Tag Archives: battleship

Warship Wednesday August 20: The Impressive Italian 17-inch Heroes

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week.

– Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday August 20 The Impressive Italian 17-inch Heroes

battleship italia
Here we see the giant and remarkable for the time  Italia-class battlewagon Lepanto. Designed by the famous Benedetto Brin in the 1870s to bring peace and tranquility to the Med– under the Italian tri-color– the two-ship Italia-class was the pride and joy of the Regia Marina.

Tipping the scales at over 15,000-tons, these 409-foot steel-hulled brawlers could make an impressive 18.4-knots on their 15,797 shp plant. What is truly remarkable about these ships is that they had a brace of four 17-inch (432mm) naval guns. That’s not a misprint– we are talking about 17-inch rifled cannon in 1876. Of course they were black powder and only some 26-calibers long, but you have to admit that is impressive.

immense 17-inch armament of the Italian Lepanto.

Due to their length and weight, these guns were set up en echelon amidships in a single, large, diagonal, oval barbette, with one pair of guns on a turntable to port and the other to starboard.

Notice how deep the hull is. You have to put 10,000 troops somewhere!

Notice how deep the hull is. You have to put 10,000 troops somewhere!

Italia was laid down in 1876 at Castellammare Naval Shipyard while Lepanto began construction at Orlando in Livorno at the same time. However, these ships were so new for the time, I mean think about it, the U.S. Civil War had just ended a decade before, that they languished on the builders ways until after 1885, nearly a decade later when they were commissioned.

ITA italia

These were huge, deep ships for the time. Besides the massive main armament and a dozen secondary 6-inch and 4.7-inch guns, each could carry a full 10,000-man infantry division in a pinch. Now that is power projection.

1052

These gentle giants, with their distinctive six-funnel profile (Lepanto always just had four though), cruised the Med for a generation but saw little active use. By 1902 Lepanto was placed in reduced service as a gunnery training ship and then a non-functional depot vessel within the decade.

Lepanto-facta-nautica

Sistership Italia lasted a bit longer, earning a refit in 1905 then serving as a torpedo training ship and floating harbor defense craft in World War One. While Lepanto was sold for scrapping on 27 March 1915, Italia suffered an even worse fate. Disarmed after the war, she was used to carry grain to Italian troops in North Africa until being finally stricken 16 November 1921 and subsequently scrapped.

No known memorial exists to these interesting 17-inch Roman battlewagons.

Specs:

italia op067 2s

Displacement: 13,336 long tons (13,550 t) normal
15,649 long tons (15,900 t) full load
Length:     400 ft 3 in (122.0 m) between perpendiculars
409 ft 1 in (124.7 m) length overall
Beam:     73 ft 4 in (22.4 m)
Draft:     30 ft 9 in (9.4 m)
Installed power: 15,797 ihp (11,780 kW)
Propulsion:     4 shafts, vertical compound engines, 8 oval and 16 cylindrical boilers
Speed:     18.4 knots (21.2 mph; 34.1 km/h)
Range:     ca. 5,000 nautical miles (9,260 km) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Troops:     Up to 10,000
Complement: 669, later 701
Armament:     As built:
*4 × 17-inch (432 mm)/26 guns
*8 × 6-inch (152 mm)/32 guns
*4 × 4.7-inch (119 mm)/32 guns
*4 × 14-inch (356 mm) torpedo tubes
Added later:
*2 × 75mm guns
*12 × 57mm quick-firing guns
*12 × 37mm revolvers
*2 × machine guns
From 1902:
*4 × 17-inch (432 mm)/26 guns
*4 × 4.7-inch (119 mm)/32 guns
9 × 57mm guns
6 × 37mm/25 revolvers
2 × machine guns
Torpedo tubes removed after 1902
Armor:     Steel armor
Belt and side: None
Deck: 4 in (101.6 mm)
Citadel: 19 in (483 mm)
Funnel base: 16 in (406 mm)
Conning tower: 4 in (102 mm)

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

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval lore http://www.warship.org/naval.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.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday Aug 13, 2014 A Sad Story of Fish, Genius, Sightseeing and Neglect

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.

– Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday Aug 13, 2014 A Sad Story of Fish, Genius, Sightseeing and Neglect

12142501

Here we see the majestic yacht Celt. Built by Pusey and Jones Co., Wilmington, Delaware (hull number 306), the 170-foot long steel hulled vessel with fine lines was built to the specs of one Mr. J. Rogers Maxwell, a long-time member of the Atlantic Yacht Club who had owned a number of famous racing yachts including the Peerless, Emerald and Yankee. Designed by Mr. Wintringham, Celt was 138-feet at the waterline and 170 oal. Intended for New York Bay and Long Island Sound, she was to be a tender and flagship to Maxwell’s racing fleet. Outfitted with a number of mahogany adorned cabins on two berthing decks, she was a a magnificent vessel. Two Almy boilers fed by some 42 tons of bunkered coal pushed a  four-cylinder triple expansion Sullivan that generated 1200 shp. Completed in 1902, she was the toast of the New York coastline for a decade.

Maxwell’s racing team won the King’s Cup in 1907 in the Queen, but by 1914, the whole trans-Atlantic sprint had fallen into a slump due to the start of World War One. With this, Celt was laid up and at sometime during this time was renamed Sachem upon her sale to one Manton B. Metcalf. When the U.S. entered the war in April 1917, Metcalf offered the craft up for use by the Navy. As such, in July 1917 she rightfully became the USS Sachem (SP-192), an anti-submarine patrol craft.  Her armament was an unimpressive 6-pounder 57mm deck gun, a pair of 3-pounder 37mm guns, and two Colt potato digger light machine-guns.

Then something odd happened.

According to Thomas A. Edison: Unorthodox Submarine Hunter by E. David Cronon archived over at the WWI.com website, Thomas Edison had a queer fascination with producing any number of novel ideas to sink the Kaiser’s U-boats. But he needed a ship as a floating laboratory. Keep reading:

“Edison would not rest, however, until he had acquired a boat for his anti-submarine experiments. In the spring of 1917 he obtained Secretary Daniels’ permission to charter a yacht for this purpose, but had great difficulty finding a suitable one at a cost he thought reasonable. He suspected this was because the owners hoped the government would commandeer their boats so they would “then get a good price for them.” “Many of them are old and the engines defective, approaching the character of junk,” he cautioned Daniels. “I think Roosevelt should be warned not to fall into this trap and be saddled with a lot of junk.”(31). This last was a reference to F.D.R.’s well-publicized enthusiasm for solving the U-boat problem with a fleet of small anti-submarine boats. After a number of false starts, Daniels finally arranged for Edison to have use of a Navy submarine patrol boat, the S.P. 192, and the Edisons moved to New London, Connecticut, to conduct experiments on Long Island Sound. Always protective, Mrs. Edison insisted on sharing the small cabin aboard ship with the inventor, much to the dismay of the Navy crew. “I detest it on the boat and long to be home, ” she wrote one of their sons. “I wish I knew just how much and what Papa wants me out here for. . . . The more cluttered the place the better contented father seems to be. I could kill Hutchinson for ever getting him into this mess.”(32). Mrs. Edison worried about her husband’s susceptibility to seasickness and his unwillingness to conclude his experiments or ever concede defeat. “It looks like a winter’s job as far as father is concerned, as you know father,” she lamented in another letter. “He constantly gets new ideas that leads [sic] to more experimenting and halfway never counts with him.”(33).

The use of a suitable Navy boat enabled Edison to conduct experiments on a number of projects requiring tests simulating conditions at sea. One of these was a water brake or sea anchor, which he called a “kite rudder,” and which when used in conjunction with a ship’s engines and regular rudder might enable it to turn quickly enough to avoid an oncoming torpedo. “On a merchant ship I propose to use 2 or 3 fastened to rail of ship.” Edison reported. “On signal, they are dropped and instantly act to turn the ship.”(34). In one experiment, a fully loaded cargo ship was able to turn 90 degrees in only 200 feet using four sea anchors, whereas it advanced 1,000 feet while executing the same turn with no sea anchors in use (35).

Two of the inventor’s other schemes might have come from Rube Goldberg. Noting that 75% of torpedoed ships took more than fifteen minutes to sink, Edison experimented with what he called “collision mats” rolled up at the rail on both sides of a ship for its full length. When torpedoed, these-large mats would be released to cover the hole, and water pressure would hold them against the cargo, slowing the influx of water. “I think 50% of all the torpedoed boats can be saved and got to port,” Edison reported to Daniels in a handwritten note from Key West; “officers here think so.”(36). An even more fantastic Edison contraption was a 25-foot long tube of rolled up wire mesh made of quarter-inch cable. “It resembles a large window curtain,” he explained, which would be fired from the ship in the path of an oncoming torpedo.

In add Edison worked on some 45 inventions to fight submarines during the war, and none were put into production

The hardy Sachem never saw active combat and was returned to Mr. Metcalf in Feb. 1919 who sold it to a Philadelphia banker for use as a yacht (and rumored as a rum runner mother-ship during Prohibition) before selling it again to Sheepshead Bay New York charter fisherman Jake Martin in 1932. Martin soon put the now-30 year old craft into use each summer as a junket ship for tourists along the Jersey and New York coast.

12142506
Martin had the old steam engines replaced with a more modern 7-cylinder Fairbanks-Morse 805hp diesel during the winter of 1935-36 and continued her in service chasing tuna and sharks for day passengers. Then came another war.

On on 17 February 1942, just ten weeks after Pearl Harbor, the Navy bought the now-40 year old ex-yacht turned fishing boat for $65,000. Giving her a haze gray paint scheme, an obsolete 3″/23 cal gun recycled from a Coast Guard cutter who had traded it in for something bigger, four M2 water-cooled Brownings and some depth charge racks, she was commissioned USS Phenakite (PYc-25), 1 July 1942.

During the war the old girl plied the Eastern seaboard from Key West to New York doing patrol work but, like in her first war service, found no combat. By November 1944 she was laid up again and a year later Martin reclaimed her.  He promptly sold her in poor shape to the Circle Line group of tour boats in New York City who spiffed her up and renamed her Sightseeker.

12142511

Moored at the popular Pier 83, the craft was very distinctive with its sleek turn of the century clipper lines (and welded over deck gun mounts). Even when the Circle Line divested themselves of most of their oldest vessels in the 1950s, they kept the Sightseer around as she was a crowd favorite. Captained by an experienced Norwegian master by the name of Harold Log, she was the flagship of the line well into the 1970s (being renamed the apt Circle Line V) until the Circle Line finally sold her for her value in scrap metal. Apparently, while derelict in New York harbor, she made it into Madonna’s “Papa Dont Preach” video.

8561349835_0a7b13e003_b
The rest of her life is a mystery until she was picked up by one Robert Miller in 1986, nearly a decade after she was sold for scrap. Miller repaired her a bit, crewed her and sailed her to his property near Lawrenceburg, Indiana on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River

Unfortunately, she is still there as a ghost ship along the river frequented by kayakers and would-be treasure hunters searching for reasons to get a tetanus shot.

Now, some 112 years old, she rests in the mud.

Specs:
Displacement 317 t.
1942 – 360 t.
Length 186′ 3″
1942 – 183′
Beam 22′ 6″
Draft 8′
1942 – 9′ 7″
Speed 15 kts.
1942 – 13.5 kts.
Complement 49 (1917)
1942 – 40
Armament: One 6-pounder, two 3-pounders and two machine guns (1917)
1942 – One 3″/23 mount, four .50 cal. machine guns and two depth charge tracks
Propulsion: One 1,200ihp vertical triple-expansion steam engine, one shaft
1936 – One 805hp 7-cylinder Fairbanks-Morse 37D 14 diesel engine.

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/

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.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, Aug 6: Of a General, an Admiral, a cadet, Mother’s Day and Cinco de Mayo

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, Aug 6: Of a General, an Admiral, a cadet, Mother’s Day and Cinco de Mayo

corbetazaragoza

Here we see the Cañonero corbeta-escuela “General Zaragoza” at anchor around the 1890s. She was the backbone of the Armada de México for more than three decades, one of the first modern warships of that navy, and as such the birthplace of that current military force.

Zaragoza general

Zaragoza, the General who brought us Cinco De Mayo

Named for the famous 33-year old General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín, the leader of the Mexican forces during the first part of the French Intervention in Mexico. The Secretary of War in the cabinet of Benito Juárez, Zaragoza resigned from his desk job and led a ragtag force of some 4500-men against 6000 hardened French regulars at the battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. This victory is still remembered by Mexicans at home and abroad in the regular Cinco de Mayo festivals in which everyone suddenly loves Corona, Dos Equis, and Modelo Negros.

In 1890 a modern 213-foot steel hulled corvette was ordered from the Société Nouvelle des Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée shipways at Le Havre, France. A steam-engined barque-rigged ship, she was capable of 13-knots with her boilers lit, slightly less with her canvas aloft and a good breeze, or slightly more with a following gale. The man-of-war was configured to be crewed by 21 officers and 98 enlisted, she had berthing for 20-40 midshipmen trainees in her intended role as the Navy’s first modern buqueescuela or school-ship in addition to her primary duties as a steel warship.

gen zaragoza maxican cruiser

A nice view of the Zaragoza with her original rig. The “Chocolaterie d’aiguebelle (Drome)” label on this card is from the French Chocolat d’Aiguebelle company, a candy maker in the late 19th and early 20th century who included produced a series of naval vessel cards drawn typically from French and French-made vessels.

Being built in France, her armament consisted of a half-dozen Schneider-Canet made 140mm (5.5-inch) rapid-fire naval rifles as her main battery, two Nordenfelt 57mm guns, and a pair of 37mm (1.5-inch) Hotchkiss revolving guns for defense against small boats. The ship also carried enough small arms for a decent landing party and small, wheeled cannon for the same.

corbetaescuelazaragoza

A force of officers and contract sailors commanded by Brigadier Gen/Vice Admiral Angel Ortiz Monasterio (at the time the Navy was part of the Army) collected the ship from France November 16, 1891, placing her in commission then. She then sailed in her maiden voyage to Veracruz at a slow rate in nine weeks, carrying the first national prototype kilogram of platinum-iridium to arrive in Mexico.

Angel Ortiz Monasterio, the Admiral

Angel Ortiz Monasterio, the Admiral

She re-crossed the Atlantic that fall to have her rig improved for faster sailing and some other technical modifications. As luck would have it, she was in Cadiz in time to attend the celebrations of the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America by Columbus, serving as an escort ship for the Queen Regent of Spain’s royal yacht, a duty that led to the ship, officers, and men being decorated by the regent. The fact that Monasterio had served in the Spanish Navy for 13 years and at one point was an ADC to the King probably helped ease that process.

With her improved rig

With her improved rig

To display the new ship, it was decided to attempt the first Mexican circumnavigation of the globe in 1895-97. It was divided into two stages: the first was commanded by experienced Cape Horn master English merchant skipper Carey Brenton, who took command in Tampico, where he sailed on April 5 to tour Central, and South America and passed through the Strait of Magellan to reach Acapulco on July 29. The second stage was to be commanded again by Monasterio with a young captain by the name of Manuel Azueta as ship’s master, who brought his toddler son Jose along for the epic trip. Zaragoza had her hull inspected and cleaned in dry-dock in San Francisco in August at which point while on the circumnavigation that the corvette was boarded and observed by Americans in California.

Zaragoza

One of whom left the following impression:

 

San Francisco Call, August 9, 1895

ON BOARD THE ZARAGUZA

The Mexican War Vessel the Scene of a Public Reception.

Yesterday afternoon a public reception was held on board of the Mexican war vessel Zaragoza, lying off the oil works, and a large party of visitors enjoyed the graceful and hearty hospitality of Captain Azueta and his brother officers. . . . To exhibit the seamanship of his crew Captain Azueta put them through the naval evolutions of sail drill and sending down the lighter yards. At the order, the little Mexican tars ran aloft arid in a short space of time the canvas dropped simultaneously from the yards. The sails were quickly furled and presently the topgallant and royal yards and topgallant masts all came down together on deck with a precision not always found even on crack American and English men-of-war. Prominent among the nimble sailors was the little live-year-old son of the commander . . . The Zaragoza is a French built steel corvette with an armament of six 14-centimeter, or about 5-inch guns, two Nordenfeldt quick-fire and two Hotchkiss guns. . . . Captain Manuel Azueta was born in Mexico 33 years ago, and was educated at the naval school in Spain, and has been in the service of the republic 18 years. He is a highly polished gentleman, a thorough sailor and an earnest patriot of the Mexican Republic. The Zaragoza has completed her repairs and will sail for Guaymas to-morrow.

 

From there the ship sailed to Honolulu, Yokohama, Nagasaki, Hong Kong, Ceylon, Adam, Port Said and up through the Suez, Toulon and back to Veracruz on July 3, 1897, after showing the Mexican tricolor throughout most of the seven seas in a 27-month cruise. During this trip, the hardy little ship’s name was repeated with pleasure and praise in the columns of the newspapers of those distant countries.

Corbeta Escuela Zaragoza

Once back in Mexico, the trio of Zaragoza, Captain Azueta and Vice Adm. Monasterio went about establishing the Republic’s first naval academy, the Escuela Naval Flotante/Escuela Naval Militar, at Veracruz. With just 26 students seconded from the Army, the installation for the Naval Academy consisted of a wooden house at the intersection of Landeros and Coss street consisting of two bodies or eaves of two floors, with an intermediate court where the offices of naval command were installed on the south side of market seafood port. After conditioning the building, it finally opened on July 1, 1897, with the Zaragoza serving as the floating classroom and school ship.

Buque_Escuela_Zaragoza

Peace and quiet, however, were not to be the Zaragoza‘s plight, however and by 1898 she sailed under Azueta’s orders to assist the government in the pacification of the Maya Indian rebels in southeastern Mexico. Zaragoza reached the coast of Yucatan with orders to seize the strongpoint at the El Castillo Tulum ruins, the ancient landmark of the Maya. Azueta landed on the beach there with a 150 man Army/Navy landing force and seized the castle after a siege. Over the next seven years, the ship remained in near constant combat against the rebels, transporting her landing force along the coast and seizing Progresso, Xcalax, Isla Mujeres, Puerto Morelos, Cozumel, Ascension Bay, and Rio Hondo, sometimes more than once. It was a bloody conflict that is not remembered well by the history books for good reason. During this time, Monasterio retired and Azueta moved up to command the Naval Academy, leaving the Zaragoza in the Yucatan.

It was while at Tampico the aging corvette served alongside the warships “Veracruz” and “El Bravo” during the siege by the Constitucionalistas from December 1913 to May 1914, where she operated as floating artillery for federal troops under General Ignacio Morelos Zaragoza. On March 14, 1914, then-Commodore Manuel Azueta hoisted his flag on the old girl and took command of the combined Gulf squadron (Flotilla del Golfo), then proceeded to bombard rebel troops along the coastline with shrapnel at close range. During this time the Tampico Incident, a poorly handled event from both the Mexican and American standpoints, occurred where an unannounced U.S. Navy landing party from the gunboat Dolphin bumped into Federal troops and, both parties being armed and unable to speak the other’s language, ended off in a quite literal Mexican standoff.

This led to an American response in the form of a reinforced squadron of battleships and torpedo boat destroyers landing several hundred sailors and marines at Veracruz April 21. To defend the vital port, local Federal troops gathered all the men they could find, including the 50 or so cadets of the Naval Academy to oppose the landings. One of these cadets, José Azueta Abad, the 19-year old son of Manuel Azueta– the same one who sailed the Zaragoza as a toddler around the world, found himself operating a Hotchkiss light machinegun outside the Academy’s walls. There, alone, the young Azueta held off the advancing column of bluejackets until BM2 JG Harner of the USS Florida ended the young man’s stand at a range of 300-yards, earning the MOH.

....The cadet

….The cadet who is remembered on Mothers Day in Mexico.

Azueta died on May 10 after lingering for nearly three weeks of his wounds, but became a hero in the process after he refused to meet U.S. Rear Adm Frank Friday Fletcher or accept care from American doctors that could have saved his life. His resulting funeral was attended by hundreds in opposition to Fletcher’s orders forbidding public assembly. The day of his death is remembered now as Mother’s Day in Mexico and the Naval Academy was renamed the “Heroica Escuela Naval Militar” to honor Azeuta and the other cadets who fought.

The Zaragoza did not take part in the combat at Veracruz, remaining at Tampico with the rest of the vastly outnumbered Mexican fleet. The elder Azueta retired after the Americans left Veracruz in November. The corvette was on its last legs and, in the resulting drain from the years of the cyclical purges, deaths, and defections during the Mexican Revolution, fell into disrepair.

Zaragoza in haze gray by 1914. She had seen a hard 25-years, crossing the Atlantic four times, the world once, and fighting rebels of all kinds for more than fifteen years.

Zaragoza in haze gray by 1914. She had seen a hard 25-years, crossing the Atlantic four times, the world once, and fighting rebels of all kinds for more than fifteen years.

However, she was still seaworthy enough to escort the remains of noted Mexican modern poet Amado Nervo (Juan Crisóstomo Ruiz de Nervo), who died while Mexico’s Ambassador in the Republic of Uruguay in 1919, back home.

Mexican training cruiser Zaragoza in dazzle camouflage, likely 1918

Immobile by the 1920s, Zaragoza was decommissioned 6 March 1926, stripped, and sunk in the Gulf of Mexico as a target ship.

Specs:

Displacement: 1,226 tons
Length:            213 ft. (65 m)
Propulsion:      Steam engine
Sail plan:          Barque
Speed: 13 knots (24 km/h; 15 mph)
Complement: 139 max
Armament:
6 × Schneider-Canet 140mm cannon
2 × 37 mm (1.5 in) Hotchkiss Revolving Cannon

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/

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.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday July 30th, 150th Anniversary of the Great Tennessee

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.

– Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday July 30th, 150th Anniversary of the Great Tennessee

Battle of Mobile Bay by Louis Prang. CSS Tennessee at left

Battle of Mobile Bay by Louis Prang. CSS Tennessee at left

Here we see the great steam-powered casemate ironclad warship, CSS Tennessee, pride of the Confederate Navy sailing out to meet the Union fleet. Never fully operational, she met her fate and proved her metal 150 years ago this week at the Battle of Mobile Bay. Designed by John L. Dixon, she was the largest Confederate ironclad completed during the war.

Her 209-foot long hull constructed at the heart of the Confederate steel industry in Selma, Alabama, in 1862, she was shipped incomplete down the Mobile River system to Mobile herself for completion. One of the last southern ports, Mobile was vital to the South’s continued resistance in the last stages of the war. There, in the shallow mud flats, she was neared to completion under the direction of Joseph Pierce, Acting Naval Constructor in the area. She was fitted with some 5-6 inches of heavy steel armor plate, three sheets thick, made in Shelby, Alabama. She was equipped with a pair of hard-hitting 7-inch double banded Brooke guns and another four, slightly smaller, 6.4-inch guns, making her perhaps one of the most formidable vessels afloat in the hemisphere if not the world at the time.

The problem was she had a slow and inefficient steam plant salvaged from the old steamer Alonzo Child. With this plant operating at maximum capacity, it could push the 1200-ton battleship to just 5-knots if lucky. This made her ram bow almost a joke of a weapon as most ships could evade the slowly moving but heavily armored ironclad.

Watercolor by F. Muller, circa 1900. Courtesy of the U.S. Navy Art Collection, Washington, D.C.

Watercolor by F. Muller, circa 1900. Courtesy of the U.S. Navy Art Collection, Washington, D.C.

Made the flagship of Confederate Admiral Buchanan, who had helmed the earlier CSS Manassass to her fitful clash with the USS Monitor just two years before, the nearly finished met the might of the Union Navy at the mouth of Mobile Bay on August 5, 1864. There, U.S. Rear Admiral David G. Farragut was leading an armada of eighteen ships, including four new monitors, past the two forts barring the entrance to the last sovereign Confederate watershed.

All Buchanan had at his disposal was the Tennessee and three sad little wooden gunboats armed with popguns. This placed the ironclad at the heart of the southern fleet’s answer to the invaders. Steaming into the fray, the ship closed with Farragut’s classic naval frigates Hartford and Brooklyn and exchanged cannon fire with these wooden ships at point-blank distance. This continued until the new USS Chickasaw, a Milwaukee-class river monitor, closed with the larger beast and raked her with fire, keeping her at bay. Over the course of the next several moments the fleet pounded Tennessee, taking away her steering chains and holing her in several places.

Tennessee broadside-to-broadside with the Oneida; monitor Chickasaw coming in on the Confederate from point-blank range at left, Winnebago in background; bowsprit-less gunboat USS Pequot at right rear. Painting by Tom Freeman

Tennessee broadside-to-broadside with the Oneida; monitor Chickasaw coming in on the Confederate from point-blank range at left, Winnebago in background; bowsprit-less gunboat USS Pequot at right rear. Painting by Tom Freeman

With no other alternative, and fighting a losing battle with a predetermined outcome, Tennessee surrendered.

Capture of Ram Tennessee Mobile Bay by Alfred R. Waud

Capture of Ram Tennessee Mobile Bay by Alfred R. Waud

Within days the Yankees had repaired the ship and placed it under the star-spangled banner as the USS Tennessee, using her, in the ultimate irony, against the Confederates at Fort Morgan. Following victory there she was sent to New Orleans for more extensive repairs and kept in service with the U.S. Navy’s Mississippi Squadron. In 1867 the ship was scrapped.

Port quarter view, probably taken off New Orleans, Louisiana, circa 1865. She was formerly CSS Tennessee (1864-1864). U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph.

Port quarter view, probably taken off New Orleans, Louisiana, circa 1865. She was formerly CSS Tennessee (1864-1864).U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph.

Her guns are on display around the country including several of her Brookes at the Washington Navy Yard, Washington, D.C, another at Norfolk, and one at Selma, where it was cast.

If you are free and around Mobile this weekend, there is the 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Mobile Bay. Centered around Fort Morgan, they will have a mock-up of the Tennessee. You should check it out if in the area.

Specs:

css_tennessee_plan

Displacement: 1,273 long tons (1,293 t)
Length:     209 ft (63.7 m)
Beam:     48 ft (14.6 m)
Draft:     14 ft (4.3 m)
Installed power:     4 boilers
Propulsion:     2 Shafts, 2 Steam engines
Speed:     5 knots (9.3 km/h; 5.8 mph)
Complement: 133 officers and enlisted men
Armament:     2 × 7 in (178 mm) Double-banded Brooke rifles
4 × 6.4 in (163 mm) Double-banded Brooke rifles
ram
Armor:
Casemate: 5–6 in (127–152 mm)
Deck: 2 in (51 mm)

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

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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.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, 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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Warship Wednesday July 23, Jules Verne, Meet the U.S. Navy

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, July 23, Jules Verne, Meet the U.S. Navy

0816846
Here we see the magnificent V-type submarine USS Nautilus (SS-168) in oil on board by the artist I.L. Lloyd depicting the submarine engaging a Japanese merchant ship at close quarters.

Between the two world wars, the U.S. Navy built a collection of nine more or less experimental “V-boat” submarines. These boats took lessons from British and German submarines learned after WWI and incorporated these into a more Yankee design. Each of these subs was very different as the design bureau experimented as they went. One of the ships, V-6, a very close pattern of V-5, which came before her, was built to a submarine-cruiser design.

This concept was a huge sub, meant to have very long legs, and capable of taking the war to the enemy wherever they may be. For this, they were fitted with large, cruiser-caliber guns, and an impressive torpedo battery. Laid down at Mare Island Naval Yard on 2 August 1927, this V-boat (designated V-6/SC-2) was commissioned in June 1930. Following sea trials, V-6 was renamed USS Nautilus (SS-168) on Feb 19, 1931.

Steaming into New York City, 1931. Photo credit: Navsource

Steaming into New York City, 1931. Photo credit: Navsource

The sub was fitted with a pair of massive 6-inch/53 guns in special Mark 17 wet mountings. This gun was designed as a secondary battery of the Lexington-class battle cruisers and South Dakota-class battleships but was only installed in Omaha-class cruisers. Capable of firing a 105-lb shell to a maximum range was 23,300 yd (21,310 m), at the maximum elevation of 25 degrees, they were a hoss of a battery for a boat meant to operate underwater. Except for near-sisters (and fellow V-boats) USS Argonaut (SM-1) and USS Narwhal (SS-167, ex-V-5), the guns carried by the Nautilus were the largest fitted to an American submarine.

To get a feel for how big these guns were, here we see the Nautilus (SS-168) photographed from her sister ship, the Narwhal (SS-167). Photo credit; Navsource.

To get a feel for how big these guns were, here we see the Nautilus (SS-168) photographed from her sister ship, the Narwhal (SS-167). Photo credit; Navsource.

Capable of traveling an amazing 25,000 nm as long as she kept it slow and filled her ballast tanks with fuel, Nautilus could cross the Atlantic six times without refueling if needed. However, she was meant to operate in the Pacific against a growing Japanese naval threat, and she soon found herself there as the flagship of SubDiv12 at Pearl Harbor. Although her near-sister Narwhal was present there on Dec. 7, 1941 (shooting down two torpedo bombers of the Japanese Combined Fleet), Nautilus was laid up undergoing maintenance back in California.

However, she soon got underway and conducted an amazing 14 war patrols. Nautilus found herself in the middle of the Japanese fleet at the Battle of Midway, firing 5 torpedoes at the battleship Kirishima and the carrier Kaga (with little success due to faulty torpedoes) while surviving 42 enemy depth charges. However, just a few weeks after the battle, she ran across the Japanese Shiratsuyu-class destroyer Yamakaze and sent that ship to Davy Jones approximately 60 nautical miles (110 km) southeast of Yokosuka on 30 June 1945. The photo taken of the Yamakaze sinking after being torpedoed became an instant hit and was used for war bond art.

Yamakaze sinking by Nautilus

 

Yamakaze sinking by Nautilus used in 1943 Electric Boat ad

Yamakaze sinking by Nautilus used in 1943 Electric Boat ad

In August 1942, along with the fellow V-Boat USS Argonaut, the two subs carried elements of the Marine Second Raider Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Evans F. Carlson to raid the isolated Japanese garrison at Makin Atoll.

Carrying 90 men of Bravo Company, the raid annihilated the small force on the atoll and was a huge propaganda victory for the nation at the time.

U.S. Marine Raiders exercise on the deck of USS Nautilus while en route to the raid on Makin Island on August 11 1942

U.S. Marine Raiders exercise on the deck of USS Nautilus while en route to the raid on Makin Island on August 11, 1942. And yes, that’s what a 6″/53 Mk17 looks like up close.

Nautilus went back to her life as a fleet submarine but was also pressed back into duty carrying raiders behind enemy lines.

In 1943 she carried 109 Eskimo Scouts to land on the Japanese-occupied Aleutian island of Attu just before the main assault. Then at Tarawa, she put ashore a 77-man group of the 5th Amphibious Reconnaissance Company. Towards the end of the war, she helped carry supplies and recon teams around the Philippines, helping to resupply and tie in local guerrilla groups led since 1942 in many cases by stay-behind (left-behind?) U.S. military members to the effort to liberate the islands.

However, with the war winding down, so did the Navy’s interest in the old and reliable Nautilus. Decommed before the war even ended on 30 June 1945, she was stricken and sold for scrap that Fall after a very hard 15-year life. Her war patrol reports are public record.

Specs:

0816803a

Displacement, Surfaced: 2,730 t., Submerged: 3,960 t.;
Length 371′ ;
Beam 33′ 3″;
Draft 15′ 9″;
Propulsion, diesel-electric, Maschinfabrik – Augusburg- Nurnburg, New York Navy Yard diesel engines, hp 3175,
Fuel Capacity, 182,778 gal., Westinghouse Electric Co., electric motors, hp 2500, Battery Cells 240, twin propellers.
Speed, Surfaced 17 kts, Submerged 8 kts;
Depth Limit 300′;
Complement 8 officers 80 enlisted;
Armament, four 21″ torpedo tubes forward, two 21″ torpedo tubes aft, four 21″ torpedo tubes topside, 24 torpedoes; two single 6″/53 deck gun, two 30 cal. mgs.;

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/

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.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday July 16, Coast Guard Saladbar holder, The Mighty Spencer

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.

– Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, July 16, Coast Guard Salad-bar holder, The Mighty Spencer

(Courtesy USCGC Spencer Association)

(Courtesy USCGC Spencer Association)

Here we see the United States Coast Guard Treasury-class cutter USCGC Spencer (W36/WPG-36/WAGC-36/WHEC-36) as depicted in a painting by CWO3 William ‘Bill’ RaVell, USCG Ret. . CWO3 RaVell is an artist and member of the International Society of Marine Painters in addition to being a crew member on the USS Spencer between 1959 and 1961.

Officially known as the “Treasury” class due to the fact the 7 ships in the group were all named after former early secretaries of the U.S Treasury (the department that the Coast Guard reported to until 1972), they were better known simply as ‘327’ ships due to their overall length. Based on the Erie-class (PG-50) gunboats of the U.S Navy, a group of just two ships designed to patrol the far-flung Panama Canal Zone before WWII, these coast guard cutters were the largest and most heavily armed ships in the Treasury fleet up until that time.

"Gunnery exercise."; circa 1940; Photo No. 2414; photo was provided through the courtesy of Merle Harbourt, USCG (Ret.), a Spencer crewman, who served on board her during the 1939-1940 period. USCG Photo

“Gunnery exercise.”; circa 1940; Photo No. 2414; the photo was provided through the courtesy of Merle Harbourt, USCG (Ret.), a Spencer crewman, who served on board her during the 1939-1940 period. USCG Photo

Capable of over 20-knots and with the capability to carry a seaplane (a JF-2 amphibian), these 327-foot long, 2400-ton cutters could roam across the ocean and back again with an impressive 12,300-nm range. A threesome of 5-inch/51-caliber guns augmented a few 6-pounder guns was impressive enough for a shallow water (can float in 13-feet of sea) gunboat and seen as more than adequate to stop smugglers and sink derelict vessels on the high seas. In a pinch, the armament could be increased in time of war, which the Navy was keenly aware of.

Grumman JF-2 Duck being deployed from a cutter. Two were carried experimentally on board the 327s Spencer and Taney during pre-war tests. The Coast Guard obtained 14 JF-2s prior to WWII designed specifically for the service and a number of J2Fs during WWII. Of the first batch, they were acquired in October of 1934 and carried Coast Guard numbers V-135 through V148.

Laid down in 1935 at the New York Navy Yard, Spencer was commissioned into the USCG on 1 March 1937 with a total building cost of  $2,468,460. She was named after former Secretary of the Treasury John Canfield Spencer, who served in President Tyler’s administration. An earlier Civil War-era Revenue Cutter was also named after Spencer.

Sent to patrol the Alaskan fishing grounds, Spencer embarked meteorologists from the Weather Bureau (this is pre-NOAA) and performed weather station observations in both the Pacific and the Atlantic. Then in November 1941, with the threat of war looming, she reported for duty with the U.S. Navy  Quickly, she was armed with an three 3-inch AAA DP guns, depth charge racks, and a “Y” gun depth charge projector as well as an increasingly advanced array of senors for finding enemy ships and submarines.

She was going to need them.

Spencer with her teeth in and her warpaint on.

Spencer with her teeth in and her warpaint on.

By February 1942 she was escorting the first of no less than 18 huge trans-ocean convoys as part of Mid-Ocean Escort Force (MOEF)-A3. This force often tasked with protecting dozens of merchantmen carrying troops and vital supplies consisted of the destroyer Gleaves, Spencer, and Flower-class corvettes Bittersweet, Chilliwack, Shediac and Algoma.

Each MOEF escort Group worked in a 33-day cycle allowing nine and one-half days with a westbound ON convoy, six days in St. John’s, Newfoundland, nine and one-half days with an eastbound HX or SC convoy, and 8 days refit in Derry.

These runs were often terrifying. Convoy ON 67 in February 1942 lost 7 ships to wolf packs of multiple U-boats. During Convoy SC.100, a slow-ship run from  Sydney, Cape Breton Island to Liverpool with 26 merchant ships, the escorts fought off attacks from two complete wolf-packs totaling 17 U-boats. SC-121 fought off attacks from 27 submarines. It was only the fact that the Spencer and her associates constantly rushed to every HF/DF, sonor, radar and lookout contact, dropping depth charges and curses that these convoys made it at all. During this time her armament was increased with the addition of a Hedgehog system, 6 “K” gun projectors, and a number of 20mm AAA guns.

U.S. Coast Guard Cutter SPENCER

On 17 April, while a part of convoy HX-233, no less than seven U-boats converged on the group of ships in the mid-Atlantic gap, the area of the ocean too far from land to be covered by either U.S. or European-based anti-submarine aircraft. Stopping to pick up survivors of the torpedoed freighter Fort Rampart, Spencer found the German Type VII-type submarine U-175 sitting at periscope depth just 5000-yards from the convoy, lining up her tubes on the Allied vessels.

USCGC Spencer hits the German submarine U-175, 4.17.43

USCGC Spencer hits the German submarine U-175, 4.17.43

11 depth charges later, U-175 was mortally wounded and Spencer‘s U-boat killers soon switched into rescue mode (it’s the Coast Guard!), pulling 19 survivors from the stricken vessel.

 

Official Caption: "NAZI SUBMARINE SUNK BY THE FAMED CUTTER SPENCER: Effect of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter SPENCER'S fire are visible in this closeup shot of the U-Boat, taken as the battle raged. The Nazi standing by the stanchion amidships disappeared a moment after this picture was taken by a Coast Guard photographer. The U-Boat had been trying to sneak into the center of the convoy." Date: 17 April 1943 Photo No.: 1512 Photographer: Jack January? Description: The "Nazi" mentioned in the above caption was probably in fact a member of the Coast Guard boarding team--one of the first Americans to board an enemy man-of-war underway at sea since the War of 1812.

Official Caption: “NAZI SUBMARINE SUNK BY THE FAMED CUTTER SPENCER: Effect of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter SPENCER’S fire are visible in this closeup shot of the U-Boat, taken as the battle raged. The Nazi standing by the stanchion amidships disappeared a moment after this picture was taken by a Coast Guard photographer. The U-Boat had been trying to sneak into the center of the convoy.” Date: 17 April 1943 Photo No.: 1512 Photographer: Jack January? Description: The “Nazi” mentioned in the above caption was probably, in fact, a member of the Coast Guard boarding team–one of the first Americans to board an enemy man-of-war underway at sea since the War of 1812.

Official Caption: "OFF TO RESCUE THEIR BEATEN FOES: A pulling boat leaves the side of a Coast Guard combat cutter to rescue Nazi seamen struggling in the mid-Atlantic after their U-Boat had been blasted to the bottom by the cutter's depth charges. Two Coast Guard cutters brought 41 German survivors to a Scottish port." Date: 17 April 1943 Photo No.: 1516 Photographer: Jack January Description: The men in this pulling boat were in fact a trained boarding team led by LCDR John B. Oren (standing in the stern and wearing the OD helmet) and LT Ross Bullard (directly to Oren's left). With the assistance of the Royal Navy they had practiced boarding a submarine at sea in order to capture an Enigma coding machine and related intelligence material. They were forced to take a pulling lifeboat when the Spencer's motor lifeboat was damaged by friendly fire.

Official Caption: “OFF TO RESCUE THEIR BEATEN FOES: A pulling boat leaves the side of a Coast Guard combat cutter to rescue Nazi seamen struggling in the mid-Atlantic after their U-Boat had been blasted to the bottom by the cutter’s depth charges. Two Coast Guard cutters brought 41 German survivors to a Scottish port.” Date: 17 April 1943 Photo No.: 1516 Photographer: Jack January Description: The men in this pulling boat were, in fact, a trained boarding team led by LCDR John B. Oren (standing in the stern and wearing the OD helmet) and LT Ross Bullard (directly to Oren’s left). With the assistance of the Royal Navy they had practiced boarding a submarine at sea in order to capture an Enigma coding machine and related intelligence material. 

In addition to this confirmed kill, Spencer has been credited by some sources as being credited off and on in the sinking of U-529 and U-225 as well as damaging several others.

Spencer was not the only 327 to make a kill. With a kill rate of .57 per ship, the Treasury-class were the most successful antisubmarine warships of World War Two. (US Navy Destroyer Escorts had a kill rate of .1 in comparison).

 

U-175S7
By early 1944 the submarine war in the Atlantic was all but decided and the 327s were reclassified as Communications Command Ships for Amphibious group leaders and Spencer was transferred as such to the Pacific with the 36th Signal Detachment Headquarters Company, U. S. Army stationed aboard.

Norfolk Sept 1944, a hard war already behind her, she is now headed to the Pacific.

Norfolk Sept 1944, a hard war already behind her, she is now headed to the Pacific.

 

There, re designated as WAGC-36, she arrived in the Philippines and participated in the landings at Palawan, Moro Gulf, Mindanao, Parang and Luzon where she had often had  LTGEN  R. L. Eichelberger, Commanding General, 8th Army, and MAJGEN Swing, commanding general, 11th Airborne Division on board during the landings. She then sortied south to assist in landings in Borneo. She ended the war shooting at floating naval mines off China and was ordered to sail back to the states 5 December 1945.

Her armament reduced, excess wartime equipment removed, and paint scheme returned to white, she was back in service off the Eastern seaboard with the Coast Guard by 1946, alternating home ports for the next thirty years between New York City (Governor’s Island) and Boston.

1946 spencer

Back in white, with a new 5″/38 mount and almost everything else war-related stripped away.

In 1965 she was overhauled and redesigned WHEC-36 (High Endurance Cutter). Then in 1969, the 32-year old war veteran was sent to South Vietnam as part of CG Squadron Three as part of the Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club interdicting NV/Viet Cong junks along the coast. For nine months she tracked and boarded contacts, captured 52 enemy suspects, and answered 13 naval gunfire close support fire missions, bombarding NVA targets ashore.

002 Govenors Island
Then, as after WWII, she returned home to other rounds of peacetime service. Finally, her hull aging and equipment worn out, she was docked in 1974 in semi-retirement, used as a floating Engineer Training School until 1980, when she was finally retired after 43 years of service.

Spencer's salad bar of decorations.

Spencer’s salad bar of decorations.

During her wars, she accumulated a vast array of awards and has been described as the most decorated of all Coast Guard cutters. These include a Presidential Unit Citation, 10 campaign medals for ETO and Pacific Theater operations in WWII, 3 Vietnam Service Medals, 3 Philippine Liberation Ribbons and the Republic of Vietnam Meritorious Unit Citation with Gallantry Cross with Palm.

In 1981 she was sold for $27,000, her value as scrap, to a company in Delaware. However, two of her sister ships, Taney (currently a museum ship at the Baltimore Maritime Museum) Ingham (Key West Maritime Museum in Key West, Florida) are preserved for you to visit– so please do.

Spencer‘s memory is preserved in a Bear-class 270-foot WMEC  as well as a very well-organized veterans association.

Specs:
(As per USCG History official website)

Spencer001

Displacement: 2,350 (1936)
Length: 327′ 0″
Beam: 41′ 0″
Draft: 12′ 6″ (max.)
Propulsion: 2 x Westinghouse double-reduction geared turbines; 2 x Babcock & Wilcox sectional express, air-encased, 400 psi, 200° superheat; 2 x 9′ three-bladed propellers.
SHP: 6,200 (1966)
Maximum Speed: 20.5 knots
Economical Cruising: 11.0 knots (8,000 nautical miles)
Fuel Oil Capacity:  135,180 gallons (547 tons)
Complement:  1937: 12 officers, 4 warrants, 107 enlisted;
1941: 16 officers, 5 warrants, 202 enlisted;
1966: 10 officers, 3 warrants, 134 enlisted.

Electronics:
HF/DF: (1942) DAR (converted British FH3)
Radar: (1945) SC-4, SGa; (1966) AN/SPS-29D, AN/SPA-52.
Fire Control Radar: (1945) Mk-26; (1966) Mk-26 MOD 4
Sonar: (1945) QC series; (by early 1950s?) AN/SQS-11
Armament:

1936: 3 x 5″/51 (single mount); 2 x 6-pounders.; 1 x 1-pounder.

1941: 3 x 5″/51 (single mount); 3 x 3″/50 (single mount); 4 x .50 caliber Browning MG; 2 x depth charge racks; 1 x “Y” gun depth charge projector.

1943: 2 x 5″/51 (single mount); 4 x 3″/50 (single mount); 2 x 20mm/80 (single mount); 1 x Hedgehog; 6 x “K” gun depth charge projectors; 2 x depth charge racks.

1945: 2 x 5″/38 (single mount); 3 x 40mm/60 (twin mount); 4 x 20mm/80 (single mount).

1946: 1 x 5″/38 (single mount); 1 x 40mm;/60 (twin mount); 2 x 20mm/80 (single mount); 1 x Hedgehog.

1966: 1 x 5″/38 MK30 Mod75 (single); MK 52 MOD 3 director; 1 x MK 10-1 Hedgehog; 2 (P&S) x Mk 32 MOD 5 TT, 4 x MK 44 MOD 1 torpedoes; 2 x .50 cal. MK-2 Browning MG, 2 x MK-13 high altitude parachute flare mortars.

Aircraft: Curtiss SOC-4, USCG No. V159 (1937)
Grumman JF-2, USCG No. V144 (1938)

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/

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.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are
unique in their sweep and subject.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday July 9, Italian spaghetti and midget meatballs.

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, July 9, Italian spaghetti and midget meatballs.

Italian midget submarine at Sevastopol, Russia , circa 1942 CB

Here we see one of the plucky little Italian-made coastal submarines of the CB-class at Sevastopol, Russia, circa 1942. Ordered from the Società Caproni e Comitti in Milan, the company specialized in the production of military aircraft, not ships, but they did a great job on these tiny u-boats.

cb02

Capable of spending a couple of days at sea and carrying a pair of 17.7-inch torpedoes (externally), these boats were capable of sending a decent sized ship to the bottom and, if there had been enough of them, would have made any amphibious assault of the Italian coastline very dangerous as these ships could submerge in waters as shallow as twenty feet of sea.

CB sub moored at Sevastopol 1942

The Regina Marina ordered 72 of these plucky 50-foot long boats in 1941, but only 20 or so were completed due to Allied invasions and blockades. Of those ships, about half served the Axis forces, with the others being completed after Italy switched sides in 1943.

in romanian service

The first six ships completed, CB-1 through CB-6, were shipped to the Black Sea along with a group of some 40 Italian submariners where they quickly set up camp in captured Soviet digs and went looking for Russkies.

Constanza, September 1944. These four CB were used by the Soviets after the war with the initials TM 4-7 for experiments and training

About the only victory chalked up by these Italian midget subs was sending Soviet Black Sea Fleet Shchuka-class submarine SHCH-208 to the bottom by torpedo attack on June 18, 1942, just weeks after they arrived at Yalta. As a Shchuka was some 187-feet long and 700-tons load, that was a true David and Goliath victory for the Italians. This was something of a bit of payback for the Italians as one of the boats, (CB-5) was bombed and sunk by Red bombers near Yalta, 13 June 1942.

cb_taranto italian midget

Italian minisommergibile CB Mar Nero Yalta 1942

Once Italy switched sides, these five remaining Black Sea boats were transferred to Romania in 1943.

Former Italian CB midget submarine at Costanza Romania late 1943

With the advance of the Red Army, the Romanians and Germans scuttled these in Constancia harbor in August 1944. The Russians, never one to let a piece of kit go bad, promptly raised them and put them in local service until the end of the war.

italian cb midget firing on surface

Other craft were captured by the British or Germans in the Adriatic and were in turn sunk or scrapped around the end of the conflict. One was found in Bordeaux by the Americans in 1944, where it had been sent along with a crew under Lt. Eugenio Massano in 1942 for trials in an aborted program that would have seen a false-flagged mothership such as the DaVinci take a few CBs to the Hudson River in hopes of running amok in New York harbor.

Minisommergibile CA 2 -1944, captured in Bordeaux

One boat, CB-20, fell into the hands of Tito’s Partisans and was soon pressed into service with the new Yugoslav navy (as pennant P-901). The Yugos loved the little craft so much that they kept it in service for nearly two decades and even then kept it as a museum and trials ship.

It should therefore surprise no one that the Yugoslav navy built its own class of homemade midgets, the Una-class, in the 1970s. These half-dozen craft were very similar in size (61-foot long, 70-tons) as the old Italian CB craft they still had in storage. The Italians, likewise, spent several decades making their own improved midgets from COSMOS and others which have a direct lineage to these humble WWII-era boats.

CB-20/P-901 still exists by the way.

April 7, 2010: The unveiling ceremony of the newly rebuilt CB-20 at the Teknicki Muzej (Technical Museum), Zagreb, Croatia. The boat has been completely restored inside and out to the original specifications and paint scheme she had when launched. (Photo courtesy of Vladimir Tarnovski)

April 7, 2010: The unveiling ceremony of the newly rebuilt CB-20 at the Teknicki Muzej (Technical Museum), Zagreb, Croatia. The boat has been completely restored inside and out to the original specifications and paint scheme she had when launched. (Photo courtesy of Vladimir Tarnovski)

An excellent reference is at Maritime Quest on the CB20, including more than 9 pages of in-depth images on CB-20.

There is also this:

Trieste, 22 – 24 giugno 1996. Il sommergibile tascabile CB 22 esposto a Piazza dell’Unità dopo il trasferimento da San Vito ed in attesa di essere conservato nel Museo Henriquez.

Specs:

classeCBIsommergibiliItaliani-19631024

Displacement: 35.4 tons surfaced, 44.3 tons submerged
Length:     14.99 m (49.2 ft)
Beam:     3.00 m (9.84 ft)
Draught:     2.05 m (6 ft 9 in)
Propulsion:     1 shaft diesel-electric,
1 – 80 hp Isotta Fraschini diesel, 1 – 50 hp Brown Boveri electric motor
Speed:     7.5 knots (13.9 km/h) surfaced, 7 knots (13 km/h) submerged
Complement: 4
Armament:     2 externally mounted 450mm torpedoes or two mines

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/

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.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday July 2 Helen’s daughter

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.

– Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday July 2 Helen’s daughter

INF3_1488

Here we see the British Dido-class light cruiser HMS Hermione (Pennant 74) of the Royal Navy slicing through the Italian coastal submarine Tembien like butter on 2 August 1941, west of Malta. The (gouache on board) artwork is entitled, “A British cruiser ramming an Italian submarine” by Marc Stone. It is in the collection of the UK National Archives.

The 16 ships of the Dido-class, built to a prewar design, were some of the most modern fleet escorts in the Royal Navy and found themselves at the sharp end of the spear throughout World War Two. Originally designed to be a svelte 5700 tons, with a 1:10 length to beam ration (512-feet oal, 50-foot abeam), they were fast (33-knots) but lightly armored ships capable of swatting away aircraft, light combatants, and submarines from the fleet proper. Armed with ten rapid-fire 5.25-inch (133mm) guns in five dual-mounted turrets, as well as two sets of triple torpedo tubes, they were basically just really big destroyers– with a little bit of armor.

Where they had an advantage was in a 4000-nm cruising range of 16-knots, which enabled them to cross the Atlantic at a fair clip. This made them perfect for escorting convoys to places like Malta, Cyprus, or across the big pond.

hms_hermione

The Dido‘s were all named after classical history and legend (e.g Black Prince, Bonaventure, Charybdis, Naiad, Spartan, et al) which made cruiser number 74’s name after Hermione, the daughter of Menelaus and Helen in Greek mythology, logical. As such, she was the Royal Navy’s third ship to carry that moniker, the first a Napoleonic war 32-gun frigate, and the second being a WWI-era Astraea-class protected cruiser, both with somewhat unlucky histories. The frigate’s crew had mutinied and surrendered to the Spanish while the old cruiser had grounded herself at least twice and was too obsolete to take an active part in the Great War.

HMS_Hermione_1942_IWM_A_7736

The third would be the unluckiest of all.

Laid down at Alexander Stephen and Sons in Glasgow, Scotland in 1937, the war started before Hermione was commissioned on 25 March 1941. With just a few weeks in service, she was part of the Bismarck hunt, and served on the Northern Patrol in the Atlantic for two months. Rushed to the Med where the Royal Navy was fighting for its very life alone against the Italian, Vichy French and German forces there, she joined 1st Cruiser Squadron Force H, protecting the lifeline convoys running from Gibraltar to Malta and back, then convoys from Malta to Alexandria.

Dido-class sisters, The cruisers HMS Edinburgh, HMS Hermione (center), and HMS Euryalus, steaming in line abreast whilst they escort a convoy as part of Operation Halberd, at the time the largest resupply effort to Malta, to which the entire Italian navy sortied to attempt to stop.

The (Town class) cruisers HMS Edinburgh, along with the Dido-class sisters HMS Hermione (center), and HMS Euryalus, steaming in line abreast whilst they escort a convoy as part of Operation Halberd, at the time the largest resupply effort to Malta, to which the entire Italian navy sortied to attempt to stop.

These runs carried fighters to Malta, oil and supplies to Montgomery’s troops fighting Rommel in North Africa, and other valuable commodities. As such, Hermione shot down attacking dive bombers, endured endless hours on alert for U-boats and fast attack craft, and had her ‘turn in the barrel’ everyday for over a year running this gauntlet.

The ship's good luck charm "Convoy", Hermione's ship's cat, sleeps in his own hammock whilst members of the crew look on

The ship’s good luck charm “Convoy“, Hermione‘s ship’s cat, sleeps in his own hammock whilst members of the crew look on

On the night of Aug 2, 1941 Hermione encountered the Italian Adua-class submarine Tembien on the surface preparing to send a brace of torpedoes into the precious carrier HMS Ark Royal. Had the Ark been sunk, British naval power in the Med would have changed for the worse. It was on that evening the daughter of Menelaus sliced the Roman shark in two, sending her to the bottom.

*Sidebar on the unlucky Adua-class boats of the Regia Marina: These plucky 800-ton, 200-foot long vessels were well-designed but their crews were unprepared for war against the Royal Navy, which had a long tradition of killing submarines operating close to their ships. Of the 17 Adula’s operational during World War II, 16 were lost, almost all to the RN. The class did not chalk up many kills for all of their reckless bravado.*

H.M.S. Hermione

For her role in sinking the Italian submarine, the cruiser Hermione was immortalized in wartime martial art, which was soon turned into war propaganda posters. Tragically, the cruiser had already met her own fate before the ink was dry on these posters.

Assigned to the 15th Cruiser squadron in the eastern Med, she came face to face with a boat who had already tried to sink her once the previous winter. On 16 June 1942, she was sunk after being torpedoed just off Alexandria by the German U-boat U-205 with a loss of some 85 of her crew.

hrmnebat3b

Commanded by Kptlt. Franz-Georg Reschke, U-205 herself the subject of a blood vendetta by the Royal Navy, who sent her to the bottom near the coast of Libya 17 Feb, 1943, with the destroyer HMS Paladin finishing her off.

The Hermione‘s name was issued to a Leander-class frigate (F58) in 1967, a ship that by all accounts had a lucky and safe thirty-year life and whose crew share a reunion and remembrance association with that of the lost WWII cruiser.
Specs:

hmsdido

Displacement: 5,600 tons standard
6,850 tons full load, wartime overload, 7700-tons.
Length: 485 ft (148 m) pp
512 ft (156 m) oa
Beam: 50.5 ft (15.4 m)
Draught: 14 ft (4.3 m)
Propulsion: Parsons geared turbines
Four shafts
Four Admiralty 3-drum boilers
62,000 shp (46 MW)
Speed: 32.25 knots (60 km/h)
Range: 1,500 nautical miles (2,780 km) at 30 knots
4,240 nautical miles (7,850 km) at 16 knots
1,100 tons fuel oil
Complement: 480 (more added in 1941 to man additional AAA guns)
Armament:
Original configuration:

10 x 5.25 in (133 mm) guns,
2 x 0.5 in MG quadruple guns,
3 x 2 pdr (37 mm/40 mm) pom-pom quad guns,
6 x 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes (2×3).

1941 – 1943 configuration:

10 x 5.25 in (133 mm) dual-purpose guns (5×2),
5 x 20 mm (0.8 in) single guns,
8 x 2 pdr (37 mm/40 mm) pom-pom guns (2×4),
6 x 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes (2×3).

Armour:
Belt: 3 inch,
Deck: 1 inch,
Magazines: 2 inch,
Bulkheads: 1 inch.

 

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Warship Wednesday June 25, The Fighting Swenson

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.

– Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday June 25, The Fighting Swenson

1945 in the Pacific, photographed from DD-745. Courtesy Robert Baumbrucker, NHC NH 89376. Ed Zajkowski

1945 in the Pacific, photographed from DD-745. Courtesy Robert Baumbrucker, NHC NH 89376. Ed Zajkowski

Here we see USS Lyman K. Swenson (DD-729), an Allen M. Sumner-class destroyer, in all of her World War Two glory pounding it out on the high seas. She is the only ship named for naval hero Lyman Knute Swenson (USNA 1916).

One of those rare early 20th century officers who did everything, from battleships to submarines to destroyers, he was the wartime commander of the hard-luck light cruiser USS Juneau (CL-52). Twice torpedoed during the Battle of Guadalcanal, in what historian S. E. Morison called the “wildest most desperate sea fight since Jutland,” Juneau sank rapidly, taking under Swenson and most of her crew, including the five Sullivan brothers. This battle prevented the Japanese from landing reinforcements on Guadalcanal and Swenson was awarded the Navy Cross for his actions.

A warbaby, the destroyer that carried his name was laid down September 11th, 1943 at Bath Iron Works in Maine with his daughter sponsoring the vessel. Commissioned in Boston 2 May 1944, she was rushed off to war.

The 58-ship Sumner-class were large and heavily armed when compared to the old flush-deck destroyers that preceded them. Sandwiched between the svelte Fletcher-class and the follow-on Gearing-class (which were nothing but modified Sumners), these boats cost some $8 mill a pop (although Bath contracted for $5.1 million for Swenson) and Uncle Sugar got a swell deal from them, with most of the class serving into the 1970s.

At 3500-tons full load and 376-feet long, these bruisers packed a half-dozen 5-inch/38 DP guns (in twin mounts) as well as a dozen 40mm Bofors, another dozen 20mm guns, a brace of 10 torpedo tubes to take on Japanese cruisers, plus depth charges to bust enemy subs with. As such, they had much more kick than the Fletcher-class that preceded them, while still being able to float in as little as 16 feet of water (at a light load) and make 34-knots when needed. Capable of carrying more than 500 tons of fuel oil for her boilers, these ships had long legs, and could run 6000-nm on a full load, more than three times early pre-war built destroyers– which was important in the far-flung pacific.

DD729d

Swenson arrived in the Philippines as part of the screen of Carrier Task Group 38.4 in October, 1944. There, off Samar on 30 October, she was the first US ship to fire on the first Japanese Kamikaze suicide planes. She went on to sail with Task Group 38.1 on the epic 3800-mile raid around the Pacific rim in January 1945, participated in the daring nighttime anti-shipping run thorough the entrance of Tokyo Bay with DESRON 61 on 22/23 July, helping to sink two freighters with her 5-inch guns, and witnessed the surrender of Japan that September.

All in all she had a very successful and lucky war, putting some 200,000 miles on her hull in just over a year.

USS Swenson in heavy swells alongside USS Wasp, January 1945. Photo 80G 301572 by John Chiquoine

USS Swenson in heavy swells alongside USS Wasp, January 1945. Photo 80G 301572 by John Chiquoine

She spent the next five years in quiet peacetime operations around the Pacific, finding herself stationed in Japan when the balloon went up in Korea in 1950. Pressed into service as a transport, she transported the US Army’s 560th MP company to Pusan then sent the next several months in plane guard and shore bombardment missions.

USS Lyman K. Swenson 10

 

She fired no less than 1700 rounds of 5″ shells into the forces attacking the Pusan perimeter, exploded floating mines with her 40mm guns at Inchon, and traded shots with North Korean shore batteries on the island of Wolmi-Do. In covering the landings at Inchon she fired another 1400 rounds of 5″ and three thousand rounds of 40-mm. For this action Swenson and the five other destroyers with her were awarded the Navy Unit Commendation and the Korean Presidential Unit Citation.

A Chaplain reads the Last Rites service as Lieutenant (JG) David H. Swensen is buried at sea from USS Toledo, off Inchon, where he had been transferred for his wounds. The Lieutenant had been struck by shrapnel from North Korean shore-based artillery while his ship, USS Lyman K. Swenson was bombarding enemy positions on Wolmi-do island, Inchon, on 13 September 1950. The USS Swenson is seen observing the service in the distance.

A Chaplain reads the Last Rites service as Lieutenant (JG) David H. Swensen is buried at sea from USS Toledo, off Inchon, where he had been transferred for his wounds. The Lieutenant had been struck by shrapnel from North Korean shore-based artillery while his ship, USS Lyman K. Swenson was bombarding enemy positions on Wolmi-do island, Inchon, on 13 September 1950. The USS Swenson is seen observing the service in the distance.

After stateside refit in 1951 where she received up to date radars and electronics, as well as new barrels for her shot-out five inchers, she returned to Korean waters where she landed troops behind enemy lines, rescued downed fliers, and pummeled North Korean railway yards and trains, being one of the few members of the club of naval ships that have sent locomotives cartwheeling through the air.

Following the cessation of hostilities there, came more peacetime service.

She was FRAMM’d in 1960. This removed most of her WWII era AAA armament, added facilities for the nifty Drone Anti-Submarine Helicopter (DASH) UAV (yes, they had them back then!) replaced her 21-inch torpedo tubes with two triple Mark 32 tubes for the Mark 44 ASW torpedo, and added Variable Depth Sonar (VDS). She also got her first ECM gear and modern sonars and radar, effectively making her as effective as a contemporary new destroyer at a fraction of the cost.

DASH drone on USS Swenson. Photo by Curt Helmer, DD729 website

DASH drone on USS Swenson. Photo by Curt Helmer, DD729 website

As soon as Vietnam got hot she was there, participating in naval gunnery support missions along the I Corps area during 15 days in October 1964, she fired no less than 2966 rounds of 5″ ammunition.

 

swenson vietnam

Follow-on tours in 1967, 68, 69, well you get the idea, saw more gunfire support with her miniature drone deck being just large enough to accommodate the occasional Huey. She also played plane guard on Yankee station during this time between participating in the Mekong Yacht Club.

USS Swenson in 1969 Vietnam coastal waters. Image courtesy of Earl Faubion, DD729 website

USS Swenson in 1969 Vietnam coastal waters. Image courtesy of Earl Faubion, DD729 website

With the looming wrap up of the Vietnam conflict (at least for the Americans) her days were numbered. The Navy was pushing for a new fleet of huge 7000-ton Spruance class destroyers, twice as large as the Sumners, and room had to be made.

The old fighting Swenson was decommissioned and struck from the Naval List 1 February 1974, just shy of her 30th birthday.

In addition to the Navy Unit Commendation, the ship earned the following awards: American Campaign, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign (with 5 battle stars), World War II Victory, Navy Occupation Service, China Service, National Defense Service, Korean Service (with 6 battle stars), Armed Forces Expeditionary, Vietnam Service (with 10 stars), United Nations Service, Philippine Liberation (with one star), Korean Presidential Unit Citation, and Republic of Vietnam Campaign.

A dozen of the Sumner-class destroyers were sold to the Republic of China (Taiwan) between 1969-1974, with Swenson being one of the last to go. She was never recommissioned into the ROC navy, being used as a floating source of spare parts.

Finally by the 1990s she was scrapped. However there are undoubtedly parts from her that still remain afloat on the USS Taussig, which since 1970 served Taiwan as the as Lo Yang (DD-14). Since 2000, that hardy old tin can, the last of her class still in military service, has been semi-preserved as a floating museum at Cijin Port, Kaohsiung City, Taiwan.

The only Sumner class destroyer in the U.S is the USS Laffey DD-724. Known as the “Ship that would not die” Laffey survived a swarm of 22 kamikazes during WWII and served alongside Swenson at Inchon in 1950. She is preserved as memorial and berthed at Patriot’s Point, Charleston, South Carolina.

Please visit her when you get a chance.

The former crew-members of the might Swenson have their own reunion site and at http://www.dd729.com/ which supplied many of the images here.

 

Specs:

(Off Mare Island 1945)

(Off Mare Island 1945)

(As built)
Displacement: 2,200 tons (3500-fl)
Length: 376 ft 6 in (114.8 m)
Beam: 40 ft (12.2 m)
Draft: 15 ft 8 in (4.8 m)
Propulsion: 60,000 shp (45 MW);
2 propellers
Speed: 34 knots (63 km/h)
Range: 6500 nmi. (12,000 km) @ 15 kt
Complement: 336
Armament: 6 × 5 in./38 guns (12 cm),
12 × 40mm AA guns,
11 × 20mm AA guns,
10 × 21 in. torpedo tubes,
6 × depth charge projectors,
2 × depth charge tracks

After FRAM II: (1960)
6 × 5 in/38 cal guns (127 mm) (in 3 × 2 Mk 38 DP mounts)
2 × triple Mark 32 torpedo tubes for Mark 44 torpedoes
1 × Drone Anti-Submarine Helicopter (DASH)
Variable Depth Sonar (VDS), ALR-1 EW suite
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/

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.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday June 18, The Opening shot of the old subkiller

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday June 18, The Opening shot of the old subkiller

click to bigup

click to bigup

Here we see the old Wickes-class destroyer, USS Ward (DD-139/APD-16), with her No.3 4-inch MK9 gun dropping it like its hot on an unidentified submarine contact trailing the 11450-ton auxiliary USS Antares (AG-10/AKS-3) into Pearl Harbor on the early morning of December 7, 1941.

Ward had an eventful life to say the least.

Built as one of the 111-ship Wickes-class, she was one of the iconic ‘Four Piper” destroyers that were designed in 1915-16 with input from no less an authority as Captain (later Admiral) WS Sims. Beamy ships with a flush-deck, a quartet of boilers (with a smokestack for each) were coupled to a pair of Parsons geared turbines to provide a blistering 35.3-knots designed speed, which is still considered fast today, nearly 100 years later. The teeth of these 314-foot, 1250-ton greyhounds were four 4-inch/50 cal MK9 naval rifles and a full dozen 21-inch torpedo tubes.

ward note torpedo tubes

They had short legs and were very wet, which made long-range operations a problem, but they gave a good account of themselves. Originally a class of 50 was authorized in 1916, but once the U.S entered WWI in April 1917, this was soon increased and increased again to some 111 ships built by 1920.

109 day plate from wardWard was a warbaby. Laid down at Mare Island Navy Yard in San Fransisco on 15 May 1918, she was commissioned just 109 days later on 24 July.

USS WARD NH-50261 Mare Island 1918

Her service in World War One was brief, the war basically ending just weeks after she was transferred to the Atlantic. She did, however, help escort the four NC flying boats that crossed the Atlantic the following year.

ward 1920

Like most of the Wickes-class boats, she was soon laid up due to the shortage of real live shooting wars in the 1920s. By July 1921 Ward was on read-lead row.

During this time, the 111-ship class was reduced with several ships being lost in accidents, scrapped, or sunk as targets. In 1940, 27 of the class were transferred to Britain and Canada as part of the famous “Bases for Destroyers” deal. Then in 1941, with the new war coming, Uncle Sam started knocking the rust off his old four-pipers and bringing them back into service.

With that, Ward was recommissioned 15 January 1941. Since the Navy was short on man-power, the ship was crewed in large part by citizen sailors of the St Paul Division of the Minnesota Naval Militia.

As part of the increasing naval presence in Hawaii, the 23-year old, low mileage destroyer with her now active-reserve crew was sent to Pearl Harbor to patrol the coastline for unauthorized intruders. Her skipper was Lt.Cmdr. William Woodward Outerbridge (USNA 1927), on his first command.

It was then at 03:57 on Sunday Morning, 7 December 1941, that the Ward, on patrol outside of the peaceful harbor at Pearl, was alerted to a periscope sighting from the 85-foot long Coast Guard manned converted wooden-hulled purse seiner USS Condor. After going to battle stations and alerting Pearl, Ward spotted a periscope of unknown origin trying to sneak in past the harbor nets at about 0630. Her No.3 gun crew opened fire on the intruder, which later turned out to be Type A Ko-hyoteki-class submarine No.20 of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Several of the 4-inch shells from the gun penetrated the conning tower of the midget sub, while depth charges lifted the tiny craft out of the water before she plummeted to a depth of 1200-feet where she lay on the seafloor and was found 3-miles from Pearl Harbor by a University of Hawaii research submersible on 28 August 2002.

Pearlminisub

For more than 50-years, it was claimed by many naysayers that Ward sank nothing on Dec 7th, then when the University of Hawaii found Midget Submarine No.20 with Ward‘s shell holes through her in 2002, they could naysay-nolonger.

The Ward had fired the first U.S. shots of World War Two and tragically, although they were an hour and a half before waves of Japanese carrier planes came in low over Battleship Row, the fleet was not properly alerted.

“A Shot for Posterity — The USS Ward’s number three gun and its crew-cited for firing the first shot the day of Japan’s raid on Hawaii. Operating as part of the inshore patrol early in the morning of December 7, 1941, this destroyer group spotted a submarine outside Pearl Harbor, opened fire and sank her. Crew members are R.H. Knapp - BM2c - Gun Captain, C.W. Fenton - Sea1c - Pointer, R.B. Nolde - Sea1c - Trainer, A.A. De Demagall - Sea1c - No. 1 Loader, D.W. Gruening - Sea1c - No. 2 Loader, J.A. Paick - Sea1c - No. 3 Loader, H.P. Flanagan - Sea1c - No. 4 Loader, E.J. Bakret - GM3c - Gunners Mate, K.C.J. Lasch - Cox - Sightsetter.”


“A Shot for Posterity — The USS Ward’s number three gun and its crew-cited for firing the first shot the day of Japan’s raid on Hawaii. Operating as part of the inshore patrol early in the morning of December 7, 1941, this destroyer group spotted a submarine outside Pearl Harbor, opened fire and sank her. Crew members are R.H. Knapp – BM2c – Gun Captain, C.W. Fenton – Sea1c – Pointer, R.B. Nolde – Sea1c – Trainer, A.A. De Demagall – Sea1c – No. 1 Loader, D.W. Gruening – Sea1c – No. 2 Loader, J.A. Paick – Sea1c – No. 3 Loader, H.P. Flanagan – Sea1c – No. 4 Loader, E.J. Bakret – GM3c – Gunners Mate, K.C.J. Lasch – Cox – Sightsetter.”

Shell hole in conning tower of Japanese Type A Ko-Hyoteki two-man submarine, raised after the sub had been shelled and sunk during the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor.

With the changing pace of the new naval war, the Ward, as was most of her class, was converted to other uses, being too small for fleet work. She lost her 4-inch guns, which went on to equip armed merchant ships, as well as her torpedo tubes. Also leaving were half of her boilers, which dropped her speed down to 25-knots. She was given a trio of newer high-angle 3-inch/50 guns, one 40 mm AA gun, and five 20 mm AA guns, and the capability to carry up to 300 marines or soldiers for a brief period of time. In this new role, she was re-designated as a high-speed amphibious transport (APD-16). Where her torpedo tubes once were, she now carried four 36foot LCP landing craft on davits.

100401605

Note just two funnels now, and with huge LCP’s amidships. The 3-inch gun forward looks tiny compared to the old 4-inch MK9s.

These conversions had a hard war. They transported troops to beachheads, served as escorts for transports and supply vessels, conducted anti-submarine patrols and survey duties, operated with Underwater Demolition Teams and commando units, performed messenger and transport duties, conveyed passengers and mail to and from forward units, and were involved in mine sweeping operations. Ward landed troops at Saidor, Nissan Island, Emirau, Aitape, Biak, Cape Sansapor, Morotai,  Dinagat Island, Ormac Bay, and others.

"Sansapor, Dutch New Guinea, falls to the Allied Forces, July 30, 1944. One might almost say - Sansapor falls to the boys from St. Paul, Minn. - as all but two of these men come from that city and the entire group has shipped together since Pearl Harbor, with the actions and results shown on their banner. As a matter of fact, they are believed to have fired the first offensive shot of the war in the Pacific, while on patrol against Japanese subs." Note the more than a dozen landings credited on the scoreboard on the left side as well as two subs and several planes. They are L/R: (bottom row) J.L. Spratt, MM2/c; A.J. Fink, CM2/c; O.S. Ethier, MM1/c; C.W. Fenton, BM1/c; D.R. Pepin, SM1/c; J.G. LeClair; SOM2/c; F.V. Huges, SOM2/c. (Top Row) R.B. Nolde, SF1c; W.G. Grip, BM2c; H.F. Germarin, S1c; H.J. Harris, MM1c; H.K. Paynter, CMoMM; J.K. Lovsted, CMMM; W.H. Duval, CCS, (of San Diego); I.E. Holley, CSK (of Los Angeles); W.S. Lehner, SC1c; F.J. Bukrey, CM1c; and F.L. Fratta, MM1c."

“Sansapor, Dutch New Guinea, falls to the Allied Forces, July 30, 1944. One might almost say – Sansapor falls to the boys from St. Paul, Minn. – as all but two of these men come from that city and the entire group has shipped together since Pearl Harbor, with the actions and results shown on their banner. As a matter of fact, they are believed to have fired the first offensive shot of the war in the Pacific, while on patrol against Japanese subs.” Note the more than a dozen landings credited on the scoreboard on the left side as well as two subs and several planes. They are L/R: (bottom row) J.L. Spratt, MM2/c; A.J. Fink, CM2/c; O.S. Ethier, MM1/c; C.W. Fenton, BM1/c; D.R. Pepin, SM1/c; J.G. LeClair; SOM2/c; F.V. Huges, SOM2/c. (Top Row) R.B. Nolde, SF1c; W.G. Grip, BM2c; H.F. Germarin, S1c; H.J. Harris, MM1c; H.K. Paynter, CMoMM; J.K. Lovsted, CMMM; W.H. Duval, CCS, (of San Diego); I.E. Holley, CSK (of Los Angeles); W.S. Lehner, SC1c; F.J. Bukrey, CM1c; and F.L. Fratta, MM1c.”

It was off of Ormac in the Philippines that the Ward, with only her naval crew aboard, was attacked by a kamikaze.

Ward (APD-16, ex-DD-139) on fire after she was hit by a “Kamikaze” in Ormoc Bay, Leyte, 7 December 1944

Ward (APD-16, ex-DD-139) on fire after she was hit by a “Kamikaze” in Ormoc Bay, Leyte, 7 December 1944

On December 7th, 1944. Three years exactly from Pearl Harbor day.

A 314-foot ship is not designed to withstand a direct impact from a loaded fighter-bomber, and soon she was fully involved. Her crew abandoned ship and the newly built Allen Sumner-class destroyer USS O’Brien (DD-725), recently transferred to the Pacific after dropping it while it was hot on the Germans on Normandy on D-Day, administered the coup de grace.

ward
Another amazing coincidence, O’Brien‘s skipper on that day was now-Commander William Woodward Outerbridge, who helmed Ward three years before.

In another turn, O’Brien herself would later be sunk as a target by U.S ships off California on 13 July 1972 at the end of her service life. Outerbrigde retired from the Navy in 1957 as a Rear Admiral after thirty years of service, taking his last breath on September 20, 1986.

Today no Wickes-class tin can survives. The last one afloat, USS Maddox (DD–168), was scrapped in 1952 after serving in the US, then RN, then Canadian, then Soviet navies.

One of the class, the USS Walker (DD-163), has been given new life in the excellent alternate history series Destroyermen written by Taylor Anderson.

However, it should be noted that Ward‘s famous gun No.3 still exists, saved from going down with the ship by virtue of it being replaced during the war with more modern ordnance.

4inch from ward

Preserved in the Twin Cities area, it was presented to the state in 1958 by the Navy in honor of her Minnesota reservist guncrew on Dec.7, 1941.  It is located on the grounds of the Veterans Service Building in St. Paul.

Specs:

uss-dd-139-ward-1941-destroyer
(As built)
Displacement: 1,247 long tons (1,267 t)
Length:     314 ft 4 in (95.81 m)
Beam:     30 ft 11 in (9.42 m)
Draft:     9 ft 10 in (3.00 m)
Propulsion:     2 × geared steam turbines, 2 × shafts
Speed:     35 kn (65 km/h; 40 mph)
Complement:     231 officers and enlisted
Armament:     4 × 4 in (100 mm)/50 cal guns
2 × 3 in (76 mm)/50 cal anti-aircraft guns
12 × 21 in (530 mm) torpedo tubes (4×3)

(1942)
Displacement: 1,247 long tons (1,267 t)
Length:     314 ft 4 in (95.81 m)
Beam:     30 ft 11 in (9.42 m)
Draft:     9 ft 10 in (3.00 m)
Propulsion:     2 × geared steam turbines, 2 × shafts
Speed:     25kn
Complement: 180 officers and enlisted, upto 300 troops for short periods
Armament:     3x3inch/50
One 40mm bofors
Five 20mm OK

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/

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.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are
unique in their sweep and subject.

I’m a member, so should you be!

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