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Warship Wednesday, June 23, 2021: The St. Thomas Slugger

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

Warship Wednesday, June 23, 2021: The St. Thomas Slugger

Danish National Library DH030850

Here we see the krydserkorvetten (cruiser corvette) Valkyrien of the Royal Danish Navy in exotic Hong Kong on 8 April 1900 while notably under the command of H.K.H. Prins Valdemar, son of then-King Christian IX. Note the junks, small vessel traffic, and destroyers near the gleaming white Nordic warship, which is firing a salute to the harbor battery. Ushered in just after Denmark suffered twin military humiliations, the relatively mighty vessel– for the Danes– would have a quiet and long-ranging career, making several footnotes in history.

Laid down at Orlogsværftet København for the Danish admiralty 27 October 1888, she was reportedly a close cousin of the Armstrong-built Chilean protected cruiser Esmeralda (2,992 tons, 18.3 kts, 2 x 10″/30, 6 x 6″/26) but had a different armament (Krupp-made: 2 x 8.2″/35, 6 x 6″/32), more economical domestic Burmeister & Wain machinery of a lower horsepower, and thicker armor (up to 2.5-inches rather than 1-inch), factors that dropped her speed to 17 knots.

Chilean cruiser Esmeralda by Edoardo de Martino Tyne & Wear Museums Maritime and Industrial Collection http://www.artuk.org/artworks/esmeralda-41851

Using a dramatic ram bow, in vogue after 1866, Valkyrien also had some other tricks up her sleeve, including five above-deck torpedo tubes arrayed at various angles from her beam (two bows, one stern, two amidships) and carried a pair of 68-foot Thornycroft-made torpedo boats (Torpedobaad Nos. 10 and 11), which were capable of independent operations.

Orlogsmuseet – Model of the Danish Cruiser Valkyrien. Note her ram bow

VALKYRIEN (Danish Cruiser, 1888) Photographed circa 1890 with 2nd class torpedo boat numbers 10 and 11 embarked. NH 85380

A celebration of the Viking choosers of the slain, the ship carried war shields, swords, and battle-axes on her bow, and wings on her bow in careful ornamentation. 

Note the auxiliary sail rig

Note her stern “stinger” torpedo tube below the winged crest

At the time of her commissioning, Valkyrien far outclassed the other “cruisers” under the Danish ensign, some of which were more appropriately described as armored schooners: Absalon (533 tons, 1 x 60-pounder, 2 x 5.75″), Fylla & Diana (560 tons, 1 x 60-pounder, 3 x 30 pounder), St. Thomas (1,700 tons, 8 x 4.7-inch guns), and Ingoff (1,012 tons, 2 x 6″). Valkyrien held the heavyweight champ title even as the latter Hekla-class of light cruisers– Gejser, Hejmdal, and Fyen (1,282 tons, 2 x 4.7″, 4 x 3.5″, 4 x torpedo tubes, 17 knots) — were delivered in the 1890s. When compared to Denmark’s squadron of “bathtub battleships” or kystforsvarsskib— Iver Hvitfeldt (3,446 tons, 2 x 10″ guns, 8-inches armor), Skjold (2,195 tons, 1 x 9.4″, 10 inches armor), and the three Trolle-class (~3,500 tons, 2 x 9.4″, 4 x 6″, 7 inches armor) vessels– she also compared favorably in size, if not in throw and armor, while being a couple of knots faster.

Danish Navy’s silhouettes of primary vessels, showing how Valkyrien compares in size against the rest of the fleet.

In short, Valkyrien, from the time of her commissioning to her eventual retirement three decades later, was the ideal vessel to show the Danish flag overseas, especially in her territories such as Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and the Danish West Indies (Dansk Vestindien). Her 3,900nm range certainly helped with that. Once she joined the fleet, she became very busy.

In the summer of 1893, she escorted the royal ship yacht Dannebrog to England for the marriage of the Duke of York (grandson of the Danish king) and Princess Marie of Teck. She followed that royal visit up three years later to represent Denmark at Prince Carl of Denmark’s marriage to Princess Maud.

Danish protected cruiser Valkyrien, in a very dark scheme, on a visit to England

She met Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen’s returning 1896 polar expedition as his famed ship, Fram, arrived back home.

Fram’s return to Kristiania, 9 September 1896. A large fleet of over a hundred small and large ships met Nansen’s ship. Bottom left five torpedo boats, in the middle the new cruiser Valkyrien with her glad rags out, and closest S. S. Haalogaland, who had towed Fram (here partly covered by white smoke). Via the Fridtjof Nansen bildearkiv, National Library of Norway

Valkyrien, dansk krysser, krigsskip, Oslofjorden Norwegian archives HHB-15663

In October 1899, she left on a trip to the Far East under Prince Valdemar. No paper sailor, the son of King Christian IX spent most of his life on active duty with the Danish navy– a tradition for a country known for “sailor kings.” She returned home 10 months later, after calling at more than 30 overseas ports.

Danish protected cruiser Valkyrien in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland, circa 1900, in dark scheme.

Prince Valdemar with King Chulalongkorn of Siam. He also met with the Japanese Emperor on the trip

From 1901 through 1902, she continued her out-of-Europe service with a stint as a station ship in the Danish West Indies.

It was during this detail that she sailed to Martinique after a volcanic eruption there, which killed over 30,000 people, and her crew participated with local French authorities in the rescue operation at the town of Le Precheur.

Crew members of the Danish cruiser Valkyrien pose with the Krupp ship gun in front of St. Thomas, Via the Orlosmuseet (War Museum), Copenhagen

After a period in ordinary as the fleet expanded, she returned to service with a Med cruise in 1913-1914 on the eve of the Great War. Once Europe was ablaze in conflict, she donned a wartime scheme and maintained a defensive posture in home waters, serving through 1915 as a barracks and school ship training Sikringsstyrken, or security forces.

Then came a wartime modernization, landing her old 8.2- and 6-inch guns in favor of more modern weapons, albeit of a smaller caliber. Her 8.2s had a rate of fire of one shot every three minutes, and the original 6-inchers could achieve one shot per. minute. The new 6-inch guns she mounted in place of her main battery could fire 5-6 rounds per minute, as could her new secondary battery, composed of 3-inch guns.

Danish protected cruiser Valkyrien 1919, wartime grey scheme

Shoving off for the Danish West Indies in November 1915, she remained in place as a station ship in that far-off territory as the U.S. and others sought to purchase the islands for their own use. Times were tense on the ground, with wartime shortages, labor problems, local unrest, and Great Power spies all on the list of problems. The cruiser’s captain, CDR Henri Konow, became local governor when the vessel arrived.

H. M. S. Valkyrien ved Frederiksteds, 1915. DT133709

Valkyrien i St.Thomas havn 1915 DT130531

Valkyrien Virgin Islands DVS 0062-1236-900-600-80

In October 1916, the islands were slammed by a strong Category 3 hurricane that left the Danish bark Thor wrecked, three steamers grounded, as well as the schooner Irma II and sloop Faith sunk. It was Valkyrien’s officers who sounded the alarm about the oncoming storm, firing her guns and rockets on command of Konow, and her crew that saved dozens of lives in and around St. Thomas while, as telecommunications and electricity were knocked out, her searchlights and signal lamps illuminated the night sky. The ship’s junior surgeon was sent to Saint John to render assistance as there was no medical personnel on that nearby island.

Following along that vein, Valkyrien was the muscle on hand representing the Danish government at the transfer of the colony to Uncle Sam on 31 March 1917, just days before the American entry into WWI. Her band played during the ceremony while an armed 24-man honor guard drawn from her crew marched in tandem with a squad of local gendarmes and Yankee bluejackets from the transport USS Hancock (AP-5), who was very lightly armed with only a few 3-inch guns.

Valkyrien crew on Transfer Day, March 31st, 1917

Konow and a dozen of his officers looked on, surrounded by consular representatives of foreign nations and the American delegation. It was Konow who had read the public proclamation of the event aloud two weeks prior, an act that notified the locals of the change in management.

Once the flags were exchanged at 1600 hours, Valkyrien and Hancock fired 17-gun salutes across St. Thomas harbor. Notably, in the port at the time were the interned German ocean liners Wasgenwald and Calabria of the Hamburg America Line, which watched the events cautiously.

Valkyrien, as the Danish flag comes down, Hancock is behind her. DH009717

Valkyrie salute 1917 DH009665

The territory (save for 500-acre Vand or Water Island, which was retained as property of the Danish East Asiatic Company until 1944) became the U.S. Virgin Islands with Hancock’s skipper, LCDR Edwin Taylor Pollock, becoming Acting Governor. Hancock’s crew would take the German steamers into custody just a week later as the U.S. declared war on the Kaiser.

Deprived of a station to serve overseas, Valkyrien returned home, served as a quarantine vessel during the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918, and soon got back to her globetrotting once the war ended.

Used as a training vessel for naval cadets as newer cruisers were available for front-line use, she stopped at Egypt and Malta during her 1919 summer cruise to pick up 160 former German POWs of Danish extraction from the British and returned them to Denmark. That winter, she performed the same task in visits to Holland, Belgium, and France, repatriating 135 further Danes, most of whom lived in German-controlled Southern Jutland, where the Kaiser’s army conscripted over 30,000 Danish-speaking residents into his legions, over the howls of Copenhagen. The Schleswig Plebiscite later returned much of the region, captured by the Prussians in 1864, to Danish control.

Her summer cruise in 1921 carried, besides her cadets, King Christian X, who used the opportunity to pay visits to the Faroe Islands and Iceland. Christian, who had spent four years with the Danish army as a dragoon officer and would later become famous for his daily horseback rides through German-occupied Copenhagen in WWII, proved adept at instructing the boys in close order drill and morning calisthenics.

Christian is the mustachioed officer with carefully parted hair. If your sovereign is behind you doing calisthenics, you are gonna do calisthenics

Laid up in 1923, Valkyrien was sold for scrap the next year.

Epilogue 

She is remembered in period maritime art and postcards. Danish maritime artist Christian Benjamin Olsen, who sailed on her several times, painted no less than three handsome portraits of the cruiser.

The Valkyrie Off Tenerife, 1923 Olsen

“The Spanish general visiting the Danish ship of war Valkyrien.” Signed Chr. Benjamin Olsen, Santa Cruz

Cruiser Valkyrien by Christian Benjamin Olsen, 1913 at Royal Danish Naval Museum

A set of plans is in the U.S. National Archives. 

She is probably best known for her Virgin Islands service and is noted there annually on Transfer Day, observed each March. Konow, her skipper during the transfer, later retired as a vice admiral and served the Danish government in the 1920s as Minister of Defense and Minister of Foreign Affairs. A holder of the Grand Cross of the Order of the Dannebrog, he died in 1939 (ironically, the same year as Prince Valdemar, another of her famous captains) and is well remembered in Danish history. 

Specs: 

(Jane’s 1914 listing)


Displacement: 3,020 tons
Length: 266.75 ft.
Beam: 43.25 ft.
Draft: 18.25 ft.
Machinery: Burmeister & Wain, 2 VTE, 6 cylindrical boilers, 5,300shp
Speed: 17.4 knots
Range: 3,900nm at 10 knots on 496 tons coal
Crew: 282 to 310
Armament:
(1890)
2 x 21 cm/32cal Krupp C/86 L/35 bagladekanoner
6 x 15 cm/32cal Krupp C/88 L/35 bagladekanoner
4 x 57 mm/40cal Hotchkiss kanoner
8 x 37 mm/17cal Hotchkiss kanoner
2 x 8mm machine guns
5 x 381 mm above water torpedoapparater (later reduced to three in 1913, deleted in 1919)

Armament
(1915):
2 x 14.9 cm/32cal L/50 M.06 bagladekanoner (from Peder Skram)
4 x 75 mm/52 L/55 M.12 patronkanoner (increased to six in 1919)
2 x 57 mm/40cal Hotchkiss kanoner
2 x 37 mm/17cal Hotchkiss kanoner

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

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

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

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

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Warship Wednesday, June 16, 2021: Rig for Red

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Here at LSOZI, we will take off every Wednesday to look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1946 time period and profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, June 16, 2021: Rig for Red

Called a skalomniscope by American sub wonk Simon Lake, the periscope of sorts was first invented in 1854 by a French guy by the name of Marie Davey, submersibles have had various “sight tubes” ever since. While early boats had a single short scope attached directly to the (single) top hatch (!) by the 1930s it was common for large fleet submarines to have multiple search and attack periscopes in the sail.

Over the years, these devices in U.S. parlance led to the term “periscope liberty” which denoted side use in observing peacetime beaches and pleasure craft with bikini-clad femmes at play and, of course, the old-school “Rig for red” use of red lighting for those who would use the scopes while the boat was at periscope depth at night or was preparing to go topside should the boat to surface in the o-dark-o’clock hours.

Here are some of the cooler periscope shots in the NHHC’s collection, among others.

Vessel sighting mechanism details LC-USZC4-4561 Robert Hudson’s submarine 1806 periscope patent

The eye of the submarine periscope, Gallagher card.

Aircraft carrier Taiho, seen through the periscope of submarine USS Albacore

Japanese destroyer ‘Harusame’, photographed through the periscope of USS Wahoo (SS-238) after she had been torpedoed by the submarine near Wewak, New Guinea, on 24 January 1943

Japanese armed trawler seen through the periscope of USS Albacore (SS-218) during her tenth war patrol. Photo received 17 November 1944 NHHC 80-286279

80-G-13550 Guardfish periscope

Submarine officer sights through a periscope in the submarine’s control room, during training exercises at the Submarine Base, New London, Groton, Connecticut, in August 1943 80-G-K-16013

Periscope death of the destroyer Tade, (1922) Montage of eight photos showing her sinking after being torpedoed by USS Seawolf (SS-197) on 23 April 1943 NH 58329

Shoreline of Makin Island, photographed through a periscope of USS Nautilus (SS-168) on 16 August 1942, the day before U.S. Marine raiders were landed 80-G-11720

Periscope photograph taken from USS Seawolf (SS-197), while she was on patrol in the Philippines-East Indies area in the fall of 1942. 80-G-33184

Periscope photograph made PUFFER SS-268 freighter Teiko Maru (ex-Vichy French steamship D’Artagnan 1943. Torpedo is shown hitting NH 68784

USS Barb 1944 “fiendish antisubmarine weapon bird” blocking Lucky Fluckey’s view on approach. He reportedly sank the Japanese ship with his observation periscope

In January of 1951, the recently GUPPY’d USS Catfish slipped into San Francisco Bay underwater and remained in the harbor for three days taking photos of the Bay Area through their periscope in daylight as part of an authorized mission to see if they could do it with a minimum of civilian reaction. The mission was successful to a degree, as no one called SFPD or the military, as reported by the San Fran Chronicle.

Sighting the target submarine periscope by Georges Schreiber, Navy Art Collection 88-159-ji

USS JOHN HOOD (DD-655) and USS SNOWDEN (DE-246) photographed through a submarine periscope, while underway 1950s USN 1042008

View from the HALIBUT’s periscope of the March 1960 launch of the Regulus missile.

USS Seadragon (SSN 584) crewmembers explore ice pack in the Arctic Ocean through the periscope

President John F. Kennedy through the periscope aboard USS THOMAS EDISON (SSBN-610) 14 April 1962 USN 1112056-F

USS New Jersey (BB-62) seen through the periscope of USS La Jolla SSN-701

Bohol Strait USS Triton spies a local fisherman on April 1 1960

Key West submarines USS Sea Poacher, USS Grenadier, and USS Threadfin wind their way up the Mississippi River toward New Orleans, as seen through the periscope of USS Tirante, Mardi Gras 1963

Periscope view as Captain G.P. Steele searches for an opening in the ice through which to surface, September 1960 USS Sea Dragon SSN-584 USN 1050054

USS Cowpens through the periscope of the nuclear fast attack submarine USS Salt Lake City (SSN 716), Western Pacific, September 1994.

Many modern submarines, including the U.S. Virginia and RN’s Astute class, no longer use traditional periscopes, having long since ditched them in favor of modern telescoping digital optronics masts housing numerous camera and sensor systems with the Navy’s current standard being the AN/BVS-1 photonics mast.

Astute class CM10 Optronic Masts from Thales. periscope

GROTON, Conn. (Dec. 20, 2019) Sailors assigned to the Virginia-class fast-attack submarine USS Minnesota (SSN 783) stand topside as they pull into their homeport at Naval Submarine Base New London in Groton, Conn., Dec 20, 2019, following a deployment. Minnesota deployed to execute the chief of naval operation’s maritime strategy in supporting national security interests and maritime security operations. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Steven Hoskins/Released)

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

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

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

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

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, June 9, 2021: First of the Jeep Carriers

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

Warship Wednesday, June 9, 2021: First of the Jeep Carriers

Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-236393

Here we see the unassuming yet near overloaded escort carrier, USS Long Island (CVE-1) underway off California on 10 June 1944, acting as an aircraft transport. Wearing Measure 32, Design 9a camo, she has 21 F6F Hellcats, 20 SBD scout bombers, and two J2F Duck utility planes on her flight deck. Commissioned 80 years ago this week, she was the prototype escort carrier in American service and made one hell of a beta test.

Laid down 7 July 1939, as the Type C3‑S‑A1 cargo freighter SS Mormacmail, under Maritime Commission contract for the Moore-McCormack Lines (Moore Mack), by the Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock Co., Chester, Pennsylvania, she launched 11 January 1940 and surely would have gone on to become any other merchantman had she not been acquired by the U.S. Navy on 6 March 1941 and entered service 2 June 1941 as Long Island (initially designated APV-1, but redesignated and commissioned as AVG-1, then later as Auxiliary Aircraft Carrier ACV-1 and CVE-1), with a lot of modifications from her original intended design.

USS Long Island (AVG-1) (ex-Mormacmail) Under conversion at Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Co. Yard, 1 April 1941. She had received the name LONG ISLAND on 31 March 1941. Note flight deck under construction and temporary retention of her neutrality MKGS open. Lighter YC-301 is in the left background. NH 96711

Some 13,500 tons, she was 492 feet long and could accommodate 21 single-engine aircraft between her hangar deck and topside parking, or more than twice that many (as seen in the first image of this post) when being used as an aircraft transport.

USS Long Island (AVG-1) underway on 8 July 1941, with two F2A Brewster Buffalo fighters parked at the forward end of her flight deck. Note flight deck markings: LI. The ship is painted in Measure 1 camouflage, with heavy weathering of paint evident on the hull side. 80-G-26567

As noted by DANFs:

In the tense months before Pearl Harbor, the new escort aircraft carrier operated out of Norfolk, conducting experiments to prove the feasibility of aircraft operations from converted cargo ships. The data gathered by Long Island greatly improved the combat readiness of later “baby flattops.”

No matter if you call them “jeep carriers,” or “Combustible, Vulnerable, and Expendable,” the escort carrier concept is one we have covered a few times in the past several years on WW. Besides one-off training carriers and prototype ships, four large classes of U.S.-built CVEs (Bogue, Sangamon, Casablanca, Commencement Bay) were cranked out during WWII, approaching 150~ hulls planned or completed for Uncle Sam and his Allies. And Long Island was the inaugural model.

FDR himself had a keen interest in her development and went to sea to view her in operation firsthand.

USS Long Island (AVG-1) (upper center) Underway in company with the heavy cruiser USS Augusta (CA-31), in the left front, off Cape Sable, Nova Scotia, in August 1941. Augusta had President Franklin D. Roosevelt embarked to witness Long Island’s operations. Among the other ships present are USS Tuscaloosa (CA-37), partially visible at far right, and USS Meredith (DD-434), steaming astern of Long Island. 80-G-13074

Officers of Scouting Squadron 201 (VS-201) posing on the flight deck of USS Long Island (AVG-1), 10 September 1941. VS-201 was the Navy’s pioneer composite squadron, formed in early 1941 specifically for service on Long Island. 80-G-28406

USS Long Island (AVG-1) in Measure 12 (Modified) Atlantic camouflage, circa 10 November 1941. Planes on her flight deck include seven Curtiss SOC-3A scout observation types and one Brewster F2A Buffalo fighter, both types rare to carrier operations in WWII. 19-N-27986

Following the official U.S. entry into WWII after Pearl Harbor, Long Island got operational, escorting a convoy to Argentia.

USS Long Island (AVG-1) View on the flight deck while operating in the vicinity of Argentia, Newfoundland, January 1942. This was the only time Long Island operated in such northern areas. Planes parked on the carrier’s snowy flight deck, behind the palisade, are Curtiss SOC-3A Seagull types, craft normally seen as floatplanes on cruisers and battleships of the day. 80-G-13129

Then, she qualified naval aviators on new types and made for the West Coast, because, while Hitler’s U-boats were beating a drum from Maine to Texas, things in the Pacific were even worse.

USS Long Island (AVG-1) View on the hangar deck, looking aft over the elevator pit, 28 March 1942. Three Vought SB2U scout bombers are present, embarked for carrier qualifications. Note propellers on deck, and cowling removed from the SB2U at left. The plane in the center is marked S-75. 80-G-16967

USS Long Island (AVG-1) LCDR Lex L. Black, Commanding Officer of squadron VGS-1, makes the ship’s 2000th landing, 20 April 1942, just 10 months after the tiny carrier’s commissioning. No that is a serious shakedown! He is flying a Curtiss SOC-3A Seagull scout-observation aircraft. Note lowered flaps and deployed leading-edge slats on the upper wing. 80-G-14256

USS Long Island (AVG-1) Curtiss SOC-3A Seagull scout-observation planes, of the carrier’s embarked squadron, VGS-1, parked on the flight deck, 10 May 1942. 80-G-14521

Reaching San Francisco on 5 June, Long Beach was attached to Task Force ONE under VADM William S. Pye to provide air cover for his four battleships headed to join Nimitz.

USS Long Island (AVG-1) moored at Naval Air Station, North Island, California, on 2 June 1942, shortly before she sortied with TF1. Aircraft on deck include six Grumman F4F-4 fighters and three Curtiss SOC-3A of squadron VGS-1. 80-G-31839

Same as above

USS Long Island (AVG-1) crewmen spotting an early Grumman F4F-4 Wildcat fighter on the ship’s hangar deck, 17 June 1942. Several other F4F-4s are present, as are Curtiss SOC-3A Seagull scout-observation planes. All are from squadron VGS-1. 80-G-14524

USS Long Island (AVG-1) Grumman F4F-4 Wildcat fighter on the catapult, ready for take-off, 17 June 1942. Several more F4F-4s are waiting their turn for launch. All planes are from squadron VGS-1. Note that Long Island’s catapult runs diagonally across the flight deck, from starboard toward the port bow. 80-G-14548

USS Long Island (AVG-1) a Curtiss SOC-3A Seagull scout-observation plane landing on board, 17 June 1942. Note bomb (or anti-submarine depth bomb) carried on the plane’s centerline rack and arresting gear wires on the carrier’s flight deck. 80-G-14257

USS Long Island (AVG-1) at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on 17 July 1942, with at least eight SBD scout bombers and one TBF torpedo plane parked on her flight deck. This is only six weeks past the Battle of Midway. She is painted in camouflage Measure 12 (Modified) and wears an unusual number on her bow: 751. 80-G-73390

With things growing hairy at a place called Guadalcanal, Long Island picked up two squadrons of Marine tactical aircraft, part of Marine Aircraft Group 23, and headed down to Henderson Field accompanied by the cruiser USS Helena (CL 50) and destroyer USS Dale (DD 353) to supply the first planes to the budding “Cactus Air Force.”

Brewster F2A-3 Buffalo fighter rests in the flight deck gallery walkway after suffering landing gear failure while landing onboard USS Long Island (AVG-1), off Palmyra Island, 25 July 1942. This plane is from Marine Fighting Squadron 211 (VMF-211), now best known as “The Wake Island Defenders” the last Navy or Marine Corps unit to operate the F2A in a front-line capacity. 80-G-12905

Another view of the same. Note marking MF-5 on the plane’s fuselage and very weathered paint. The carrier’s SC radar antenna is visible atop her stub mast at the right. 80-G-12906

At 1700 on 20 August, the first Marines landed aircraft at Henderson Field– taking off from Long Island, some 200 miles to the southeast. They included 18 F4F Wildcats flown by the Bulldogs of VMF-223 (MAJ John L. Smith) and 12 SBD Dauntless dive bombers of the Red Devils of VMSB-232 (Lt. Col. Richard Mangrum). “A shout of relief and welcome went up from every Marine on the island,” reported LT. Herbert L. Merrill.

MAG-23 fighters from the escort carrier USS Long Island are flown into Henderson Field Air Strip.

Dispersal Area of Henderson Field, Guadalcanal, circa 1942 USMC Archives Soule Collection

They flew their first combat missions from Guadalcanal the very next day and were in dogfights just 19 hours after landing.

Ordered back to the West Coast to serve as a training carrier– flattops in the Pacific of any type being exceedingly short at the time– Long Island avoided further brushes with combat but spent the better part of two years in this vital duty, alternating it with running aircraft to the forward areas as deck cargo. It was during this period that she was reclassified as an “Escort Carrier” and redesignated CVE-1.

USS Long Island (ACV-1) Grumman TBF-1 Avenger torpedo plane makes an arrested landing, probably during carrier qualifications in late 1942 or early 1943. 80-G-66735

USS Long Island (ACV-1) Underway with a mixed cargo of airplanes and stores on her flight deck, 25 May 1943. The planes include F4F, SBD, and TBF types. 80-G-83216

USS Long Island (CVE 1), starboard bow view, with new masts and camouflage upon departure from Puget Sound Navy Yard, Washington, D.C., February 11, 1944. Note the camouflage Measure 32, Design 9a. 80-G-413493

Following VJ Day, she would continue serving as a Magic Carpet ride for returning GIs and bring back captured Japanese wonder weapons for technological analysis.

USS Long Island with Navy Med-Evac & Corpsmen unit aboard, Ulithi Atoll late 1945. Note her guns are all covered, pointing to a post-VJ-Day image. 127-GR-51-141315

Japanese Army Type 4 Fighter, a Nakajima Ki-84 Hayate (U.S: “Frank”), painted in U.S. Navy colors onboard USS Long Island (CVE 1), 1945. Japan’s fastest fighter, Franks were the bane of B-29 squadrons over the Home Islands in the last years of the war. This example, serial number 1446, was captured at Clark Field during 1945 and shipped to the U.S. on Long Island late that year to be examined by the War Department. Sold off as surplus in 1952, it eventually made its way to the Tokko Heiwa Kinen-kan (Kamikaze) Museum in Japan, where it is the only surviving Ki-84 in the world.

Epilogue

Long Island received only one battle star for her World War II service and decommissioned on 26 March 1946 at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. Struck 12 April 1946, she was sold to Zidell Ship Dismantling Co., Portland, Oregon., 24 April 1947, ostensibly for scrapping.

A survivor, she was converted by Albina Engineering & Machine Works, Portland, to become an immigrant carrier under the name of Nelly, slowly shuttling war-shook Europeans eager to quit the old world for the new from ports in Western Europe to Australia, with accommodations for 1,300 steerage class passengers.

MS Nelly is seen at sea

By 1955, she had been purchased by the Europe-Canada Line to, as noted by SS Maritime.com, “provide inexpensive student/migrant travel to Canada” with 20 First Class and 970 Tourist Class accommodations. She would sail as MS Seven Seas.

A postcard of the Seven Seas issued by Europe-Canada Line via SS Maritime.com.

In 1963, she was again converted to a school ship for the University of the Seven Seas and World Campus Afloat (now Chapman University) then later become a floating dormitory in Rotterdam for Erasmus University, then for foreign workers in the 1970s.

Via SS Maritime.com.

Her usefulness long since passed, ex-SS Mormacmail/USS Long Island/SS Nelley/MS Seven Seas was towed to the breakers in Belgium in May 1977.

Seven Seas, ex-USS Long Island, in tow, on her last voyage from Rotterdam to Ghent, Belgium, 4 May 1977. She arrived there one day later and breaking up started immediately. Gerhard Mueller-Debus. Via Navsource 

Little to nothing of Long Island remains today, and her name was never reused by the Navy, sadly. However, several of her squadrons, especially the 1942 Marine units, are still in existence.

Speaking of which, the image of the VMF-211 Buffalo crashed on her deck in July 1942 has gone on to have a life of its own, circulating far wider in its modified form than any other Long Island photo. It makes its rounds every May 4th. 

Specs:

The Long Island (CVE-1), the prototype escort carrier, as an aircraft transport, June 1944. Note that she still retained her arresting gear at this time. The original freighter superstructure is visible amidships, forward of her short hangar. Drawing and text from U.S. Aircraft Carriers: An Illustrated Design History, by Norman Friedman, via Navsource.

(As converted, 1941)

Displacement: 7,886 tons standard; 13,499 tons full load
Length: 465 feet (wl) 492 feet deck
Beam: 69.5 feet (wl), 102 feet over deck edges
Draft: 27.5 feet
Power plant: 4 Busch-Sulzer diesels (7-cylinder); 1 shaft; 8,500 bhp
Speed: 16.5 knots
Aviation facilities: 1 elevator; 1 hydraulic catapult
Crew: 970 (wartime figure)
Sensors: SG and SC-1 radar
Armor: None
Armament: 1 single 5″/51 mount; 2 single 3″/50-cal gun mounts; 4 .50-cal machine guns
Aircraft: 21

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Warship Wednesday, June 2, 2021: Flattop of the Americas

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

Warship Wednesday, June 2, 2021: Flattop of the Americas

Library and Archives Canada 4950939/WO-A057319

Here we see an incredible original color photo of the Colossus-class light aircraft carrier HMCS Warrior, Canada’s first flattop, at sunset circa 1946. She would fly three different flags across her short career and get close enough to an H-Bomb to almost touch the sun.

British birth

Warrior was one of 16 planned 1942 Design Light Fleet Carriers for the RN. This series, broken up into Colossus and Majestic-class sub-variants, were nifty 19,500-ton, 695-foot-long carriers that the U.S. Navy would have classified at the time as a CVL or light carrier. They were slower than the fast fleet carriers at just 25-knots with all four 3-drum Admiralty boilers were lit and glowing red, but they had long legs (over 14,000 miles at cruising speed) which allowed them to cross the Atlantic escorting convoys, travel to the Pacific to retake lost colonies or remain on station in the South Atlantic or the Indian Ocean for weeks.

The classes’ 1946 Jane’s entry under the RN’s section. Note that Warrior is missing. 

Capable of carrying up to 44 piston engine aircraft of the time, these carriers had enough punch to make it count.

The thing is, only seven of these carriers were completed before the end of World War II and even those came in during the last months and weeks. They effectively saw no service. Laid down beginning in 1942, most of the ships were launched but when the war ended, construction was canceled. Two were completed as a peculiar RN invention of a “maintenance carrier,” intended just to repair and ferry but not operate aircraft. Some were immediately transferred to expanding Commonwealth fleets. Suddenly, the Australians, Canadians, and Indians became carrier operators. The Dutch (then Argentines) and Brazilians soon followed. Class leader Colossus was sold to France as Arromanches.

HMS WARRIOR (FL 21271) At a buoy. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205121624

Speaking of being sold off, Warrior was ordered, originally as HMS Brave, on 7 August 1942 from Harland and Wolff (builders of the Titanic) at their yard in Belfast. Launched on 20 May 1944, just two weeks before D-Day, she was the last of the Colossus class to finish construction in WWII on 2 April 1945, just as Berlin was falling. Intended for use in the Pacific, she was made available to Ottawa on a “try it before you buy it basis” while Japan was still in the war.

Oh, Canada

The Canadians were not entirely neophytes to carrier operations, having used a couple of Ruler/Bouge-class escort or “Jeep” carriers (the RN-flagged HMS Nabob and HMS Puncher) during the war already. Outfitting four squadrons (803, 825, 826, and 883 for the RCN), she would soon be ready to fly Supermarine Seafires (later replaced by Hawker Sea Fury) fighters, and Fairey Firefly IV strike aircraft (later replaced by TBM Avengers). Commissioned as HMCS Warrior on 24 January 1946, she was the largest warship Canada operated up until that time, having previously just had cruisers and escorts.

She arrived at Halifax in March 1946 and, had Japan not surrendered six months prior, would have likely gotten in on Operation Coronet, the planned and likely very bloody Allied invasion of Honshu, where the British Pacific Fleet was scheduled to play a big part. After all, her sisters HMS Colossus, Glory, Venerable, and Vengeance had already joined the BPF in Sydney in 1945.

Instead, Warrior never went to war under a Canadian flag.

HMCS Warrior, broadside view taken from shore, 14:30 hours, 23 Aug. 1946. LAC 3198949

Warrior underway, circa 1946. Original color. LAC 4950938/WO-A057319

The batsman on HMCS Warrior, signaling aircraft to land on the flight deck, circa 1946-48. Original color. LAC 4950874/WO-A057319

R.C.N. PR434. Vickers “Seafire” Mk15. R/R Griffon 6. 803 SQD. H.M.C.S. Warrior 30 August 1946 LAC

HMCS-Uganda (C66) as seen from the Canadian aircraft carrier HMCS Warrior circa 1946, note the Fairey Firefly and Maple Leaf insignias. LAC-MIKAN-No 4821077

Fairey Firefly on the deck of HMCS Warrior, circa 1946-48. Original color. WO-A057319

Crowded hangar deck of Canadian aircraft carrier HMCS Warrior

Warrior passing under the Lions’ Gate Bridge in Vancouver 10 February 1947. Photo by Jack Lindsey/City of Vancouver Archives CVA 1184-3461

HMS Warrior (R-31) passing under the Lion’s Gate Bridge, Vancouver. Feb 9, 1947. Jack Lindsey/City of Vancouver Archives

Deck Landing Control Officer (DLCO) signaling Hawker Sea Fury to take off, on an RCN aircraft carrier, circa 1947-57. Original color. LAC 4950873/WO-A057319

RCN 881 Anti-Submarine Squadron Grumman Avenger in flight LAC 4951377

Canada’s first proper flattop was returned to the Royal Navy on 23 March 1948 at Portsmouth, replaced by the Majestic-class near-sister HMCS Magnificent.

London Calling

Upon her return to Britain, Warrior was used as a trial ship for flexible deck experiments and then was laid up. Reactivated for Korea, she was used as a transport carrier to haul troops and aircraft to the epic battle for the Peninsula, arriving there in August 1950. 

 

 

HMS Warrior off Gibraltar MOD 45139702

HMS Warrior (R31), USS Des Moines (CA-134), and HMS Gambia (48) at Malta, circa in 1951. IWM A32043

Same, IWM A32044

After a refit with new commo gear and radars, she would embark Sea Furies and Fireflies for a West Pac cruise in 1954, where she would have the White Duster in both South Africa and Hong Kong.

FAR EAST FLEET EXERCISES. 3 OCTOBER 1954, AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHS FROM AIRCRAFT OF THE LIGHT FLEET CARRIER HMS WARRIOR OF THE BRITISH FAR EAST FLEET. EXERCISES CARRIED OUT OFF THE CHINA COAST AND WITH THE ROYAL AUSTRALIAN NAVY. (A 33037) HMS BIRMINGHAM and HMS WARRIOR in line ahead while exercising off Hong Kong. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205016333

FAR EAST FLEET EXERCISES. 3 OCTOBER 1954, AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHS FROM AIRCRAFT OF THE LIGHT FLEET CARRIER HMS WARRIOR OF THE BRITISH FAR EAST FLEET. EXERCISES CARRIED OUT OFF THE CHINA COAST AND WITH THE ROYAL AUSTRALIAN NAVY. (A 33035) HMS WARRIOR sailing from Hong Kong for the exercises. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205016331

During this cruise, she served as a “floating nursery,” clocking in to carry refugees from newly independent North Vietnam down to the Republic of Vietnam.

THE FRENCH INDOCHINA WAR, VIETNAM 1945 – 1954 (A 33001) The aircraft carrier HMS WARRIOR evacuates 1,455 refugees from Haiphong, North Vietnam to Saigon during Operation PASSAGE TO FREEDOM, 4 September 1954. Rice and other food are issued to refugees in the forward lift well. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205187799

As above. Note the spare wings on her hangar deck bulkheads. IWM A 33003

HMS WARRIOR VISITS SOUTH AFRICA. ON 11 NOVEMBER 1954, ONBOARD THE LIGHT FLEET CARRIER AT PORT ELIZABETH, SOUTH AFRICA. (A 33059) A section of the large crowd of South Africans who visited HMS WARRIOR at Port Elizabeth. More than 10,000 visitors went aboard on one afternoon. Here some are looking at A Sea Fury on the WARRIOR’s deck. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205163735

Given another refit to add an angled deck– the Brits were the first to use such a novelty, she would embark both helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft on occasion. This included another trip to the Pacific where she would standby of the Grapple X test at Christmas Island– the first British hydrogen bomb.

Grapple test as seen from HMS Warrior via Histarmar. The carrier would be very close to three separate bombs during the tests. 

There, her Avengers, Vampires, and HAR3/4 Whirlwinds would collect fallout samples the old-fashioned way, by flying through it.

Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Warrior (R31). The photo was taken circa 1957, as Warrior wears the deck code “J” which had been assigned to HMS Eagle (R05) from 1951 to late 1956. Eagle then received the new deck code “E”, whereas deck code “J” was assigned to the newly refitted Warrior. NNAM No. 1996.488.037.025

Same, different view, NNAM 1996.488.037.024

 

HMS Warrior on speed trials in 1957, note her “J” deck designator. 

On her way back from the Grapple tests, Warrior stopped off in Argentina, then a British ally, for a very special set of tours. You see, the carrier was surplus to RN needs and was very much for sale.

Back to the Americas

Sold to Argentina, HMS/HMCS Warrior was renamed ARA Independencia (V-1) on 6 August 1958 while at Portsmouth undergoing refit. Leaving for her new homeland, she arrived in December and wasn’t officially commissioned until mid-1959 with the first Argentine carrier landing in history taking place on her deck in June.

Her initial airwing would be made up of Korean War-era F4U-5L Corsairs complete with wing-mounted radars, a few navalized SNJ-5Cs Texans, the occasional T-28A Trojan, and, after 1962, a handful of early S-2A Trackers.

Archivo Fotográfico Portaaviones “Independencia” 27 de mayo de 1960 Archivo General de la Nación Dpto. Doc. Fotográficos.

Argentina carrier ARA Independencia with Corsairs on deck, colorized by Diego Mar of Postales Navales

Aviacion Naval Argentina F4U-5 Corsair carrier

F4U-5NL Vought Corsairs of the Aviacion Naval Argentina, circa 1962, original color. The country operated 26 F4U-5/N/5NL Corsairs from 1956 to 1968, primarily flying from Independencia

Archivo Fotografico ARA INDEPENDENCIA Puerto de Buenos Aires Julio/60 Fotografia Archivo General de la Nación Dpto. Doc. Fotográficos. Buenos Aires. Argentina. Note the white-painted F4U-5 Corsairs on deck

In August 1963, an ex-U.S. Navy F9F-2B Panther flown by Capt. Justiniano Martínez Achával became the first jet to land on an Argentine carrier when it was trapped on Independencia. However, it had to be craned off as her catapults were not thought to be powerful enough to launch it safely.

At least one of the country’s two F9F-8T Cougar trainers was photographed aboard as well.

First aircraft carrier of Argentina ARA Independencia (V-1) and Vickers G-class destroyer ARA Misiones (E-11) via Histamar, circa 1965

Argentina carrier ARA Independencia y ARA Punta Médanos Foto By N del Sr Adolfo Jorge Soto‎ Buques de guerra colorised by Diego Mar Postales Navales

Argentinian light carrier ARA Independencia -ex-HMS Warrior, a Colossus class carrier) operated “navalized” T-6 Texan (SNJ), a unique force. The USN used them but in the Great Lakes in the training carriers USS Sable & USS Wolverine.

With the delivery of the more modern Colossus-class sister HNLMS Karel Doorman (ex-HMS Venerable) from Holland in 1968– which could launch Panthers and Cougars and would later carry A-4 Skyhawks– the Argentines commissioned the new flattop as ARA 25 de Mayo (V-2) on 12 March 1969 and Independencia’s days were numbered. Laid up, she was sold on 17 March 1971 and scrapped.

Today, little of Warrior remains, with her bell still washed up in Canada at the Shearwater Aviation Museum in Nova Scotia.

HMCS Warrior’s bell at Shearwater Aviation Museum via Wiki Commons

There are, also, assorted scale models of her aircraft, including those flown by the FAA, RCN, and Armada.

The last of her class in the Royal Navy, Triumph, was kept around as a repair ship until 1975 then scrapped. The final vessel of her class sent to the breakers, the third-hand ex-HMS/HMAS Vengeance/ex-NAeL Minas Gerais, was sold for scrap by the Brazilian owners in 2004, torched to man-portable pieces on the beach at Alang.

There is one, more somber legacy of Warrior as well. Members of her Grapple crew, many of which have long-term generational health issues, are often represented by the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association. 

George Baulch on the deck of HMS Warrior after the first explosion. “One of his daughters was born with severe learning disabilities, which Mr. Baulch blames on the radiation. She died in her 30s of unexplained reasons.”

Specs:

Warrior’s 1946 Entry in Janes

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

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

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

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

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

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Warship Wednesday, May 26, 2021: Baked New Hampshire

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

Warship Wednesday, May 26, 2021: Baked New Hampshire

Courtesy of the Naval Historical Foundation; Collection of W. Beverley Mason, Jr., 1962. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 51182

Here we see the lead ship of the Ossipee-class sloop of war, USS Ossipee, off Honolulu in the then-Kingdom of Hawaiʻi during the Kamehameha dynasty, with her crew manning the yards, in early 1867. Our sloop would range far and wide in her naval service, including damming the torpedoes and coping with fainting Russian princesses.

Built for the budding war between the states, the four vessels of the Ossipee-class were wooden-hulled steam-powered warships of some 1,200 tons, running some 207 feet long overall. With a ~140-man crew, they were designed to carry a 100-pounder Parrott pivot gun, an 11-inch Dahlgren shell gun, a trio of 30-pounder rifles, six 32-pounders, and a couple of 12-pounders, giving them the nominal rank of a 13-gun sloop.

Class leader Ossipee was laid down at Portsmouth Naval Yard in Kittery, Maine in June 1861, just as the Army of the Potomac and the Army of the Shenandoah were being formed, while her sisters USS Adirondack, USS Housatonic, and USS Juniata, were subsequently laid down the Navy Yards in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, respectively and near-simultaneously.

A good sketch profile of the class in their Civil War layout. USS Housatonic, Wash drawing by R.G. Skerrett, 1902. NH 53573

The class was named for geographical features i.e., mountains and rivers, with Ossipee being the first (and thus far only) Navy warship to carry the name of the Ossipee River that runs through New Hampshire and part of Maine.

Ossipee Falls, Ossipee, N.H. LC-DIG-stereo-1s13770

Commissioned on 6 November 1862, Ossipee spent a few months with the North Atlantic Squadron before shipping south on 18 May 1863 to join Farragut’s West Gulf Blockading Squadron off Mobile, Alabama. While operating in the Northern Gulf, she pulled off a hattrick of captures, hauling over the schooner Helena on 30 June and the blockade runners James Battle and William Bagley two weeks later, with the latter two packed with cotton and headed abroad.

Damn the Torpedos!

On the early morning of 5 August 1864, Ossipee was part of the 14-vessel task force assigned to sweep Mobile Bay, pushing past Battery Powell and Forts Gaines and Morgan at the mouth of the Bay, despite the threat of underwater torpedoes (mines).

Plan of the battle of August 5, 1864. [Mobile Bay] From Harper’s Weekly, v. 8, Sept. 24, 1864. p. 613, via the LOC CN 99447253. Ossipee is marked No. 11 on the plan, taking the Bay mouth aside from the gunboat USS Itasca.

About those Torpedos
 
The Confederates sowed dozens of fixed mines of several types in defense of Mobile Bay, with at least 67 of the “infernal devices” across the mouth of the Bay alone. (See: Gabriel Rains and the Confederate Torpedo Bureau: Waters, W. Davis, Brown, Joseph, for more details than below). 

An example of the Confederate Type 7 Frame-fixed torpedo (mine). Some 28.5-inches long and 12.2-inches across, they weighed 440-pounds of which just 27 of that was black powder explosive charge. Using a Type G1A adjustable triple Rains-pattern primer style torpedo fuze, these cast iron mines were set into a wedge-shaped frame and typically laid in sets of three with the thought that, if the first was missed, a passing ship would possibly hit the second or third or, if spotting the last in the chain, attempt to back off and run over the first. The rebels used what Brig. Gen Gabriel J. Rains, head of the Confederate Torpedo Bureau, described as a “Torpedo Mortar Battery” at Mobile, some 60 feet long and 35 feet wide, constructed of these frame-type mine arrays. Towed into place once constructed, it was angled from the bottom of the sea bed with the fuzed shells facing just under the surface of the water at low tide.

An example of a Confederate Fretwell-Singer-type torpedo, common to Mobile Bay, at the Fort Morgan Museum.

The Confederate Rains “keg type” mines were made from everything from Demi jugs, beer barrels, and even 1,500-gallon boilers in at least one case, with conical ends fitted. Waterproofed with pitch and tar, they were anchored in place and used with chemical/pressure style fuzes or could be command-detonated via an electrical circuit ashore.

 
Heeling Tennessee

Besides the mines, Farragut had to face off and do combat with the fearsome albeit semi-complete Confederate ironclad ram CSS Tennessee. During the engagement, Ossipee suffered 1 killed (SN Owen Manes) and 7 wounded, mostly with splinter wounds, against the fleet’s total losses of 135 dead (including 94 who went down with the Canonicus-class monitor USS Tecumseh, one of 43 American vessels sunk by rebel mines in the conflict) and 88 sent to the surgeon.

At the end of the morning, Farragut’s fleet had lost Tecumseh to causes still not fully known but captured the gunboat CSS Selma with 90 officers and men as well as the battered CSS Tennessee, with 190 officers and men aboard to include Confederate ADM. Franklin Buchanan. Tennessee’s skipper, CDR James D. Johnson, was a prisoner on Ossipee by dusk on the 5th. Just out of Farragut’s reach, the sinking gunboat CSS Gaines lay grounded and abandoned.

Ossipee went down in history as being the last Union ship to get a bite at Tennessee, moving in to ram the rebel ironclad in the final moments before Johnson poked up a white flag from her wheelhouse. Unfortunately, the momentum of the sloop continued under Newton’s first law of motion and collided with the surrendered beast.

Battle of Mobile Bay, 5 August 1864. Line engraving after an artwork by J.O. Davidson, published in “Battles and Leaders of the Civil War”, Volume 4, page 378. Entitled “Surrender of the Tennessee, Battle of Mobile Bay”, it depicts CSS Tennessee in the center foreground, surrounded by the Union warships (from left to right): USS Lackawanna, USS Winnebago, USS Ossipee, USS Brooklyn, USS Itasca, USS Richmond, USS Hartford, and USS Chickasaw. Fort Morgan is shown at the right distance. NH 1276

“Capture of the Confederate ram Tennessee” Artwork by J.O. Davidson, depicting the surrender of CSS Tennessee after the Battle of Mobile Bay, 5 August 1864. U.S. Navy ships depicted include monitor USS Winnebago and sloop USS Monongahela, in the left background; sloop USS Ossipee “in collision with Tennessee”, in the center; monitor USS Chickasaw “lying across the stern of Tennessee”, in right foreground; gunboat USS Itasca, in the right distance; and flagship USS Hartford further to the right. NH 42394

Once Mobile had been neutralized as a rebel port, Ossipee continued her service in the Gulf enforcing the blockade off Texas and was in Union-held New Orleans in April 1865 when the side-wheel steam ram CSS Webb, darted out of the Red River and made a break for the sea via the Mississippi and gave pursuit along with other vessels with the nimble Webb ending her run burned out and abandoned by her crew.

The Webb Running the Blockade, by William Lindsey Challoner, Louisiana State Museum

To the Frozen North

Laid up briefly after the war, Ossipee was one of the luckier of her class. Sister Adirondack had been lost on a reef in the Bahamas in August 1862 while looking for blockade runners. Sister Housatonic made naval history (in a bad way) by becoming the first warship sunk by an enemy submarine when CSS H.L. Hunley took her to the bottom with her off Charleston, South Carolina, 17 February 1864. Only Juniata, who had spent most of the Civil War ranging the seas in search of Confederate raiders, remained.

The 11-gun Ossipee-class steam sloop USS Juniata in 1889, Detroit Photo. Via LOC. Her class included the ill-fated USS Housatonic.

Like Juniata, Ossipee would soon see more of the earth than the Gulf of Mexico and Eastern Seaboard.

Recommissioned 27 October 1866, she was sent to the Pacific to show the flag from Central America to Alaska, then a Tsarist territory.

Following the “folly” of U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward’s treaty with Russia for the purchase of what would eventually become the 49th state for $7.2 million in gold, Ossipee was dispatched from San Francisco in September 1867 to affect the transfer. Accompanied by the third-rate gunboat USS Resaca (9 guns), who had been in Alaskan waters since August, the two vessels were on hand of the transfer on Castle Hill at Sitka (then population: 1,500) on October 18, 1867. There, Prince Dmitry Petrovich Maksutov, commissioner of the Tsar and Russian Governor of the territory, formally transferred all of Alaska to Brig. Gen. Lovell H. Rousseau, commissioner for the United States.

Ossipee’s skipper, Capt. George F. Emmons, would chronicle the transfer in his journal which is now in the Alaska State Archives as is Maksutov’s calling card given to the good captain.

Some 200 American troops, in Yankee blue, stood at attention across from a smaller number of Russian soldiers on opposite sides of the flagpole with the Russian flag dropped, and the American raised to a slow 21-gun cannon salute from Ossipee and the Russian coastal battery. Princess Maria Maksutova was famously supposed to have fainted during the transfer, as the Russian flag became stuck during the ceremony and had to be removed rather unceremoniously, although Emmons’s account dispels the fainting trope.

Old Glory Rises Over Alaska by Austin Briggs, showing Prince Maksutova and his parasol-equipped wife under the flagpole near the Tsar’s riflemen. Maksutova, who was a trained naval officer, fought during the Battle of Sinop and the siege of Petropavlovsk in the Crimean War, remained in Sitka for a year to help close things out. He died an admiral in his St. Petersburg home in 1889.

Post-Alaska

USS Ossipee in her 1873-78 configuration, with her 11-inch pivot gun mounted between the main & mizzen masts. NH 45369

Following the Sitka transfer, Ossipee would spend several years in the North Atlantic squadron. It was during this period that one of her crew, SN James Benson, would earn a rare peacetime Medal of Honor with his citation reading “Onboard the USS Ossipee, 20 June 1872. Risking his life, Benson leaped into the sea while the ship was going at a speed of 4 knots and endeavored to save John K. Smith, landsman, of the same vessel, from drowning.”

Ossipee would pick up the two-year-long Selfridge Expedition to the Isthmus of Darien (Panama) which we have covered before.

Darien Selfridge Survey. The First Reconnoitering Expedition, upon its return from the Isthmus of Darien Survey, No. 1 Commander Selfridge. No. 2. Captain Houston, USMC. No. 3. Lieutenant Goodrell, No. 4. Lieutenant Commander Schulze, No. 5 P.A. Surgeon Simonds, No. 6 P.A. Paymaster Loomis, No. 7 Lieutenant Jasper, No. 8 Mr. Sullivan Asst C.S., No. 9 Lieutenant Allen, USMC: NH 123343

Ossipee was involved in the 1873 Virginius affair with Spain after the fact, towing the notorious vessel back after the Spanish released it while her filibustering/insurgent crew would remain in custody in Havanna.

USS Ossipee in her configuration of 1884-89, with her 8-inch rifled pivot gun, mounted forward of the stack. NH 45054

USS Ossipee photographed in her 1884-89 configuration. NH 45370

Following more time in ordinary, Ossipee would once again ship off for the Pacific, remaining on Asiatic station from April 1884 to February 1887 when she arrived back in New York.

On her return, she was visited by E.H. Hart, a New York-based photographer who catered to postcard companies, and he captured her crew and decks in time. Her log held at the time that she was a 3rd rate sloop of 8 guns.

USS Ossipee Berth Deck, Cooks, in 1887. Photographed by E.H. Hart, 112 E. 24th St., New York. Note cooking gear, sausages in the roasting rack at left, tins of beef (one from New Zealand), bread, man peeling potatoes, a black sailor with bowl, coffee cups, and bearded Marine. NH 2860

USS Ossipee, Ship’s officers pose by her poop deck ladder, at the time of her arrival at New York from Asiatic service, February 1887. Note Gatling machine gun at left. CDR John F. McGlensey is in the center, in a forked beard. NH 42938

USS Ossipee, Inspection of the crew, at the time of her return from Asiatic service, February 1887. CDR John F. McGlensey, is in the right-center, beside the small boy. Note marines at left, and pumps in the lower center. NH 42939

USS Ossipee, Ship’s firemen posed by the boiler room hatch, with mascot puppy, 1887. Note breeches of 9-inch Dahlgren guns at left. NH 42940

USS Ossipee, Ship’s apprentices posed beside the engine room hatch, 1887. Note fancy bulwark paint and molding work; belaying pins holding running rigging; Gatling gun shot rack for 9-inch guns and carriage for a 3-inch landing force gun. Also ramrods and other heavy ordnance gear on bulwarks. NH 42941

USS Ossipee, Crew at quarters for inspection, February 1887, upon her arrival at New York from the Asiatic station. Marines are at the left. NH 42942

USS Ossipee, Men of the starboard watch, posed by the engine room hatch, looking forward, 1887. Note mascot puppy; engine order plaque on hatch coaming; a man with a telescope on the bridge; wire rope ladder to the shrouds; 9-inch round shot in the rack. NH 42943

USS Ossipee, Men of the port watch, posed by the engine room hatch, looking forward, in 1887. Note bugler at left, coal scuttle on deck, and cowl ventilator. Also, note landing force 3-inch gun carriage on deck. NH 42944

USS Ossipee “Equipping for distant service,” hoisting out a boat and landing force gun. This view was taken at New York Navy Yard upon her return from the Asiatic station in February 1887 and may show her being un-equipped for home service. NH 42945

USS Ossipee, “Abandoned ship,” showing her cluttered decks after her return to the New York Navy Yard from the Asiatic station in February 1887. Photo looking forward from her poop deck. Note: 9-inch Dahlgren guns, pumps, hatches, and tarpaulins over hammock rails. NH 42946

USS Ossipee ship’s officers, circa 1887-1888. Her Commanding Officer, CDR William Bainbridge Hoff, is in front left-center, with coat open. Note 9-inch Dahlgren gun at right. NH 42947

USS Ossipee crew At Quarters, circa 1887-88. Note black sailor in the right-center; gun crews by their weapons at right, Marines with Trap-door Springfield rifles, drummers, dog on deck, and hammocks stowed in hammock rails over the bulwarks. NH 42949

USS Ossipee general Muster on board, circa 1887-88. The ship’s Commanding Officer, CDR William Bainbridge Hoff, is in the center, leaning on the grating rack. Note Marine sentry at the gangway, hammock stowage, and large percentage of black sailors among the crew at left. NH 42950

USS Ossipee practice with a spar torpedo, rigged abeam, February 1887. NH 42952

USS Ossipee ship’s Marine guard in formation circa the 1880s. NH 58911

With the old wooden-hulled ship increasingly anachronistic in the new steel Navy, Ossipee was decommissioned at Norfolk on 12 November 1889 and sold there on 25 March 1891 to Herbert H. Ives.

Epilogue

Ossipee’s only sister to make it out of the Civil War, USS Juniata, would famously circumnavigate the globe in 1882-85 under the command of young CDR George Dewey, but her fate was coupled to Ossipee in the end, being sold off to Mr. Ives on the same day in 1891, who no doubt got a deal.

Ossipee is preserved in maritime art

W.M.C. Philbrick (American, 19th Century) Profile View of the U.S.S. Ossipee

Likewise, her muster rolls and logs are extensively preserved and digitized online in the National Archives as are numerous items in Alaska archives.

Finally, every October 18th is regularly celebrated in “The Last Frontier,” as Alaska Day, complete with a reenactment ceremony and parade in Sitka.

Specs:
Displacement 1,240 t.
Length 207′
Beam 38′
Draft 16′
Depth of Hold 16′ 10″
Speed 10kts
Complement 141
Armament
one 100-pdr Parrott rifle
one 11″ Dahlgren smoothbore
three 30-pdr Dahlgren rifles
six 32-pdr
one heavy 12-pdr smoothbore
one 12-pdr rifle
Propulsion Sails/Steam

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

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

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

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

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Warship Wednesday, May 19, 2021: One Tired Fox

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

Warship Wednesday, May 19, 2021: One Tired Fox

Naval History and Heritage Command Photo NH 61060

Here we see just a great wheelhouse shot of the Astraea-class 2nd class protected cruiser, HMS Fox, likely around the early 1900s, with her wheels covered in battle honor from the 14 previous Royal Navy vessels that carried the name. A slight ship, she had stamina and would range the globe, pushing up rivers in Africa, fighting pirates, surviving ice floes, storming Dervish forts, duking it out with Germans, sparking Arab revolts, and mixing it up with Bolsheviks across her career.

The eight ships of the Astraea class were slow for what you typically think of for cruisers, capable of making just over 19 knots in peak condition under a forced draft, but they were economical, able to steam for 7,000 nm at 10 knots to overseas deployments across the Empire’s vast colonial assets– which of course was their intended purpose. Just 4,300-tons and 339-feet long, they carried a mixed battery of two 6″/40 (15.2 cm) QF Mark Is arranged fore and aft, eight 4.7-inch (12 cm) QF Mark Is arranged port and starboard, eight Ordnance QF Hotchkiss 6 pounders for torpedo boat defense, and a few smaller 3 pounders and early Maxim machine guns. For offensive use, they had three 18-inch torpedo tubes.

HMS FOX British Cruiser, 1893 Caption: Deck scene, looking forward from the stern. Gun is one of her two 6″/40s. NH 61059

The arrangement of this myriad of weapons gave the Astraeas a very bristly appearance, seen here is the 1897 Brassey’s. Note her three torpedo tubes superimposed along the waterline port, starboard, and a stern stinger

The eight cruisers of the class were built almost concurrently, sliding down the ways at five different yards within 18 months of each other across mid-1894 to early 1896. Our subject was at least the 15th HMS Fox to serve in the Royal Navy since 1656 and was launched 15 June 1893, commissioning three years later at a cost of £256,042.

HMS Fox being launched in 1893. IWM Q38906

Serving on the Cape and West African stations, she was tapped for the “expedition against the Sierra Leone Insurgents” in 1898-9, best known today as the Hut Tax War, where the British were running the same old game since 1775. During the colonial dust up there, Fox, along with the paddlewheel gunboat HMS Alecto and scout cruiser HMS Blonde, would land a 280-strong “naval brigade” to fight Bai Bureh’s rebels. She would also be engaged in some NGFS against targets on the Mano River.

For the action, men aboard her were entitled to wear the Ashantee Medal with the “Sierra Leone” clasp.

Fitted with a Marconi wireless device in October 1901, Fox left Portsmouth, off for the East Indies Station for the next three years in a trip that is very well documented in a 271-page journal of Yeoman F.E. Nobbs and Stoker W.T. Berger, with outbound stops in Malta, Port Said (“Sand is not preferable to green slopes and the foliage is very scarce”), Seychelles, in Aden and Muscat (where a detail applied her name to the famous rock there), India (“During our first week’s stay in Bombay, 850 deaths were reported, not a very cheering record for a health resort”), and Colombo on the way.

Just after New Year’s day 1902, Fox took aboard nine field guns and ammunition for shore service to answer a call to help put down disorder in the Persian Gulf at Koweit (Kuwait), where 120 bluejackets helped support the regime of Sheikh Jabar.

Fox was called to patrol the Somaliland coast, and send her tars and field guns ashore once again in the campaign against the Mad Mullah (Mohammed Abdullah Hassan), joining troops of the East African Rifles, Bombay Sappers & Miners, the Uganda Rifles, and a unit of Boers, setting off on a flying column from Obbia (Hobyo) consisting of “1,000 men and 500 camels” to fight the Dervish rebellion.

Then came cruises and visits in the Pacific, including stops in Singapore, only for Fox to be recalled to Somaliland.

Seizing Illing 

Fox in her pre-WWI scheme. NH 61058

On 21 April 1904, working in conjunction with the torpedo cruiser HMS Mohawk and her sistership HMS Hyacinth as well as the Italian gunboat Volturno, they took 125 Tommys of the 1st Battalion, Royal Hampshire Regiment (under Maj. S.F. Jackson, DSO) aboard, tasked with reducing and capturing the Mahdi’s stronghold at Illing under the orders of Maj. Gen Sir Charles Egerton.

The Hampshires had already been some 10 months campaigning on the Horn of Africa as camel-mounted infantry and had been delayed from an England-bound transport for the operation. “It was a sight to see them, sunburnt and weather-beaten, in the very much worn khaki trousers and old grey backs, standing on the deck of our vessel,” notes the journal.

With each bluejacket sent ashore issued a rifle and 120 rounds of ammunition, they were assembled and sent with the ship’s field guns and Maxims along with stretchers, water cans, rations, and anything else that could be needed.

Between the landing parties of sailors and Royal Marines from the four warships and the Hampshires, 540 men were mustered for the task, equipped with five Maxims in the vanguard. With whaleboats beginning to embark at 0400, the battalion was ashore on a deserted wadi three miles south from Illing by 0730. The expedition then crept towards the port along the beach. By 0830, combat kicked off at a range of 600 yards against fortified blockhouses where the locals were firing through loopholes and supported by a trio of “ancient” 3-pounder muzzleloading carronades firing “bits of old iron” commenced.

Fox answered by shelling the old forts and caves there from a range of 6,300 yards with her 4.7-inch guns, firing 20 rounds of lyddite, shrapnel, and field-pointed common shells to cover the landings. It was all over half an hour of heavy skirmishing with mop-up work commencing the rest of the morning.

The fighting, done at bayonet point, was sharp, with one of Fox’s stokers killed, shot through the lungs, and two more of her crew seriously wounded. In all, the British suffered three killed and 11 wounded, almost all seamen. They captured “sixty corpses and a few prisoners.”

After spending five days ashore razing the works and sorting out souvenirs, the force left by the morning of 26 April. “Illiing had ceased to exist. The walls were flat as those of Jericho, the village had been destroyed, and the fourteen surf boats had been burnt.”

Fox arrived back at Portsmouth in October 1904, flying a 450-foot paying-off pennant, and having steamed more than 60,000 miles in 36 months, putting landing forces ashore on at least three different occasions.

After a period in ordinary, she was dispatched again to the East Indies in June 1908, where she would remain for the better part of 10 years.

On this extended deployment, she would capture slave traders and pirates from stateless dhows off the Arabian Peninsula and be involved in the so-called Dubai Incident or Hyacinth Incident in 1910 that would start with a Christmas Eve party and end up in a “running gun battle, a naval bombardment and numerous deaths” after the RN moved to confiscate a stockpile of “illegal” guns. When the smoke cleared, the Sheikh of Dubai ended up having to hand over to the British some 400 serviceable rifles and pay a fine of 50,000 rupees.

Fox was photographed with some of the Martinis and other breechloaders that were handed in.

Official caption: Arms traffic. The disaster at Dibai. The surrendered rifles on the quarter deck of the HMS Fox, via the Bain News Service collection at the LOC LC-USZ62-104788

Great War

While Fox was overseas in the East, her sisterships were trimmed. Forte had been sold for scrap, Cambrian and Flora were stricken and in line to be disposed of, and Bonaventure was disarmed and converted to a submarine depot. Even with the halving of the Astraea class, the Admiralty was far from hurting for cruisers, with the 1914/15 Jane’s/Brassey’s cataloging no less than 60 light cruisers still active in the Royal Navy heading into the Guns of August.

The active Astraea-class cruisers, Brassey’s 1915, at which point they were old and obsolete, especially for fleet actions.

HMS Fox, Great War era

THE ROYAL NAVY IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR (Q 75397) Protected cruiser HMS Fox. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205320184

When the shooting started, Fox put to sea in search of Germans to fight. This soon led to her hailing and impounding the German merchantmen Australia of the Dutch Australian Lloyd Line (on 10 August 1914), and Hansa Line steamer Holtenfels the next day, both off Colombo.

Then came the search for the missing German light cruiser SMS Königsberg.

Had the two vessels met at sea, it would have been a hard contest with the newer German ship being faster and more maneuverable in addition to being equipped with faster guns, but Fox having an arguably better armor scheme and a heavier battery. Further, Königsberg’s crew were bloodied, having already fought the old Pelorus-class cruiser HMS Pegasus, sinking the 2,700-ton vessel in a surprise attack in Zanzibar harbor, 20 September 1914.

Sailing for Zanzibar and Mombasa the same month, Fox was soon engaged against the Kaiser’s possessions in Africa.

After securing German POWs from the tug Adjutant in October, she joined an expedition to the German colony of Tanzania the next month, filled with troops of 13th Rajputs, 61st Pioneers, 2nd Kashmir Rifles, and 2nd Loyal North Lancashires. Supporting the landings at the key Tanzanian port of Tanga in the first week of November, Fox would fire 10 6-inch and 120 4.7-inch shells during the failed operation known to history as the Battle of the Bees where 1,000 mixed Schutztruppe under then-unknown Lt. Col. Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck bested the British force, capturing much of their equipment.

Fox then raided Dar Es Salaam in German East Africa on 28 November, during which one of her steam launches came close enough to shore to be taken under rifle fire, suffering one killed, three wounded and five counted among the missing (including one who was captured),

Once Königsberg had holed up in the Rufiji River, Fox spent some time there in December on the blockade should the German sortie out then escorted a force to occupy Mafia Island off Tanzania in January 1915. Bombarding the German positions there on 10 January, the cruiser’s skipper impounded a local dhow and, arming it with two Maxim guns and manning it with a junior officer and six ratings, pressed it into active service during the operation.

After Königsberg was neutralized, Fox was released to patrol the Red Sea, where the Ottomans held nominal control of Arabia and threatened the Suez. With that, she spent most of the next three years either sitting in Port Sudan or running her searchlights and cutters across the Great Bitter Lake, with breaks to run to Aden and Bombay as needed and to conduct drills and target practice.

Oh yeah, and help with the Arab Revolt.

With Lawrence & Co.

On 21 March 1916, Fox and the cruiser HMS Suva destroyed the Turkish forts at Umlejh and Wejh in the Hejaz district, which was key in influencing the wavering Arabs to come out against the Ottomans. On 15 June, along with the auxiliary cruiser HMS Perth, Fox steamed into the inner harbor at Jeddah, the port for Mecca, and bombarded the Turkish troops manning the city walls in conjunction with the local insurgents who captured the city the next day.

The Red Sea Patrol, with Fox in the forefront, seized Qunfundah in July on behalf of the Arab cause and a small force from our cruiser garrisoned the town. In that action, Fox fired the warning shot on the town, an event that ended up with some 200 Turkish prisoners who were eager to stop fighting. In January 1917, Fox would move in and garrison Wejh just after the Ottomans quit the town.

Against the Reds

The Armistice cut Fox free of her extended 10-year mission in Asia and Africa and she returned to England. However, her post-war drawdown was cut short, as she was dispatched to join the British Intervention forces in Northern Russia, sent there originally in late 1918 to protect the stockpiles of war stores there from German capture.

Literally cooling her heels in Archangel and Murmansk, her crew was dispatched to put down mutinous Russians on former Tsarist vessels in those harbors.

British Astraea-class cruiser HMS Fox and the old Russian battleship *Chesma at Archangel, 1919. IWM Q 16952

[*Built originally as the Petropavlovsk-class Poltava, the Tsarist battlewagon was lost during the siege of Port Arthur in December 1904, then raised by the Japanese and put into service as the guardship Tango, complete with Miyabara boilers and British-pattern guns from the Kure Arsenal. After participating in the capture of the German treaty port of Tsingtao in 1914, she was later graciously repatriated with the best wishes of the Emperor to the Russian Navy in 1916, serving alongside the British and French in the Med before sailing to Archangel just before the Russian Revolution. With her mutinous crew relieved of their home by the British in 1918, the Interventionists and local Whites used the derelict vessel as a prison hulk until they withdrew in March 1920. The Reds never put her back to use and she was scrapped in 1924.]

It was while in Archangel that Fox found herself bound in an ice floe for six days. Ironically, at the time, her crew included Ireland’s greatest Antarctic explorer, Tom Crean, who earned three Polar Medals while a member of the expeditions of Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton.

A portrait of Tom Crean, February 1915 smoking a pipe. By 1919, he was freezing on Fox while in Russia. A familiar feeling, for sure

Sadly, it was on Fox that Crean suffered a serious fall, causing a head injury that led to the end of his 27-year naval career.

Other than that, Fox’s primary task in Northern Russia was to act as a tender for monitors and gunboats, with her bakers providing bread and her engineers and stokers supplying water and coal. A hub of activity, she was apparently the clearinghouse for small arms such as Lewis guns, as well as mail for the British forces pushing down the Northern Dvina in the summer of 1919, and securing Russian prisoners brought back.

Fox with French troops aboard, 1919

Finally, with the Western Allies growing tired of their involvement in the Russian Civil War, Fox sailed for home in late September.

Paid off, she was sold 14 June 1920 to Cardiff Marine Stores for scrapping.

Epilogue

Fox’s remaining sisters, while seeing wartime service, were far from being as active in the conflict. By 1923, all were sold for scrap except for HMS Hermione which lingered on into 1940 as a training hulk for the Marine Society charity.

Most of Fox’s logbooks from 1913 through 1919 have been digitized and along with assorted letters and make good reading.

Fox is also remembered in maritime art and period postcards.

HMS Fox by Henry J. Morgan, Portsmouth Museums and Records Service collection/ Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

Meanwhile the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich offers several prints of her.

There has only been one further HMS Fox in the Royal Navy since 1920, a Bulldog-class survey ship (A320) that was active in the Cold War.

As for our cruiser, her name, left behind by her crew, is still visible on the rock at Muscat in Oman and outside of Diyatalawa in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) above the old port at Trincomalee, which is known today as Fox Hill, for a reason.

Specs:

 

1914 Jane’s listing for the class

Displacement: 4,360 tons
Length: 320 feet
Beam: 49.5 feet
Draft: 19 feet (21 full load)
Machinery: 2 shaft, 3 cycle TE, 8-cylinder boilers; 7,500 shp (9,500 shp forced)
Speed: 19.5 knots trials on forced draft, 18 max while operational
Range: 7,000 nm @10kts on 1,000 tons of coal (typical coal load: 400 tons)
Complement: 312 officers and men
Armor:
Decks- 2 inches
Engine hatches- 5 inches
Conning tower- 3 inches
Splinter shields on main guns
Armament:
2 x QF 6″/40
8 x QG 4.7″
8 x 6-pounder (57mm) Hotchkiss guns
1 x 3-pounder (47mm) Hotchkiss
4 x Maxim water-cooled machine guns
3 x Above-water 18-inch torpedo tubes.

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.

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

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Warship Wednesday, May 12, 2021: Linguine with Clam Sauce

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

Warship Wednesday, May 12, 2021: Linguine with Clam Sauce

Official U.S. Navy photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 80-G-472496

Here we see the lead ship of her class of motor torpedo boat tenders, USS Oyster Bay (AGP-6/AVP-28), anchored in the Leyte Gulf of the Philippines in December 1944 with a brood of her PT boats alongside. Don’t let the designation think she couldn’t fight. With destroyer lines and comparable armament, she would both defend her boats and deliver shore bombardment during WWII.

Originally laid down as Barnegat-class small aircraft tender AVP-28 on 17 April 1942 at Lake Washington Shipyard, Houghton, Washington just four months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, on 1 May 1943 she was reclassified AGP-6, her role switched to taking care of PT boats instead.

The 41 Barnegats were 2,500-ton, 311-foot armed auxiliaries with destroyer lines capable of floating in 12 feet of water. They had room for not only seaplane stores but also 150 aviators and aircrew. Their diesel suite wasn’t fast, but they could travel 8,000 miles at 15.6 knots. Originally designed for two 5-inch/38-caliber guns, this could be doubled if needed (and often was) which complemented a decent AAA armament helped by radar and even depth charges and sonar for busting subs. All pretty sweet for an auxiliary.

While we’ve covered them in the past to include the former “Queen of the Little White Fleet,” USS Duxbury Bay (AVP-38); the horse-trading and gun-running USS Orca (AVP-49), and the 60-year career of USS Chincoteague (AVP-24) but, as noted already, Oyster Bay was to be a somewhat different animal.

CPT Robert J. Bulkley, Jr., USNR’s superb work on wartime PT-boats, “At Close Quarters” speaks to the conversion of Oyster Bay and her three direct sisters, USS Mobjack (AGP-7), USS Wachapreague (APG-8), and USS Willoughby (APG-9):

Beginning with the Oyster Bay, commissioned in November 1943, four ships originally laid down as seaplane tenders were completed as PT tenders by their builder, the Lake Washington Shipyards, Houghton, Wash. These were 310 feet long, about 2,800 tons. They were fine, sleek ships, built along destroyer lines, and each carried, in addition to antiaircraft batteries, two 5-inch guns. Though they were faster than the ungainly LST type, they had limited shop space and had no means of raising a PT from the water unless they towed a drydock. In certain types of operations, however, where speed and firepower were required, they proved superior to the LST type.

Besides the provision for 48 replacement torpedoes, the PT boat tenders had other improvements that enabled them to support over a dozen “mosquito boats” at any given time. Modified from the standard Barnegat layout, the Oyster Bays lacked a windscreen/splinter shield around the front of the bridge and, instead of the normal #2 5″/38DP Mark 30 mount forward of the bridge, mounted a pair of twin 40mm Bofors. Their sterns were also different, to accommodate a larger torpedo and engine repair shop.

For comparison, look at this image of Barnegat.

USS Barnegat (AVP-10) underway off the coast of Brazil on 4 April 1944. The ship is painted in the two-tone Measure 22 camouflage scheme. Note the star and bar aircraft insignia on the bow aft of the hull number. Photographed from an aircraft of Fleet Air Wing 16. 80-G-361055

And contrast it to our subject:

USS Oyster Bay (AGP-6) photographed off the Puget Sound Navy Yard on 28 November 1943, shortly after commissioning. Photograph from the Bureau of Ships Collection in the U.S. National Archives. Catalog #: 19-N-54733

Besides the pair of twin 40mm Bofors forward of the bridge, another pair were about amidships, while four single 20mm Oerlikons were aft. Photo from the same series as above, 19-N-54734

A 5″/38 Mark 21 pedestal mounting without the characteristic armored shield of the Mark 30s, was pointed over her stern. The Mark 21, in almost all uses, was disliked as it didn’t have a dedicated shell hoist, was manually trained, and elevated, and had a lower rate of fire. In most images of the Oyster Bays, they are shown cased. Also, note the stern depth charge racks. 19-N-54735.

Commissioned 17 November 1943, Oyster Bay would spend the rest of the year in shakedowns on the West Coast, notably taking the following load of duty munitions aboard for her battery, in addition to tons of .50 cal BMG and 48 Mk. 13 Mod 2A torpedoes for her PT boats and shells set aside for structural test firing:

600 rounds 5″/38 ser
100 rounds 5″/38 illum
19,200 rounds 40mm AA service
31,680 rounds 20mm HEI, service
15, 840 rounds 20mm HET, service

She was headed to war.

Leaving San Diego in early 1944 for Milne Bay, Oyster Bay would pick up two full torpedo boat squadrons, MTBRon 18 and MTBRon 21, then escort them to Admiralty Islands where the little armada would arrive 10 March.

There, Bulkley notes:

Although the 1st Cavalry Division, under Maj. Gen. Innis P. Swift, had landed on Los Negros 10 days before, the island was not yet under control. The perimeter defenses of the harbor were still in dispute. Snipers still fired occasionally at the tender and PTs at anchor. Fortunately, there were no casualties.

USS Oyster Bay (AGP-6) tending PT boats, likely of Squadrons 18 and 21, in Seeadler Harbor, Admiralty Islands, on 25 March 1944. Photograph from the Army Signal Corps Collection in the U.S. National Archives. Catalog #: SC 271592

With her boats immediately heavily involved in the landings on Japanese-held Pityilu Island, the tender was called upon to plaster the holdouts there with 60 rounds of 5-inch on 14 March. She later evacuated 42 wounded Army personnel to the field hospital on Finschafen before heading back to the line.

By April, Oyster Bay, supporting MTBRon 7 and MTBRon 18, was moved up to Hollandia where her boats would pitch in on the fight against Japanese barge traffic, landed several Army scouting parties, and made nightly patrols, later joined there by MTBRon 12 in May.

June brought a shift to operate from Wakde.

For the first eight nights located there, high altitude Japanese bombers came in to keep the troops awake, and, aided by the Army’s searchlights ashore, Oyster Bay‘s 5-inch crews tried to reach for the phantoms. On the night of 13 June, 29 5-inch shells at a choice bomber were rewarded with a 500-pound bomb that exploded just 100 yards off the ship’s bow, killing one and injuring two. However, the smoking bomber reportedly crashed into the hills south of the ship. Her 5-inchers would do more work for the Army, providing NGFS on the nights of 23 and 25 June. Turned out that it pays to have a vessel with a 13-foot draft and 5-inch guns.

The following month, while anchored off Brisbane, a RAAF Vultee Vengeance dive bomber flying at mast level would clip Oyster Bay, an act that proved fatal to the Australians aboard and would put the tender at Hamilton Warf for repairs.

By September saw Oyster Bay, joined by sistership Mobjack, with CDR Selman S. Bowling (USNA 1927), Commander Motor Torpedo Boat Squadrons, Seventh Fleet, flying his flag from the tender a shift to Morotai in the Halmaheras where they would support 41 PT’s of MTBRons 9, 10, 18, and 33.

Off Morotai later that month, her gun crews were busy. Against a low-flying Japanese Betty bomber, they logged 140 40mm and 487 20mm rounds expended with the plane observed to “lurch violently” and to be last seen losing altitude over land. In return, four small bombs were observed to strike within 700 yards of the ship.

On 13 October, Oyster Bay, and her sisters Wachapreague and Willoughby, again with Bowling aboard, gathered a group of 45 mostly new PT boats from MTBRons 7, 12, 21, 33, and 36, then set off from Mios Woendi in the Schouten Islands southeast of Biak (codenamed Stinker) in a combat-ready convoy for the Leyte Gulf in the Philippines, with the boats repeatedly being refueled en route.

PT-194, “Little Mike,” of MTBRon 12, refuels from an Oyster Bay-class tender, USS Wachapreague (AGP-8), en route to Leyte Gulf. 80-G-345815

They arrived there at dawn on October 21, a day after the major assault landings on the island of Leyte. Bulkley would describe this 1,200-mile voyage as “the largest and longest mass movement of PTs under their own power during the war, and every one of the 45 boats covered the full distance under its own power.”

USS Oyster Bay (AGP-6) tending PT boats in Leyte Gulf in October or November 1944. The boat approaching at the right is PT-357, “Dianamite” of MTBRon 27. NH 44315

Check out this close up of the boats from the above image, each 80-foot Elco types equipped with four Mk 13 type modified aircraft torpedos, which were much lighter than the old tubes

USS Oyster Bay (AGP-6) anchored in Leyte Gulf, late 1944 with PT boats alongside

The PT boats were soon not only involved in supporting the landings in the Gulf, carrying out liaison missions with local guerilla scouts and parties, as well as performing extensive escort and reconnaissance duties but would also play a role in the Battle of the Surigao Strait.

The 45 odd PT boats sent to the Leyte Gulf in October were important when it came to liaising with local anti-Japanese guerilla groups, who had been fighting the Emperor’s troops since 1942.

In that engagement, 39 PTs, in 13 three-boat sections, waited to sucker punch VADM Shōji Nishimura’s battleship/cruiser force on 24 October in what would be a late-night/early morning melee that would be joined by a larger American force and seal Nishimura’s fate. During this “tripwire” action, PT-137 (” The Duchess” under LTJG Mike Kovar of MTBRon 7, sailing from Oyster Bay) landed a Mk 13 in the boiler room of the Japanese Nagara-class light cruiser Abukuma in the pre-dawn darkness which forced the 5,600-ton vessel to try to make for Dapitan for repairs, escorted by the destroyer Ushio. Found limping along by USAAF B-24s the next morning, Abukuma would be on the bottom by noon.

With VADM Jesse B. Oldendorf’s larger force crossing the Japanese “T” the next morning, Nishimura was killed during the battle when his flagship, the Yamashiro, was sunk after being hit multiple times from the U.S. battleships.

Battle of the Surigao Strait, October 1944. PT boats are active not only in spotting and attacking Japanese naval forces attempting to force Surigao Strait but also in picking up survivors. Japanese from naval craft, clinging to debris, approach a boat for rescue. PT Boat shown is “Death’s Hand” PT-321, of MTBRon 21, underway from Oyster Bay. Note her heavily armed and creatively dressed crew. 80-G-47001

Very soon after arriving at the Leyte Gulf, the American force became target number one for successive waves of Japanese air attacks, often numerous times a day. In Oyster Bay‘s 21 November war diary, the ship reported 221 air raid alerts in the preceding 40 days putting a “severe physical and mental strain on all hands.”

As at Morotai, her gun crews were successful, spotting enemy planes close enough to take a shot at on no less than 23 occasions in October and November. On 25 October, she credited downing a Val. On 21 November, a Jake. On 26 November, she bagged three Zekes. During the same period, PTs 195, 522, and 324 were each credited with a plane while being “tended.”

Japanese plane hits the water in the bay near Tacloban, Leyte, P.I., PTs brought down this Japanese plane exploding as it hits the water. Left, PT-boat tenders USS OYSTER BAY (AGP-6) and USS HILO (AGP-2). 80-G-325823

December saw the air raids abate, slacking down to an average of “just” three per day.

She would continue her operations in the Philippines, participating in the invasion of Zamboanga in March 1945, supporting her PT boats in Sarangani Bay, Mindoro, where they carried the war to the Japanese in the Davao Gulf for the first time since 1942. Then came Samar and a quiet period of mop-up work. From 18 May to 6 August, she reported “tender operations without incident.”

By mid-August, with the Japanese throwing in the towel, her crews and those of her related MTBRons were involved in the work of “decommissioning PT-boats,” which meant stripping and burning.

The fate of most of the PT boats in WWII. More than 100 were burned in the Philippines alone

On 10 November 1945, Oyster Bay hoisted her anchor, broke out her homebound pennant, and departed the PI for the West Coast, with 120 passengers aboard.

She had earned five battle stars for her war in the Pacific.

Steaming into San Francisco Bay just after Thanksgiving, she would be decommissioned on 26 March 1946. With the task of tending PT-boats no longer seen as a thing, she was re-designated while in mothballs to a seaplane tender in 1949, picking up her intended AVP-28 hull number for the first time.

Laid up in Stockton, it was decided by the State Department and the Pentagon a few years later that Oyster Bay was going on to live a second career, abroad.

Bound for Italia!

Transferred to the government of NATO-allied Italy 23 October 1957 to help rebuild that country’s navy from the ashes of the old Regia Marina. As such, Oyster Bay was stripped of her armament, sent packing with just a 3″/50 forward, and, after a brief overhaul and sensor upgrade at the San Francisco Naval Shipyard, became the support ship Pietro Cavezzale (A-5301).

She later picked up two 40mm guns and a tripod mast was installed in place of the original mast and went on to grace the pages of Jane’s Fighting Ships for the next 36 years. While the ships around her changed, she remained the same. 

Jane’s 1973 entry.

Cavezzale was frequently photographed around the Med during those years and was used as a floating base for Italian frogmen of COM.SUB.IN., the successors to the famed Decima Flottiglia MAS of WWII.

She got operational with her divers in 1982, supporting a deployment to Lebanon under the auspices of the UN.

In 1984, she again shipped out, responding to the demining operations in the Red Sea, where a suspected Libyan merchant ship littered the waters with infernal devices. Using Soviet/East German “export” bottom mines of a type not previously known in the West, the mystery vessel’s deadly seeds damaged at least 17 ships. There, she would support three Italian minehunters operating predominantly in the Gulf of Suez for two months as part of the international effort (Operation Harling/Operation Intense Look) to clear the waters.

Kept on the rolls long past her prime– almost all her sisters had long been sent to the scrappers– Oyster Bay/Cavezzale was decommissioned in October 1993 and sold for dismantling in February 1996, bringing a very active 43 years to a close.

Epilogue

Oyster Bay’s activities are mentioned extensively in Bulkley’s “At Close Quarters” (pgs. 71, 73, 222, 227, 230, 239, 246, 250, 259, 368-369, 373, 377, 392, 394, 426, 429, 434.)

Going back to the original source material, most of her war diaries, her war history, and engineering drawings are digitized and available online in the National Archives.

An amazing scale model diorama, created by Carl Musselman, was produced in 2004 depicting Oyster Bay and her brood in her Leyte Gulf days.

Via Carl Musselman

A total of 18 Barnegats transferred to Coast Guard in the 50s and 60s to become the “Casco” or “311” class (for their length) of heavy weather endurance cutters, WHEC, with pennant numbers 370 to 387. Many were renamed traditional USCG names, e.g after past Treasury Department Secretaries. Many of these were subsequently transferred a second time to overseas allies such as the Republic of Vietnam and the Philippines. 

As for Oyster Bay‘s immediate PT-boat tender sisters, Mobjack transferred to the U.S. Department of Commerce after the war as the ocean survey ship Pioneer (OSS31) and operated with the Coast and Geodetic Survey for 20 years off the West Coast before meeting the scrapper in 1966.

The Coast and Geodetic Survey Ship PIONEER III, ex-USS Mobjack, via the NOAA Photo Library. While Oyster Bay was transferred to Italy in the 1950s, her three sister PT-boat tenders would serve various American maritime branches well into the late 1960s and early 1970s.

USS Willoughby (AGP-9) went on to serve as the USCGC Gresham (WAVP/WHEC/WAGW-387), through 1973 before being scrapped in Holland, seeing service in Vietnam where it was found that her 5-inch forward mount could still provide NGFS in shallow water when needed. Funny thing.

The former PT boat tender Willoughby made into the cutter USCGC Gresham. USCG Photo

Finally, USS Wachapreague (AGP-8), also served with the Coast Guard as USCGC McCulloch (WAVP/WHEC/WAGW-386) before transfer to the South Vietnamese Navy in 1972 as Ngo Kuyen (HQ-17). When Saigon fell, she was one of the diasporas of former RVN vessels to make the sad trip to the Philippines where she was eventually taken into Filipino service as Gregorio de Filar (PS-8) for a few years. In poor condition, she was slowly stripped of anything useful and faded away sometime in the 1980s.

When it comes to the Barnegat class, they have all gone on to the breakers or been reefed with the final class member afloat, ex-Chincoteague (AVP-24/WHEC-375)/Ly Thuong Kiet (HQ-16)/Andres Bonifacio (PF-7) scrapped in the Philippines in 2003. None remain above water.

Specs:

Camouflage Measure 31, Design 10P drawing prepared by the Bureau of Ships for a camouflage scheme intended for motor torpedo boat tenders of the AGP-6 (Oyster Bay) class. This plan, approved by Captain Torvald A. Solberg, USN, is dated 22 May 1944. 80-G-172868 and 80-G-172876.

(1944)
Displacement 1,766 t.(lt) 2,800 t.(fl)
Length 310′ 9″
Beam 41′ 2″
Draft: 12′ 3″ (full load) 13′ 6″ (limiting)
Speed 18.6 knots. Fuel Capacities: Diesel 1,955 Bbls; Gasoline 71,400 Gals
Propulsion: two Fairbanks Morse Diesel 38D8 1/4 engines, single Fairbanks Morse Main Reduction Gear, two propellers, 6,080shp
Ship’s Service Generators: two Diesel-drive 100Kw 450V A.C., one Diesel-drive 200Kw 450V A.C.
Radars: SL, SC-2, ABK
Sonar: YG homing equipment, QC sonar,
Complement: 215 but with accommodations for 152 men of accompanying PT Boats
Armament:
1 x 5″/38 (12.7 cm) Mark 12 in Mark 30 shielded mount, forward
1 x 5″/38 (12.7 cm) Mark 12 in Mark 21 open mount, aft
8 x 40mm/60 Bofors in 4 x twin mounts
4 x 20mm/70 Oerlikon singles
2 x stern depth charge racks, some plans show 2 DT throwers but likely not fitted.

Changes before transfer to Italy
Radars: RCA SPS-12 air search radar, I-band navigation radar
Armament:
1 x 3″/50 DP mount, later two 40mm mounts added

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

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

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

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

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Warship Wednesday, May 5, 2021: De Gaulle’s Pearl

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

Warship Wednesday, May 5, 2021: De Gaulle’s Pearl

BuShips photo 19-LCM-67592 via the National Museum of the U.S. Navy.

Here we see a great surface view of the Free French Saphir-class minelaying submarine (sous-marin mouilleur de mines) Perle (Q-184) while off the Philadelphia Navy Yard, 5 June 1944– the day before the Normandy invasion to begin the liberation of her homeland. Perle, in the above photo, was preparing to sortie from PNSY to continue her already active war, having just completed an overhaul. Sadly, she would never see France again.

The six minelaying boats of the Project “Q6” Saphir-class were ordered across a series of naval programs in the late 1920s. With a double-hull construction, the 216-foot subs were small enough for work in the confined waters of the Mediterranean, displacing less than 1,000 tons when fully loaded and submerged. Using a pair of Normand-Vickers diesels and a matching set of electric motors they were not built for speed, capable of just 12 knots on the surface and less than that while under the waves. However, they could remain at sea for a lengthy 30-day patrol, able to cover 7,000nm without refueling.

Saphir

Besides the capability to carry and efficiently deploy 32 Sautter-Harlé HS 4 2,500-pound contact mines double-loaded vertically into a series of 16 Normand-Fenaux chutes built into the hull on either side of the sail, the class had three 550mm torpedo tubes and two smaller 400mm tubes (but only stowage for six spare torpedos) as well as some modest deck guns.

Drawing of a Saphir-class submarine. The black circles are the vertical mine launchers, which worked on compressed air to eject their mines. You can also note her 75mm deck gun forward and twin 13.2mm MG mount, aft. She also carried a pair of 8mm Hotchkiss MGs that could be mounted on her tower. Via К.Е.Сергеев/Wikimedia

Our Perle was something like the 18th warship used by the French to carry the name of the jewel of the ocean-going back to a circa 1663 34-gun ship of the line. Of note, the 17th Perle was also a submarine, a tiny (70-ton/77-foot) Naïade-class boat of the Great War era, complete with Russian-style Drzewiecki drop collar torpedoes.

Laid down in 1931 at the Arsenal de Toulon as the final member of her class, our Perle was commissioned 1 March 1937 and was assigned to the 21ème Division des Sous-Marins (DSM) at Toulon.

The Phony War

When the war kicked off against Germany in 1939, the French Mediterranean fleet was left where-is/how-is just in case the Italians decided to enter the game. When Mussolini obliged on 10 June 1940, Perle was dispatched to sow a defensive minefield off the Corsican port of Bastìa and patrol alongside sistership Diamant.

Vichy Boat

The general French ceasefire on the 22nd ended Perle’s initial involvement in the war. However, after the British plastered the Vichy battleline at Oran two weeks later, she and three other submarines were ordered to head to Gibraltar for a bit of revenge that was called off at the last minute.

Then came deployment to the strategic West African port of Dakar, which was under pressure from the British and De Gaulle’s nascent Free French movement. There, Perle joined the 16ème DSM, which consisted of several smaller submarines, to prepare for a second Allied assault on Senegal that never came. Instead, once the Torch Landings in North Africa triggered the German dismantling of the Vichy French republic and the order to scuttle those ships still in European French waters, Dakar came over to De Gaulle and Perle switched sides by default.

Working for the Liberation

By early 1943, Perle had been integrated into Allied efforts in the Med and was in Oran and was soon running patrols off Cannes and Marseille in between landing operatives and agents where needed, helping no doubt to spread the deception at play across the region as to where the Allies would strike next.

From December 1942 (Operation Pearl Harbour) through November 1943, the “Algerian Group” Free French submarines to include Perle, Casabianca, Marsouin, and Arethuse were heavily involved in running “Le Tube” along the Riveria. Run by intelligence officer Colonel Paul Paillole, the subs made regular runs to Southern France and Corsica, dropping off OSS, SIS, and French resistance agents and supplies ranging from STEN guns to suitcase transmitters. In many of these cases, the submarines would have selected shore party members sent through abbreviated commando training, just in case. 

On one of these missions, in late October 1943, Perle landed Guy Jousselin Chagrain de Saint-Hilaire, who used the nomme de guerre “Marco” in the hills outside of Cavalaire sur Mer in Southern France along with two radio operators and their equipment. Saint-Hilaire would set up the Marco Polo network which played a key role in the liberation in 1944.

Those landed ran the gamut from small groups of operatives, such as Marco and his common guys, to teams of exiled field-grade French Army officers complete with regimental banners that had been spirited out of France in 1940, eager to reform units to spring into action for the liberation. The trips, coordinated with local Resistance cells, would also pick up Allied agents and downed pilots looking to exfiltrate from Nazi-occupied France and carry back important dispatches, reports, objects of intelligence, and film.

In short order, Perle, along with the other Algerian Group subs, conveyed shadowy individuals to Barcelona (where she planted Deuxième Bureau Capt. D’Hoffelize on the beach), Cap Camarat in Corsica, and elsewhere.

Speaking of Corsica, Perle was used to deliver 30 operators of the Bataillon de Choc near Ajaccio on 13 September to help pave the way for the Firebrand landings. The larger Casabianca would land 109 commandos of the same unit– so many that she carried them across the Med while surfaced!

Free French soldiers from the Bataillon de Choc, a commando unit created in Algeria in early 1943. The Bataillon was decisive in the liberation of Corsica and Elba. This picture, with a recently repurposed camouflaged German 7.5cm Pak 40, was taken after they landed in Provence during Operation Dragoon, during the fight to free Toulon, in August 1944. Note the mix of gear including British watch caps, American M1903 rifles, boots, uniforms, and gaiters; and Italian Beretta MAB 38sub guns. Also, note the open 75mm shell crate with two rounds ready, no doubt fixing to get back into service against its former owners.

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

The French commandos, meeting no opposition, soon linked up with Corsican partisans, some 20,000 strong, who had been in open revolt against the German occupation force. Perle’s skipper at the time was able to twist the arm enough of the Toulon-Ajaccio ferry captain to sail to Algiers and come over to the Free French side of things. The submarine also landed three tons of flour on 16 September– more important than guns when it came to winning hearts and minds. The submarine Arethuse arrived two days later to bring five tons of munitions from North Africa to help put those minds to use. 

The campaign evolved rapidly and De Gaulle, on his arrival in Ajaccio on the 8 October 1943, declared Corsica to be the first part of Metropolitan France to be liberated – eight months before Overlord.

The final “Tube” mission was one of Perle’s. On 29 November, she appeared at the designated point and time off the French coast and sent her shore party to the beach only to run across a German patrol, resulting in two prisoners and one killed on both sides.

The results of the covert efforts in Southern France were evident in the Dragoon landings the next year, where it seemed that well-organized FFI units were everywhere. 

Free French Resistance meeting Allied troops on the beach at Saint Tropez, Aug.1944 During Dragoon (Signal Corps Photo 111-SC-212383 via NARA)

Refit

At this point, Perle was in dire need of an overhaul and made for Philadelphia, one of numerous Free French vessels to do so at the time. There, arriving just before Christmas 1943 by way of Bermuda, she would land her 13.2mm machine guns for a set of American-made 20mm Oerlikons, as well as undergo general modification for continued work with the Allied fleets.

A great series of photos exist of her from this time in the States. 

Cleared to return to the war, she sailed in late June 1944 for Holy Loch via Newfoundland in the company of the destroyer escort USS Cockrill (DE-398). Leaving St. Johns with the Flower-class corvette HMCS Chicoutimi (K156) on 3 July.

Five days later, while some 1,000 miles out into the Atlantic, Perle came close to the outbound 94-ship convoy ONM243, sailing from Halifax to Clyde, while it was roughly between Greenland and Iceland. The convoy was protected by a pair of merchant aircraft carrier (MAC) ships, MV Empire MacColl and MV Empire MacCallum who, tragically, were not notified of the possible presence of the Free French submarine until it was too late.

In the early afternoon of 8 July, a Fairey Swordfish Mark II torpedo bomber flown from Empire MacCallum by a Free Dutch Navy pilot of 836 Squadron FAA, was flying ahead of the convoy performing routine a sweep and spotted the mysterious submarine, and subsequently executed a textbook attack that proved successful.

From an article by Dr. Alec Douglas, a former Canadian Forces Director General of History, in the Autumn 2001 Canadian Military Journal:

The pilot, Lieutenant Francoix Otterveanger of the Royal Netherlands Navy, assumed that the submarine, surfaced and on a northeasterly course, was a U-boat, as did the senior officer of the Canadian Escort Group C5 in HMCS Dunver [a River-class frigate]. That officer, Acting Commander George Stephen, the colorful and widely respected Senior Officer Escorts (SOE), is reputed to have exclaimed “Sink the bastard!”, as he ordered the two MAC ships in company to get all available aircraft up.

The ‘string bag’, a slow old biplane, had to give a wide berth to U-boat flak. Lieutenant Otterveanger put his Swordfish into a position upwind between the sun and the target. He waited for the other aircraft from Empire MacCallum and Empire MacColl to join him, and then held off for another ten minutes or so while the six Swordfish (four from Empire MacCallum and two from Empire MacColl) formed up, flying clockwise around the submarine, to carry out a series of attacking runs.

It was just about then, at 1358Z, an hour and five minutes after receiving the sighting report at 1253Z, that Commander Stephen suddenly passed a voice message to the MAC ships: “Have aircraft been informed that submarine ‘La Perle’ might be in our vicinity?”

The bewildered air staff officer in Empire MacCallum knew nothing about La Perle, nor exactly what to do about the message, but tried to alert the aircraft with a belated warning: “Look out for recognition signals in case the sub is friendly. If not, attack.” Only one aircraft heard him over the RT (radiotelephone) traffic that filled the air, and asked in vain for a repetition, just as Lieutenant Otterveanger was beginning his attacking run between 1404 and 1408Z, about an hour and fifteen minutes after the first sighting.

When Otterveanger saw a series of “L’s”, the correct identification for the day, flashing from the conning tower of La Perle, and not having heard the last-minute caution, he concluded it was simply a ruse de guerre and fired four pairs of rockets at the target. All the other aircraft followed up with rocket attacks and (now running into light machine gun fire from the submarine), in the last instance, with two depth charges on the order of Lieutenant Otterveanger, “who had conducted operations in a most proper manner from the start”.

So effective was the operation that the air staff officer in Empire MacCallum was moved to comment, in a more triumphal tone than probably was intended: “The attack was extremely well coordinated and was over in the space of a minute. At least eight hits were scored on the submarine which sank within four minutes of the attack.”

By the time escorts from Convoy ONM-243 reached the scene, only one man out of a crew of sixty men, a Chief Petty Officer machinist [Émile Cloarec, rescued by HMCS Hesperler], was still alive.

A board of inquiry into the loss pointed a lot of fingers, largely at Acting CDR Stephen, and exonerated Ottervaenger.

She was not the only Free French submarine to be lost during the war. The mighty cruiser submarine Surcouf would vanish on her way to Panama in 1942, taking 130 men down with her.

Epilogue

Documents on “the French submarine Le Perle” including her PSNY repair log and the report of her sinking by a Swordfish aircraft are on file in the U.S. National Archives.

Of her five sisters, Nautilus, Saphir, and Turquoise were captured by the Axis in North Africa in 1942 who tried to put them to use but instead scuttled them. Diamant was likewise sunk at Toulon by her own countrymen.

Rubis, like Perle, would join the Allied effort, escaping the Fall of France in 1940 by the nature of already working out of Scotland with the Royal Navy at the time. She would carry out an impressive 28 war patrols including almost two dozen mining operations off Norway, sowing deadly 683 seeds that could claim at least 15 Axis vessels.

French submarine Rubis as seen from the anti-aircraft cruiser HMS Curacoa in the North Atlantic. Photo via the Dundee Submarine Memorial

Rubis would have a stacked Jolly Roger by the end of 1944.

What is left of the 6-submarine Saphir class in the 1946 edition of Jane’s.

One of a handful of submarines in the immediate post-war French Navy, Rubis would retire in 1949. She was scuttled as a sonar target in 1958 off Cape Camarat. Her wreck is in 135 feet of water between Cavalaire and Saint-Tropez and is a popular dive spot.

The French Navy has carried on the legacy of both of the hardworking WWII Saphirs with the Rubis-class attack boat SNA Pearl (S606) commissioned in 1993. She is currently under extensive repair and refurbishment at Cherbourg-en-Cotentin following a fire last summer.

Rubis-class SSN Perle (S606) surfacing. Just as the previous Perle was the sixth and final boat of the Saphir-class in the 1930s, the current boat is the sixth and last of the Rubis series.

Specs:

A scale model of the Saphir class with a net cutter forward and no 13.2 twin mount. If you look close, you can see the doors to the mine chutes. Via Wikimedia Commons

Displacement: 761 tonnes (surfaced), 925 tonnes (submerged)
Length: 216.5 ft.
Beam: 23.3 ft.
Draft: 14 ft.
Machinery: 2 Normand Vickers diesels of 650 hp ea., 2 Schneider electric motors of 410 kW ea., 144 batteries
Speed: 12 knots (surface), 9 knots (submerged)
Range: On 75 tons diesel oil- 4000nm @12 knots, 7000nm @7.5 knots surfaced; 80nm @4 knots submerged. 30 days endurance
Hull: 13mm shell, 80-meter operating depth
Crew: 3 officers, 10 petty officers, 30 enlisted
Armament:
2 550mm bow tubes with four torpedoes.
1 trainable 550mm tube
2 400mm tubes with four torpedoes
1 x 75mm/35cal M1928
1 x Twin 13.2mm Hotchkiss M1929 machine gun mount
2 x 8mm Hotchkiss M1914 machine guns
32 Sauter-Harlé HS4 mines (2,400lbs each with 704 pounds of explosives)

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

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

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

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

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Warship Wednesday, April 28, 2021: Kan-do Kangaroo

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

Warship Wednesday, April 28, 2021: Kan-do Kangaroo

Official U.S. Navy Photographs NH 98383 and NH 98391, from the Naval History and Heritage Command collections. (Click to big up)

Here we see what a difference 19 years make! The brand-new Baltimore-class heavy cruiser USS Canberra (CA-70) underway in Boston harbor, 14 October 1943, clean and ready for WWII; compared to the Boston-class guided-missile cruiser USS Canberra (CAG-2) underway at sea during the Cuban Missile Crisis, 28 October 1962.

When the early shitstorm of 1939 World War II broke out, the U.S. Navy, realized that in the likely coming involvement with Germany in said war– and that country’s huge new 18,000-ton, 8x8inch gunned, 4.1-inches of armor Hipper-class super cruisers– it was outclassed in the big assed heavy cruiser department. When you add to the fire the fact that the Japanese had left all of the Washington and London Naval treaties behind and were building giant Mogami-class vessels (15,000 tons, 3.9-inches of armor), the writing was on the wall.

That’s where the Baltimore class came in.

These 24 envisioned ships of the class looked like an Iowa-class battleship in miniature with three triple turrets, twin stacks, a high central bridge, and two masts– and they were (almost) as powerful. Sheathed in a hefty 6 inches of armor belt (and 3 inches of deck armor), they could take a beating if they had to. They were fast, capable of over 30 knots, which meant they could keep pace with the fast new battlewagons they looked so much like as well as the new fleet carriers that were on the drawing board as well.

While they were more heavily armored than Hipper and Mogami, they also had an extra 8-inch tube, mounting nine new model 8-inch/55 caliber guns whereas the German and Japanese only had 155mm guns (though the Mogamis later picked up 10×8-inchers). A larger suite of AAA guns that included a dozen 5-inch/38 caliber guns in twin mounts and 70+ 40mm and 20mm guns rounded this out.

In short, these ships were deadly to incoming aircraft, could close to the shore as long as there were at least 27 feet of seawater for them to float in and hammer coastal beaches and emplacements for amphibious landings, then take out any enemy surface combatant short of a modern battleship in a one-on-one fight.

Originally laid down on 3 September 1941 by Bethlehem Steel Corp of Quincy, Mass., as the third USS Pittsburgh, the subject of our tale was renamed USS Canberra on 16 October 1942 in honor of the Kent-class heavy cruiser HMAS Canberra (D33) of the Royal Australian Navy (while CA-72 would go on to be named Pittsburgh until stricken in 1973).

The move was to pay respect to the cruiser which– struck by two Japanese torpedoes and 20 8-inch salvos of gunfire while fighting alongside American ships and under the tactical command of RADM Richmond K. Turner– was lost at the Battle of Savo Island off the Solomon Islands two months prior and was the first time that a U.S. naval vessel was named for a foreign capital city.

The Australian Minister to Washington, Sir Owen Dixon, somberly presented the American ship with a special plaque to represent its RAN namesake (which had itself been the first to carry the name “Canberra”) and his handsome wife dutifully performed the christening ceremony in 1943.

USS Canberra was commissioned on 14 October 1943, CPT Alexander R. Early (USNA 1914) in command. After completing her wartime shakedown in the Caribbean (90 percent of her crew had never been to sea and were fresh “off the farm”) and a yard period in Boston afterward, she was on the way to the Pacific.

USS Canberra (CA-70) underway, circa late 1943. NH 45505

USS Canberra (CA-70) underway in Boston harbor, Massachusetts, 14 October 1943. Note the ship’s two aircraft cranes, stern 40mm quad gun mount offset somewhat to port, and arrangement of 8/55, 5/38, and 40mm guns aft and amidships. NH 98386

Her war got real when she escorted the carrier USS Saratoga (CV-3) to plaster the Japanese stronghold at Eniwetok in February 1944 then proceeded to protect the amphibious landings there.

After a pollywog party while crossing into the South Pacific, she worked interchangeably with the legendary USS Enterprise (CV-6) and the newer Essex-class USS Lexington (CV-16) for attacks on the islands of Palau, Truk, and Yap as well as supporting the troop landings at Tanahmerah Bay on New Guinea. Then came more “softening up” raids on Marcus Island, Wake, Guam, and Iwo Jima.

During the Battle of the Philippine Sea, she was one of the units that used searchlights and star shells to guide American carrier air wings back to the fleet from the “Marianas Turkey Shoot.” Afterward, Canberra and her OS2N Kingfisher floatplanes performed extensive lifeguard duties for aircrews of ditched and lost planes, rescuing young aviators who had started the battle on squadrons from Yorktown, Lexington, Wasp, and Belleau Wood but ended it in life rafts.

Then came more work in the Carolines before shifting back to the PI, where she accompanied her carrier task force to Samar, Leyte, Cebu, Negros, and Bohol Islands.

USS Canberra (CA-70) operating with Task Force 38 in the Western Pacific, on 10 October 1944, three days before she was torpedoed off Formosa. Her camouflage is Design 18a in the Measure 31-32-33 series. 80-G-284472

It was while on station roughly equidistant from Okinawa, Formosa, and Northern Luzon– within easy flight range of all three, on Friday the 13th, October 1944, her crew spied a late afternoon/early evening attack at approximately 1833 by a group of Japanese torpedo bombers. Although her AAA crews splashed three of the incoming planes, one was able to drop a fish that contacted our cruiser.

Damage chart from her torpedo strike. Much larger version here. 

Believed to be a Type 91, Mod. 3 torpedo, it hit below her armor belt at the engineering spaces and blew a jagged hole in her side, killing 23 men outright. Due to the location of the wound, a whopping 4,500 tons of water flooded her after fireroom and both engine rooms, leaving the cruiser dead in the water. (Read the extensive damage report, here)

Saved by heroic DC efforts, Canberra, along with the likewise torpedoed light cruiser USS Houston (CL-81), was towed to safety over the next several days under a CAP flown by the aircraft of the carriers Cabot and Cowpens. Nonetheless, during the initial retirement to Ulithi, the crippled cruisers were subjected to repeated Japanese air attacks, with Houston suffering another torpedo hit before it was over.

USS Canberra (CA-70) under tow toward Ulithi Atoll after she was torpedoed while operating off Okinawa. USS Houston (CL-81), also torpedoed and under tow, is in the right background. Canberra was hit amidships on 13 October 1944. Houston was torpedoed twice, amidships on 14 October and aft on 16 October. The tugs may be the USS Munsee (ATF-107), which towed Canberra, and the USS Pawnee (ATF-74). NH 98343

USS Canberra dry-dock ABSD-2 at Manus after the Japanese torpedo attack.

In the end, Canberra would remain under repair in forward bases and then at Boston Naval Yard until after VJ Day. Ordered back to the post-war Pacific Fleet, a refreshed Canberra arrived at San Francisco on 9 January 1946 then was placed out of commission at Bremerton on 7 March 1947 and mothballed.

She earned seven battle stars for her WWII service. Captain Early, her wartime skipper, would earn a Naval Cross and retire as a rear admiral in 1949, a veteran of both world wars in big-gunned ships. 

USS Canberra (CA-70), a chart of the ship’s operations in the Pacific Ocean with the Fifth and Third Fleet, from 14 February to 19 November 1944. Drawn by Quartermaster J.L. Whitmeyer, USNR. NH 78680

The Missile Age

The Baltimore class cost Uncle Sam an estimated $39.3 million per hull in 1940s War Bond-backed dollars. It made sense in the 1950s to try and get some more use out of these all-gun cruisers in an increasingly Atomic world. With that, Canberra and her sister ship USS Boston (CA-69) were tapped in 1951 to become the U.S. Navy’s first guided-missile warships in fleet service, dubbed CAG-1 (Boston) and CAG-2, respectively.

The conversion radically changed the aft of the vessels, deleting their 143-ton No. 3 8-inch turret and after twin 5-inch DP mount. Also stripped off were all the 40mm and 20mm AAA guns, replaced by six (later reduced to four) of the new 3″/50 twin Mk. 22s. Also deleted were the seaplane provisions and accompanying hangar, catapults, and crane.

Aerial photographs of USS Canberra in 1943, top, and 1967, bottom. Note her helicopter platform, angled to the starboard to provide for boat storage space. Immediate CAG sistership Boston did not have such an arrangement.

The superstructure was modified with their twin funnel arrangement morphed into a single stack and their pole mast was replaced with a radar mast topped with a powerful air search radar.

Two giant Terrier missile systems–capable of firing two missiles every 30 seconds– were installed over the stern along with two giant AN/SPQ5 radar directors for them. Below deck, a massive rotating magazine/workroom, capable of holding 144 missiles, was created. Keep in mind that the VLS-equipped Ticonderoga-class cruisers of today only have 122 cells.

USS Canberra (CAG-2) fires a Terrier guided missile during First Fleet demonstrations for Secretary of the Navy Paul H. Nitze, off the U.S. West Coast in December 1963. KN-8743

USS Canberra fires a Terrier guided missile, in February 1957. Photo NH 98398

Official period caption: “Super radars (AN/SPQ5) for guidance on terrier missiles installed onboard USS Canberra (CAG-2). The radars have massive, turret-like antennae and resemble giant searchlights. Developed for the U.S. Navy by the Sperry Gyroscope Company, the long-range, high-altitude missile guidance systems are a part of the U.S. Navy’s program directed toward the fleet with highly reliable missiles to combat supersonic jet aircraft. The super radar is giving an exceptionally high performance for tenacious stable guidance of supersonic missiles whether fired singly or in salvoes at individual or multiple enemy attackers. The systems combine many automatic radar functions in each unit and either system can control the missiles from a single launcher or battery, which fires the terrier missile or both radars can track different target groups simultaneously. It also includes flexible modes of scanning the air space many miles beyond the horizon, providing the advantage of early warning. Thus, individual targets can be selected from close flying groups and tracked with great distances while the missiles are launched and guided with extreme accuracy.” USN Photograph 670326 was released May 3, 1957.

The two-stage missile weighed 1.5 tons and was 27 feet long over the booster but had a speed of Mach 3 and a range of over 17 miles. Besides the 218-pound warhead, it could carry a W45 tactical nuke in the 1KT range. Not bad for just a decade off WWII.

Terriers were huge!

Seen here aboard the USS Providence (CLG-6) in 1962.

The conversions cost $15 million per hull or about half their original cost. Canberra was re-commissioned on 15 June 1956 at Philadelphia and looked quite different from when she was last with the fleet.

USS CANBERRA (CAG-2) entering Hampton Roads, Virginia, 1950s. K-20598.

The Kangaroo opened her pouch for the brass as needed, hosting Ike for his 1957 Bermuda conference with British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower with his Naval Aide, Captain Evan P. Aurand, USN, onboard a launch taking them to USS Canberra (CAG-2), 12 March 1957. NH 68550

USS Canberra CAG-2 carrying President Eisenhower on a trip to Bermuda – March 1957 LIFE Magazine – Hank Walker Photographer

President Dwight D. Eisenhower practicing his golf game, while onboard USS Canberra (CAG 2) en route to Bermuda for a conference, 14 March 1957. The driving target and protective netting have been rigged on the main deck, just to starboard the ship’s Number Two eight-inch gun turret. NH 68555.

After a mid-cruise in the Caribbean and an extended deployment to the Mediterranean, she served as the ceremonial flagship for the selection of the Unknown Serviceman of World War II and Korea in 1958.

USS Boston sailors render honors as the casket is transferred to USS Canberra before ceremonies on board Canberra to select the Unknown Serviceman of World War II. Virginia Capes on 26 May 1958. NH 54117

Hospitalman William R. Charette selects the Unknown Serviceman of World War II, during ceremonies on board USS Canberra, 26 May 1958

Then came another mid-cruise, and stints in the Med, where she was often used as a flagship. A 1960 circumnavigation saw her visit her “home” in Australia for the first time and the next year she was on the line off Cuba, where she hosted RADM John W. Ailes, head of the blockade err quarantine task force.

A beautiful Kodachrome of USS Canberra (CAG-2) was underway on 9 January 1961. KN-1526

Then came her second shooting war, and she did lots of shooting.

Southeast Asia

Off Vietnam in February 1965 screening carriers of TF77, Canberra became the first U.S. Navy vessel to relay an operational message via communication satellite via the Syncom 3 system and prototype Hughes Aircraft terminals to reach the Naval Communications Station in Honolulu, 4,000 miles away. She followed it up with a confirmed xmit to USS Midway (CVA-43), which at the time was some 6,000 miles away.

By March 1965, she shifted away from Yankee Station to take up a spot on the evolving gun line just off the coast of Vietnam during Operation Market Time. This included providing overwatch for air raids into the country and Sea Dragon naval gunfire support, a mission the Navy had thought for sure was dead.

As noted by DANFS, “While supporting these operations Canberra carried out six fire support missions making her the first U.S. Navy cruiser to use her guns in warfare since the Korean War.”

In this role, the old WWII bruiser and others of her kind and vintage found steady employment. Between February 1965 and December 1968, Canberra shipped out for Vietnam’s littoral waters on five deployments, with her guns heavily in demand.

Off the coast of North Vietnam, the eight-inch guns of the USS CANBERRA (CAG-2) frame the “Terrier” missile launchers of the USS LONG BEACH (CGN-9). Photographed by Chief Journalist R.D. Moeser, USN. USN 1121640

USS Canberra (CAG-2) Eight-inch guns of Turret # 2 firing, during a Vietnam War gunfire support mission, March 1967. Note the two outgoing projectiles in the upper right corner. Photographed by Chief Journalist R.D. Moeser, USN. USN 1142159

USS Canberra (CAG-2) crewmen sponge out an 8/55 gun of Turret # 2, following Vietnam War bombardment operations, March 1967. USN 1122618

USS Canberra (CAG-2): A ball of fire lights up USS Canberra (CAG-2) as a three-gun salvo is fired toward North Vietnamese targets, in March 1967. Accession #: L45-42

The POW Savant

One of Canberra’s bluejackets had the misfortune of falling into the hands of the North Vietnamese through a freak accident and became a POW in the Hanoi Hilton.

Seaman Apprentice Douglas Hegdahl spent two years in a hell hole but was released earlier than a lot of other prisoners– as he wasn’t seen as being much of a threat and was one of the few conscripts in NVA hands–and carried irreplaceable intel back home. You see, as an EM in a prison camp full of 256 officers, he was given nearly free rein of the place and could interact with the other Americans. As such he (amazingly) memorized their names, capture dates, method of capture, and personal information despite feigning illiteracy during his captivity.

As described by Erenow:

Petty Officer Second Class Douglas Hegdahl was quiet and self-effacing. Unlike most American prisoners, who had been shot from the sky, he had been rescued from the sea. Serving aboard the USS Canberra, he had disobeyed orders and crept up on deck to watch a night bombardment. As he stepped past a five-inch gun, it discharged. He lost his footing and fell into the Gulf of Tonkin. The warship steamed away into the darkness.

Vietnamese fishermen picked him up and turned him over to the authorities, who thought him so clueless that his North Vietnamese guards called him “the incredibly stupid one.” But once released, he turned out to be a gold mine of information. To the tune of “Old McDonald Had a Farm,” he had memorized the names of more than two hundred prisoners. Thanks to him, scores of American families would find out for the first time that their sons and husbands and fathers were still alive. Within a few days of the press conference, Hanoi’s treatment of the prisoners began to improve— “a lot less brutality,” one captive remembered, “and larger bowls of rice.”

From Piloten im Pyjama, an East German propaganda film shot in the glorious Democratic Republic of Vietnam:

“Douglas Brent Hegdahl maintaining the cleanliness of the camp. Hegdahl is the only American draftee in custody in the DRV. The sailor fell overboard from a warship where he was serving as a draftee and was fished out of the water a short time later by Vietnamese fishermen. Now Hegdahl is sharing the life of the captured air pirates.”

The End

By July 1969, Canberra had been redesignated as an all-gun cruiser, picking up her old hull number (CA-70) and her Terrier missile systems and related equipment were removed. Although she was found to still be in good condition, she was instead pulled from service as part of a big pull-down by the Navy to liquidate older vessels.

On 2 February 1970, Canberra was decommissioned at San Francisco, was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 31 July 1978, and sold for scrap two years later.

Epilogue

Doug Hegdahl is still alive, aged 74. He left the Navy in the 1970s after working as a SERE instructor, a job he had particular knowledge. 

One of the USS Canberra’s screws was saved and is on display at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum in San Pedro.

Her ship’s bell was presented to the Government and Commonwealth of Australia the day before September 11 to mark the 50th anniversary of the ANZUS Treaty Alliance in a ceremony between President George W. Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard. It is now on display at the Australian Maritime Museum in Sydney, where Bush visited the bell in 2007.

White House photo by Tina Hager.

Further, in 2000, a plaque commemorating USS Canberra was installed at the Australian War Memorial.

She is also remembered in maritime art.

Painting of USS Canberra (CAG-2) departing San Diego Bay, in 1963 by artist Wayne Scarpaci titled Silvergate Departure

When it comes to such artwork, a 1928 watercolor of HMAS Canberra, which was presented to USS Canberra and carried aboard until she was decommissioned, is now in the custody of the NHHC. 

NH 86171-KN HMAS Canberra (Australian heavy cruiser, 1928) Watercolor by F. Elliott. This painting was received from USS Canberra (CA-70) in 1970.

A vibrant USS Canberra reunion association is set to have its meeting in Pittsburgh this year while the HMAS Canberra association remembers the service of their American cousins fondly.

While the Royal Australian Navy is currently on its third HMAS Canberra, a 28,000-ton LHD, the U.S. Navy is set to soon receive its second. PCS USS Canberra (LCS-30), an Independence-class littoral combat ship, recently took to the water of Mobile Bay and is set to commission in 2023. Her name was announced at a Feb. 2018 meeting between President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Specs:

 

(1946 Jane’s)

(As-built)
Displacement: 14,500 long tons (14,733 t) standard; 16,000 tons full load
Length: 673 ft. 5 in
Beam: 70 ft. 10 in
Height: 112 ft. 10 in (mast)
Draft: 26 ft. 10 in
Propulsion: 8 Babcock & Wilcox boilers, four GE geared steam turbines with four screws = 120,000 shp
Speed: 33 knots
Fuel: 2,500 tons
Complement: 61 officers and 1,085 sailors
Armor: Belt Armor: 6 in
Deck: 3 in
Turrets: 3–6 inches
Conning Tower: 8 in
Aircraft: 4 floatplanes (Kingfishers) 2 catapults, one crane over the stern, below deck hangar for two aircraft
Armament:
9 × 8″/55 (20.3 cm) Marks 12s (3 x 3)
12 × 5″/38 (12.7 cm) Mark 12s (6 x 2)
48 × 40 mm Bofors guns
28 × 20 mm Oerlikon cannons

(As CAG)
Displacement: 17,500 full load
Length: 673 ft. 5 in
Beam: 70 ft. 10 in
Height: 112 ft. 10 in (mast)
Draft: 26 ft. 10 in
Propulsion: 8 Babcock & Wilcox boilers, four GE geared steam turbines with four screws = 120,000 shp
Speed: 33 knots
Fuel: 2,500 tons
Complement: 73 officers, 1,200 enlisted
Armor: Belt Armor: 6 in
Deck: 3 in
Turrets: 3–6 inches
Conning Tower: 8 in
Aircraft: Deck space for helicopter
Radar: SPS-43 forward, SPS-30 aft pole mast
Armament:
6 × 8″/55 (20.3 cm) Marks 12s (2 x 3)
10 × 5″/38 (12.7 cm) Mark 12 (2 x 2)
8 × 3″/50 (7.62 cm) Mark 22 AAAs (4 x 2)
2 x Terrier twin rail SAM launchers (144 missile magazine)

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Warship Wednesday, April 21, 2021: Let’s Vote on It

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

Warship Wednesday, April 21, 2021: Let’s Vote on It

Library and Archives Canada 4951041

Here we see a beautiful original color photo of the Improved Fiji-class (alternatively described as Colony-class, Mauritius-class, or Ceylon-class) cruiser HMCS Quebec (31) in Copenhagen, Denmark, on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth II’s birthday, 21 April 1954– some 67 years ago today. She battled the Germans, Italians, and Japanese withstood the divine wind and “Fritz X” only to have her reputation mired in undeserved controversy.

A borderline “treaty” cruiser of interwar design, the Fijis amounted to a class that was one short of a dozen with an 8,500-ton standard displacement. In WWII service, this would balloon to a very top-heavy weight of over 11,000. Some 15 percent of the standard displacement was armor. As described by Richard Worth, in his Fleets of World War II, the design was much better off than the previous Leander-class cruisers, and essentially “the Admiralty resolved to squeeze a Town [the immediately preceding 9,100-ton light cruiser class] into 8,000-tons.”

With a fine transom stern, they were able to achieve over 32 knots on a plant that included four Admiralty 3-drum boilers driving four Parsons steam turbines, their main armament amounted to nine 6″/50 (15.2 cm) BL Mark XXIII guns in three triple Mark XXI mountings in the case of our cruiser and her two immediate full sisters (HMS Ceylon and HMS Newfoundland).

The standard Fiji/Colony-class cruiser had four Mark XXI turrets, as shown in the top layout, while the “Improved Fijis/Ceylon-variants of the class mounted three, as in the bottom layout. Not originally designed to carry torpedo tubes, two triple sets were quickly added, along with more AAA guns, once the treaty gloves came off. (Jane’s 1946)

Ordered from Vickers-Armstrong’s, Walker in March 1939, just six months before Hitler sent his legions into Poland, Quebec, our subject vessel was originally named HMS Uganda (66) after that African protectorate. A war baby, she commissioned 3 January 1943.

HMS Uganda sliding down the slipway at the Walker Naval Yard, 7 August 1941. Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums (TWAM ref. DS.VA/9/PH/12/17).

HMS UGANDA, MAURITIUS CLASS CRUISER. JANUARY 1943, SCAPA FLOW. (A 22963) Broadside view. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205155098

After workups and interception patrols on the lookout for German blockade runners, in May she escorted the RMS Queen Mary (with Churchill aboard) across the Atlantic for a meeting with President Roosevelt at what later became known to history as the Washington Conference.

Transferred to the Mediterranean for service with the 15th Cruiser Squadron, she helped escort convoy WS31/KMF17 on the way before arriving in Malta with Admiral Cunningham aboard on 4 July. Then came the Husky landings in Sicily, where she was very busy covering the landings of the British 1st Airborne Division near Syracuse, rescuing 36 survivors from the hospital ship Talamba, and delivering naval gunfire support.

Cruisers HMS Orion and HMS Uganda on patrol with Mount Etna towering in the distance, some 40 miles away. Taken from HMS Nubian, 12th July 1943. The ships had bombarded Augusta the previous day.

A pom-pom crew of HMCS Uganda examining Kodak pictures. Note the “tropical kit” to include sun helmets and shorts. NAC, PA 140833

Then came the Avalanche landings at Salerno in September, where she provided NGFS for the British X Corps. Four days after reaching the beachhead, she was hit by a 3,000-pound German Fritz X precision-guided, armor-piercing bomb at 1440 on 13 September. Passing through seven decks and through her keel, it exploded under her hull, crippling but not quite killing the ship. When the smoke cleared, amazingly just 16 men of Uganda’s complement were dead.

The damage was very similar, albeit much less costly in lives, to the hit that the same-sized treaty cruiser USS Savannah (CL-42) suffered off Salerno two days prior. In the Fritz attack on that Brooklyn-class light cruiser, the early smart bomb hit the top of the ship’s number three 6/47-gun turret and penetrated deep into her hull before its 710-pound amatol warhead exploded. The damage was crippling, blowing out the bottom of the ship’s hull, immediately flooding her magazines– which may have ironically saved the ship as it prevented them from detonating– and killed 197 of her crew. In all, she would spend eight months being rebuilt.

As for Uganda, she was moved to Charleston Naval Shipyard in South Carolina for extensive repairs– just in time to become the most capable warship in another navy.

Oh, Canada!

By 1944, the Royal Canadian Navy could rightfully claim to be about the third strongest in the world when it came to warship tonnage. However, it was almost all in small escorts such as sloops, corvettes, frigates, and destroyers as well as armed yachts, trawlers, and torpedo boats. The RCN did have three armed merchant cruisers– the “Prince” class Canadian National Steamships passenger liners, which, at 6,000 tons, carried a dozen 6-, 4- and 3-inch guns, as well as depth charges and assorted Bofors/Oerlikons– but Ottawa had no proper cruisers on its naval list.

To rectify this, the brand-new light cruiser HMS Minotaur (53), transferred to Royal Canadian Navy in July 1944, and became HMCS Ontario (C53), although she did not finish working up in time to contribute much to the war effort. She was soon joined by Uganda, who kept her name when she was recommissioned 21 October 1944– Trafalgar Day– but replaced HMS with HMCS.

Uganda’s new crew, drawn from throughout the Canadian fleet, was assembled in 80-man teams and shipped out on a range of British 6-inch cruisers to train on their vessel while it was being repaired. These included a team that, while on HMS Sheffield, braved the Murmansk run and the Boxing Day 1943 fight against Scharnhorst. Curiously, and a bone of contention with the crew, she carried an RN duster rather than a Canadian ensign.

The Canadian cruiser would be commanded by Capt. Edmond Rollo Mainguy, who had previously served on several large RN warships including the battleship HMS Barham in the Great War.

Dispatched for service with the British Pacific Fleet, which was preparing for the final push against Japan, she stopped in the UK for sensor upgrades on the way, swapping Type 284 and 272 radars for newer Type 274 for fire control and Types 277 and 293 for surface warning and height finding. Nonetheless, the choice of the ship for tropical service, as it at the time lacked both onboard exhaust fans for air circulation and a water distillation plant capable of supporting the crew, was questionable. Belowdecks, when not on duty, many men simply wore “a towel and a pair of shoes.”

Regardless, she was a beautiful ship and her crew, most of whom were Battle of the Atlantic vets, were ready to fight.

A great shot of HMCS Uganda with a bone in her teeth. H.F. Pullen Nova Scotia Archives 1984-573 Box 1 F/24

British light cruiser HMS UGANDA underway. 14 October 1944. IWM FL 17797

HMS UGANDA, BRITISH CRUISER. 1944, AT SEA. (A 27728) Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205159166

HMCS Uganda in 1945 while in the British Pacific Fleet. IWM ABS 698

She joined the BPF on 9 March, arriving that day in Sydney via the Suez and the Indian Ocean. Joining British TF 57 as part of the U.S. 5th Fleet, Uganda soon became a close escort for the fleet’s carriers, particularly HMS Formidable and HMS Indomitable. This included fighting off kamikaze raids, delivering NGFS, and acting as a lifeguard for downed aviators as the fleet pushed past Formosa, through the Philippines, and on to Okinawa.

Task Force 57 at anchor, HMS Formidable (foreground) and HMS Indomitable w 4th Cruiser Squadron- (L to R) Gambia, Uganda, and Euryalus-San Pedro Bay, Leyte April 1945

Japanese aircraft attacking H.M.C.S. UGANDA. Ryukyu Islands, Japan, 4 April 1945. LAC 3191649

Bombardment by H.M.C.S. UGANDA of Sukuma Airfield on Miyoko Jima, 4 May 1945, the ship’s QF 4 in (102 mm) Mark XVI guns in action. LAC 3191651

Decks of HMCS Uganda after her bombardment of the Sakishima Island airstrip of Sukama, south of Okinawa, 12 May 1945, with her 6-inch guns swamped with powder tubes. The ship in the distance is her Kiwi-flagged sistership, HMNZS Gambia (48). (Photo: CFB Esquimalt Naval and Military Museum, VR2014.1.1)

Ratings sleep amidst 4-inch shells on HMCS Uganda, 1945 (Photo: CFB Esquimalt Naval and Military Museum, VR2014.1.26)

HMCS UGANDA and HMS FORMIDABLE, the latter burning after a Kamikaze airstrike, May 9, 1945, Royal Canadian Naval photograph. (CFB Esquimalt Naval and Military Museum /Photo Catalogue VR2014. 1.24 from the museum collection.)

Life aboard the ship continued to decline for the crew. Compounding the uncomfortable heat aboard– which led to rounds of tropical bacteria, viruses, and fungus infections among the crew– the BPF had logistical issues trying to supply its ships. This led to mechanical issues as spare parts were not available and poor food.

As noted by Bill Rawling’s A Lonely Ambassador: HMCS Uganda and the War in the Pacific, a 25-page article in The Northern Mariner/Le Marin du nord, VIII, No. 1 (January 1998), 39-63, one firsthand report of the time detailed:

In the tropics everything multiplied — of a crew of 900, two men were detailed for spraying cockroach powder through the mess decks to at least try to control them. It was not out of the ordinary to be munching on your de-hydrated peas and carrots to feel a sharp “crunch.” That was another roach being broken up. Flour deteriorated into a life form — a tiny worm with a white body and a little black head. It would be found in the bread which was baked aboard ship. At first, we would pick the worms out, but as we were told, and came to realize, they would not hurt us, we just ate them with the bread and called it our meat ration for the day.

This set the stage for what became known as the “Uganda Episode.”

As explained by the Naval and Marine Museum at CFB Esquimalt:

Prime Minister Mackenzie King announced on 4 April 1945 that the Canadian Government no longer intended to deploy personnel, other than volunteers, to the Pacific Theatre. The “Volunteers Only” policy, as it was called, required that all naval personnel specifically re-volunteer for service in the Pacific Theatre before they would be dispatched to participate in hostilities.

On the eve of the vote, in which it seemed many of Uganda’s crew were on the fence about going home, Capt. Mainguy reportedly gave a tone-deaf speech that went as high as a lead balloon with one crew member’s recalling that he, “Called us four flushers and quitters. Those who were in doubt soon made up their minds at a statement like that.”

The June 22 crew vote found that 556 of Uganda’s men preferred to head home, while just 344 re-volunteered to stay in the Pacific despite the daunting risk of kamikaze attack and a war that, at the time, was expected to drag out at least another year. With the prospect of swapping out so many of the cruiser’s complement while still deployed a non-starter, the plan was to send her back to Esquimalt, update her for continued service, and sail back to the war with a reformed crew in time to join Operation Olympic, the invasion of Kyūshū which was slated for November.

Relieved on station by the British cruiser HMS Argonaut on 27 July, ironically the Japanese signaled they were ready to quit the war just two weeks later, making the Uganda vote– which left a bitter pill with the RN– almost a moot subject. Uganda arrived at Esquimalt on 10 August, the day the Japanese officially threw in the towel.

While labels of mutiny and cowardice were unjustly lobbed at her crew by historians, her skipper would go on to become a Vice Admiral.

Better years

Postwar, Uganda would spend the next two years in a training role.

Cruiser HMCS Uganda photographed on 31 November 1945.

A color shot of HMCS-Uganda (C66) as seen from the Canadian aircraft carrier HMCS Warrior circa 1946, note the Fairey Firefly and Maple Leaf insignias. LAC-MIKAN-No 4821077

Transferred to the reserves in August 1947, her slumber was brief.

Recommissioned as a result of the Korean War on 14 January 1952 as HMCS Quebec (C31), she soon sailed for Halifax to continue her service, notably under a Canadian flag and with belowdecks habitability improvements.

Guard of Honor and Band at the recommissioning of H.M.C.S. QUEBEC, Esquimalt, British Columbia, 14 January 1952 LAC 3524549

For the next four years, she was a global traveler, heavily involved in NATO exercises.

HMCS QUEBEC coming alongside for a ship-to-ship transfer receiving supplies from HMCS Magnificent, during  Exercise Mainbrace in 1952. LAC 4951392

A closer view, from HMCS Magnificent. Note the carrier’s 40mm mount and the folded wing of a fighter, likely a Hawker Sea Fury judging from the pair of wing-root 20mm cannons. LAC 4951382

H.M.C.S. QUEBEC heeling in rough seas during exercises. 18 Sept 1952 LAC 3524551

HMCS Quebec (C-31) leads HMCS Magnificent (CVL-21), HMAS Sydney (R-17), and multiple destroyers as they return from the Queen’s coronation, July 1953

Sperry radar scan of Gaspé Bay anchorage, HMCS Quebec 12 July 1953 LAC 3206158

HMCS QUEBEC Parading the White Ensign in Rio-South America cruise, 1954. Note the Enfield rifles, with the rating to the right complete with a chromed bayonet. Also, note the local boy to the left giving a salute to the RCN duster. LAC 4950735

Port broadside view of H.M.C.S. QUEBEC after having been freshly painted by ships’ company, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 29 June 1955 LAC 3524552

She also became the first Canadian naval ship to circumnavigate Africa, during her 1955 cruise. In 1946, she had claimed the first such Canadian warship to “Round the Horn” of South America.  

King Neptune and the pollywogs! Original color photo of HMCS QUEBEC’s crossing the line equator ceremony during her fall cruise to South America, 1956. LAC 4950734

HMCS Quebec (C-31) and USS Newport News (CA-148) at Villefranche.

With all-gun cruisers that required a 900-man crew increasingly obsolete in the Atomic era, Quebec was paid off 13 June 1956 and laid up in Nova Scotia. Four years later, she was sold for her value in scrap metal to a Japanese concern.

She is remembered in period maritime art, specifically in a piece by official war artist Harold Beament, who was on the RCNVR list and later president of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.

HMCS Uganda in Drydock, Esquimalt, during a post-war refit. Beaverbrook Collection of War Art CWM 19710261-1030

Today, the RCN remembers Quebec fondly. Narrated by R.H. Thomson, the script in the below tribute video is based on a memoir by LCDR Roland Leduc, RCN (Ret’d) who served on the post-war cruiser. 

An exceptional veterans’ site is also online, with numerous photos and remembrances. 

For a great deep dive into HMS Uganda, especially her 1945 service, check out Bill Rawling’s A Lonely Ambassador: HMCS Uganda and the War in the Pacific, a 25-page article in The Northern Mariner/Le Marin du Nord, VIII, No. 1 (January 1998), 39-63.

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