1972, Spain bought eight British-built Harriers. Designated VA.1 Matadors in Spanish service, they were essentially modified variants of the USMC AV8A/B series and were classified as AV-8S/TAV-8S models.

Spanish Dédalo/Cabot with Harrier and helicopters

By 1976, the jump jets were active on Dedalo, providing both air defense and strike capabilities for the Spanish fleet, ultimately buying 13 of the type.

An aerial port bow view of the Spanish aircraft carrier DEDALO (R01) underway. Note the mix of Matadors, AB-212s, and Sea Kings. DN-SC-88-08303

Check out this amazing footage of Dedalo operating with her Matadors off the Canary Islands in 1978, “Defensa de las Canarias,” which simulated the repulsion of a Soviet amphibious assault on the chain.

However, with Spain’s WWII-era fleet beginning to show its age in the early 1980s, a refresh was soon underway that saw the Guppy boats traded in for a quartet of new French Agosta-class submarines, the Fletchers and Gearings replaced by a half dozen Santa Maria-class frigates (a Spanish version of the Oliver Hazard Perry-class), and a plan to replace Dedalo.

A port beam view of the Spanish amphibious assault ship DEDALO (PA-01), formerly the USS CABOT (AVT-3), in the foreground and the frigate BALEARES (F-71) participating in exercise Ocean Venture ’81.

The planned Almirante Carrero Blanco, built to a modified U.S. Navy Sea Control Ship study, entered service in 1988 as the 16,700-ton Príncipe de Asturias. Equipped with a 12-degree ski jump and powered by GE LM2500 gas turbines that could push the carrier along at 26 knots, the new Spanish carrier would embark and launch the larger and more advanced AV-8B Harrier II, which was produced locally at CASA’s facility in Seville, Spain, as the EAV-8B Matador.

Príncipe de Asturias (R11)

The old Dedalo, unneeded, was headed to the breakers, and her old AV-8As were soon resold to Thailand for use with that country’s building HTMS Chakri Naruebet, which was based on the design of Príncipe de Asturias and constructed in Spain.

On 12 July 1989, Dédalo was decommissioned, capping a 46-year career.

A brief reprise

Rushing in to save the day was a group of WWII U.S. Navy vets and their supporters. At the time that Cabot was retired, she was by far the only member of her class still around. In addition to her nine battle stars and Presidential Unit Citation for WWII, there was also her Korean War service, her connections to Neil Armstrong and Ernie Pyle, and her Cold War journey that made her worthy of preservation.

Ultimately, she was brought to New Orleans triumphantly in August 1989 when she still looked amazing– having only left Spanish naval service the month prior. Within months, she was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service.

Then, sadly, the successive efforts to preserve her all tanked for one reason or another, typically money-related (or lack thereof), and she sat along one dock or another in the Crescent City for eight years, suffering marine collisions, looting, and neglect.

Being a warship nerd in my 20s at the time, I snuck through a series of fences to get a snapshot of her tied up on a foggy morning near the Mandeville docks.

USS Cabot/Spanish Dédalo, tied up in New Orleans. Photo by Chris Eger

By 1997, with her time all but gone, she was towed to Texas, where she would soon be involved in a confusing series of lawsuits and seizures by the U.S. Marshals for debts owed. Slowly scrapped there over the next several years, she disappeared by August 2001.

As summed up by WWII After WII, who covers her tragedy in detail:

The USS Cabot fiasco was a sad, but in some ways foretelling, end to the boom of WWII warship museums in the United States. From the late 1970s to the early 1990s, these seemed to proliferate – however, with a few exceptions (USS Intrepid in NYC being particularly successful) they were extremely difficult to keep financially sound after opening. To display a P-51 Mustang fighter or M4 Sherman tank ashore doesn’t take a whole lot beyond the purchase cost, but afloat decommissioned ships are “financial zombies” in that even when dead, they require constant money just to stay above the waterline, let alone be profitable, and this only increases as the ship continues to age – the USS Texas saga being a good example. Often visitor admission fees just aren’t enough.

Anger was directed at the original Foundation, who were portrayed in veteran’s circles as idiots, grifters, or both. This is not fair as the original intentions were good; and in fact, much of the early fundraising was done by veterans at a VFW post in Louisiana on their own time. It might be better to say that they had no idea what they were getting into and quickly found themselves in way over their head.

Epilogue

Several echoes of Cabot endure.

There is, of course, the USS Cabot Association.

The National Museum of the Pacific War has a plaque honoring her as well as CAG 29 and 31.

The National Archives has her plans, diaries, and logs on file.

At the National Naval Aviation Museum, the center floor display includes a replica of the wooden flight deck and island superstructure of Cabot. Assisted by his son, the same sailor who painted the original scoreboard highlighting the combat record of the ship and its embarked air groups duplicated his work for the museum.

(Photo: Chris Eger)

(Photo: Chris Eger)

One of her screws and some of her WWII-vintage Bofors mounts went to USS Lexington, which is preserved in Corpus Christi, just a couple of hours away from where she was scrapped.

Meanwhile, the Spanish Navy’s AH-1G Cobras that flew from Dedalo proved to be a time capsule for the U.S. Army and are now gems in the collection of the Army Aviation Museum in Alabama, as most of their type in U.S. service were either scrapped or converted to updated models.

This toothy G-model Cobra served with the Spanish Navy and was recently returned to the U.S. Note the early 7.62mm minigun and 40mm grenade launcher in the chin. (Photo: Chris Eger)

A few years ago, scale model maker Amo released an AV-8S Matador kit (AMO-8505) that features box art by Valery Petelin that includes Cabot/Dedalo cruising below.

AV-8S Matador AMO box art by Valery Petelin, with Delado/Cabot below

Of Cabot’s sisters, besides USS Princeton (CV/CVL-23), which was lost in 1944, USS Independence was extensively damaged in the Crossroads tests and then, filled with radioactive material, was scuttled off the coast of California in deep water in 1951.

Langly/ La Fayette and Belleau Wood/Bois Belleau, after operating with the French off Indochina and Algeria, were returned to the Navy in the 1960s and scrapped, replaced in French service by the new domestically built Clemenceau-class carrier,s which were twice as large and were built from the keel up to operate jets.

USS Bataan (CVL-29), which added seven Korean War battle stars to the six she earned in WWII, was scrapped in 1961.

USS Bataan (CVL-29) was photographed on 22 May 1953, as she was en route to Naval Air Station San Diego, California, following a deployment to Korean waters. Note crew paraded on the flight deck spelling out the word “HOME” and an arrow pointing over her bow. Aircraft on deck include 19 Grumman AF “Guardian” anti-submarine planes and a solitary Vought F4U “Corsair” fighter (parked amidships on the starboard side. NH 95808

USS Cowpens (CVL-25), laid up after the war, was reclassified as an auxiliary aircraft transport (AVT-1) while in mothballs and was scrapped in 1960.

USS Monterey (CVL-26), on which the future president Gerald Ford served aboard in WWII, served as a training carrier (AVT-2) during the Korean War, then was decommissioned in 1956 and scrapped in early 1971.

USS San Jacinto (CVL-30) would be the last in U.S. Navy possession, sold to the breakers in December 1971 after sitting on red lead row for 24 long and unkind years.

The Indys earned a total of 81 WWII battle stars, and it is a crying shame that none remain.

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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Warship Wednesday, July 19, 2023: Red Sub Circumnavigator

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

Warship Wednesday, July 19, 2023: Red Sub Circumnavigator

Above we see the type IX-bis S (Stalinets) class “medium” Guards Red Banner submarine S-56 returning to Polyarni in early 1944 from a patrol off the coast of German-occupied Norway. The most celebrated of her class, she claimed one of her biggest “kills” some 80 years ago today.

The S-class

It is a little-known fact that the Tsarist Imperial Navy entered the Great War in 1914 with more submarines in its inventory than anyone else. Following the national disaster that was the Russian Revolution and Civil War, the reformed Red Navy inherited a few of these old boats and even managed to keep some of them in operation into the 1950s!

When it came to new designs, by the late 1920s the Soviets built a half dozen modest 1,300-ton Dekabrist-class (Series I) submarines constructed with Italian expertise, followed by 25 minelaying Leninets-class (L class, or Series II) submarines of the same size which were essentially reverse engineered from the lost British L-class submarine HMS L55 which was recovered by the Soviets, and a staggering 88 Shchuka-class (Series III, V, V-bis, V-bis-2, X, X-1938) “medium” submarines that went some 700 tons and were ideal for use in the cramped Baltic and Black seas.

Then, the Stalinets class in IX, IX-bis, IX-bis-II, and XVI series, began to appear in 1936.

Besides the lessons learned in making the Italian-based Dekabrist-class and English-based Leninets-class boats, the Russians, who were very close to a quietly rearming Weimar Germany in the early 1930s, worked with the Dutch front company Ingenieurskantoor voor Scheepsbouw (IvS), which was, in fact, a dummy funded by the German Weimar-era Reichsmarine using design assets from German shipyards AG Vulcan, Krupp-Germaniawerft, and AG Weser to keep Berlin in the sub-making biz while skirting the ban on such activity by the Versailles treaty.

IvS had previously built boats and shared technology with Finland and Spain and it was with the latter’s planned Submarino E-1 that the Soviet S-series was based.

Spanish submarine E-1 at the shipyard in Cádiz. Built in Spain from 1929-30, Soviet engineers participated in her construction and trails. Although her design would go on to be used as the basis for both the German Type IA submarine and the Russian Stalinets class, ironically, the Spanish Navy never operated E-1, as she was sold to Turkey in 1935 just before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. She went on to fly the star and crescent until 1947 as TCG Gür.

Some 255 feet long and with an 840/1070 ton displacement, the basic Stalinets design was good for 19.5 knots on the surface and a cruising range of 4,000nm. Carrying four forward torpedo tubes and two sterns, they also mounted a 100mm deck gun and a 45mm backup as well as machine guns that could be set up for AAA use. Besides the six 533mm torpedoes in the tubes, they could carry another six spare fish.

Stalinets class

The first flight of three boats used German diesels, something that was corrected in follow-on ships that evolved slightly across their construction, hence the four different flights. In all, some 41 Stalinets would be completed. The first, C-1, was laid down on Christmas Day 1934 (because who needs religion in the worker’s paradise) and delivered on 23 September 1936 while a final eight whose construction began at around the same time languished on the builder’s ways during WWII, and were only finished post-war.

The subject of our tale is the most successful of the class. Of the 33 Stalinets class boats completed in time for WWII, 16 were lost. Of the 30 that saw combat patrols, 19 claimed tonnages. This would include the infamous S-13, which sank five ships including two large transports Wilhelm Gustloff and General Steuben, regarded as among the worst maritime disasters in history.

1946 Janes entry on what was left of the class at that time

Two submarines of the class were awarded the rank of Guards, and seven boats earned the Red Banner, only S-56 was awarded both distinctions.

Meet S-56

A 2nd series (IX-bis) Stalinets, S-56 was intended for service in the Pacific Fleet and therefore was assembled at the Dalzavod works at Vladivostok from a kit sent across Siberia from Leningrad starting on 24 November 1936. Launched Christmas 1939, she was commissioned on 20 October 1941, as the Germans were on the outskirts of Moscow.

With the Soviets eschewing combat against the Japanese until after Berlin was licked, on 6 October 1942, S-56, along with sisters S-51, S-54, and S-55, departed Vladivostok ahead of the ice to join the Red Navy’s Northern Fleet at Murmansk. They would be joined by the Leninists-class minelaying subs L-15 and L-16 sailing from Petropavlovsk on a 17,000-mile transoceanic voyage across both Pacific and Atlantic, maneuvering the seas of Japan, Okhotsk, Bering, Caribbean, Sargasso, Northern, Greenland, Norwegian and Barents with stops in Dutch Harbor, San Francisco, the Panama Canal, Guantanamo Bay, Halifax, and Rosyth.

At least that was the plan.

L-16 was lost en route with all hands, believed torpedoed and sunk by the Japanese submarine I-25 on 11 October 1942 approximately 500 miles west of Seattle. This was even though the Soviet Union and Japan were officially at peace. Fog of war, after all.

Via Combined Fleets on I-25:

While returning to Japan on the surface, I-25 spots two ships, apparently en route to San Francisco. The seas are rough. LCDR Tagami first identifies the ships as two battleships. Later, he identifies them as two “American” submarines. At 1100, he dives and fires his last remaining torpedo. It hits 30 seconds later. Several heavy explosions follow. One of the explosions wrecks a head aboard I-25.

The leading submarine starts to sink rapidly stern first with its bow up 45 degrees. A second explosion follows. When the smoke clears there is only an oil slick on the water. The submarine sinks with all 56 hands (a Russian crew of 55, a naturalized American and American interpreter/liaison officer Sergey A. V. Mikhailoff (USNR) who boarded the submarine at Dutch Harbor) at 45-41N, 138-56E. (Postwar, it is learned that the submarine was Soviet Cdr Dmitri F. Gussarov’s 1,039-ton minelayer L-16 en route from Petropavlovsk, Siberia via Dutch Harbor, Alaska to San Francisco.)

The accompanying Soviet L-15 reports seeing one more wake, fires five 45-mm rounds at I-25 and mistakenly claims a hit on I-25’s periscopes.

The five remaining Russian boats were captured several times by American and Canadian cameras while en route to Murmansk.

Russian S-type submarine probably photographed about 1942. 80-G-636837

The Russian submarine S-54 is seen departing Mare Island on 11 November 1942. USN photo # 6697-42

Russian submarine SS-55 is seen departing Mare Island on 11 November 1942. USN photo # 7001-42

The skippers had a chance to meet and pose for a snapshot in Panama, where they rested from 25 November 25 to 2 December 1942.

From left to right: S-54 skipper, LCDR Dmitry Kondratievich Bratishko, S-51 skipper Captain 3rd rank Ivan Fomich Kucherenko, submarine group commander, Captain 1st Rank Alexander Vladimirovich Tripolsky, commander of S-56 LCDR Grigory Ivanovich Shchedrin, commander L-15 Captain 3rd Rank Vasily Isakovich Komarov, Commander S-55 Captain 3rd Rank Lev Mikhailovich Sushkin. Unfortunately, the names of the American officers are not noted.

Soviet “L” Class submarine (L-15) in Halifax harbor. Date: January 1943. Reference: H.B. Jefferson Nova Scotia Archives 1992-304 / 43.1.4 180.

In March 1943, S-56 became part of the 2nd division of the submarine brigade of the Northern Fleet, after a voyage of 153 days.

Her combat career would encompass 125 days underway on eight patrols against the Germans in which she was declared overdue and likely destroyed no less than 19 times, more an issue of poor radio communications than anything else.

S-56 in the Northern Fleet

She logged 13 attacks and fired 30 torpedoes. This included several runs on German convoys, escaping a surface duel with a pair of escorts, surviving a glancing torpedo strike from the German U-711, and reportedly hitting at least one large freighter with a dud torpedo.

Although she would claim 14 enemy transports and warships sunk with a total displacement of 85,000 tons, her post-war validated tally is a good bit smaller (as are most subs from all sides).

Her successes detailed by U-boat.net, included:

  • 17 May 1943 sank the German tanker Eurostadt (1118 GRT) off the Kongsfjord.
  • 17 July 1943 sank the German minesweeper M 346 (551 tons) west of the Tanafjord.
  • 19 July 1943: Torpedoed and sank the German auxiliary patrol vessel NKi 09 / Alane (466 GRT, former British ASW trawler HMS Warwickshire) off the Tanafjord near Gamvik.
  • 31 July 1943 sank the German merchant Heinrich Schulte (5056 GRT) west of the Tanafjord.

C56 Victory Parade July 1945

Epilogue

In 1954, the now famed S-56 was sent back to her birthplace at Vladivostok via the then very perilous Northern Sea Route through the Arctic, thus becoming the first Russian submarine to circumnavigate the globe.

Decommissioned in 1955, she was retained in the Pacific Fleet as a floating charging station and damage control training hulk, renamed ZAS-8 and then UTS-14.

In 1975, on the 30th anniversary of VE Day, she was installed as a museum ship on the Korabelnaya Embankment, where she remains well preserved today, the last of her class.

She is also celebrated in several heroic Soviet maritime art pieces.

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.

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Old School and the New Class

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80 Years Ago Today, 14 July 1943, while steaming from San Diego to Norfolk: The mighty dreadnought USS Nevada (Battleship No. 36), seen after her extensive repairs due to the pummeling she took at Pearl Harbor 19 months prior, returning from Alaska, where she had provided naval gunfire support from 11 to 18 May 1943 for the liberation of Attu (Operation Landcrab).

Photo # 80-G-74411 now in the collection of the US National Archives

Nevada, in the above, was bound for the Norfolk Navy Yard to undergo another several months of further modernization in preparation for service in the Atlantic Ocean and to support amphibious landings in the European Theater of Operations.

As noted by DANFS

After her time in the yard, she shifted to Boston and for several months, she engaged in convoy duty calling at New York, Maine, Massachusetts, and Ireland. On 18 April 1944, Nevada sailed from Casco Bay, Maine, bound for British waters in order to prepare for Operation Neptune, the landing component of Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy.

Trailing astern Nevada is the newly commissioned Bogue-class escort carrier USS Croatan (CVE-25), one of just 11 who served in the U.S. Navy. Just finished at Tacoma in time to sail with the battleship for the East Coast, Croatan would eventually lead her own hunter-killer ASW group that would account for six German U-boats by the end of the war. She would outlast Nevada in the fleet, lingering until 1970 when she concluded her final use as the MSTS-manned aircraft ferry, USNS Croatan (AKV-43) carrying hundreds of Army helicopters to Vietnam.

Warship Wednesday, July 12, 2023: Mr. Gallatin’s Shallow Water Angel

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

Warship Wednesday, July 12, 2023: Mr. Gallatin’s Shallow Water Angel

Halftone photo from “War in Cuba,” 1898. Official U.S. Navy Photograph. NH 191

Above we see the fine Harlan & Hollingsworth-built schooner-rigged steam yacht Almy, with her summer of 1898 warpaint on, as the gunboat USS Eagle during the Spanish-American War. Late of the New York Yacht Club and rushed into naval service, she won what would turn out to be an unexpected victory over the much larger and better-armed Compañía Trasatlántica Española (CTE) steamer Santo Domingo some 125 years ago today.

Fine lines and good bones

In addition to making steam engines and railcars, Wilmington’s Harlan & Hollingsworth were one of the earliest iron shipbuilders. Constructing 347 hulls between 1844 and 1904 when they were acquired by Bethlehem Steel, besides their bread and butter fare like barges, ferries, and tugs, they also won a few Navy contracts (the monitors USS Patapsco, Napa, Saugus, and Amphitrite; the sloop USS Ranger, destroyers USS Hopkins and Hull, and torpedo boat USS Stringham).

Starting in the 1870s, they began a string of more than 30 fine hermaphrodite steam yachts including Dr. William Seward Webb’s Elfrida, William Astor’s Nourmahal, H W Putnam’s Ariadne, W. K. Vanderbilt’s Alva, Cass Canfield’s magnificent Sea Fox, Florida shipping magnate H. M. Flagler’s Alicia, and William DuPont’s Au Revoir.

Another of these yachts was contracted from H&H by New York attorney Frederick Gallatin. A resident of 650 Fifth Avenue (now a 36-story office tower adjacent to Rockefeller Center), he was a grandson of early Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin and from old Hamptons money. Married to Almy Goelet Gerry (daughter of Tammany Hall “Commodore” Elbridge Thomas Gerry, with the title coming as head of the NYC Yacht Club) it was only logical that Gallatin would order a yacht from H&H named for Almy.

Hull No. 256 was 177 feet long overall with a 24-foot beam, she had a nice stiletto-like 7.5:1 length-to-beam ratio and had a draft of just 7 feet with a 14-foot depth of hold. Powered by a single-ended cylindrical boiler pushing a T.3 Cy (18″,23″ & 42-33″) steam engine with a nominal 101 NHP (850ihp) venting through a single stack, she had an auxiliary two-mast sail rig and was good for a stately 12 knots although on her trials she made 15.5 knots. Coal stowage was 85 tons.

View of the engine room, of USS Eagle, built as yacht Almy, at Portsmouth Navy Yard, N.H. 31 August 1916. Note the builder’s plaque on the bulkhead and disassembled engine parts on the deck. NH 54333

Steel-hulled with a 364 GRT displacement, she carried electrical lighting in every compartment as well as topside and was reportedly very well-appointed. Her normal crew, as a yacht, was four officers and 20 mariners.

Delivered to Gallatin in August 1890– just in time to catch the end of “the season”– the New York Times mentioned Almy in its yachting news columns more than a dozen times in the next eight years including one mention in 1895 of an epic blue fishing trip to Plum Gut where “he landed some of the finest fish captured this season.”

Typically, Gallatin would ply her during the summer and, every October, send her back down to winter at the builder’s yard where she would be drydocked and freshly painted every spring, ready to do it all again.

Then came war

As part of the general rush to avenge the lost USS Maine on 15 February, the scions of the NY Yacht Club soon offered up their yachts to be converted to fast dispatch boats and scouts. Ultimately, the Navy bought no less than 28 large yachts, including 13 that topped 400 tons, in addition to almost 70 other auxiliaries for support duties to the fleet.

Several yachts took part in fights with Spanish forces including three, USS Gloucester, Hist, and Vixen, which were present during the Battle of Santiago. Among the former NYYC H&H-built yachts that went to the Navy for the war with Spain were Flagler’s Alicia (renamed USS Hornet after purchase for $117,500) and Dr. Webb’s Elfrida (which was taken in service as USS Elfrida for $50,000).

The 28 yachts converted to armed auxiliaries in 1898. Via The Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, Vol. VI, 1898, click to big up.

While negotiations continued with a Navy purchasing agent, Gallatin allowed Almy to go to the Brooklyn Navy Yard on 26 March to begin her conversion to an armed picket ship. Eventually, he let Almy go for $110,000 on 2 April 1898 and the Navy renamed her USS Eagle, the fourth such vessel to carry that name.

Given a coat of dark paint and armed with a quartet of 6-pounder 57mm deck guns (two forward, two aft) and two Colt machine guns forward of the deck house, her early admission to BNY allowed her to be commissioned three days later under the command of LT William Henry Hudson Southerland (USNA 1872).

Other changes from her civilian life, as detailed by The Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, Vol. VI, 1898, included:

  • Magazines for supplying ammunition to the above battery were built under berth deck, just forward of the fireroom bulkhead, with ammunition cranes to the hatches, directly over.
  • Steel plating 7/8 inch thick and 8 feet wide was worked on outside of the vessel for the length of the engine and boiler space.
  • Her foremast was cut down and made a signal mast, while the mainmast and fittings were entirely removed.
  • The ornate dining room was cleaned out and fitted up as crew space while extensive wood and brass works were removed.
  • The vessel was drydocked, cleaned, and painted throughout. All plumbing, drainage system, and auxiliaries were overhauled and put in order. The entire exterior of the vessel, including spars and metal deck fittings, was thickly painted a “lead color.”

She carried 75 men to war, drawn largely from the Naval Militia, when she left New York on 17 April headed for duty with the North Atlantic Squadron on blockade and dispatch duty in Cuban waters. She was at sea when war was declared on 25 April.

By 28 April, Eagle, along with the gunboat USS Nashville and the Montgomery-class unprotected cruiser USS Marblehead, established a blockade off Cienfuegos. The next morning, Nashville seized the Spanish steamer Argonauta which had Col. Corijo of the Third Cavalry Regiment (Regimiento de Caballería “Montesa” N.º 3) and 19 men of its headquarters troop aboard. This sparked a 25-minute naval gunfire duel between Eagle and Montgomery versus three Spanish torpedo boats coming out of the river to contest the affair under cover from a shore battery.

Southerland reported to RADM William T. Sampson that Eagle fired 59 rounds of No.4 shell in the engagement and suffered no casualties, although, ” Two of the enemies shot passed close over this vessel, another close astern, and another within a few feet of the bowsprit.”

On 29 June, Eagle shelled the Spanish battery at Rio Honda, showing that, while her little six-pounders were small, they could still breathe fire.

On 5 July, while Eagle was on the blockading route in the vicinity of the Isle of Pines, she sighted the provision-laden Spanish schooner Gallito five miles to the South and immediately gave chase.

As detailed by James Otis in “The Boys of ’98”:

The schooner ran in until about a quarter of a mile from the shore, when she dropped her anchor, and those aboard slipped over her side and swam ashore. Ensign J. H. Roys and a crew of eight men from the Eagle were sent in a small boat to board the schooner. They found her deserted, and while examining her were fired upon by her crew from the beach. Several rifle shots went through the schooner’s sails, but no one was injured. The Eagle drew closer in and sent half a dozen shots toward the beach from her 6-pounders, whereupon the Spaniards disappeared. The Gallito was taken into Key West.

A week later, on 12 July, Eagle came across her biggest prize yet. The Govan-built iron-hulled CTE screw steamer Santo Domingo, some 344 feet in length. Formerly the D. Currie & Co’s Dublin Castle (which carried British troops during the Zulu War), she had been sold in 1883 to Spanish interests and by 1886 was sailing for CTE on a regular Havana to New York service.

Santo Domingo

Otis describes the event:

The auxiliary gunboat Eagle sighted the Spanish steamer Santo Domingo, fifty-five hundred tons, aground near the Cuban coast, off Cape Francis, and opened fire with her 6-pounders, sending seventy shots at her, nearly all of which took effect.

While this was going on, another steamer came out of the bay and took off the officers and crew of the Santo Domingo. When the men from the Eagle boarded the latter, they found that she carried two 5-inch and two 12-pounder guns, the latter being loaded and her magazines open. The steamer had been drawing twenty-four feet of water and had gone aground in twenty feet.

The men from the Eagle decided that the steamer could not be floated, and she was set on fire after fifty head of cattle, which were on board, had been shot.

The Santo Domingo carried a large cargo of grain, corn, etc. While the steamer was burning, the vessel which had previously taken off the crew emerged from the bay and tried to get off some of the cargo, but failed. The Spanish steamer burned for three days and was totally destroyed.

It made big news back home.

On 30 July, Eagle supported the gunboat USS Bancroft with the seizure (twice) of a small Spanish schooner in Sigunea Bay. I say twice because, once taken by two rifle-armed sailors from Bancroft’s steam launch and tied near the wreckage of Santo Domingo devoid of crew, the Spanish promptly sailed out in two small boats to reclaim her, an event that ended with Eagle and Bancroft, by this time joined by the gunboat USS Maple, in a chase and possession of all three small enemy vessels.

Hostilities ceased on 13 August, capping the 16-week conflict. 

Continued peacetime service

Post-war, Eagle was painted white, two of her four 6-pounders landed, and she was retained for survey work, a role she was suited for with her extremely shallow 7-foot draft. She then spent much of the next two decades working to compile new charts and corrected existing ones for the waters surrounding Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Haiti– all central to American interests. In this task, she typically had a team of civilian engineers and surveyors aboard.

USS Eagle (1898) at anchor off Norfolk, VA. Jan. 19, 1899. UA 461.33 Henry Bundy Collection

As detailed by DANFS:

Troubled conditions throughout the Caribbean often interrupted Eagle’s surveying duty and she gave varied service in protecting American interests.

She patrolled off Haiti in January and February 1908 and again in November and December and off Nicaragua in December 1909.

In June 1912 she transported Marines to Santiago de Cuba and Siboney to protect American lives and property during a rebellion in Cuba and continued to investigate conditions and serve as base ship for the Marines until 1914.

She also had gunboat duty with a cruiser squadron during the Haiti operation of July 1915 to March 1916 and was commended by the Secretary of the Navy for her creditable performance of widely varied duty. 

She then headed back home for a much-needed dry docking and overhaul.

In dry dock at the Portsmouth Navy Yard, N.H. in September 1916. Note bt this time she had her second mast reinstalled. NH 54334

Then came another war

Eagle as she appeared in early 1917. NH 64949

Once America entered the Great War, Eagle returned to Cuban waters as part of the American Patrol Detachment, Atlantic Fleet, and throughout 1917 and 1918 was continually on patrol off Cuba and the southern coast of the U.S. This was while the Ford-built “Eagle boats” were being cranked out in Detroit.

Eagle in Havana Harbor, Cuba, October 1917 NH 54335

At one point, Eagle was detailed to protect an American-owned sugar mill at Manati, Cuba, in early 1917, and did so by putting ashore a modest landing force including hauling one of the ship’s 6-pounders and machine guns ashore– half her armament. It was thought the mill would be an easy target for a German U-boat. A machinist’s mate among the crew, John G. Krieger, had a small portable camera and captured a great array of snapshots during this period.

Men from the Eagle with a mail bag and flag, at Manati, Cuba, in 1917, when the ship’s crew was protecting a local sugar mill. Note the sailors’ crackerjacks are whites that have been “tanned” via the use of coffee grounds. The officer is Ensign Hubert Esterly Paddock, who was with Eagle as Surveying Officer. The donor comments that Paddock surveyed with a motorboat and took regular watches at sea. Of note, Paddock would go on to command the destroyer tender USS Dobbin (AD 3) in WWII and retire post-war, passing in 1980, one of the last U.S. Navy officers left from the Great War. Photographed by John G. Krieger. NH 64955

Mounted Guard furnished by USS Eagle to protect a sugar mill at Manati, Cuba in 1917, shortly after the U.S. entered World War I. Note the motley uniforms and M1903 Springfields. The officer is the ship’s XO, LT (JG) Jerome A. Lee, a skilled electrician who had served on Arctic expeditions before his time on Eagle and would continue to serve through WWII. Photographed by Mr. John G. Krieger. NH 64957

Ford Automobile armed with a Colt M1895 “potato digger” machine gun complete with AAA shoulder rests, staffed by members of the Eagle’s crew, who were guarding a sugar mill at Manati, Cuba, shortly after the U.S. entered World War I. Photographed by Mr. John G. Krieger. NH 64958

Eagle crew members with machine gun-equipped “Gas Car” railway work wagon, assigned to the protection of a sugar mill at Manati, Cuba, in 1917. Photographed by Mr. John G. Krieger and donated by him in 1966-67. NH 64959

A six-pounder gun mounted in a tower at Manati, Cuba, in 1917 by Eagle’s crew. Photographed by Mr. John G. Krieger. NH 64960

Her 1916-17 skipper, LT Henry Kent Hewitt (USNA 1906), seen ashore on service in Cuba with Eagle’s landing party and on the bridge of his gunboat. He would go on to earn a Navy Cross commanding the destroyer USS Cummings escorting Atlantic convoys in 1918 and command the amphibious landing forces for the Torch, Husky, and Dragoon Landings in WWII. After chairing a post-war Pearl Harbor investigation, he would retire as a full admiral. The Spruance class destroyer USS Hewitt (DD-966) was named in his honor, christened at Pascagoula by his daughters. Photographed by Mr. John G. Krieger. NH 64953/64952

The entire landing party, about 40 strong– half the crew– posed for Krieger. NH 64956

Eagle in the Ozama River, Santo Domingo, in July 1917. U.S. Navy Coal Barges Nos. 300 and 301 are in the foreground. NH 64948

Post-war, with that Navy no longer needing a 30-year-old converted yacht with a pair of 6-pounders, Eagle was detached from her southern climes and ordered to Portsmouth Navy Yard in April 1919 to pay off, being decommissioned there on 23 May 1919.

Epilogue

Disarmed and sold by the Navy on 3 January 1920, the former pride of the NYC Yacht Club soon appeared as the tramp coaster Reina Victoria owned by one M.F. Kafailovich, sailing out of Santiago de Cuba.

She was listed in Lloyds as such from 1921 to 1927 and then disappeared.

Her final fate is not known.

As far as relics from Eagle, I can’t find any that exist other than the pennant and ensign of the Santo Domingo which were installed among the 600 banners installed in the United States Navy Trophy Flag Collection in 1913.

Gallatin? His dear Almy passed in 1917 and their $7 million estate was subsequently divided among their six adult children. After this, he withdrew to the Hotel Plaza where he passed in 1927, aged 86. His NYT obit memorialized him by saying “he was well known as a yachtsman.”

Eagle’s Span-Am War skipper, LT William Henry Hudson Southerland, would go on to serve as hydrographer of the Navy from 1901 to 1904, commanding the gunboat USS Yankee as well as the battleship New Jersey (BB-16), taking part in the Great White Fleet’s circumnavigation. Appointed rear admiral in 1910, he later became commander of the Pacific Fleet and was the final Civil War naval veteran (he was a 12-year-old powder monkey in 1865 before becoming a naval apprentice and attending Annapolis) still in active service.

Captain William H. H. Southerland, USN. A circa 1907 photograph was taken at the time he served as Commanding Officer of New Jersey (BB-16). NH 45029

RADM Southerland retired in early 1914 after 49 years of service, just missing the Great War, and passed in 1933. The Allen M. Sumner– class destroyer USS Southerland (DD-743) was named in his honor.

Curiously, other than a WWII Q-ship, USS Eagle (AM-132), which was quickly renamed USS Captor during her construction, the Navy has not elected to use further use the name USS Eagle.

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!

First of Ford’s Subusters Hits the Water

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Here we see, 105 years ago today, “Patrol Eagle (PE) Boat #1” ready to be Launched at the Ford River Rouge Plant, on the outskirts of Detroit, 11 July 1918. The vessel is seen sliding bow-first from the mammoth construction that was “Building B,” which was considered a temporary structure at the time

Ford Motor Company. Photographic Department. From the Collections of The Henry Ford. THF97490

And there she goes…THF270203

During World War I, Ford built “Eagle” anti-submarine patrol boats at a new plant on the Rouge River. Ford assembled the boats using the same mass-production assembly-line techniques it perfected for its automobiles. The launching of the first Eagle, above, was cause for celebration.

The Rouge Plant consisted of a 1,700-foot assembly line that would spit out a 200-foot patrol boat at the end, ready to take on the Kaiser’s undersea pirates. When fully operational, it could do so at a rate of 25 vessels a month. It was initially thought that 125 Eagles would be a good number to start with.

During World War I, Ford Motor Company built “Eagle” anti-submarine patrol boats for the U.S. Navy. Henry Ford called on industrial architect Albert Kahn to design the Eagle factory, located at the mouth of the Rouge River. Kahn created three principal structures: a fabricating shop, a main assembly building, and a fit-out shop. Via the Henry Ford Museum

Eagle No. 1 had her keel laid on 7 May 1918, was launched on 11 July, and was commissioned on 27 October, a span of 173 days. This rate never really shortened, and, by Eagle No. 11, which was completed post-war, was stretching well over a year. 

Inside Building B at Rouge. Construction of Ford Eagle Boats (200′ Patrol Boats #1 to 60) Ford Motor Company, Detroit, Michigan. March 29, 1918. NH 112098

Ford Built Eagle Boat No 1 via Hampton Roads Naval Museum

Ford Built Eagle Boat No 1 via Hampton Roads Naval Museum

These boats had a solid cement bow, specially built for ramming and sinking submarines– a popular early Great War ASW practice. They were equipped with 4-inch guns on the bow and stern and also carried depth charges and primitive sound gear. Here, class leader, USS PE-1. NH 85434

Ford Built Eagle Boat No 1 via Hampton Roads Naval Museum

Note the depth charge stern racks and projectors. Via Hampton Roads Naval Museum

Ford Built Eagle Boat No 1 via Hampton Roads Naval Museum

However, the war ended four months later, before any of the boats saw combat, and, in the end, just 60 were built. Only the first three were in commission on Armistice Day. 

Downright ugly and generally seen as being unsuccessful due to poor speed and range, they were largely disposed of by the early 1930s without ever firing a shot, although eight survived long enough to see limited CONUS WWII service. It was in that later conflict that one, PE-56, was sunk on 23 April 1945 by the German submarine U-853 off Portland, Maine just two weeks before VE Day. 

Meanwhile, after Eagle production ended, Ford exercised its option to buy the production “B” Building from the federal government, which postwar became the core of Ford’s Rouge factory complex. It was from that building that “everything from Model As to Mustangs” were made. It remained in use until 2004.

The Ford has an extensive online resource on the Eagles.

Incident #3658

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80 Years ago today: Attack on the Type VIIC German submarine, U-134 (Kptlt. Hans-Günther Brosin), by a PBM Mariner of the “Flying Tigers” of VP-201, lat 27-04W, Long 59-48W, the pilot was LT John T. Hitchcock– a gunfighter’s name– in incident #3658, on 8 July 1943.

U.S. Navy photo in the National Archives. 80-G-205264

The U-boat survived this attack, along with three others on 18 and 19 July and 21 August. U-134 notably knocked USN Blimp K-74 (Sqdn ZP 21) from the sky on the 18 July encounter– the only airship shot down during WWII.

U-134 finally met her match on 27 August 1943 in the Bay of Biscay north of Cape Ortegal, in position 44.03N, 08.05W, by depth charges from the British frigate HMS Rother. (Axel Niestlé & Eric Zimmerman, July 2004).

All hands were lost, with Brosin and his 47 tough-to-kill members of the Ubootwaffe, still on patrol.

The pilot of the lumbering flying boat in the image above, LT Hitchcock, would become an anthropologist and college professor of some note after the war, hanging up his guns so to speak.

As for VP-201, it was redesignated VPB-201 on 1 October 1944, then on 15 May 1946 to VP-MS-1, then to VP-ML-8 the next year when they converted to the new P2V Neptune, and finally Patrol Squadron (VP) 8 on 1 September 1948, later becoming the first squadron to field the P-3 Orion. The Flying Tigers are still around, based at Jacksonville as part of AIRLANT. These days they fly the P-8A Poseidon.

Warship Wednesday, June 28, 2023: A 22,000-Yard Fish and a One-Man Army

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

Warship Wednesday, June 28, 2023: A 22,000-Yard Fish and a One-Man Army

Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-52931

Above we see the Fletcher-class destroyer USS Strong (DD-467) as she highlines mail to the light cruiser USS Honolulu (CL-48) during operations in the Solomon Islands area, circa early July 1943. Our fighting tin can had the misfortune of being lost to what is credited as the longest-range torpedo hit in military history some 80 years ago today, 5 July 1943. A war baby, she had only been in service for 332 days.

Fletcher class background

The Fletchers were the WWII equivalent of the Burke class, constructed in a massive 175-strong class from 11 builders that proved the backbone of the fleet for generations. Coming after the interwar “treaty” destroyers such as the Benson- and Gleaves classes, they were good-sized (376 feet oal, 2,500 tons full load, 5×5″ guns, 10 torpedo tubes) and could have passed as unprotected cruisers in 1914. Powered by a quartet of oil-fired Babcock & Wilcox boilers and two Westinghouse or GE steam turbines, they had 60,000 shp on tap– half of what today’s Burkes have on a hull 25 percent as heavy– enabling them to reach 38 knots, a speed that is still fast for destroyers today.

USS John Rodgers (DD 574) at Charleston, 28 April 1943. A great example of the Fletcher class in their wartime configuration. Note the five 5″/38 mounts and twin sets of 5-pack torpedo tubes.

LCDR Fred Edwards, Destroyer Type Desk, Bureau of Ships, famously said of the class, “I always felt it was the Fletcher class that won the war . . .they were the heart and soul of the small-ship Navy.”

Meet USS Strong

Our vessel was the first named in honor of naval hero James Hooker Strong. A New Yorker who was appointed midshipman in 1829 at age 14, he learned his trade fighting buccaneers while with the Brazil Squadron and spent long years on the Mediterranean and East India Squadrons. Commander of the steamer Mohawk when the Civil War began, by 1863 he was skipper of the steam sloop USS Monongahela as part of the Western Gulf Blockading Squadron. Under Farragut, he sailed Monongahela into the heart of the Confederate stronghold of Mobile Bay and his ship was the first to engage the fearsome rebel ironclad CSS Tennessee.

RADM James Hooker Strong, a hero of the Battle of Mobile Bay, retired from the Navy in 1876 completing a 48-year career. He passed away in 1882. The photo above shows him with a special sword awarded by Congress for the Battle of Mobile Bay.

The first USS Strong (DD-467) was laid down on 30 April 1941 at Bath Iron Works in Maine. Launched on 17 May 1942, sponsored by Mrs. Susan H. Olsen, the great-grandniece of the late RADM James Hooker Strong, and commissioned at the Boston Navy Yard on 7 August 1942, her construction took just under 16 months.

Her first and only skipper was CDR Joseph Harold Wellings (USNA ’25)

Strong Fitting Out 190225-N-ZV259-0183

USS Strong (DD-467). Heavily retouched copy of a photograph taken circa the later part of 1942. The retouching, which includes the land in the distance and the ship from the forward smokestack to the top of the pilothouse, was mainly done for censorship purposes, to eliminate radar antennas from the ship’s gun director and foremast. NH 97883

After a quick shakedown in the Casco Bay area and along the East Coast– which included active screening escort missions for the battleship USS Massachusetts— by October Strong was tagging along on convoys in the Caribbean and, by November, she was part of Convoy UGS-2 steering a course for North Africa to take part in the Torch landings.

Returning to New York on westbound Convoy GUF-2, she would sail two days after Christmas 1942 as part of Task Force 39, bound for Nouméa in Free French New Caledonia, the staging area for the push into Guadalcanal and the Solomons.

Strong at the New York Navy Yard three days before Christmas of 1942, Mt. 51, and Mt. 52 of her main battery are prominent in the foreground. Parenthetical numbers refer to recent modifications: (1) the raised platform and foundation for a 20-millimeter Oerlikon on the centerline aft of Mt. 52; (2) the large-type BL radar antennae; and (3) the relocated groups of vertical fighting lights. (U.S. Navy Bureau of Ships Photograph BS-40290, National Archives, and Records Administration, Still Pictures Division, College Park, Md.)

USS Conyngham (DD-371) At Espiritu Santo, New Hebrides, 15 February 1943. The destroyer in the right background appears to be USS Strong (DD-467). 80-G-38661

By March 1943, Strong, along with sisters USS Nicholas, Radford, and Taylor, as part of TG 18.6, was delivering 5-inch shells on the roofs of Japanese shore installations in late-night raids of Kolombangara Island.

Strong delivered 368 shells in that raid, all fired in just under 10 minutes.

Via her report “USS STRONG – Act Rep, Bombardment of Vila-Stanmore, 3/15-16/43” in the National Archives.

On the night of 7 April, while screening the cruiser Task Force 18 off San Cristobal Island, Strong came across one of the Emperor’s submarines, RO-34.

Via DANFS:

Strong’s searchlight revealed the presence of what proved to be RO-34 (Lt. Cmdr. Tomita Rikichi). Strong opened fire with her main battery and machine guns — expending ten 5-inch/38 rounds, 98 40-millimeter rounds, and 288 20-millimeter rounds. The destroyer reported that she struck the submarine three times with her 5-inch fire. During the barrage, RO-34 dove into the sea, down by the stern.

Strong circled RO-34’s location and dropped ten Mk. 6 depth charges and six Mk. 7 depth charges, to ensure RO-34’s journey to the bottom. Before she returned to the task force, Strong observed debris from RO-34 on the surface at 10°05’S, 162°08’E, and she was later credited with the sinking. After the war Japanese records indicated that RO-34 was given orders on 16 April to return to Rabaul, New Britain, which went unanswered, leading to the presumption that she was lost with all 66 souls on board.

USS Strong coming alongside, 1943. Note the highline.

May found Strong, as part of her task force, returning to her late-night NGFS raids of Japanese positions at Kolombangara, Enogai Inlet, and Rice Anchorage. She expended 815 rounds of 5-inch shells and, while retiring the next morning, popped off another five shells at interloping Japanese aircraft.

Speaking of aircraft, by 16 June, Strong, steaming with Nicholas (DD-449) and the oiler Monongahela (ironically), encountered a wave of 15 Val bombers joined by another half dozen Zekes. In the fight, all three American ships made it safely out of it while Strong, reportedly firing 194 5-inch, 750 40mm Bofors shells, and 980 20mm shells in just seven mad minutes, splashed three aircraft.

With an active career that saw her sink a submarine, shoot down a trio of incoming bombers, and hit enemy positions with almost 1,200 shells inside a span of just four months– all without any losses or damage of her own– Strong was in for a harsh meeting with fate.

Battle of Kula Gulf

On the night of 4/5 July, Strong, in company with three cruisers and four destroyers, was headed back to Kolombangara for another nighttime gun raid. As the second ship in the column behind USS Nicholas, Strong steamed into the Kul Gulf just after midnight on the 5th and plastered Japanese positions on Kolombangara Island, then around the Bairoko Inlet on New Georgia Island.

At 0043, she was struck by a torpedo that detonated on the port side of the forward fireroom at about frame 90.

The damage was catastrophic.

Via Destroyer Report: Torpedo and Mine Damage and Loss in Action: 17 October 1941 to 7 December 1944

While the cruisers moved off, with Nicholas as a screen, the destroyers USS Chevalier and O’Bannon moved in to assist Strong with rescue operations. All during the rescue, Japanese 140mm guns at Enogai Inlet kept firing star shells and AP rounds, some of which landed awfully close including both “shorts and overs.” Chevalier came alongside and managed to take off about three-quarters of the ship’s company before Strong’s depth charges exploded, wrecking Chevalier’s radars and sound gear.

USS Chevalier (DD-451) Moored to the Government Wharf, Tulagi, Solomon Islands, 6 July 1943. Her bow was damaged while rescuing the crew of the sinking USS Strong (DD-467) during the 5 July 1943 Battle of Kula Gulf, and her 5/58 gun mount # 3 shows the effects of a hang-fire, explosion, and fire immediately after that rescue was completed. Courtesy of Rick E. Davis, 2012. This is a cleaned version of National Archives’ Photo # 80-G-259220.

From Strong’s loss report.

Through the courageous actions of the men of the USS Chevalier, most of Strong’s crew was safely taken aboard before the destroyer sank. Some 46 of her 325-man complement were listed as missing including several last seen “floating on a raft in the Kula Gulf.”

One of those considered MIA was LT Hugh Barr Miller Jr., USNR.

A standout of the Alabama football team, Miller was with the Crimson Tide when they won the national championship at the Rose Bowl in 1931 with a 24-0 shutout of Washington State. Old “Rose Bowl” Miller went on to become a southern lawyer who volunteered for the Navy in 1941 and, eschewing JAG work for surface warfare, was assigned to Strong as the destroyer’s 20mm and stores officer.

Making it to nearby Japanese-held Arundel Island, Miller survived there for 39 days, alternatively fighting, and coming on top in lop-sided battles against malnutrition, dehydration, and Japanese troops before he was recovered. 190225-N-ZV259-0184

Strong received three battle stars for her short but spectacular service in World War II,

Epilogue

There is a Project USS Strong DD-467 webpage and, as noted above, most of her reports are in the National Archives.

Post-war, it was established that Strong was likely holed by a Type 93 Long Lance torpedo from the Japanese Akizuki-class destroyer Niizuki, fired from no less than 11 nautical miles. If true, it is the longest confirmed wartime torpedo hit on record. Fittingly, Niizuki was sunk the next night in a clash with American surface ships.

Niizuki’s wreck was discovered by RV Petrel in January 2019. She sits upright in 2,444 feet of water and is heavily damaged. A month later, Petrel came across the shattered wreck of Strong in 980 feet of water.

CDR Joseph H. Wellings, Strong’s only commander, would earn the Bronze Star Medal, with Combat Distinguishing Device “V” and the Silver Star Medal for the destruction of the submarine RO-34 and the destroyer’s other actions. Following the sinking of the Strong, he was hospitalized until January 1944, then went on to command DESRON TWO for which he earned a Gold Star in lieu of the Second Bronze Star Medal, with Combat “V” for actions in the Philippines in early 1945. Post-war, he would command the cruiser USS Columbus (CA 74) and hold a series of senior appointments, retiring as a rear admiral in 1963. Admiral Wellings died on March 31, 1988. His papers take up 32 boxes in the U.S. Naval War College Archives.

As for “Rose Bowl” Miller, the hard-to-kill lieutenant was awarded the Navy Cross, two Silver Stars, six Bronze Stars, two Purple Hearts, and 27 other individual and unit decorations.

Miller was awarded the Navy Cross, personally bestowed on him by Eleanor Roosevelt, seen here in a Red Cross uniform, who was on a Pacific swing with the American Red Cross. Note Halsey looking on. 190225-N-ZV259-0185

Miller’s story was dramatized by the Navy in his lifetime, a real “One-Man Army”:

And he appeared on an episode of This is Your Life, hosted by Ronald Reagan.

Miller retired as a Navy Captain before passing away in 1978.

As for Strong’s Fletcher-class sisters, 24 were sunk or evaluated as constructive total losses during WWII including Strong’s companion Chevalier, which was scuttled after being torpedoed by a Japanese destroyer during the Battle of Vella Lavella, 6 October 1943. These ships were sent into harm’s way. 

The rest of her surviving sisters were widely discarded in the Cold War era by the Navy, who had long prior replaced them with more modern destroyers and Knox-class escorts. Those that had not been sent overseas as military aid were promptly sent to the breakers or disposed of in weapon tests. The class that had faced off with the last blossom of Japan’s wartime aviators helped prove the use of just about every anti-ship/tactical strike weapon used by NATO in the Cold War including Harpoon, Exocet, Sea Skua, Bullpup, Walleye, submarine-launched Tomahawk, and even at least one Sidewinder used in surface attack mode. In 1997, SEALS sank the ex-USS Stoddard (DD-566) via assorted combat-diver delivered ordnance. The final Fletcher in use around the globe, Mexico’s Cuitlahuac, ex-USS John Rodgers (DD 574), was laid up in 2001 and dismantled in 2011.

Today, four hard-charging Fletchers are on public display, three of which in the U.S– USS The Sullivans (DD-537) at Buffalo, USS Kidd (DD-661) at Baton Rouge, and USS Cassin Young (DD-793) at the Boston Navy Yard. Please try to visit them if possible. Kidd, the best preserved of the trio, was used extensively for the filming of the Tom Hanks film, Greyhound.

The name USS Strong was recycled during the war for a new Allen M. Sumner-class destroyer (DD-758) laid down on 25 July 1943 by Bethlehem Steel Co., San Francisco. Commissioned on 8 March 1945, she made it to the Japanese Home Islands just in time for VJ-Day. She would then be highly active in the Korean War, conducting gun strikes up and down the peninsula, and then go on to conduct gunline conducting harassment and interdiction missions against North Vietnamese water-borne logistic craft in the 1960s.

USS Strong (DD-758) underway off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii on 21 May 1968. Photographer: PHCM Louis P. Bodine. Official U.S. Navy Photograph NH 107152

This second Strong received one battle star for Korean service and three battle stars for service in Vietnam before she was decommissioned and struck from the Navy list on Halloween 1973, transferred to Brazil for further service before being lost at sea while headed to the breakers in 1997.

With that, both USS Strongs rest on the sea floor.

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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Warship Wednesday, June 28, 2023: The Tsar’s Jutland Veteran

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

Warship Wednesday, June 28, 2023: The Tsar’s Jutland Veteran

Archivio Centrale dello Stato

Above we see the Italian light cruiser Bari moored at Patras in Axis-occupied Greece in May 1941. Note her laundry out to dry, her 5.9-inch guns trained to starboard, and her crew assembled on the bow with the band playing. A ship with a strange history, a wandering tale, she was lost some 80 years ago today.

The Muravyov-Amurskiy class

No fleet in military history was in desperate need of a refresh as the Imperial Russian Navy in the 1910s. Having lost 17 battleships (depending on how you classify them), 13 cruisers, 30 Destroyers, and a host of auxiliaries to the Japanese in 1904-1905, the Russians were left with virtually no modern combat ships except those bottled up in the Black Sea by the Ottomans. Also, with lessons learned from the naval clashes, it was clear the way of the future was dreadnoughts, bigger destroyers, and fast cruisers.

To fix this, the Russian Admiralty soon embarked on a plan to build eight very modern 25,000-ton Gangut, Imperatritsa Mariya, and Imperator Nikolai I-class battleships augmented by a quartet of massive 32,000-ton Borodino-class battlecruisers. With the age of the lumbering armored cruiser over, the Russians went with a planned eight-pack of fast new protected cruisers of the Svetlana and Admiral Nakhimov classes (7,000 tons, 30 knots, 15 5.1-inch guns, 2 x torpedo tubes, up to 3 inches of armor) as companions for the new battle wagons.

And, with Russia all but writing off its larger Pacific endeavors, eschewing rebuilding its former battle fleet there in favor of a much more modest “Siberian Military Flotilla” based out of often ice-bound Vladivostok and Petropavlovsk, the Tsar’s admirals deemed that just two light scouting cruisers were needed for overseas use in the Far East, typically to wave the flag, so to speak.

That’s where the Muravyov-Amurskiy class came in.

The two cruisers, at 4,500 tons displacement and 426 feet overall length, were generally just reduced versions of the Svetlana/Admiral Nakhimov classes being built in Russian yards already.

Planned to be armed with eight 5.1-inch guns and four torpedo tubes, they were turbine powered and expected to be fast– able to touch 35 knots at standard weight for short periods although published speeds were listed as 27.5 knots.

Mine rails over the stern allowed for up to 120 such devices to be quickly sown– a Russian specialty.

Their armor was thin, never topping three inches, and spotty with just a protective deck above machinery spaces, a protected conning tower, and 50mm gun shields.

Muravyov-Amursky class in 1914 Janes.

It should be noted the Russian cruisers feel very much like a follow-on to the experimental “cruiser corvette” SMS Gefion (4,275 t, 362 ft oal, 10 x 4-inch guns, 1-inch armor) that Schichau built at Danzig in the mid-1890s for overseas service. 
 

SMS Gefion, commissioned in 1895, would serve briefly in East Asia before she was laid up in 1901. After service as an accommodation hulk through the Great War, she was converted to use as a freighter, Adolf Sommerfeld, in 1920, only to be broken up a few years later.

The two new vessels were to be named after historic 19th Century Russian figures who had expanded the country’s reach towards the Pacific: General Count Nikolay Nikolayevich Muravyov-Amursky, a statesman who proposed abolishing serfdom; and Admiral Gennady Ivanovich Nevelskoy, a noted polar explorer.

General Muravyov-Amursky and Adm. Nevelskoy.

They were ordered in the summer of 1913 from F. Schichau’s Schiffswerft in Danzig, as yard numbers 893 and 894.

The choice to have a German firm build the new cruiser class wasn’t too unusual for the Tsarist fleet as the Russian cruiser Novik and four Kit-class destroyers was built at Schichau in the 1900s while Krupp delivered the early midget submarine Forel at about the same time. The Russian protected cruiser Askold, one of the most successful of her type, was built at Kiel by Germaniawerft while the cruiser Bogatyr was ordered from AG Vulcan’s Stettin shipyards, also in Germany.

Besides German orders and construction at domestic yards along both the Baltic and the Black Sea, the Russians also ordered warships and submarines from France, Britain, Denmark, and the U.S.– they needed the tonnage.

The planned future Muravyov-Amursky at Schichau-Werke, Danzig, on the occasion of her launch, 29 March 1914 (Old Style), 11 April (N.S.).

Ironically, this was at the same period that Russia’s primary military ally was France, whose principal threat was from Germany. However, most Russian Stavka strategists and statesmen of the era assumed that they would be far more likely to fight the Ottomans or Austrians– perhaps even the Swedes– long before the Germans.

Then came August 1914 and relations between Germany and Russia kind of took a turn.

Kreuzer Pillau

When Germany declared war on Imperial Russia, Muravyov-Amursky had been launched just four months prior and was fitting out with an expected delivery in the summer of 1915. Sistership Admiral Nevelskoy was still on the ways with her hull nearly complete. With the Kaiserliche Marine hungry for tonnage, they seized the two unfinished Russian cruisers and rushed them to completion.

Muravyov-Amursky was renamed after the East Prussian town of Pillau, and Nevelskoy after the West Prussian port city of Elbing. Muravyov-Amursky/Pillau was completed in December 1914 and Nevelskoy/Elbing was delivered the following September.

To keep them more in line with the rest of the German battleline, they were fitted with slightly larger (and better) 15 cm/45 (5.9″) SK L/45 guns, the same type used as secondary armament on German battleships and battlecruisers as well as later on most of their cruisers built during the Great War.

Pillau as seen during her German career. Courtesy of Master Sergeant Donald L.R. Shake, USAF, 1981. NHHC Catalog #: NH 92715

SMS Elbing of the Pillau class, circa 1915-16

SMS Pillau shortly after entering service, 1915

Pillau had her baptism of fire in the Battle of the Gulf of Riga in August 1915– ironically against the Russians– while Elbing took part in the bombardment of Yarmouth in April 1916. Both were assigned to the High Seas Fleet’s 2nd Scouting Group (II. Aufklärungsgruppe), commanded by Contre-Admiral Bödicker, and took a key role in the Battle of Jutland.

While Jutland is such a huge undertaking that I won’t even attempt to showcase it all in this post as I would never have the scope to do it properly, Elbing scored the first hit in the battle, landing a 5.9-inch shell against HMS Galatea from an impressive distance of about 13.000 m at 14.35 on 31 May. In the subsequent night action, she was accidentally rammed by the German dreadnought SMS Posen and had to be abandoned, with some of her crew saved by the destroyer S 53 and others landed on the Danish coast by a passing Dutch trawler.

As for Pillau, she was hit by a single large-caliber shell– a 12-incher from the battlecruiser HMS Inflexible— that left her damaged but still in the fight while she is credited with landing hits of her own on the cruiser HMS Chester. In all, Pillau had fired no less than 113 5.9-inch shells and launched a torpedo in the epic sea clash while suffering just four men killed and 23 wounded from her hit from Inflexible.

Her chart house blown to memories and half of her boilers out of action but still afloat, Pillau then served as the seeing eye dog for the severely damaged battlecruiser SMS Seydlitz— hit 21 times by heavy-caliber shells, twice by secondary battery shells, and once by a torpedo– on a slow limp back to Wilhelmshaven with the dreadnought’s bow nearly completely submerged.

German battlecruiser SMS Seydlitz, low in the water after Jutland. The image was likely taken from Pillau, who led her back to Wilhelmshaven from the battle

SMS Seydlitz after the Battle of Jutland, 1916. Amazingly, she only suffered 150 casualties during all that damage and would return to service by November– just six months later. Colorized photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/

Then, her work done, Pillau had to lick her wounds.

SMS Pillau in Wilhelmshaven showing heavy damage to her bridge, caused by a 12-in shell hit from the battlecruiser HMS Inflexible.

She only suffered 27 casualties at Jutland while her sister, Elbing, was lost.

The entry wound, so to speak

Repaired, Pillau took part in the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight on 17 November 1917 as well as other more minor operations before the end game in October 1918 in which her crewed mutinied and raised the red flag rather than head out in a last “ride of the Valkyries” suicide attack on the British Home Seas Fleet.

SMS Pillau passing astern of a ship of the line, winter 1917

SMS Pillau on patrol in Helgoland Bay, 1918 note AAA gun forward

Incrociatore Bari

Retained at Wilhelmshaven as part of the rump Provisional Realm Navy (Vorläufige Reichsmarine) under the aged VADM Adolf von Trotha while 74 ships of the High Seas Fleet surrendered to the British in November 1918 to comply with the Armistice, Pillau was saved from the later grand scuttling of that interned force seven months later at Scapa Flow.

The victorious allies, robbed of the choicest cuts of the German fleet, in turn, demanded Pillau be turned over for reparations along with a further nine surviving battleships, 15 cruisers, 59 destroyers, and 50 torpedo boats. Pillau was therefore steamed to Cherbourg and decommissioned by the Germans in June 1920.

It was decided that Pillau was to go to the Italians as a war prize, with the Regia Marina renaming her after the Adriatic port city of Bari in Italy’s Puglia region. The Italians also were to receive the surrendered German light cruisers SMS Graudenz and SMS Stassburg, the destroyer flotilla leader V.116, and the destroyers B.97 and S.63. Italy would further inherit a host of former Austrian vessels including the battleships Tegtthof, Zrinyi, and Radetzky; the cruisers Helgoland and Saida; and 15 destroyers.

The future light cruiser Bari seen in rough shape, with the provisional denomination “U” painted on her bow, right after being ceded to Italy, Taranto, 5 May 1921.

Embarrassingly, just after she entered service with the Italians, Bari ran aground at Terrasini and was stuck there for a week before being refloated.

Aerial photos of Bari stranded at Terrasini, 28 August 1925.

Still, she went on to have a useful and somewhat happy peacetime service with the Italian fleet.

L’incrociatore leggero Bari late 1920s a

L’incrociatore leggero Bari late 1920s

L’incrociatore leggero Bari late 1920s, seen from the port side.

Bari, fotografiado en Venecia en el año 1931

Italian cruiser Bari, in Venice in the early 1930s. Colorized by Postales Navales

Cruiser Bari (ex SMS Pillau ) in floating dock, 1930s

Italian light cruiser Bari (formerly the German SMS Pillau) moored at the pier in 1933

Italian Light Cruiser RM Bari pictured at Taranto c1929 

Bari would be extensively rebuilt in the early 1930s, including a new all-oil-fired engineering suite that almost doubled her range but dropped her top speed to 24 knots. This reconstruction included several topside changes to appearance as well as the addition of a few 13.2mm machine guns for AAA work.

Bari crosses the navigable canal of Taranto after the second round of modification works, circa 1933-40. Compare this to the postcard image shown above taken at the same angle and place that shows her mid-1920s appearance

Bari in the 1931 Janes Fighting Ships

She took part in the Ethiopian war in 1935 and would remain in the Red Sea as part of the Italian East African Naval Command well into May 1938. She then returned home for further modernization at Taranto in which her torpedo tubes were removed and a trio of Breda 20mm/65cal Mod. 1935 twin machine guns were installed and two twin 13.2/76 mm Breda Mod. 31s.

Bari, as covered by the U.S. Navy’s ONI 202, June 1943.

When Italy joined WWII, Bari was soon sent to join the invasion of Greece where she conducted minelaying and coastal bombing missions in the Adriatic and the Aegean. She served as the flagship of ADM Vittorio Tur’s Special Naval Force (Forza Navale Speciale, FNS), an amphibious group that was used to occupy the Ionian Islands including Corfu, Kefalonia, Santa Maura, Ithaca, and Zakynthos. She would also participate in naval gunfire bombardment operations on the coast of Montenegro and Greece against partisans and guerrillas.

Bari in Patras in occupied Greece, as the flagship of the Forza Navale Speciale, May 1941

Another shot from the same above.

Bari moored in Patras, around 18 June 1941, with the ensign of Ammiraglio Comandante Alberto Marenco di Moriondo aboard.

ADM Tur and the FNS, with Bari still as his flag, would go on to occupy the French island of Corsica in November 1942 during the implementation of Case Anton, the German-Italian occupation of Vichy France after the Allied Torch landings in North Africa.

Bari anchored at the breakwater of the harbor of Bastia, Corsica, on 11 November 1942, as the flagship of the Forza Navale Speciale that was then occupying the island after Operation Torch.

The cruiser in Bastia on November 11, 1942, during the Italian landings. Note the steel-helmeted blackshirt troops in the foreground

In January 1943, with the FNS disbanded and ADM Tur assigned to desk jobs, Bari retired to Livorno where she was to be fitted as a sort of floating anti-aircraft battery, her armament updated to include a mix of two dozen assorted 90mm, 37mm, and 20mm AAA guns.

This conversion was never completed.

On 28 June 1943, she was pummeled by B-17s of the 12th Air Force and sank in the industrial canal at Livorno, deemed a total loss.

From 10 June 1940 to the sinking, the Bari had conducted 47 war missions and steamed 6,800 nautical miles.

After the Italian armistice, the Germans attempted to salvage the cruiser for further use but in the end wound up scuttling it once more in 1944. Post-war, she was stricken from the Italian naval list in 1947 and raised for scrapping the following year.

Epilogue

Very few remnants of these cruisers endure.

A painting by German maritime artist Otto Poetzsch was turned into a series of widely circulated Deutsches Reich postcards, used to depict both Pillau and Elbing.

Elbing‘s wreck has been extensively surveyed and studied over the years and is generally considered to be in good shape after spending a century on the bottom of the Baltic. Besides her guns, she has china and glassware scattered around the hull.

The Russian scale model firm Combrig makes a 1/700 scale kit of Pillau.

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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She deserved better

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65 years ago today. The well-traveled Yorktown-class aircraft carrier, ex-USS Enterprise (CVS-6) awaiting disposal at the New York Naval Shipyard on 22 June 1958. She was sold for scrapping ten days later, on 2 July.

Official U.S. Navy Photograph. Catalog #: USN 1036995

The new Forrestal-class supercarrier USS Independence (CVA-62), almost twice as large by displacement, is fitting out on the opposite side of the pier. Ships visible in the left foreground include (from the front): the destroyer escorts USS DeLong (DE-684), USS Coates (DE-685), and the diesel fleet boat USS Hoe (SS-258). Ten other destroyers are also present, as is a Liberty-type ship. The Schaefer Brewery is visible in the center background.

The 7th U.S. Navy ship to bear the name, Enterprise was present and in the thick of it at Midway, the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, the Santa Cruz Islands, Guadalcanal, the Battle of the Philippine Sea, and the Leyte Gulf, winning 20 battlestars the hard way. From the period between USS Wasp‘s sinking on 15 September 1942 and USS Essex‘s entrance to the Pacific after rushed builder’s trials in May 1943, she and Saratoga, which earned 8 battlestars, were the only U.S. fleet carriers in the Pacific.

Decommissioned on 17 February 1947, the Big E was scrapped in 1958 though remnants of her have remained aboard both the 8th Enterprise (CVN-65) and the newest to carry the name, CVN-80.

Steel from CVN-65 will be recycled into the hull of the new USS Enterprise (CVN-80) as will the portholes from her Captain’s cabin (which were carried on CV-6 during WWII!) and her bell.

One of six porthole frames and covers removed from the bridge of USS Enterprise (CV-6) in 1958. These portholes were installed in the Captain’s cabin aboard USS Enterprise (CVN-65) and are slated to be installed aboard the next ship to bear the name of Enterprise, CVN-80.

One of six porthole frames and covers was removed from the bridge of USS Enterprise (CV-6) in 1958. These portholes were installed in the Captain’s cabin aboard USS Enterprise (CVN-65) and are slated to be installed aboard the next ship to bear the name of Enterprise, CVN-80.

 

Builders plaque from USS Enterprise (CV 6) at keel laying of CVN-80

Bomb and kamikaze fragments from USS Enterprise (CV 6) at keel laying of CVN-80

Welcome Back, Iowa

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The future USS Iowa (SSN 797) was officially christened by Christie Vilsack, the ship’s sponsor and former first lady of Iowa, during a ceremony at the Electric Boat shipyard facility in Groton, Connecticut last Saturday. She is the 23rd Virginia-class submarine and the 6th advanced Block IV boat of the class.

230617-N-UR986-0140 GROTON, Conn. (June 17, 2023) – Christie Vilsack, sponsor of the pre-commissioning unit (PCU) USS Iowa (SSN 797), christens the ship during a ceremony at General Dynamics Electric Boat shipyard facility in Groton, Connecticut , June 17, 2023. Iowa and crew will operate under Submarine Squadron (SUBRON) FOUR 

230617-N-UR986-0042 GROTON, Conn. (June 17, 2023) – The crew of the pre-commissioning unit (PCU) USS Iowa (SSN 797), stand in ranks next to their ship during a christening ceremony at General Dynamics Electric Boat shipyard facility in Groton, Connecticut, June 17, 2023. 

The future USS Iowa (SSN 797) is the fourth U.S. Navy vessel and first submarine named in recognition of the state. Previous ships named after the state were battleships, as well as, a converted merchant ship that was never activated.

Her crest includes BB-61, “The Grey Ghost” that I saw recommission in 1984 as an excited 10-year-old at Pascagoula– and accidentally bumped into then Veep George Bush in a passageway.

The final battleship Iowa decommissioned on 26 October 1990 and her name was stricken from the NVR on 17 March 2006, leaving an almost 16-year gap on the Navy List without the Hawkeye State.

Ironically, the first USS Iowa (Battleship No. 4) was launched on 16 June 1897– 126 years and one day prior.

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