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 (on a Thursday), Jan. 4, 2024: They Look Funny, But They Work
National Archives Photo 80-G-205356
Above we see a column of shorts and sandal-clad German and Italian EPOWs marching under naval guard in Recife, Brazil 80 years ago this week. They are the 133 waterlogged survivors from the armed and deadly blockade runner Westerland delivered to captivity from the ship that halted their run from the Pacific to Brest, the destroyer USS Somers (DD-381), seen on the pier at the right.
Besides Westerland, Somers had two other Axis blockade runners on her scoreboard by this point in the war and she had a lot of fight still to come.
The Somers class
The five Somers and their follow-on cousins of the Gridley (4 ships), Bagley (8), Benham (10), and Sims (12) classes were something of an evolutionary dead end for the American destroyer force. Sandwiched between the hundreds of four-pipers of the Great War, the more or less experimental two-stack Farragut (8) and Porter (8) classes of the early 1930s, and the twin pipers of the more mature and prolific wartime Benson (30), Gleaves (66), Fletcher (175), Sumner (58) and Gearing (98) classes, the Somers were members of the rare club that was single-stack American destroyers.
Designed as destroyer leaders (of which 13 were allowed under the London Naval Treaty) to host a commodore of a four-piper DESRON and make up for the American shortfall in light cruisers in the early 1930s, the Somers was essentially a repeat of the twin stack Porter destroyer leader design (381 feet oal, 1850 tons, 50,000shp, 37 knots, 8x 5-inch guns, 8x torpedo tubes) using the same hull and gun armament but with a more efficient engineering suite (trunked into a single stack) that generated 53,000 shp to allow for 38.6 knots on trials. The torpedo battery was likewise a little different, mounting a trio of quad 21-inch tubes to give a full dozen tubes by redesigning the superstructure instead of the eight tubes of the Porters. However, the Somers did not carry reloads while the Porters did, gambling on 12 ready fish rather than 8 in the tubes and 8 in the magazine.
A typical 1930s Porter:
The Porter class destroyer USS Balch (DD-363) underway, probably during trials in about September 1936. Note her superstructure including her large aft deck house, twin 4-tube torpedo turnstiles amidships, and twin funnels. NH 61694
Compare to a 1930s Somers, noting the different topside appearance to include three 4-tube torpedo turnstiles and a single funnel:
Somers class USS Jouett (DD 396), starboard view, at New York City 1939 NH 81177
Another thing that the Porters and Somers shared besides hulls was their peculiar Mark 22 mounts for their twin 5″/38 guns. These were limited elevation gun houses that relegated these rapid-fire guns to being capable of surface actions only.
As noted by Navweaps:
“Their low maximum elevation of +35 degrees of elevation was adopted mainly as a weight savings, as it was calculated that these ships would only be able to carry six DP guns rather than the eight SP guns that they actually did carry. The Mark 22 mounting used a 15 hp training motor and a 5 hp elevating motor.”
Check out those funky Mark 22 turrets! Somers-class sister USS Warrington (DD 383) arriving at New York City with Queen Mary and King George VI on board, 1939. Also, note a great view of her quad 1.1-inch AAA mount in front of the wheelhouse. LC-USZ62-120854
Most of the Porters and Somers would have their low-angle 4×2 Mark 22s replaced later in the war with 3×2 Mark 38 DP mounts, but we are getting ahead of ourselves.
Still, the Somers got their SP 5 inchers into the fight during the upcoming war, as we shall see.
As for AAA, the Somers as commissioned carried two “Chicago Piano” quad 1.1-inch mounts and a pair of flexible water-cooled .50 cals.
Official U.S. Navy photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 80-G-21955
Meet Somers
Our ship is the fifth named in honor of Lieutenant Richard Somers who joined the Navy as a mid at age 19 in 1798. After service during the Quasi-War with France on the frigate USS United States with Decatur, he later made a name for himself for fighting three duels in one day and was given command of the schooner USS Nautilus during the Barbary Wars. It was during the latter that the ballsy Somers, under command of the “floating volcano” fire ship Intrepid, attempted to sail into Tripoli harbor and blow up the corsair fleet, a mission that ended in Intrepid going sky-high with Somers and all 12 volunteer crew members short of her intended target. Their remains were recovered by the locals, desecrated, and have been buried ashore in Tripoli.
Lieutenant Richard Somers, USN. Dates of rank: Midshipman, 30 April 1798; Lieutenant, 21 May 1799. Died 4 September 1804. NH 45024/ “Blowing Up of the Fire Ship Intrepid commanded by Capt. Somers in the Harbor of Tripoli on the night of 4th Sepr. 1804” via NARA.
The four previous USS Somers include a schooner that fought in the War of 1812, a brig famous for hosting the only actual mutiny in U.S. Navy history, a turn-of-the-century German-built torpedo boat, and a Great War-era Clemson-class four-piper.
Schooners USS Somers, USS Ohio, and USS Porcupine Attacked by British Boats Near Fort Erie, August 1814 USN 902811. U.S. Brig Somers (1842-1846) a sketch by a crew member of USS Columbus. NH 97588-KN. Torpedo boat USS Somers (TB-22), 21 February 1900. 19-N-15-11-3. USS Somers (DD-301) Underway at very low speed, circa 1923-1930. NH 98020
Laid down on 27 June 1935 by the Federal Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co., Kearny, New Jersey, our destroyer was later sponsored by two of LT Somers’s descendants and commissioned at the New York Navy Yard on 1 December 1937.
Shakedown and trials complete, she began service with the Atlantic Fleet, soon to be joined by her four sisters.
Navy destroyer USS Somers (DD-381) at anchor in September 1938 NH66340
DD-381 USS Somers
War! (Not always declared…)
Five days after WWII began in Europe, FDR’s tense and problematic Neutrality Patrol kicked off and the Atlantic Fleet got a lot more muscular when it came to its operations just short of war. As part of this, Somers was on patrol in South America with the old light (scout) cruiser and Warship Wednesday alumni USS Omaha (CL-4).
On 6 November 1941 Somers spied an American-flagged ship, the freighter Willmoto out of Philadelphia, and closed to inspect her. When a boarding team came close, the freighter’s crew started abandoning the ship, signaling it was sinking.
Taking quick action Navy went to salvage work and saved the ship, which turned out to be the 5,098-tonner Odenwald owned by the Hamburg-American Line. En route to Germany from then-neutral Japan when she was seized, she was packed with 3,800 tons of desperately needed rubber and tires that never made it to the Third Reich.
Odenwald, NH 123752
USS OMAHA/ODENWALD Incident during World War II. Autographed Portrait of Salvage Detail. American Flag and emblem of the Nazi party/ Swastika flag on the ship with Salvage Detail portrait signed by each member of Salvage Detail.NH 123757
Odenwald was escorted to Puerto Rico and made a big splash when she arrived.
According to the U-boat Archive, Odenwald contained the first German military POW taken by the U.S. though they didn’t know it:
Helmut Ruge was a Kriegsmarine radioman aboard the Graf Spee when that ship was scuttled after the battle of the River Plate. He escaped from internment crossing the Andes on foot to Chile and then on to Japan where he joined the crew of the Odenwald for the return to Germany.
During his initial interrogation both U.S. Army and Navy interrogators failed to discover that Helmut Ruge was not a civilian merchant marine officer but in fact was a German Navy sailor or that he was an escaped internee from the crew of the Graf Spee. Throughout his captivity he was interned with the civilian crews of German merchant ships and not with other German Navy personnel.
Odenwald Incident, November 1941. USS Omaha (CL-4), in right-center, standing by the German blockade runner Odenwald, which has a U.S. boarding party on board, in the South Atlantic, 6 November 1941. Photographed from USS Somers (DD-381). NH 49935
In a 1946 interview with the Navy, Chief Firecontrolman Charles J. Martin, who was on Somers at the time, remembered the incident being more Somers than Omaha.
From the interview:
It was around this time that Somers and her sisters would be refit for a bigger war, landing their Chicago Pianos, .50 cals, and one set of torpedo tubes for a mix of 40mm Bofors and 20mm Oerlikon, and soon be fitted for SC, SG, and Mk 3 radars. For use in fighting U-boats, they picked up six depth charger throwers and racks to accommodate 62 ash cans. A QC sonar set and DAQ direction finder became standard as well.
After the U.S. entered the war post-Pearl Harbor, Somers continued her work in the South Atlantic, an eye peeled for Axis blockade runners. This paid off when, in November 1942, working in tandem with the light cruisers USS Cincinnati (CL-6) and Milwaukee (CL-5) as Task Group 23.2, Somers went to close with a suspicious Norwegian merchant ship SS Skjilbred.
When Somers got close, the ship, later identified as the armed (1x 4-inch gun, two 20mm flak, 4 MGs) German freighter Anneliese Essberger (5,173 tons) with a crew of 62 about a third of which were Kriegsmarine ratings, scuttled herself without a fight.
Anneliese Essberger scuttling, images likely taken from Somers, via the NHHC.
From FCC Martin’s interview, where he confuses Milwaukee with sistership cruiser Memphis (CL-13), which Somers had also worked with:
USS Somers (DD-381). At the Charleston Navy Yard, South Carolina, 16 February 1942. She is wearing Measure 12 (modified) camouflage. NHHC Photograph Collection, NH 98021.
1943 saw Somers dispatched to escort Memphis to Bathurst, Gambia and remained by the old cruiser while she served as flagship for FDR during the Casablanca Conference between Churchill and Roosevelt in January, just weeks after the Anglo-American Torch landings in French North Africa.
The diplomatic mission wrapped up, Somers was tasked with escorting the incomplete (and damaged) French battleship Richelieu and heavy cruiser Montcalm, recently added to De Gaulle’s Free French Navy, from their former Vichy stronghold in Dakar to the U.S. East Coast for repairs and modernization.
French battleship Richelieu arrives in New York with her damaged turret; the uppermost fire control director on the fore tower had to be dismantled for her to pass under the Brooklyn Bridge, in 1943. She had made it across the Atlantic under the escort of Somers.
Weserland
In October-November 1943, three German blockade runners slipped out of Soerabaja and Batavia in the Japanese-owned Dutch East Indies bound for Europe: Rio Grande (6062 GRT, sailed 29 October), Burgenland (7230 GRT, 25 November) and Weserland (6528 GRT, 22 November). They carried such vital supplies as rubber, tin, and wolfram for the German war machine.
None of them made it.
Built as Ermland 1922 as part of the Havilland class for Hamburg-American Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (Hapag), the 449-foot freighter had a capacity for 18 passengers and worked the East Asia service as Warmia with her sisters in a partnership with North German Lloyd. Warmia, at the outbreak of the war in 1939, was in the Japanese port of Kaohsiung, Formosa, and made it back successfully to Germany disguised as the Russian Tbilisi from Vladivostok with her cargo– the first blockade runner from Japan to Europe– and reached Bordeaux in April 1941 after meeting with the raider Hilfskreuzer Orion to take 183 captured mariners and another 56 from the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer while on her trip.
Renamed Weserland and armed with a 10.5 cm gun and four 2 cm AAA guns while in further war service, she was dispatched back to Japan with a load of German war material for the Empire in the fall of 1943 and was bound back from East Asia carrying 35 Italian submariners in addition to their assigned German crew.
Weserland via Labomar
Consolidated PB4Y-1 Liberators of VB-107 out of windswept Wideawake field on Ascension Island– one of the Destroyers for Bases outposts– working on Ultra intercepts, was able to spot Weserland on New Years Day 1944 and clocked her continuously for the next two days.
While she was disguised as the British steamer Glenbank on the way to Montevideo from Cape Town she was sailing northeast, not northwest and, when challenged by a burst of .50 cal from one of the bombers (“Baker 9”) across her bow, was greeted with 20mm flak in return, hitting the aircraft three times.
Nonetheless, VB-107 kept contact and vectored our greyhound, Somers, to the wallowing freighter, which continued to spit fire whenever a plane got close enough, sending another away smoking (BuNo 32065, “Baker 12”) with a fuel leak and a dead No. 4 engine.
Weserland had shot down a British RAF Shorts Sunderland earlier in the war and, while being hunted in the South Atlantic the day before she met with Somers, had damaged at least two of VB-107’s bombers with Baker 12 not able to make it back to Ascension and had to ditch at sea 70 miles out, resulting in the death of all 10 of her crew.
Somers would make it right.
From her deck log for the running engagement, which included a no-doubt tense exchange with the British freighter Wascana Park headed from Durban to Bahia, and a one-sided surface battle with Weserland that saw Somers fire 464 rounds of 5-inch common and 32 illum rounds, ending with picking up 17 officers and 116 men from the blockade runner and delivering them to Recife on the morning of 6 January:
There, Somers landed her EPOWs to march them into captivity.
Survivors of SS Weserland disembark from USS Somers (DD 381) at Recife, Brazil. 80-G-205369
Same as the above, entering the stockade. Most would remain locked up until 1946. 80-G-205359
Heading to Europe
USS Somers (DD-381) underway at sea, circa 1944 camouflage Measure 32, Design 3D. Note that, while many of her class had their Mark 22s replaced by Mark 38 mounts, she still carried her original main armament NH 98022
Following an overhaul stateside, in May 1944, the five members of the Somers class, who thus far had spent the war sinking subs and capturing blockade runners in the South Atlantic, got the call up to the big leagues and headed to England to support Overlord, the Normandy landings.
In early June 1944, Somers and her sister USS Davis (DD-395) formed a fire support group around Channel Convoy EMB-2 off Bristol and screened the ammunition ship USS Nitro (AE-2), which was filled with heavy projectiles to refill battleships working the gunline.
Somers then clocked in on the Dixie Line, screening for E-boats off Omaha Beach on D+1, fired at a low-flying German plane on D+2, was involved in a confusing night action against what was thought to be E-boats on 12 June, screened at one time or another the cruisers HMS Black Prince and USS Tuscaloosa, and escorted HM FDT-13 out of the assault area. She wrapped up her Overlord duties on 17 June.
Not all the class was so lucky. Sister Davis survived a scrap with German E-boats only to hit a mine on 21 June, knocking her out of the war for six months for repair.
Then came reassignment to the Med where she was tasked to support the upcoming Dragoon Landings in Southern France.
Battle of Port Cros
While the Navy sank no less than 67 German U-boats in combat and torpedo/gun barrel brawls between combatants ranging from destroyer to battleship in the Southwest Pacific, particularly in 1942-43, were common, it was much rarer to see an engagement between American and Axis surface ships in the ETO.
With that being said, after supporting the Dragoon Landings in the Sitka assault area off the Iles d’Hyeres on the southern coast of France with Task Force 86 starting on 12 August, Somers got into a mix-up.
While on patrol south of Port Cros and the He du Levant on the early predawn morning (0347) of 15 August as part of Operation Sitro One, Somers obtained an SG radar contact on two ships at 15,680 yards. Maneuvering closer to investigate, a challenge was issued twice at 0440 with the destroyer’s 12-inch searchlight coming to play, and firing soon broke out at a range of 4,750 yards. The next 40 minutes was a swirling dog fight at sea until Somers checked fire, having let lose 270 rounds of 5-inch Common and left flaming hulks dead in the water. Dawn found life rafts full of survivors.
A map of the action from Somers’s report.
The two ships turned out to be the former Italian Gabbiano-class corvette Camoscio (740 tons, 1×3.9 inch, 7x20mm, 2xtt) which was operated as the German UJ6081 and the ex-French Chamois-class aviso/sloop Amiral Senes (900 tons, 2×4.1 inch, 4×13.2mm) which was operated as the German SG21.
An Italian Gabbiano-class corvette top and, French Chamois-class aviso sloop bottom, I cannot find photos of either Camoscio/UJ6081 or Amiral Senes/SG21 as both had a short career.
A boarding party from Somers sent aboard Camoscio/UJ6081 before she sank recovered several items of interest including her naval ensign and papers, which were transferred to the USS Tuscaloosa.
No rest for the weary, Somers was immediately tasked just hours later with providing NGFS to members of the combined American and Canadian “Devil’s Brigade” (1st SSF) as they landed on the island of Port-Cros proper to seize the series of German positions of Gren Reg 917 around Fort de l’Eminence on the Northeast corner of the island. Across six fire missions stretching well into the next morning, our destroyer would pummel the island with 710 rounds of 5-inch Common.
Somers would continue her Dragoon gunfighting by exchanging fire with German coastal batteries in the Bay of Marseilles on 26 August while supporting inshore minesweeping operations. That action saw her try to hit the Germans at Cape Croisette some 19,000 yards away while bracketed with splashes and shrapnel hits from the large Axis guns then make smoke to withdraw with her sweepers out of the impact zone. She was more successful against a position of smaller guns at closer Cape Mejean, forcing it to cease firing. In all, this exchange saw Somers rip out 404 rounds of 5-inch Common inside the span of 15 minutes, totaling no less than 1,384 rounds firing by the destroyer with her limited angle Mark 22 mounts across three actions in 12 days.
Not bad shooting.
However, all operations come to an end and as the Allied pressed inland from the Med, Somers’s role in the area was effectively over. Used as part of the escort for a quartet of cross-Atlantic convoys in late 1944 and early 1945, she arrived back stateside on 12 May 1945.
Used for a brief period on a series of training cruises along the East Coast and the Caribbean, VJ-Day closed out her dance card and she was decommissioned at Charleston on 28 October 1945. Unneeded even in the mothball fleet with hundreds of newer destroyers in commission, Somers was struck from the Navy list on 28 January 1947 and sold for breaking that same May.
Even though she was there for the capture of three blockade runners, made several historical escorts, worked the Dixie Line off Omaha Beach, and melted her guns down during the Dragoon Landings where she sent two German escorts to the bottom single-handed, the swashbuckling Somers only earned two battle stars for her WWII service.
When it comes to the rest of her class, one was lost during the conflict– USS Warrington (DD-383), sunk in a hurricane in 1944. Like Somers, the other three survivors were all sold for scrap by 1947.
Epilogue
Somers has few relics remaining outside of her war diaries and records in the National Archives.
Today, only period maritime art is still around.
U.S.S. Somers by George Ashley PGA card. You can make out those beautiful long Mark 22 gunhouses. LCCN2003679903
Neptunia has a model of the USS Somers
A federal court in 1947 awarded the members of the boarding party and the salvage crew of the Odenwald $3,000 apiece while all the other crewmen in Omaha and the Somers at the time picked up two months’ pay and allowances. Although it has been reported this was prize money “the last paid by the Navy,” the fact is that the ruling classified it as salvage since the U.S. on 6 November 1941, was not at war with Germany.
In all, the court found that the value of the Odenwald was the sum of $500,000 and the value of her cargo $1,860,000, which was sold in 1941 and (emphasis mine):
“As a matter of law, the United States is entitled as owner of the two men of war involved in this case to collect salvage and the officers and members of the crews of the U.S.S. Omaha and U.S.S. Somers are also entitled to collect salvage. This is not a case of bounty or prize. The libelants are entitled to collect salvage in the aggregate sum of $397,424.06 with costs and expenses.”
As for Weserland, she continues to land lost soldiers in Brazil so to speak, with over 200 large bales of Japanese-marked natural rubber washing up on Brazilian beaches in 2018 attributed to her wreck.
The Navy recycled Somers’s name for a sixth time, issuing it to a new Forest Sherman-class tin can (DD-947) that was built by Bath and commissioned in 1959. One of four Shermans converted to a missile slinger– ASROC matchbox and Mk 13 one-armed bandit– and redesignated DDG-34 in 1967, Somers earned five battle stars during the Vietnam War and remained in the fleet until 1982.
USS Somers (DDG-34) underway, circa in the early 1980s. After a 24-year Cold War career with stints in Vietnam, DD-947/DDG-34 was in mothballs for another 16 years then expended in a SINKEX off Hawaii in 1998. USN 6483131
A Veterans group for past Somers crewmembers exists.
It is past due for the Navy to have a seventh USS Somers.
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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