While accompanying my lovely wife to a local big box hobby and crafts store so she could restock her art room with baubles, I saw this poor box of joy, relegated to a clearance shelf:
“The smell, you know that Testor’s enamel smell, the whole place. Smelled like scale modeling…”
Oh, what I would have done to have come across something so magical as a 12-year-old warship nerd…
80 years ago this month: British and American Navy Forces in Combined Exercises, June 1943, off Scapa Flow. Shown are two very different battlewagons including the brand new SoDak-class fast battleship USS Alabama (BB-60) and the King George V-class HMS Anson (79).
Photograph by LT H.A. Hudson. IWM A 17582
The above stems from the efforts of U.S. Navy RADM Olaf Mandt Hustvedt (USNA 1909), a diehard battleship sailor who commanded TF 61 around Alabama and her sister, the recently repaired USS South Dakota, along with the destroyers USS Ellyson (DD-454), Emmons (DD-457, Fitch (DD-462), Macomb (DD-458), and Rodman (DD-456).
TF 61 sailed at varying times with the British ADM Sir Bruce Fraser’s Home Fleet between May and July 1943, typically in the company of HM battleships Anson (79) and Duke of York (17) along with a myriad of RN cruisers and destroyers. This was an effort to backfill the British ships sent to take part in the Husky landings in the Med.
USS Alabama BB-60 and HMS Anson (79) exercises off Scapa Flow June 1943 IWM Hudson, F A (Lt) b
USS Alabama BB-60 and HMS Anson (79) exercises off Scapa Flow June 1943 IWM Hudson, F A (Lt)
The force took part in a series of relatively bloodless missions including Operation Gearbox III, the relief of the Anglo-Norwegian garrison of Spitzbergen, and Operations Camera/Governor, demonstrations off the Norwegian coast to divert German attention from the Husky landings in July 1943.
South Dakota, Ellyson, Emmons, Fitch, Macomb, and Rodman arrived back in Norfolk on 1 August 1943, while Alabama reached Norfolk eight days later. They would soon sortie to the Pacific for a much more active role in the war.
As for Hustvedt, he went on to command Battleship Division 7 on the push to Tokyo and would retire as a Vice Admiral in 1946, capping 37 years of service. For his operations with Sir Bruce, he would be invested as a Knight Commander Order of the British Empire.
British T class submarine HMS Triumph (N18) underway, circa 1940. IWM FL 5477
HM Submarine Triumph (N 18), a Royal Navy T class boat, was ordered from Vickers in 1936 just after Hitler ordered the Rhineland reoccupied, launched in early 1938 as his forces made ready to roll into Austria for the Anschluss, and commissioned in early 1939 as the Czechoslovakia crisis was coming to an end following that country disappearing from the map.
Beginning her first war patrol off Norway the day Germany and Britain opened hostilities, Triumph would go missing while on her 21st war patrol in January 1942 while conducting special operations off Axis-occupied Greece.
She never made it back to Alexandria and her skipper, Lt. John Symons Huddart, two SOE commandos hitching a ride, and his crew of 6 officers and 55 ratings were marked lost with HMS Triumph on 23 January.
Well, it looks like this mystery has been solved by Greek wreck diver Kostas Thoctarides, with a wreck found at a 203m depth in the Aegean Sea.
His group, ROV Services, has extensively documented the wreck verifying the following:
Of note, the Royal Navy lost 79 commissioned submarines during WWII, compared to the 52 lost by the U.S. Navy. This figure does not include such special operation vessels as the seven X craft, 18 chariots, and 5 Welmans.
At first look, the EAA-imported Girsan MC 14T appears to be a clone of the original circa 1970s Beretta Cheetah series, now a classic.
However, you will note that the EAA carries an M1913 Picatinny accessory rail on the dust cover for mounting lights and lasers– a feature never cataloged on any old-school Cheetah variant.
Using a simple straight blowback action, it is chambered in .380 ACP and uses a double-action/single-action trigger with a manual frame-mounted safety lever.
The EAA Girsan MC 14T, left, compared to a Beretta Cheetah. Note the Girsan is slightly longer, and we’ll get into that. Of note, it uses the same magazine as the double-stack 13+1 round magazine of the Beretta 84.
This extended barrel length is to allow a “tip up” barrel easily actuated by a one-push lever on the right-hand side of the frame. For the gun nerds out there, Beretta briefly made a tip-up .380 Cheetah, the Model 86, but it was a single stack, and collectors, due to its rarity, tend to drive prices on those into the $1,500 region.
This is comparable to Beretta’s pipsqueak mouse guns such as the Model 21A Bobcat shown here in .22 LR.
More on the MC 14T in my column at Guns.com.
One of the most commonly seen activities for soldiers in war is to personalize their rifles. Part occupying idle hands, part commemoration, and part easily set it apart from the others on the rack at a glance, it is something that has gone on for generations.
No matter if you are talking about muskets from the French and Indian War to AKs used in Afghanistan, it is a long-standing trait.
Powderhorn of 1st Massachusetts Infantry Regiment Minuteman Daniel Kinne, dated 1775, carried at Bunker Hill , via Morphys
An Afghan forces soldier, who looks old enough to have fought as a Muj against the Soviets, with his personalized Kalash, 2007. Photographer: Leading Aircraftman Rodney Welch, Royal Australian Air Force
With that in mind, I thought the below story about the Walhalla High School Army JROTC rifle team from Walhalla, South Carolina, is just great.
The team has been personalizing their rifles for the past eight years with the caveat that they had to shoot a 530 at a sporter match before they can customize their stock.
Via CMP:
Now, reaching the honor of a painted rifle stock has become the ultimate focus of the varsity athletes. This season alone, four students have earned their custom stocks, including two freshman athletes, which has never happened in the history of the tradition.
“It gets established as the threshold for success,” COL Kevin Mangan, head coach of the rifle team, said of the rifle painting. “We have smaller goals set as well, like score 200 and a rifle is assigned to you, and at 250, you name your rifle – just little things to continue to work toward.”
Once an athlete reaches the 530 score, he or she gets to pick the subject of the art on the rifle stock. Mangan’s wife and daughters take on the graphic work along with Walhalla’s art department. From The Lion King to The Chronicles of Narnia to Hunter x Hunter, each athlete’s theme represents their own personalities and the hard work they’ve accomplished on the range.
To commemorate the rifle team’s tradition, Walhalla High School has allocated a trophy case in the student common area to display stocks of graduated athletes. So far, there have been 11 painted rifles, with more added each year.
“It has become the thing to accomplish for the Walhalla JROTC Rifle team,” Mangan said.
The Disson M1917 and later M1918 trench knives, or “knuckle dusters” were a uniquely American item in the Great War
In February 2018, a French undertaker working in a cemetery in Villers-sur-Fere, a village about 60 miles northeast of Paris, discovered a set of undocumented remains. The fallen warrior was found with assorted field equipment that included a steel helmet, a trench knife, and an ammo belt full of 30.06 cartridges.
The undertaker contacted authorities and, it was discovered that American forces battled German forces in the village in the summer of 1918. This led to calling in a Great War archaeology expert and the American Battle Monuments Commission.
ABMC historians consulted the memoir of famed Army Chaplain Francis P. Duffy, which describes the burial of U.S. Soldiers from the 42nd “Rainbow” Infantry Division in the location where the remains were discovered. Notably, three Soldiers of the 42nd’s 150th MG Battalion earned the Distinguished Service Cross at Villers-sur-Fere in July 1918, one posthumously.
They were not the only ones, as the main color in the Rainbow division in France was red.
During its time on the Western Front, the 42nd participated in six major campaigns across 264 days in combat in 1917-1918 and incurred 14,000 casualties– a whopping one-out-of-sixteen casualties suffered by the American Army as a whole during the war. The fallen included poet Sgt. Joyce Kilmer– -the author of the poem “Trees“-who was killed in action.
In the end, the lost Joe discovered at Villers-sur-Fere in 2018 was laid to rest with full military honors alongside 6,000 of his fellow countrymen this week at the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery in France.
The ceremony is reportedly the first burial of an unknown U.S. Soldier from World War I since 1988 and the first burial at Oise-Aisne since 1932.
Soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade carry a casket with the remains of a World War I unknown soldier at Oise-Aisne American Cemetery in France, June 7, 2023. Photo By: Russell Toof, American Battle Monuments Commission. VIRIN: 230606-D-GJ885-005
Notably, Kilmer, who was killed near Oise-Aisne, is buried at the same cemetery, (Plot B, Row 9, Grave 15).
With that, Kilmer’s “Rouge Bouquet,” a tribute to the 19 Americans killed by a German artillery bombardment in the Rouge Bouquet wood near Baccarat, France in March 1918 comes to mind. An excerpt reads:
“In a wood they call the Rouge Bouquet
There is a new-made grave to-day,
Built by never a spade nor pick.
Yet covered with earth ten metres thick
There lie many fighting men,
Dead in their youthful prime…”
How about this great group shot of the officers of the brand new 191-foot U.S. Revenue Cutter Tahoma, dressed in their tropical whites, complete with sun helmets.
U.S. Coast Guard Historian’s Office photo 201210-G-G0000-001
As detailed, the above include: CAPT Johnstone Quinan, Commanding (second row, seated second from left) 1st LT Charles Satterlee, Executive Officer (second row, far left) 2nd LT Edward S. Addison 2nd LT Archibald H. Scally, 2nd LT Russell R. Waesche (front row, center) 1st LT of Engineers Harry M. Hepburn, 3rd LT of Engineers Frank E. Bagger, Passed Assistant Surgeon J. S. Boggess, USPHS. Observe, the ranks are based on U.S. Army tables rather than U.S. Navy.
Of note, the future ADM Russell Randolph Waesche, shown as a young USRCS 2nd LT above, would be the WWII-era commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard.
From his bio:
He also presided over the greatest expansion of the USCG in its history and made sure the service maintained its separate identity while it was under the administrative control of the U.S. Navy. Admiral Waesche saw his small peacetime fleet swell with Coast Guardsmen manning more than 750 cutters, 3,500 miscellaneous smaller craft, 290 Navy vessels, and 255 Army vessels. The Coast Guard participated in every major amphibious operation.
No word on if he did sometimes put the old pith helmet back on.
As for his ride, she had an interesting tale of her own.
Commissioned on 25 March 1909, the 1,215-ton cutter Tahoma, armed with four 6-pounders, still had fresh paint in the above image. Her crew, including the young Mr. Waesche, soon became globetrotters, taking her from her builders at the New York Shipbuilding Company of Camden, New Jersey to her homeport in the Pacific Northwest, via the long way around.
To get to her cruising ground she made the long journey to the Pacific coast via the Suez Canal, setting sail from Baltimore on 17 April 1909. She visited St. Michaels, Azores to obtain coal before arriving at Gibraltar on 3 May 1909. Ordered to proceed as quickly as possible to Alexandrette [now known as Iskenderun, Turkey] by the Treasury Department, she departed Gibraltar, stopping in Malta, before arriving at Alexandrette on 12 May 1909. The U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, had requested a U.S. warship to calm American expatriate nerves during civil unrest in the Empire. The Tahoma remained off the Turkish coast for 13 more days before being ordered to resume her course to the Pacific. She visited Port Said and then transited the Suez Canal. Then it was on to Aden, Colombo, and arrived at Singapore on 30 June 1909. She then sailed for Manila arriving there on 8 July and made a port call at Yokohama on 21 July. She arrived at her new station in Port Townsend on 23 August 1909.
USRC Tahoma off Alaska; scanned from original in Satterlee Collection, U.S. Coast Guard Historian’s Office Special Collections.
A decade ago, you could get surplused GI M16A1 parts kits for about $200. Back then, nobody wanted them as these fixed stock, 20-inch 1:12 twist guns, complete with Vietnam-style carry handles and saw-ridge plastic handguards. They were so 1970s at a time when everyone was building or buying an M4 style carbine with a flattop, 16-inch (or smaller) barrel, and a handguard that had MLOK/Keymod or Quadrails.
Now, the bus has fully emptied, and everyone has an M4orgery of some sort, heck PSA sells them for $500 all day.
The hot new thing in the past couple of years, ironically, is “retro” builds. Basically, everyone wants a Vietnam-style M16A1. NoDakSpud, Brownells, and now, PSA with their H&R subsidiary, have all been cashing in on the trend.
With that in mind, when I saw that Atlantic had surplused Colt M16A1 parts kits, cut from retired overseas rifles and shipped in, my interest was piqued as to the price these days.
These parts are military surplus rated NRA Fair condition and finish will vary from kit to kit.
Parts will show usage & character. They are surplus but serviceable. The butt plate may be cracked and/or may have a small piece chipped off or missing small parts.
Beware, the price is four times what it used to be just 10 short years ago…
One thing I like about the USCG is that they ditch a lot of the political rhetoric when it comes to cutter naming conventions, and make sure they salute their heroes and storied past vessels.
For instance, the first flight of 11 new 360-foot Offshore Patrol Cutters, large OPVs that will surely be sent into harm’s way several times at some point in their likely 50-year careers, all will carry the recycled names of traditional cutters that fought in the War of 1812, the Quasi-War, WWII, Vietnam, and the Great War.
One of the pending OPCs will honor USCGC Icarus (WPC-110) the famed 165-foot “B”-Class cutter that sank one of the first Nazi U-boats, U-352, in 1942 just after U.S. entry into World War II.
A great retelling of that lopsided David v Goliath sea clash, in which the German submarine had superior speed, surface and subsurface armament, is retold in Hickam’s Torpedo Junction.
In the book, Hickam spends a whole chapter on the humble Icarus— a gunboat that didn’t even have a sonar range finder– commanded by 52-year-old LT Maurice David Jester, a life-long Coastie enlisted in the service as a surfman in 1917, and its epic combat against Kptln. Helmutt Rathke’s U-352.
In the end, it came down to a surface action in which the cutter used all of its weapons, including Tommy guns, against the German, sending the sub to the bottom.
Then, in typical Coast Guard fashion, they saved 33 of her crew, including Rathke, and took them ashore to POW captivity for the duration.
Before steaming for Charleston, Jester transmitted:
“Contacted submarine Destroyed same. Lat 34°12 ½” Long 76° 35″. Have 33 of her crew members on board. Proceeding Charleston with survivors.”
Man, she looks short! USS Icarus, CG arriving at Charleston Navy Yard after its epic battle with U-352, photo dated 10 May 1942.
Coast Guard Cutter Icarus drawn in profile. (Coast Guard Collection) 
The wreck site of the U-352 as it appears today. (Courtesy of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
Jester was the first Coast Guardsman to receive the Navy Cross and one of only six service members to receive it during the war.
He retired in 1944 with the rank of full commander, capping 27 years of service that spanned the First World War, Prohibition, and the Second World War.
He is interred at Arlington.
In a fitting salute to the hard-charging commander of the Icarus, the Coast Guard late last week commissioned USCGC Maurice Jester (WPC-1152), a new 154-foot Sentinel-class fast response cutter. Fittingly, she also carries the WPC designation as Icarus and is only 11 feet shorter.
The fast response cutter’s motto is “Against All Odds”.
U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Maurice Jester (WPC 1152), dressed overall during its commissioning ceremony in Newport, Rhode Island, June 2, 2023. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Lyric Jackson) . (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Lyric Jackson)
As Jester comes to life, the Coast Guard is putting one of its longest-serving cutters to pasture.
Originally commissioned in 1954 just as Buoy Boat CG-65400-D, the USCGC Bayberry (WLI 65400) picked up her name a few years later when the service authorized naming vessels 65 feet long or larger.
Captained by a senior chief petty officer and crewed by seven other enlisted, she had been working hard from San Francisco to Washington to Oak Island where she has been stationed since 2009. The “Keeper of Cape Fear” was just decommissioned after 69 years of service.
The Cutter Bayberry sits at a pier at Station Oak Island, N.C. Jun. 7, 2023, before its special status ceremony to signify the beginning of it being decommissioned after 69 years of active Coast Guard service. The Bayberry was built by Reliable Welding Works in Olympia, Washington. U.S. Coast Guard Photo by Petty Officer 2nd class Katie Lipe.
As noted by the USCG:
The Bayberry’s recent accomplishments include post-hurricane Dorian operations, where the crew led a waterways reconstitution mission, completed a complex voyage correcting 40 aids to navigation discrepancies, enabling the rapid resumption of ferry service, and facilitating the delivery of emergency supplies to 700 residents stranded on Ocracoke Island.
In typical Coast Guard fashion, Bayberry is to be replaced by the rather stalled 35-vessel Waterways Commerce Cutter program, which is far from its first delivery.
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
Time-Life Archives, Bernard Hoffman, photographer, from a series that ran in LIFE in 1943 entitled, How to Build a Submarine.
Above we see a fantastic original Kodachrome from 80 years ago of a female shipyard worker at Electric Boat in New London with an acetylene torch near the forward escape hatch of a building Gato-class submarine. Inscribed on the hatch is the hull number SS-243, making this the future USS Bream.
A couple of other great shots from that day, seemingly centered on the rear hatch:
One of the 77 Gatos cranked out by four shipyards from 1940 to 1944 for the U.S. Navy, they were impressive 311-foot long fleet boats, diesel-electric submarines capable of extended operations in the far reaches of the Pacific.
Able to swim an impressive 11,000 nautical miles on their economical power plant while still having room for 24 (often cranky) torpedoes. A 3-inch deck gun served for surface action in poking holes in vessels deemed not worth a torpedo while a few .50 and .30-cal machine guns provided the illusion of an anti-aircraft armament.
A development of the Tambor-class submarines, they were the first fleet boats able to plumb to 300 feet test depth, then the deepest that U.S. Navy submersibles were rated.
Our subject, Bream, was the only U.S. Navy ship to carry the name of the “A common food and game fish of the carp family typically found in lakes and slow rivers,” as noted by DANFS.
USS Bream (SS 243), insignia, showing a fish nipping a horned Japanese admiral. Photographed by Lieutenant Commander Charles Jacobs, USN, on 14 August 1943, at her builder’s yard, the Electric Boat Company, Groton, Connecticut. National Archives photograph: 80-G-468313.
Built by Electric Boat Co. of Groton, Connecticut, she commissioned on 24 January 1944, one of the staggering 74 submarines and 398 PT boats EB made for Uncle during WWII.
Her first skipper was LCDR Wreford Goss “Moon” Chapple (USNA 1930), a former heavyweight boxing champion at Annapolis who had already earned two Navy Crosses and two Silver Stars in command of the submarines USS S-38 and USS Permit.
To tell you a bit about Chapple, he was officially reprimanded in February 1942 for bringing 40 officers and men out of besieged Corregidor, pulled on the carpet because of the gross overcrowding on his little boat. Here, he is seen with his wife, Mrs. Chapple, who was the boat’s sponsor, and son, at Bream’s christening. (EBCo Photo)
Following shakedown and exercises on the East Coast and off Panama, Bream crossed “The Ditch” into the Pacific in April 1944 then made for Seeadler Harbor in the Admiralties by way of Australia.
From Seeadler, she put to sea on 29 May for her 1st War Patrol, loaded with Mark 23 torpedoes for the Morotai Strait.
Chasing down contacts and avoiding Japanese sub busters, she made two unsuccessful attacks on passing convoys in early June before hitting paydirt on 16 June when she torpedoed and sank the Japanese army cargo ships Yuki Maru (5704 GRT) and Hinode Maru (1916 GRT) off Halmahera Island. Bream promptly got 25 depth charges dropped on her roof in exchange.
From her patrol report:
Bream ended her 1st War Patrol at Manus on 29 June then put back out for an unsuccessful 2nd War Patrol, south of the Philippines, three weeks later that ended in early September with a return to Australia.
Her 3rd War Patrol would be much more fruitful.
Heading out on 2 October, Moon, besides his command on Bream, was commander for a submarine “search and attack group” (Yankee wolfpack) consisting of USS Raton (SS-270) and USS Guitarro (SS-363), bound for a patrol in the central Philippines, where they would be joined briefly by USS Ray (SS-271).
On the 23rd, Bream torpedoed and damaged the 9,000-ton Japanese heavy cruiser Aoba off Manila Bay, with one of six torpedoes hitting the warship’s No. 2 engine room. In return, the cruiser’s escorts dropped 32 depth charges on our boat.
From Bream’s patrol report:
The heavily damaged Japanese cruiser Aoba
Aoba limped into Cavite Navy Yard near Manila for emergency repairs. She would eventually make it back, slowly, to Kure but her damage was deemed irreparable and she never sailed again. Related to a floating AAA battery, Aoba was later sent to the bottom there at the hands of TF 38 carrier aircraft.
On 24 October, Bream ran across floating debris that included several dead bodies (listed by Moon as “non-survivors”) and six Japanese who they took prisoner after one sailor, White, “showed unusual solicitude in diving overboard to retrieve one who slipped back into the water.”
From her patrol report:
These EPOWs were quartered in the forward torpedo room and then transferred to Australia-bound sister USS Cod (SS-224) five days later, with Moon noting in his ship’s log “Cod was not too crazy about the Japs.”
Then, on 4 November, the Bream-Guitarro-Ray wolfpack shared the sinking of the Japanese seaplane tender/transport Kagu Maru (6806 GRT), picked off from convoy TAMA-31A off Dasol Bay, Philippines. The poor Kagu Maru, carrying troops of the 218th Naval Construction Unit, had no chance, being hit by one of four torpedoes from Bream, then one of eight torpedoes from Guitarro, and finally two of two from Ray in a third attack.
During the November 4 attack, Bream was also attacked by a Japanese plane, which dropped two bombs that resulted in a near miss that nonetheless caused some flooding and damage to our boat.
From her patrol report:
Two days later, on 6 November, the pack found the Japanese heavy cruiser Kumano west of Lingayen.
From her patrol report:
Japanese heavy cruiser Kumano anchored at Rabaul, with a Mitsubishi F1M Pete reconnaissance seaplane in the foreground, December 4-5, 1942
Part of the cover force for convoy MATA-31, Kumano had narrowly avoided the submarine USS Batfish the day prior but, out of a staggering 23 torpedoes fired from the Bream-Guitarro-Ray-Raton wolfpack, two made good, blowing off the cruiser’s bow section and flooding all her engine rooms. Dead in the water, Kumano had to be towed into Dasol Bay with an 11-degree list. Towed from there to Santa Cruz harbor, she was found still under repair on 25 November by aircraft from the carrier USS Ticonderoga and bombed to the bottom of the harbor.
By that time, Bream’s submariners were already throwing back a cold one in Australia and returned home early.
Her third patrol ended after just 52 days (35 submerged), with Bream traveling 10,833 miles. Her primary reason for calling it quits early was that she only had three torpedoes left. It would be her most successful patrol.
There, plankowner skipper Moon Chapple was pulled from his boat, given a Gold Star in lieu of the Second Silver Star Medal, and sent back to New London to become a tactics instructor at the Submarine School, replaced by LCDR James Lowell Page McCallum.
Targets thinned out notably by this stage of the war, with most subs managing only to bag the occasional coaster or trawler via surface action as the small fry wasn’t worth wasting a torpedo on. For instance, Bream on 14 March 1945 bagged the auxiliary submarine chaser Keihin Maru (76 GRT) in a surface action in the Java Sea, while on her 5th War Patrol, after adding no tonnage on her 4th Patrol in early 1945.
An extensive depth charging in March that cut her 5th Patrol short led to the submarine’s periscopes, her starboard shaft, and both of her screws being replaced in Freemantle, a patch job that was done in three weeks. She was thought capable of another patrol and sortied out on 20 April.
On her 6th War Patrol, Bream came across the German minesweeper/submarine depot ship Quito (1230 GRT) off Borneo’s Tanjong Puttion on 29 April, just a week away from VE Day. Loaded with fuel for Monsoon U-boats, she had been steaming from the oil fields of Balikpapan for Jakarta, and, with her daily position reports intercepted by the Navy’s FRUMEL unit in Melbourne, she was never going to make it.
From her patrol report:
The next day, a severely burned survivor from Quito, picked up by the submarine USS Besugo (SS-321), passed on the identity of the fireball that Bream had sent to the bottom.
Later on the same patrol, Bream was given orders to recon the anchorage at Miri in Japanese-occupied Borneo, where she found no shipping but was spotted by a passing American B-24 who got overly excited. As noted in her war history, “USS Bream made the big time on the 22nd when a U.S. Army plane reported her as a carrier, but still no targets. No flight pay either.”
She was also pressed into duty as a minelayer, sowing 23 Mark 12 mines off Pulo Ob in the Gulf of Siam on 8-9 May. Ironically, she would have to get really involved in navigating such fields directly after.
While on lifeguard duty in the Philippines in late May, she picked up the pilot of a downed USAAF P-51 Mustang on the 19th “after barreling through a minefield at four main engine speed,” then negotiated a different minefield on the 26th to pluck four survivors of a downed B-25 bomber from the water. The patrol report noted, “We are mighty ready to get these boys but wish they wouldn’t pick the minefields to ditch in.”
After 18 months and six hard charging patrols, during which she received rail cars full of depth charges and at least two air-dropped bombs, Bream was in need of refit and left Saipan in June 1945 for Bethlehem Steel Company shipyard at San Francisco.
She stopped off at Pearl on the way and a series of photos, taken by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, likely stationed ashore rather than part of her crew, were taken. It is rare that images of wartime Gatos exist, and these are some of the best, despite their poor condition.
USS Bream (SS 243) entering Pearl Harbor after a successful war patrol. Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, 15 June 1945. 80-G-325193
USS Bream (SS 243) entering Pearl Harbor after a successful war patrol. Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, 15 June 1945. 80-G-325192
Note her rough appearance. Hard to believe she is only been in the fleet for 18 months at the time this image was snapped. This is a fighting submarine! USS Bream (SS 243) entering Pearl Harbor after a successful war patrol. Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, 15 June 1945. The two large ships directly behind the sub at the center of the photo are both later Baltimore class cruisers.
USS Bream (SS 243) entering Pearl Harbor after a successful war patrol. View of the conning tower. Note her homeward-bound pennant and mounted Oerlikons. Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, 15 June 1945. 80-G-325197
At the Pearl Harbor submarine base, crew members touch up the rusted areas on USS Bream (SS 243), which has just completed a successful war patrol. Note her 5″/25. Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, 15 June 1945. 80-G-325172
Another great view of the 5″/25. At the Pearl Harbor submarine base, crew members touch up the rusted areas on USS Bream (SS 243), which has just completed a successful war patrol. Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, 15 June 1945. 80-G-325173
USS Bream (SS 243). Crew members inside torpedo tube. Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, 15 June 1945. 80-G-325176
USS Bream (SS 243). Crew members in engine room spaces. Note the “patrol beard” and the snipe chewing a cigar. Talk about old-school Navy! Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, 15 June 1945. 80-G-325181
In true Navy tradition, shipmates of John O. Tibs toss him overboard from USS Bream (SS 243) at Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, on his promotion to Chief Machinist’s Mate. Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, 15 June 1945. 80-G-495544
Bream was in San Francisco on VJ Day. Following her refit, she was decommissioned there on 31 January 1946 and was placed in reserve.
Bream earned four battle stars for her World War II service.
After five years in mothballs, war came again and Bream was dusted off for Korea, then, along with six other sisters– USS Angler (SS-240), USS Grouper (SS-214), USS Bashaw (SS-241), USS Bluegill (SS-242), USS Cavalla (SS-244), and USS Croaker (SS-246), she was selected to become a submarine hunter-killer (SSK) via an SCB 58 conversion, sometimes called a “Grouper conversion” after the first boat that underwent the transition from fleet boat to SSK.
Comparing Fleet Boat Gato to SSK Gato. Forgive the bend in the page. The SSK conversion did not have that crazy hull deformity
As noted by DANFS:
As a part of the Navy’s fleet expansion program in response to the communist invasion of the Republic of Korea, Bream was recommissioned on 5 June 1951 and reported to Submarine Squadron 3, Pacific Fleet. From June 1951 until August 1952, she was engaged in type training and provided services to the Fleet Sonar School at San Diego. She was decommissioned once again on 10 September 1952 to undergo conversion to an antisubmarine “killer” submarine at the San Francisco Naval Shipyard.
The conversion included the installation of a snorkel, which enabled her to take in air and operate her diesel engines while submerged. In addition, her conning tower was streamlined, the habitability of the crew’s living spaces was improved, and special sonar listening equipment was installed. The warship was redesignated SSK-243 in February 1953. Bream was placed back in commission on 20 June 1953.
USS Bream (SSK-243) photographed during the 1950s. Description: Courtesy of Commander Donald J. Robinson, USN (MSC), 1974. Catalog #: NH 78980
USS Bream (SS-243) USN 1042361
Our new SSK would spend the next decade on a series of training, exercises, antisubmarine warfare tactical development duty, and West Pac cruises. Shifting her homeport to Pearl Harbor in 1956, she roamed the largest ocean Pacific spanning from Adak, Alaska to Aukland, New Zealand, and from Hong Kong to Pago Pago, notably spending both Christmas Day 1957 and 1962 in Yokosuka.
Bream (SS-243) is seen here on 1 January 1962 off the coast of Hawaii. The fairwater has been streamlined and all guns removed. Also, she has been fitted with an enlarged sonar dome on her bow. USN Archives photo # USN-1039531 courtesy of All Hands magazine by the Naval Historical Center, April 2002, pg. 47 & submitted by Bill Gonyo. Text courtesy of The Floating Drydock, Fleet Subs of WW II” by Thomas F. Walkowiak.
In April 1964, Bream was reclassified as an auxiliary submarine (AGSS-243), as were most of her remaining sisters still in U.S. Navy in service, and switched primarily from duty as a warfighting submarine to a training boat, largely in conjunction with ASW assets such as destroyers and patrol aircraft as an OPFOR. This included a trip to Vietnam in late 1965 as well as three extended WestPac deployments to perform the same services to allies in the South Korean, Taiwanese, and Philippine fleets.
Bream (AGSS-243) underway in the Pacific in the late 1960s, via Navsource.
With time not kind to these old WWII-era diesel boats, and the Navy desperately wanting to be SSN-only, Bream was slated to decommission in 1969. On 28 June, she and four sisters– USS Bluegill (AGSS 242), 1944 Wolfpack pal USS Raton (AGSS 270), USS Tunny (AGSS 282), and USS Charr (AGSS 328), were decommissioned on the same day.
Raton (AGSS-270) and Bluegill (AGSS-242) during the decommissioning ceremony at Mare Island on 28 June 1969. Bream (AGSS-243), Tunny (AGS-282) and Charr (AGSS-328) are forward of Raton and Bluegill. Chara (AE-31) is in the background. Photo courtesy of the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum via Darryl L. Baker. Via Navsource.
In a fitting allegory that there would be no going back for these old “smoke boats,” Bream was struck from the Naval Register and sunk as a target, on 7 November 1969, sent to the bottom in tests of the new Mk48 heavyweight torpedo by the Skipjack-class nuclear-powered submarine USS Sculpin (SSN 590).
Almost all of Bream’s war patrol reports, war history, and Cold War-era logbooks are digitized in the National Archives and sometimes make very entertaining reading.
Her battle flag is one of 49 preserved in the Submarine Force Library and Museum and is certainly colorful.
Note her six service stripes for her patrols, the minelaying flag, the Swazi for the German ship Quito, two rising suns for the two Japanese cruisers she accounted for, and the lifeguard flag for the five Army aviators she plucked from the Japanese minefields off Takao in the PI. Note that she is seen sailing into the setting sun. She had a busy 18 months.
As for her WWII skipper, “Moon” Chapple commanded the heavy cruiser USS Pittsburgh in the Korean War and would go on to retire as a rear admiral in 1959. He died in 1991, aged 83.
One of Bream’s Cold War era crewmembers, EM1 Bob Droke, a shutterbug who later became a commercial photographer, has a great collection of period images from Bream on Flickr.
1955-57 USS Bream at Sea photo by Bob Droke
USS Bream, docked at Pearl Harbor, photo by Bob Droke
As for her sisters, other Gatos lived on, although an amazing 20 were lost in the Pacific during WWII. The last two Gato-class boats active in the US Navy were USS Rock (SS-274) and Bashaw (SS-241), which were both decommissioned on 13 September 1969 and sold for scrap. Nine went to overseas allies with the last, USS Guitarro (SS-363) serving the Turkish Navy as TCG Preveze (S 340) in one form or another until 1983.
A full half-dozen Gatos are preserved in the U.S. so please visit them when you can:
Two of these, Cavalla and Croaker, are rare SSK Gato conversions, like Bream, while Cod and our boat were liked via the POW incident.
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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