Tag Archives: famous ship

Warship Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025: Saigon Beauty

Posted on by 2 comments

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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025: Saigon Beauty

Above we see the Dugay Trouin-class light cruiser Lamotte-Picquet (also seen as La Motte Picquet) steaming sedately atop the Saigon River in French Indochina on 31 January 1939. Note the GL-810 series floatplane on her stern.

Twin masted with twin funnels, all with a slight rake, she was lovely and would win France’s last sea battle and go on to suffer a tragic ending at the hands of an ally, some 80 years ago this month.

The Trouins

The first large French warships designed after the Great War, the three sisters of the Dugay Trouin class were fairly big for naval treaty-era “light” cruisers, hitting the scales at 7,360 tons standard (9,350 full). Some 575 feet long at the waterline (604 feet overall), they would be considered destroyers by today’s standards.

Their draft was 17.25 feet (20 at full load) and they had a stiletto-like 1:10 beam-to-length ratio.

Powered by an eight-pack of Guyot high-pressure oil-fired boilers trunked through two funnels and feeding four Parsons geared turbines, they had 100,000 shp on tap– also about the same as today’s destroyers. This allowed all three sisters to sustain over 33 knots on trials while hitting 115,100-116,849 shp with top speeds over 34 knots. Further, they could steam at speed over distance– able to make 30 knots sustained for 24 hours straight– an important requirement for screening the battlefleet or chasing German or Italian surface raiders.

When dialed down to a more economical 15 knots, they could make 4,500nm, an unrefueled range that allowed them to span the Atlantic if needed or, with a pitstop in any of France’s numerous African or Caribbean colonies, to make the Indian and Pacific Oceans with ease.

The main armament was eight 6.1″/55 Modele 20 guns in four twin mounts. With this main battery able to fire 32 125-pound shells out to 23,000m in the first minute of operation, these guns were considered to be superior to the 7.6-inch breechloaders on older French cruisers and battlewagons and equal to contemporary designs afloat anywhere on the globe, the guns were also used on the training cruiser Jeanne d’ Arc and the carrier Bearn.

Bow Turrets on Lamotte-Picquet. Note the director and large searchlight above it. ECPA(D) Photograph. Besides the Duguay Trouin class, the French only used the 6.1″/50 Model 1920 on the training cruiser Jeanne D ‘Arc and the carrier Bearn.

Look at those hull lines. Here, Lamotte-Picquet seen in drydock.

French Duguay-Trouin-class light cruiser Primauguet on 28 Juli 1939. Note her twin forward 6-inch gun turrets, the gunnery clock on her tower, and the tropical dress of her crew

Secondary armament for period cruisers was considered their torpedo battery and the Trouins carried 24 heavyweight models able to be fired in any one of a dozen 21.7-inch topside torpedo tubes, arranged in four triple mounts on turnstiles.

Lamotte Picquet torpedo drill, Haiphong, 1939. Note the tropical service pith helmets.

Unusually for vessels of this type, there was also allowance for depth charges and mechanical minesweeping gear (paravanes).

Their anti-aircraft batteries– four 3″/60 Mod 22 AA singles clustered around the funnels amidship and another quartet of 13.2mm Hotchkiss heavy machine guns– were felt adequate for the 1920s but would be woefully underwhelming by 1939. Auxiliary armament included a pair of older 3-pounder 57mm guns for use in saluting and a 37mm landing gun on a wheeled mount along with enough small arms to send a 180-man landing force ashore if needed.

They were designed from the outset to carry two single-engine floatplanes for scouting use and had a centerline stern-mounted Penhoët-type air-powered catapult capable of handling them. It seemed the French used or evaluated at least a dozen distinct types of aircraft across the mid-1920s through 1942 on these cruisers with mixed results. The country fielded no less than 50 assorted “Hydravion de reconnaissance” types (!) in the first half of the 20th Century and I’ve seen or read of the Duguay-Trouin class with CAMS 37, Donnet-Denhaut, Loire 130 and 210, Gourdou-Leseurre GL-810/812/820 HY and GL-832, FBA 17 HL 2, Latecoere 298, and Potez 452 types aboard.

Visitors aboard the French light cruiser Lamotte-Picquet in East Asia. Note the tropical helmets on her crew and the single-engine flying boat (she carried a couple Potez 452 in 1936-39) on her catapult. The marching band is dressed in outlandish tropical grass skirts and seems to be leading a parade, which may be the start of a crossing-the-line ceremony.

Fast and with a decent armament, something had to be sacrificed and it was protection. These cruisers had an arrangement of 21 watertight bulkheads and used only double skin plating abreast of their machinery– hardly what could be described as a torpedo blister.

A scant 0.75 inches of armor protected their main deck and box citadel which covered the magazines and steering gear while the vital main turrets and conning tower only had one inch of armor, a plan capable of defeating splinters only. In all these cruisers only carried 166 tons of armor plate, which is something like 1.9 percent of its standard tonnage. By comparison, the American Omaha class light cruisers which were being built at the same time and were roughly the same size/armament (7,100 tons, 12×6″/53 guns) carried 572 tons of armor in a 3-inch belt.

Little wonder why Jane’s described the Dugay Trouin class’s armor at the time as “practically nil.”

Nonetheless, these ships were generally considered successful and seaworthy in peacetime service, with sisters Dugay Trouin and Primaguett constructed at Arsenal de Brest while middle sister Lamotte-Picquet would be built at Arsenal de Lorient. The first ship was laid down in August 1922 and all three were completed within a few weeks of each other in September-October 1926.

Jane’s 1931 listing on the class.

The Duguay Trouins proved the basis for French cruiser design throughout the 1920s and early 1930s.

As mentioned above, the type was shrunk down to create the training cruiser Jeanne D ‘Arc, and it was also upsized to make the first French heavy cruisers (croiseur de 1ere classes), the Duquesne and Tourville (10,000t std, 627 oal, 62 ft beam, 8×8″/50, 118,358.4 shp to make 34 knots). These Duquesne and Tourville used almost the same engineering suite (8 guyot boilers, 4 turbines, trunked through two funnels), the same thin bikini-style light armor plan that only covered gun magazines, deck, and the CT; arrangements for two scout planes on a single rear catapult, and the same 4×2 main gun arrangement for the main battery with torpedo tube clusters amidship.

Then came the later heavy cruisers Suffern, Colbert, Foch, and Dupleix which were basically just the Duquesne class with slightly better armor arrangement in exchange for a lower speed.

A French Navy recruiting poster, featuring the country’s modern style of light and heavy cruisers. Beautiful, fast, modern, but very lightly armored.

Meet Lamotte-Picquet

Our subject is the third French warship named in honor of the 18th century Admiral Comte Toussaint-Guillaume Picquet de la Motte who famously took part in 34 naval campaigns and sea battles across a half-century of service to his king. In addition to several single-ship commands and sea duels, this included commanding the French squadron at the Battles of Martinique and Cape Spartel and capturing a massive 22-ship British convoy in the Caribbean in 1781.

All in all, the good Comte de Lamotte-Picquet had a very successful career.

Importantly to Americans, on Valentine’s Day 1778, he ordered his flagship, the mighty Bucentaure-class 80-gun ship of the line Robuste, to fire a 9-gun salute to the incoming 18-gunned Continental Navy sloop of war Ranger under John Paul Jones, as the latter warship entered at Quiberon Bay, France. This was the first salute to the American flag given by a foreign ship and has made sure he is remembered as a hero of the American War of Independence only just behind the Comte de Grasse.

“First Recognition of the American Flag by a Foreign Government” 14 February 1778, French ship Robuste salutes Ranger. Painted in 1898 by Edward Moran. NHHC 80-G-K-21225

The first Lamotte-Picquet in French service was a 179-foot steam aviso that served in the 1860s-80s, followed by a 167-foot Jacques Cœur-class colonial gunboat/seaplane tender that served in the early 1920s before being renamed so that her moniker could go on to be used by our subject cruiser.

Before the Great War, a 10-ship class of 6,000-ton light cruisers– the first of the type in French service– was to have been led by a La Motte-Picquet, but these vessels never got further than design plans.

Our La Motte-Picquet was completed on 1 February 1926 and was able to begin its first test runs under the command of Capitaine de Vaisseau Jean Émile Paul Cras. A career officer born in Brest to a family of naval officers, Cras graduated fourth in his class from the Ecole Navale in 1898 and was a bit of a polymath. He designed several navigational instruments that are still in use today, developed electronic signaling gear earned a Legion of Honour in combat during the Great War as commander of the destroyer Commandant Bory on the Adriatic Campaign, served as a professor at the naval academy, and composed more than 60 symphonic and chamber music works– some of which were quite popular.

Capitaine de Vaisseau Jean Émile Paul Cras, Lamotte-Picquet’s very metropolitan plank owner skipper.

Peacetime service

Assigned to the 3e division légère at Brest after she joined the fleet, Lamotte-Picquet spent just over six years on a series of squadron maneuvers and summer cruises to the Mediterranean.

French cruiser Lamotte-Picquet at Brest 3 May 1927 BnF Btv1b53179908r

Le Havre 3/7/1928, Lamotte-Picquet et Revue_navale Agence_Rol_btv1b53201896j

Lamotte-Picquet lit up at night.

Crew of Lamotte-Picquet sur le cours Dajot Brest Bastille Day

Manoeuvres navales la_vedette Duquesne Provence and Lamotte Piquet BNF 1b532305530_1

County Class Cruiser HMS London Duguay-Trouin Class Lamotte Picquet Worlds Fair Barcelona May 14 1929

French cruiser Lamotte-Picquiet Cherbourg 30 July 1933 BnF btv1b9027179r

Far East Service

Then came an overseas deployment when, on 8 January 1936, La Motte-Picquet became the flagship of the French Far East Squadron (Forces Navales d’Extreme Orient), based in Indochina.

Crossing the line:

Marine Française, Croiseur Lamotte Picquet. Baptême de la Ligne plein Océan

She was easily the largest ship and most powerful member of the squadron.

The rest of the assets amounted to a pair of newer Bougainville class aviso (gunboats), Amiral Charnier and the Dumont d’Urville (1,969 tons, 15.5 kts, 3x138mm guns, 4x37mm guns, 50 mines, 1 Gourdou 832 seaplane) and two old colonial gunboats, Marne (601 tons, 21 kts, 4x100mm, 2x65mm) and Tahure (644 tons, 19 kts,2x138mm, 1x75mm guns).

Two large (302-foot) Redoutable-class deep-sea patrol submarines deployed to Indochina were deleted from the squadron before 1941, with L’Espoir recalled to Toulon in December 1940, while the second, Phenix (Q157), was lost with all hands during an accident in June 1939 off Saigon while in ASW exercises with Lamotte Picquet.

A force of 10 shallow draft river gunboats (Mytho, Tourane, Vigilante, Avalanche, Paul-Bert, Commander Bourdais, Lapérouse, Capitaine-Coulon, Frézouls, and Crayssac) was busy on constabulary duties along the brown waters of Indochina.

There was also a naval aviation squadron with eight lumbering Loire 130 flying boats, unwieldy beasts that were slow (89-knot cruising speed) and lightly armed but could at least stay aloft for almost eight hours.

This left our cruiser as a big fish in a little pond.

Duguay-Trouin class light cruiser LAMOTTE-PICQUET in Ha Long Bay Vietnam, 22-26 February 1937

French cruiser Lamotte-Picquiet, Indochina

French cruiser Lamotte-Picquiet, Indochina

Lamotte Picquet pre-war in the Far East.

Lamotte-Picquet in Saigon, note the extensive awnings.

Arriving at the station in early 1936, La Motte-Picquet spent much of her time showing the flag around the tense Western Pacific, ranging from Japan to China, Hong Kong, and Singapore, leaving the smaller gunboats to police the waters of Indochina. The French fleet had two gunboats/station ships in China, the Rigault de Genouilly in Shanghai and the Argus in Canton, to which regular visits by the much more impressive cruiser were no doubt welcome. 

Hong Kong Harbor circa November 1936 with ships of the British, French,h and U.S. Navies present. Ships are (in the most distant offshore row, left to right): French light cruiser Lamotte-Picquet, British submarine tender HMS Medway with several submarines alongside, and British aircraft carrier HMS Hermes. (in the nearest offshore row, left to right): two destroyers (unidentified nationality), a French colonial sloop, USS Augusta (CA-3,1), and USS Black Hawk (AD-9) with two destroyers alongside. Alongside dockyard wharves (left to right): British heavy cruiser Berwick with two or three destroyers outboard, and British heavy cruiser Cumberland. Inside the dockyard basin (clockwise from entrance): Two destroyers, three submarines, and an Insect class gunboat. Offshore of, and to the right of, the dockyard (left to right): USS Isabel (PY-10) alongside a U.S. destroyer, two British destroyers, three U.S. destroyers, and three U.S. destroyers. Courtesy of Lieutenant Gustave Freret, USN (Retired), 1972. NH 80422

Shanghai November 11 1938 heavy cruiser USS Augusta, HMS Dorsetshire, Lamotte-Picquet in background.

Lamotte-Picquet at Shanghai, 1930s. University of Bristol – Historical Photographs of China reference number: Ro-n1005.

“Man of War Row” in the Whangpoo (Huangpu) River, Shanghai, China, in late May or early June 1939. The U.S. Navy heavy cruiser USS Augusta (CA-31) is moored to the left. The Siccawei Observatory signal tower is in the foreground. The old Japanese cruiser Izumo is in the distance, beyond Augusta’s bow. Next is the British Royal Navy light cruiser HMS Birmingham (C19), which has large Union Jacks painted atop her awnings and turrets to assist identification from the air, and carries a Supermarine Walrus aircraft amidships. What appears to be a British Insect-class gunboat is near shore in the center background. The French light cruiser Lamotte-Picquet is moored astern of Birmingham. The U.S. Navy troop transport USS Chaumont (AP-5) is moored in the most distant row, ahead of the Italian cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni and astern of Lamotte-Picquet. The merchantman moored in the nearer offshore row including the British Shantung (left) and the Italian Enderia (center). The British merchantman Yingchow is moored in the distance, beyond Chaumont’s bow. U.S. Navy photos NH 81985, NH 81986, NH 81987, and NH 81988.

War!

Going into 1939, Lamotte-Picquet’s new skipper, Capt. Marie Daniel Régis Berenger– a Knight of the Legion of Honor who served on the battleship Patrie on the Dardanelles gunline in 1915 and commanded the landing craft Polypheme in 1916 during the Serbian landings on Corfu– was celebrating 33 years in the service.

Once WWII erupted in Europe, our cruiser spent eight months on regular patrols around the Tonkin Gulf on the lookout for German merchant vessels at large. Her only brush with such contraband-carrying vessels was to take over the seized Soviet steamer Vladimir Makovsky (3972grt) on 26 March 1940 near Hong Kong, which had been taken into custody in the Sea of Japan by the Australian armed merchant cruiser HMAS Kanimbla (C78), because the freighter was carrying a cargo of copper from the U.S. to Germany. Lamotte Picquet escorted the Soviet merchantman into Saigon, arriving on 1 April.

Mayakovsky and her 40-man crew sweated it out at Saigon under French guns for six months then were allowed to leave after the local administration relieved its cargo of coffee and ore. The ship somehow survived WWII and was only removed from Soviet service in 1967.

When France entered into an Armistice with the Germans and Italians in June 1940, the situation changed in Indochina. While the French colonies of Polynesia and New Caledonia had declared for De Gaulle’s Free France movement, Indochina remained aligned to the Vichy regime of Marshal Petain, with our cruiser and its squadron along with it.

While French colonial officials in Saigon were concerned about an increasingly aggressive Japan and their allies in Siam– which started pushing militarily on Indochina’s borders before the end of the year– they made efforts to remain on watch against the British in nearby Burma and Malaysia, especially after the shameful attack on the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir, Algeria by the Royal Navy (Operation Catapult) in July 1940.

Nonetheless, some members of her crew released themselves on their own recognizance to make it back to the fight in Europe.

In November 1940, three of her junior officers, led by LV Andre Jubelin, eager to get back in the war, managed to join a local civilian aviation club and, packed into a single-engine Caudron Pélican– which required sitting on spare gas cans in place of the seats to refuel in flight– flew 600 miles across the Gulf of Siam from Saigon to Singapore. They managed to make it from there in an epic 10-hour flight and then to England where they joined the Free French forces.

Lts. Andre Jubelin, Jean Arnoux, and Louis Ducorps dramatically deserted their post in Indochina for Singapore and, subsequently, London.

When the Siamese were eventually enticed into making a move against the French in Indochina over territorial aspirations along the Mekong frontier led to a mutual exchange of air raids, a ground campaign launched in early January 1941 that saw a 60,000-man Thai army sweep into French Laos. As the French colonial forces mobilized for a counter-attack, Berenger’s cruiser-gunboat squadron, sailing as Groupe de travail 7 (TF 7), was ordered to the Gulf of Siam, sailing from Saigon late on 14 January, with the slow sloops scouting ahead and Lamotte-Picquet following.

By dawn of the 17th, with the positions of the Thai fleet pinpointed the previous evening by French flying boats, the combat was soon joined at the anchorage of the former Thai fleet near Ko Chang. The French force squared off against the Japanese-built Thai armored coast defense vessels Thonburi and Sri Ayudhya (2,540 tons, 4×8″/50, 4x75mm guns), two British-built Thai gunboats (1,000 tons, 2×6″/50), a dozen assorted torpedo boats, and a small submarine.

On paper, you would say the odds were on the Thais.

However, luck flew with the French.

In the short 40-minute battle, Thonburi was severely damaged by 6-inch shells from Lamotte-Picquet to the point that fires spread out of control and, towed to Laem Ngop to be beached, she would instead capsize a few hours after the order to abandon ship was given, her captain, Luang Phrom Viraphan, killed in the engagement.

The French cruiser also landed hits on the torpedo boats Chonburi and Soughkla which sent them to the bottom, and shelled the base at Ko Chang, destroying its telephone exchange.

Responding land-based Thai air force Vought O2U Corsairs and Curtiss Hawks bracketed Lamotte-Picquet with small bombs, which lightly damaged her with shrapnel.

Lamotte-Picquet fired 454 6-inch and 280 3-inch shells, including 117 anti-aircraft shells, during the battle.

Casualty figures vary widely between French and Thai sources, but all agree that the French losses were negligible (11 killed) while Thai losses ran as high as 300 killed, wounded, captured, and missing with the latter including several Japanese officers serving as advisers.

Berenger reported his victory and praised his crew, saying “Under the bombs of airplanes, amid the roar of shells of an adversary who fought valiantly, you have all given an example of courage worthy of our ancestors,” withdrawing in good order back to Cam Ran Bay.

Shortly after, between the naval action at Ko Chang and the responding French colonial forces in Cambodia, the Japanese sponsored a ceasefire that took effect by the end of January which ended the conflict– with some territorial concessions to Bangkok.

Ko Chang is remembered as the last French naval ship-to-ship clash and, along with the even more forgotten Battle of Dakar (Operation Menace) in September 1940 against the Royal Navy, as the only French naval victory in WWII.

Berenger was made a Commander of the Legion of Honor and promoted to rear admiral shortly after the battle.

Ignoble End

Cut off from the possibility of dry docking in Hong Kong, Australia, Surabaya, or Singapore due to the bad blood between the Vichy regime and the Allies, the French negotiated a shipyard maintenance period in Osaka in August 1941 to clean the cruiser’s hull. At the same time, the Japanese had come to an agreement with Vichy to allow the basing and transshipment of troops and aircraft in Indochina, a factor that led to the birth of the Việt Minh.

Returning to Saigon in October 1941, the cruiser’s boilers were in a sad state of affairs and, although two new boilers were available, other parts and components were not and by 1942, suffering additional damage from typhoons that had come ashore, the mighty Lamotte-Picquet found herself laid up, with most of her officers and crew reassigned. The ship was turned into a floating school for colonial naval cadets (Ecole des marins Annamites), men who would go on to found the Vietnamese Navy.

Her turrets and superstructure were largely removed, and many of her guns were planned to be re-established ashore as coastal artillery.

In January 1945, as part of Operation Gratitude, the fast carriers of VADM “Slim” McCain’s Task Force 38 paid Indochina a visit to destroy Japanese ships and aircraft sheltering there.

Formation of TBF Avenger Aircraft of Carrier Air Group Four, USS Essex (CV-9), Task Group 38.3, approaching the coast of French Indochina on their way to bomb and torpedo airfields and shipping in the Saigon area, 12 January 1945 80-G-300673

Japanese Ships burning and sinking in Saigon River, Saigon Town, French Indochina after an aerial strike by planes of Carrier Air Group Four, USS Essex (CV-9), Task Group 38.3 on 12 January 1945. 80-G-300660

Lamotte-Picquet, her tricolor still flying, was caught in the melee and took several bombs through her decks, leaving her at the bottom of Saigon Harbor at Thanh-Tuy-Ha. She suffered 10 of her French cadre and 60 of her colonial cadets killed. The hydrographic survey vessel Octant was sunk alongside. 

USS Essex strike photo of the former French cruiser La Motte-Picquet capsized in Saigon Harbor, French Indochina (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam), 12 Jan 1945. The cruiser’s turrets and superstructure were previously removed, NNAM.

TBF Avenger Aircraft of Carrier Air Group Four, USS Essex (CV-9), Task Group 38.3, leaving the coast of French Indochina as they return to their carrier after strikes on the Saigon area, 12 January 1945 80-G-300666

To add insult to injury, in March 1945 the Japanese revoked French colonial rule in Indochina in a coup executed by the Japanese 38th Army, termed Operation Bright Moon, that left over 4,000 French troops dead and 15,000 interned, including Berenger and most of the former crew of Lamotte-Picquet.

Japanese troops entering Saigon

Most of the French sailors were housed in the notoriously bad Martin-des-Pallières camp in Saigon.

One petty officer who served there, Maurice Amant, formerly a signalman aboard the Lamotte-Picquet, recounted after the war that in July 1945, inside a courtyard surrounded by a wall, he was made to dig a series of holes 25×25-inches wide, three feet deep, and spaced six feet apart. It was only after liberation that he learned the purpose: the Japanese had placed electrically wired anti-tank mines and wheelbarrows of scrap metal in each of these holes, and in the event of a resisted Allied landing, they would have gathered all the prisoners in the courtyard to send them collectively on their “final journey” with the clack of a firing switch.

C’est la vie.

Epilogue

Our lost cruiser was slowly salvaged between 1947 and 1959, by which time the management in Saigon had changed a few times.

An online record of her travels, in particular her period in the Far East in the late 1930s, is maintained by the grandson of Claude Berruyer, a sailor who served aboard her and had a proclivity for photography.

Of her sisters, Primauguet was the largest Vichy French warship to get underway during the very one-sided battle of Casablanca during the Torch landings, and, while she landed a hit on the battlewagon USS Massachusetts, was immolated and left a burned-out hulk until scrapped above water in the 1950s.

French light cruiser Primauguet beached off Casablanca, Morocco in November 1942. She had been badly damaged during the Battle of Casablanca on 8 November and is largely burned out forward. What appears to be shell damage is visible at her main deck line amidships, just aft of her second smokestack. In the left distance are the French destroyers Milan (partially visible at far left) and Albatros, both irreparably damaged and beached closer to shore. The latter is flying a large French flag from her foremast. 80-G-31607

Class leader Duguay-Trouin was interned with the British in June 1940 in Alexandria, and sat out the war until early 1943 when she was turned over to the Free French following the fall of the Vichy regime. Refitted by the Allies in time for the Dragoon Landings along the French Riveria in August 1944, she was ordered to Indochina after the war and participated in NGFS operations there against the Viet Minh insurgents until 1952– the ghost of Lamotte-Picquet returned to exact vengeance.

French cruiser Duguay-Trouin 1946 Janes

One of the few pre-Revolutionary military heroes still honored in the Republic, ADM Picquet de la Motte has a street named after him in Paris (Avenue de La Motte-Picquet) as well as a rail station and a slew of buildings.

The French Navy has dutifully issued the name for a fourth warship, a Georges Leygues class ASW frigate (D645) commissioned in 1987. Her 100mm main gun bore the name “Ko Chang.”

The French Georges Leygues class ASW frigate La Motte-Picquet (D645) is seen in her prime. She served until 2020, including seeing a bit of action in the Bay of Kotor during the Kosovo affair, numerous deployments to the Persian Gulf, and counter-piracy operations off Somalia, capping a 33-year career.

As for Lamotte-Picquet’s skippers, her plank owner composer Jean Cras, went on to command the battleship Provence and died an untimely death from cancer at age 53 as a rear admiral in 1932. His Trio de Cordes (String Trio) No.3, one of the pieces he composed while on the cruiser, remains.

Her most famous captain, Berenger, the victor of Ko Chang, survived a Japanese POW camp and was released in September 1945. Placed on the retirement list post-war as a vice admiral after 39 years in uniform, he passed in 1971, aged 82. Ko Chang is still regarded by many as near-flawless surface action. In his memoirs, De Gaulle describes it as a “brilliant naval victory.” The battle is commemorated in numerous square and street names in France, for example in Brittany and Vendée.

Marie Daniel Régis Berenger passed in 1971, aged 84.

The young aviator from the cruiser who borrowed a single-engine aircraft to fly from Saigon to Malaysia with two passengers, Andre Jubelin, went on to fly Spitfires with No. 118 Squadron RAF and in 72 combat sorties downed two German aircraft. Returning to naval service, he commanded a destroyer on convoy duty in the Atlantic then the French carrier Arromanches off Indochina against the Viet Mien in 1948, and retired as a rear admiral in 1967, head of the French Navy’s air arm.

He made sure the borrowed Pelican made it back to the Saigon Flying Club, packed as cargo on a steamer, at his own expense.

RADM André Marius Joseph Jubelin passed in 1986, aged 80. He penned a memoir, The Flying Sailor, which is very entertaining, as well as the more mauldin J’étais aviateur de la France libre, which covers his war years, among other works.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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

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

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

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

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

 

Warship Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025: The 80 Eightballs

Posted on by Leave a comment

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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025: The 80 Eightballs

U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 50755

Above we see the Lapwing-class “Old Bird” USS Penguin (Minesweeper # 33) underway off Shanghai, China, circa the late 1920s, following conversion for river gunboat service. Note the sampan in the foreground. She rescued 24 shipwrecked Japanese sailors some 85 years ago this week.

The favor would not be repaid a year later.

The Lapwings

When a young upstart by the name of Franklin D. Roosevelt came to the Navy Department in 1913 as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, he helped engineer one of the largest naval build-ups in world history. By the time the U.S. entered World War I officially in 1917, it may have been Mr. Wilson’s name in the role of Commander in Chief, but it was Mr. Roosevelt’s fleet.

One of his passions was the concept of the Great North Sea Mine Barrage, a string of as many as 400,000 (planned) sea mines that would shut down the Kaiser’s access once and for all to the Atlantic and save Western Europe (and its overseas Allies) from the scourge of German U-boats. A British idea dating from late 1916, the U.S. Navy’s Admiral Sims thought it was a bullshit waste of time but it was FDR’s insistence to President Wilson in the scheme that ultimately won the day.

mines-anchors1North_Sea_Mine_Barrage_map_1918

While a fleet of converted steamships (and two old cruisers- USS San Francisco and USS Baltimore) started dropping mines in June 1918, they only managed to sow 70,177 by Armistice Day and accounted for a paltry two U-boats gesunken (although some estimates range as high as 8 counting unaccounted-for boats).

And the thing is, you don’t throw that many mines in international shipping lanes without having a plan to clean them up after the war (while having the bonus of using those mine countermeasures ships to sweep enemy-laid fields as well).

That’s where the 54 vessels of the Lapwing-class came in.

Review of the Atlantic Fleet Minesweeping Squadron, November 1919. USS Lapwing (AM-1) and other ships of the squadron anchored in the Hudson River, off New York City, while being reviewed by Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels on 24 November 1919, following their return to the United States after taking part in clearing the North Sea mine barrage. The other ships visible are: USS Lark (Minesweeper No. 21), with USS SC-208 alongside (at left); and USS Swan (Minesweeper No. 34) with USS SC-356 alongside (at right). Heron was there, but is not seen on the photo. U.S. Navy photo NH 44903

Review of the Atlantic Fleet Minesweeping Squadron, November 1919. USS Lapwing (AM-1) and other ships of the squadron anchored in the Hudson River, off New York City, while being reviewed by Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels on 24 November 1919, following their return to the United States after taking part in clearing the North Sea mine barrage. The other ships visible are USS Lark (Minesweeper No. 21), with USS SC-208 alongside (at left); and USS Swan (Minesweeper No. 34) with USS SC-356 alongside (at right). Heron was there but is not seen in the photo. U.S. Navy photo NH 44903. Note the crow’s nest for sighting floating mines.

Inspired by large seagoing New England fishing trawlers, these 187-foot-long ships were large enough, at 965 tons full, to carry a pair of economical reciprocating diesel engines (or two Scotch boilers and one VTE engine) with a decent enough range to make it across the Atlantic on their own (though with a blisteringly slow speed of just 14 knots when wide open on trials.)

Lapwing class 1944 profile USS Kingfisher AM-25 ATO-135

They could also use a sail rig to poke along at low speed with no engines, a useful trait for working in a minefield. Their two masts stood 73 feet high above the LWL.

Lapwing-class sister USS Falcon AM-28 in Pensacola Bay 1924 with the Atlantic submarine fleet. Note her rig

While primarily built to sweep mines, their battery amounted to a pair of 3″/50 singles with 20 ready rounds in the chest on her superstructure deck and 200 below deck. Capable of landing a squad ashore as needed, the standard small arms locker for a Lapwing class sweeper included a single Lewis light machine gun, 10 rifles (M1903s), and five revolvers (likely M1917s).

Their electrical system included two 25 kW generators as well as a smaller oscillator and radio generator which powered two 24-inch searchlights, a submarine signal apparatus, a radio outfit as well as her lights. Deck machinery included three stern hoisting winches for sweeping gear, an anchor hoist, and towing engine, and a capstan engine. Small boats amounted to a 30-foot motor launch, a 28-foot whaleboat, and a 16-foot dingy, allowing a total capacity of carrying 82 persons. Their onboard workshop included a lathe, a shaper, and a drill press along with assorted hand tools.

Crew amounted to four officers, six CPOs, and 40 ratings.

The class leader, Lapwing, designated Auxiliary Minesweeper #1 (AM-1), was laid down at Todd in New York in October 1917 and another 53 soon followed. While five were canceled in November 1918, the other 48 were eventually finished– even if they came to the war a little late.

This leads us to the hero of our tale, the humble Penguin.

Meet Penguin

Our subject is the second U.S. Navy ship to carry the name of the Antarctic flightless bird.

The first was a 155-foot screw steamer armed with a quartet of 32-pounders and a single 12-pounder that served with distinction on the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron and along the Gulf of Mexico during the Civil War.

Bombardment and Capture of Port Royal, South Carolina, 7 November 1861 Engraving published in “Harper’s Weekly”, July-December 1861. It depicts Federal warships, under Flag Officer Samuel F. DuPont, USN, bombarding Fort Beauregard (at right) and Fort Walker (at left). The Confederate squadron commanded by Commodore Josiah Tattnall is in the left-center distance. Subjects identified below the image bottom are (from left): tug Mercury, Fort Walker, USS Wabash (DuPont’s flagship), USS Susquehanna, CSS Huntsville, Commo. Tattnall, USS Bienville, USS Pembina, USS Seneca, USS Ottawa, USS Unadilla, USS Pawnee, USS Mohican, USS Isaac Smith, USS Curlew, USS Vandalia, USS Penguin, USS Pocahontas, USS Seminole, Fort Beauregard, USS R.B. Forbes and “Rebel Camp”.NH 59256

The second Penguin (Minesweeper No. 33) was laid down on 17 November 1917 at Elizabethport by the New Jersey Dry Dock & Transportation Co.; launched on 12 June 1918 and commissioned on 21 November 1918– just 10 days after the Armistice.

Sent to New York, she spent the next six months in minesweeping and salvage work for the Third Naval District.

USS Penguin (Minesweeper # 33) liberty party gathered on the ship’s stern, preparing to go ashore after reviewing the Fleet in New York Harbor, on 26 December 1918. NH 59647

Working the Barrage

Outfitted with “electrical protective devices,” Penguin set out for Scotland in late March 1919 to join the North Sea Minesweeping Detachment.

USS Penguin (Minesweeper # 33) underway near USS Scranton (ID # 3511), probably circa 28 March 1919. Photograph from the USS Scranton photo album kept by J.D. Bartar, one of her crew members. NH 99458

USS Penguin close astern of USS Scranton (ID # 3511), as a Chief Petty Officer, is putting the heaving line 60 ft. between the two ships, circa 28 March 1919. Note the line’s weight in the air above Penguin’s bow. Photograph from the USS Scranton photo album kept by J.D. Bartar, one of her crew members. NH 99450

Beginning operations in June 1919, Penguin was on hand near Scapa Flow when the 72 ships of RADM Ludwig von Reuter’s interned former German High Seas Fleet elected to scuttle rather than have their ships turned over to the Allies. She raced to the scene to help save what could be kept above the waves.

USS Penguin steaming at full speed for Scapa Flow, on 21 June 1919, during an unsuccessful effort to arrive in time to save some of the German warships, scuttled there on that day. Note the identification letters PD on her bow. Halftone reproduction of a photograph taken by DeLong, of USS Black Hawk, published in the cruise book Sweeping the North Sea Mine Barrage, 1919, page 38. Donation of Chief Storekeeper Charles A. Free. NH 99472

In all, Penguin would spend four months plumbing the depths of the North Sea for mines. This included picking up damage in two different explosions. One of these, a mine going off in her kite, resulted in three days in the yard for repair. The second caused more extensive destruction that required her to be repaired at Chatham for a month.

Three explosions between Lapwing and Penguin

USS Penguin (Minesweeper # 33), at left, and USS Lapwing (Minesweeper # 1) coming up to repass sweep gear, after exploding a mine during the sweeping of the North Sea Mine Barrage in 1919. Note the identification letters on the ships’ bows: PD on Penguin and W on Lapwing. Halftone reproduction of a photograph taken by DeLong, of USS Black Hawk, published in the cruise book Sweeping the North Sea Mine Barrage, 1919, page 59. Donation of Chief Storekeeper Charles A. Free. NH 99473

The Buoy Laying Division in Kirkwall Harbor From left to right, in the center: USS Osprey (Minesweeper # 29), USS Penguin (Minesweeper # 33), and USS Lapwing (Minesweeper # 1) moored together in Kirkwall Harbor, Orkney Islands, during the sweeping of the North Sea Mine Barrage, 1919. Note the identification letters on the ships’ bows: A on Osprey, PD on Penguin, and W on Lapwing. Halftone reproduction of a photograph taken by Kitress, of USS Swan, published in the cruise book Sweeping the North Sea Mine Barrage, 1919, page 63. Donation of Chief Storekeeper Charles A. Free. NH 99474

Her repairs at Chatham were completed, and she set off back across the Atlantic with the tug USS Concord on October 31, sailing via the Azores.

For her dangerous service in the Barrage between 5 June and 30 September 1919, Penguin earned a Great War Victory Medal

Peacetime service

Once returning stateside, Penguin was transferred to the Pacific and laid up at Pearl Harbor on 1 June 1922.

With a need for shallow draft gunboats in the Asiatic Fleet to work China’s civil war-torn inland waterways during the country’s Warlord Era, Penguin landed her sweeping gear and, recommissioned 13 October 1923 along with sister USS Pigeon (AM-47), would spend the next seven years on China station ala “The Sand Pebbles.”

USS Penguin (AM-47) in Chinese waters 1920s

As related by her XO at the time, LT (later VADM) Felix L. Johnson, Penguin made it from Pearl to Shanghai with the help of rigged auxiliary sails, which were good for nine knots. Once there, things often got hairy.

From his oral history:

We spent the next two years steaming up and down the Yangtze, protecting missionaries when they had a rough time and looking after American rights. We could only go as far as Ichang, the foot of the gorges, where we began to strike the rapids. We had two little gunboats, the USS Palos (PG-16) and Monocacy (PG-20), which did the run further up from Ichang to Chungking. Some bandits and Chinese were beginning to take cracks at us. We put an armed guard, eight enlisted men, and one officer, on each American merchant ship running the 200–300 miles to Chungking. I’ve made the run many times,the first time I was ever fired on.

Another anecdote from Johnson:

This was the time of the Chinese warlords, and we were always afraid that Chiang So Lin, the warlord of the north, was going to come down and knock everything off the river. Wo Pei Fu was the other warlord. As long as they were suspicious of each other they did not bother us much. One time, the American Consul got word that a group was going to try to take over the consulate. Our Herman Barker took about 40 men, marched from the Standard Oil dock up to the consulate, and spent the night. Just a few shots were fired, but the next day Barker had to march backward all the way, a mile and one half to the dock, because the Chinese were following. The captain fired off a couple of the ship’s 3-inch guns, just up in the air. We never had anybody killed. The objective of the bandits was plunder.

For her tense China service, between June and July 1925, Penguin, along with the destroyers and gunboats Edsall, Elcano, Hart, Isbel, MacLeish, McCormack, Noa, Parrott, Peary, Pillsbury, Pope, Preble, Sacramento, Stewart, and Truxtun earned the (Shanghai) Expeditionary Medal.

She was stationed at Kluklang (near Hankow, now Wuhan) starting in February 1927 for several months, as the sole foreign naval presence in the city during the conflict between the Guomindang army and warlord Sun Chuanfan.

For her 13-month period patrolling along the broad and often very wild banks of the Yangtze River, between 26 September 1926 and 21 October 1927, Penguin’s officers and men aboard during that frame earned the Yangtze Service Medal.

Lapwing class, 1929 janes

The “Old Duck” Lifesaver

Her China service was taken over by newer and more purpose-built gunboats, and Penguin was reassigned to work out of Guam as the territory’s guard ship around 1930. Nicknamed the “Old Duck,” the reports of the Asiatic Fleet from the 1930s frequently note minor problems and mechanical issues with the aging gunboat.

As the Navy had opened mess attendant and steward positions to CHamoru volunteers– with some 700 authorized by 1941 (12 were killed at Pearl Harbor) it made sense for four of Penguin’s crew to be drawn from the local population.

Penguin proved a godsend to many on the sea around Guam during this quiet decade, patrolling the new transpacific air routes and shipping lanes.

Among those plucked from the waves were the 24 mariners of the 91-foot wooden hulled Japanese fishing schooner Daichs Saiho Maru (Seiho Maru No. 1) which wrecked– in a restricted area– on a reef off Guam’s southeast tip on 15 January 1940. Not sure if a fishing schooner needs a 24-member crew, but hey…

A week later, after negotiations by the Navy governor of Guam, Penguin transferred these survivors to the passing Japanese Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) liner Suwa Maru after the Imperial Navy refused access to land them on nearby Saipan itself. Not weird.

Drums of War

With the march towards open combat in the Pacific, the forces on Guam, under Navy Capt. George Johnson McMillin (USNA 1911) as military governor, was sparse.

In the summer of 1940, two .50 caliber water-cooled machine guns were fitted to each AM (Penguin included) and DM in the Pacific Fleet, and Admiral Kimmel, in his 1941 report, recommended additional guns. He also noted that portable depth charge racks- that didn’t interfere with sweeping– each carrying eight ash cans, were being provided to the Mine Divisions.

To help out Penguin, the Navy in October 1941 shipped two “Yippee” yard boats, USS YP-16 and YP-17 to the island as deck cargo aboard the oiler USS Ramapo (AO-12). These were recycled Prohibition-era USCG “six-bitters,” 75-foot wooden hulled patrol boats (ex-CG-267 and ex-CG-275, respectively), each armed with light machine guns and crewed by eight men commanded by a CBM, augmented by four Chamorros. Both of these craft, along with the rest of the island, were seriously damaged in a typhoon in November.

The territory’s station ship, the 4,800-ton freighter USS Gold Star (AK-12), with much of her crew made up of Chamorros, natives of Guam, was in the Philippines in December 1941 on a regular inter-islands cargo run. A small 5,380-ton tanker, USS Robert L. Barnes (SP-3088), had been a fixture in Apra Harbor since 1920 where she had been used as a stationary oil storage vessel, towed every few years to Cavite for maintenance.

That’s it for afloat assets.

Still, the Navy, in June 1941, ordered Penguin to patrol off the Harbor entrance each night, a responsibility only occasionally alternated with the YP boats after October. This order came with a new skipper, the Old Duck’s 16th and final, LT James William Haviland (USNA 1925).

Ashore, a coastal defense battery of 6-inch guns that had been installed in 1909 to defend the station had been withdrawn due to budget cuts in the 1930s along with a Marine aviation unit.

This left 274 Navy personnel (including Penguin’s crew) between the Naval Yard at Piti, the Hospital (which had 70 Medical Corps personnel including five female nurses), and the radio stations at Agana and Libugon. A force of 150 Marines, barracked at Sumay under Lt. Col. William K. McNulty, which was not a combat unit. The Marines had the primary mission to train the recently formed 240-member territorial militia (the Guam Insular Force Guard) which had only been established in April 1941 and the local civilian police force (the Guam Insular Patrol).

Besides the revolver-equipped Insular Patrol, the Insular Guard was armed with just three Lewis guns, four Thompson submachine guns, six BARs, and 85 Springfield M1903 rifles which may have been just for drill purposes (perhaps early low-number ’03s that had been withdrawn by the War Department as unsafe) as several reportedly bore labels that said “Do not shoot. For training only.” There were no mortars, artillery pieces, or heavy machine guns available to the ashore forces. Nothing in a larger caliber than .30-06.

Guam Insular Force Guard parade, displaying of Guam Flag, 1941. Note the Navy whites and turned down “Donald Ducks.” Guam Public Library System Collection

The improvements in the outlying U.S. Navy outposts around the Hawaiian islands from ADM Kimmel’s summer 1941 report, covering Palmyra Reef, Johnston Island, Wake, American Samoa, and Guam, painted a hopeful picture so long as the war could be put off until after 1943: 

With war warnings ramping up, the base evacuated its 104 civilian dependents aboard the steamer SS Henderson to San Francisco in October.

On 5 December 1941, the Navy signaled Capt. McMillin to begin burning his classified materials. At the same time, ADM Thomas C. Hart, the commander of the Asiatic Fleet, ordered Guam’s station ship, Gold Star, to delay sailing back to her homeport and instead remain in the Philippines.

It was clear no one expected Guam to hold if things went hot, and no one was coming in the short term to help them.

War!

As detailed post-war by Capt. McMillin:

0545, 8 December [local] 1941, a message was received which had been originated by the Commander in Chief, Asiatic fleet, to the effect that Japan had commenced hostilities by attacking Pearl Harbor, prior to a declaration of war.

This kickstarted the local plans which included standing up the Insular Guard, arresting known Japanese nationals (including three of eight infiltrators who recently arrived from Saipan), shutting down the navigational lights and beacons, and evacuating local civilians away from potential military targets.

Immediately post-Pearl Harbor, a group of 24 local American civilians on Guam, 17 of which were retired military, mustered into their own group and volunteered to help defend their home. Fighting with the Insular Guard, at least two would go on to perish in Japanese POW camps.

As Penguin, which was out on her regular nightly patrol, had a broken radio (!), one of the Yippie boats was sent out to warn them that a war was on but the minesweeper was already heading back in, with a third of the crew already departed the Old Duck on their way to Recreation Beach to make initial preparations for an afternoon beach party.

As told by a member of her crew, CBM Robert William O’Brien:

The beach had been frantically trying to radio us since early morning, but naturally, they couldn’t reach us, as we had no means of communication. We were still without it and would be until the end because our one and only radioman was in that first boatload of men already ashore. He had gone after spare parts.

Well, you can imagine our consternation. There we were, moored to a buoy right in the middle of the harbor with our boilers dead, as we had doused them upon arrival as we could see the repair barge on the way out from the little Navy Yard in Piti.

Raising steam and getting underway with a reduced crew and no radio, the scratch-and-dent Penguin broke out the ammo for her two water-cooled .50 cals and her two 3-inchers and was as ready as she could be when the first wave of Japanese bombers from Saipan arrived overhead at 0827.

At least one Japanese plane would turn back from Penguin, smoking, while Ensign Robert White, head of one of the gun crews, was killed. A trio of bombs landed so close as to open her seams. Soon, LT Haviland, her skipper, wounded, ordered the men to take to the boats and pull the plug on the Old Duck in 200 fathoms of water so that she couldn’t be salvaged.

“The ship was gallantly fought, but was soon in a sinking condition,” reported McMillian. “The ship was abandoned in a sinking condition and sank in deep water off Orote Point. There several men were injured, but all of the crew succeeded in getting ashore on life rafts, bringing Ensign White’s body with them.”

Then came the fight ashore. Penguin’s men– most of which had lost their shoes in the swim ashore– joined with the under-armed Marines, Insular Guards, and self-mobilized civilians to resist a force of Japanese that, unknown to them, would amount to nearly 6,000 infantry and Naval Special Landing Force members.

A Japanese illustration of the main landing on Guam by the 144th Infantry Regiment, South Seas Detachment. Painting by Kohei Ezaki.

Weapons were scarce.

“I shared a .45 with seven other men,” said Chief O’Brian, who had caught shrapnel in the sinking of Penguin. “If I got it, number two took the gun; if he got it, number three took the gun, and so on.”

The ground combat, which began on the morning of the 10th, was sharp but soon over. Seven further Navy men– six from Penguin— were killed, with the men lost from the minesweeper executed on the beach they were defending.

From Chief O’Brien:

We were waiting for them when they approached Agana, and they had to give themselves away for a group of our Penguin men, six in all, had been established at the power plant. The power plant was on the beach and when they saw the Japanese moving up on the beach, instead of falling back to the Plaza a half mile inland, as had been their orders, they decided to attack the Japanese. They did, and the initial surprise worked well for a few minutes. They had one BAR with them and they moved down a good number. However…in moments they recovered from their surprise and killed all six of our boys quickly.

The Japanese showed their later-to-be-learned attitude by butchering these six so they were beyond recognition. Later one of the Fathers was permitted to take some CHamorus and bury them, and none could be identified, they were so badly mutilated.

The six Minemen killed on the beach:

  • Ernst, Robert Walter, SM3c, 3812969, USN, USS Penguin
  • Fraser, Rollin George, BM1c, 3110965, USN, USS Penguin
  • Hurd, Seba Guarland, SM3c, 3371486, USN, USS Penguin
  • O’Neill, Frank James, BM1c, 3282372, USN, USS Penguin
  • Pineault, Leo Joseph, Cox, 2044461, USN, USS Penguin
  • Schweighhart, John, GM1c, 2282954, USN, USS Penguin

Penguin altogether had 22 of her crew wounded in action– almost half her complement– between the attacks on their ship on the 8th, Japanese air attacks on Guam on the 9th, and the ground combat on the 10th.

Seven Navy bluejackets evaded initial capture and escaped into the jungle: four from the Agana Radio station– RM1c Albert Joseph Tyson and George Ray Tweed, YM1c Adolphe Yablonsky, and Chief Aerographer Luther Wilbur Jones; one from the Piti Naval Yard– CMM Malvern Hill Smoot; and two from Penguin, Chief Motor Machinist’s Mate Michael L. Krump and MM1c Clarence Bruce Johnston. All but Tweed were found during the Japanese occupation and beheaded, with Krump and Johnston holding out until October 1942, an amazing 10 months behind enemy lines.

The Insular Guard lost four killed and 22 wounded, almost all in the short 10 December ground battle.

MacNulty, the 49-year-old Marine barracks commander, was a fighter, having earned a Silver Sar in the Argonne in 1918 and the Navy Cross in Nicaragua in 1926. He lost a full one-third of his men (13 dead and 37 wounded) as casualties and probably would have gone down swinging an empty rifle if Capt. McMillin hadn’t ordered the surrender.

“I was captured in the Reception Room of my quarters about twenty minutes after the cease-firing signal. The leader of the squad of Japanese who entered my quarters required me to remove my jacket and trousers before marching me into the Plaza, where officers and men were being assembled, covered by machine guns,” said McMillin.

Forced to run a gauntlet of rifle butts, the surrendered Americans were forced to strip and lay face up in the sun until noon when they were herded indoors.

They had a whole new war ahead of them.

The POW chapter

Penguin, sunk in deep waters, escaped the Japanese as did Gold Star, which would survive the war carrying precious cargo throughout the South Pacific.

The old tanker Barnes, left strafed and abandoned, was pressed into Japanese service and, recovered at war’s end, was taken into British merchant service until 1949.

The Yippies, YP-16, and YP-17 were strafed by the Japanese and set to the torch by their crews.

In all, 487 people were taken prisoner of war on Guam in December 1941, according to research by Roger Mansell. They were shipped to Japan on 10 January 1942 aboard the transport Argentina Maru. This included not only the legitimate American military POWs but also 13 local Catholic clergy (two of whom were Spanish citizens), 11 Pan-American Airways employees, and six civilian sea cable employees.

At least 19 of the Guam POWs would perish over the next 3.5 years in captivity.

A handful (the nurses, Spanish clergy, a military wife, and her newborn baby) were repatriated in 1942.

The officers, medical corps POWs, and senior NCOs were largely sent at first to the Zentsuji “model camp” which was shown off to the International Red Cross.

Group portrait of POWs from Zentsuji Camp at Shikoku, Osaka, Japan. Identified are Ensign Walter Senchuk, United States (US) Navy Reserve, and USS Penguin (extreme right), the other men are unidentified. Most of the men in the camp were Allied officers captured in the early battles of 1941. The camp was a ‘show camp’ used by the Japanese for propaganda purposes, but after 1942 conditions worsened.

Group portrait of prisoners of war (POWs) from Zentsuji Camp at Shikoku, Osaka, Japan. Identified, left to right: Lieutenant (Lt) James W Haviland, United States Navy, USS Penguin; Lt John L Nestor, US Navy, USS R L Barnes; Major G V Porter, US Army; Mr H P Havenor, US Bureau of the Budget; and Lt Arnold J Carlson, US Navy, Supply. Most of the men in the camp were Allied officers captured in the early battles of 1941. The camp was a ‘show camp’ used by the Japanese for propaganda purposes, but after 1942 conditions worsened.

Group portrait of prisoners of war (POWs) from Zentsuji Camp at Shikoku, Osaka, Japan. Identified, left to right: unidentified; Ensign Edwin Wood, United States (US) Navy, USS Penguin; Ensign Hugh Mellon, US Navy Reserve (USNR); Ensign Joseph Martin Jnr, USNR; and Warrant Officer Robert C Haun, US Navy, Supply. Most of the men in the camp were Allied officers captured in the early battles of 1941. The camp was a ‘show camp’ used by the Japanese for propaganda purposes, but after 1942 conditions worsened.

A group of about 80 prisoners (at least 65 of which had been captured on Guam), considered by the Japanese to be hard cases, were made to work as stevedores on the docks at Osaka Camp No.1 “until they gave the guards so much trouble that they shipped them to a new camp at Hirohata in August 1943 where they acquired the nickname ‘The 80 Eightballs.”

These Eightballs included several men from Penguin.

Of the 55 men from Penguin that Mansell noted as surviving the Battle of Guam and becoming POWs, Capt. Sidney E. Seid, the captured U.S. Army Medical Corps officer at Hirohata, treated at least 10 of Penguin’s crew while at Hirohata for various ailments and injuries. One member of her crew, SK3c Robert Brown MacLean, died of pneumonia in 1944 while a POW.

In total, of the four officers and 60 enlisted among Penguin’s pre-war crew, including regulars, reservists, and Chamorro, 10 were killed in action, died in prison camps, or were executed by the Japanese. Those who survived– 22 of them wounded in action– earned every grain of their POW medals, spending even longer under the Empire’s locks than even the “Battling Bastards of Bataan.” At least one of the ship’s POWs, a young seaman, would suffer a complete mental breakdown and spend the rest of his long life in VA hospitals.

Chief O’Brien, who weighed 175 pounds going into the war, was down to 120 at the end of it.

During the last summer there, the ill effects of living on dried sweet potato vines and dock sweepings finally commenced showing up in a big way. Everyone seemed to be sick at once. The Japanese felt the same way about human beings as they did about their work animals; if sick, cut down the food. If they died… oh, well.

Penguin’s skipper, LT Haviland, was held at the Rokuroshi camp outside of Osaka. Liberated post-war, he was advanced to Captain and presented with a Silver Star. He retired as a rear admiral and passed in 1960 aged 55.

Both Capt. McMillin, the Naval Governor of Guam, and Marine Lt. Col MacNulty would survive the war in the camps as well. McMillin, liberated in August 1945 by Soviet paratroopers at Mukden in Manchuria, would go on to retire as a rear admiral in 1949, then go on to work as a postmaster before passing in 1983, aged 93. MacNulty, also held at the Rokuroshi, retired as a brigadier general in 1946 and passed in 1964, aged 72.

Epilogue

The Marines, with help from the Navy and Coast Guard, returned to liberate Guam in July 1944. RM1c George Tweed emerged from his cave, having evaded capture for 31 months.

The Navy recycled the name “Penguin” during WWII for the lead ship (ASR-12) of a class of submarine rescue and salvage vessels. Commissioned 29 May 1944. She spent a lengthy career working out of New London with the Second Fleet and Rota with the Sixth and, while she conducted hundreds of drills and dozens of tows, she gratefully was never called on to conduct rescue operations for an actual submarine disaster. She decommissioned in 1970.

USS Penguin (ASR-12) photographed on 21 June 1953. NH 105502

Sadly, the Navy has been without a “Penguin” on the Navy List for the past half-century, and neither Haviland, McMillin, nor MacNulty have had a ship named in their honor. That should change.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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

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

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

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

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025: Go Long

Posted on by Leave a comment

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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025: Go Long

Naval History and Heritage Command photo NH 51351

Above we see the Clemson-class “flush decker” USS Long (Destroyer No. 209), taking water over the bow, during her squadron’s experimental Alaska cruise, in 1937.

Don’t let her Great War-era good looks fool you, Long would go on to earn nine battle stars in the Pacific in WWII and be lost some 80 years ago this month.

The Clemsons

One of the massive fleets of 156 Clemson-class flush-decker destroyers, like most of her sisters, Long came too late to help lick the Kaiser. An expansion of the almost identical Wickes-class destroyers with a third more fuel capacity to enable them to escort a convoy across the Atlantic without refueling, the Clemsons were sorely needed to combat the pressing German submarine threat of the Great War.

At 1,200 tons and with a top speed of 35 knots, they were brisk vessels ready for the task.

Inboard and outboard profiles for a U.S. Navy Clemson-class destroyer, in this case, USS Doyen (DD-280)

Meet Long

Our subject is the only warship named for the Secretary of the Navy during the Spanish-American War, John Davis Long, one of the fathers of the “New American Navy.”

Laid down by William Cramp & Sons at Philadelphia on 23 September 1918– just Pershing’s Doughboys came out on top in the Battle of Saint-Mihiel– Long was just too late for the Great War. Launched on 26 April 1919, she was commissioned on 20 October 1919.

Of note, Long was a bit different from the rest of her Clemson-class sisters. While they were mostly completed with four single 4″/50s as a main battery, Long and her sister USS Hovey (DD 208) were completed with four twin 4″/50 mounts, doubling their guns.

Besides Long and Hovey, only the old (Caldwell-class) destroyer USS Stockton (DD 73) carried this Mk 14 mount, and she only did as a single experimental model mounted forward.

Stockton with her twin 4″/50 Mk 14

Hovey and Long carried four of these mounts, one forward and aft and two amidships.

USS Hovey (DD-208) view looking down from the foremast, showing the twin 4/50 gun mounts atop her midships deckhouse, along with a loading practice machine (in the lower left), ready service ammunition stowage, and three of the ship’s smokestacks. Taken during the mid-1930s. Collection of Rear Admiral Elmer E. Duval, Sr., who was Hovey’s Commanding Officer at the time. NH 99573

Postbellum service and a decade-long nap

While she didn’t get a chance to fire her guns in anger during the war itself, Long was nonetheless sent “Over There” following her East Coast shakedown cruise, assigned to DesDiv 26, she was assigned to the war-torn Adriatic and Mediterranean in the tense post-war era and served in the region as a station ship.

USS Long (DD-209) dressed in her glad rags next to one of her sisters in the Mediterranean, and two other dressed warships to the rear, circa 1919-1920. Courtesy of Jack Howland, 1982. NH 93979

Remaining overseas, she was sent to the exotic climes of the Asiatic Fleet in late 1920, based at Cavite.

USS Long (DD-209) and another destroyer of the Asiatic Fleet, c 1920s. Note the local vessel traffic– junks etc.– and extensive awning fits, common in the Pacific inter-war. Courtesy of Capt. G. F. Swainson, USN, 1969 NH 67244

Ordered back home after her globetrotting overseas service, Long was mothballed due to peacetime budget cuts– the Navy shrank from 752 ships in 1919 to just 379 by the end of 1922.

With that, Long decommissioned at San Diego on 30 December 1922, but she was kept on emergency standby if needed.

The 62 mothballed Clemsons at San Diego in the 1920s were, under Special Plan Orange (a Pacific war against the Empire of Japan), considered able to reactivate within 30 days as Category B assets after receiving an officer and 13 men from as a “nucleus” crew from an active duty sister– Long would get hers from USS Henshaw (DD 278) while Hovey would get her baker’s dozen from USS Moody (DD 277).
 
Another 21 rates would come from the Fleet Reserve pool. The balance of the recommissioning crew, 3 officers and 80 men, would be recalled reservists in the Third Naval District (New York). In all, this would give these tin cans an authorized 4 officers and 114 men, a force that could be fleshed out by a truckload of new recruits right from the depot if it fell short. 
The rates drawn for the nucleus crew and Fleet Reserve:

Thirty-four mothballed destroyers of the U.S. Navy decommissioned in 1921 and tied up at the San Diego Naval Base, being hauled from their berths by tugs to replace ships of the 11th and 12th squadrons that were being laid up. USS Long (DD-209) can be seen as tugs prepare to move her out, on 21 September 1929. Courtesy of the San Francisco Maritime Museum, San Francisco, California, 1969. NH 69123

Salad days

Between 1930-31, 60 Navy high mileage active duty flush-deckers with worn-out Yarrow boilers were decommissioned and disposed of– it was cheaper to scrap them than rebuild them. This required a dip into the reserve fleet to reactivate 60 of the low-mileage tin cans that had been growing algae on their hulls to take their place.

That meant Long, which recommissioned at San Diego on 29 March 1930, had her hull cleaned and was brought back to life, this time assigned to the Pacific Fleet.

A circa 1930s photo of USS Long, note her giant hull numbers, which were typical of the period. NARA 80-G-1025957

She maintained the standard peacetime operational tempo common to the fleet in the 1930s, alternating between training cruises and large fleet problems.

Battleship USS Maryland (BB-46) and escorting destroyers USS Hovey (DD-208), and USS Long (DD-209) (ships listed left to right) In the Miraflores Locks, while transiting the Panama Canal during the annual inter-ocean movement of the U.S. Fleet, 24 April 1931. Note the distinctive twin 4″/50 Mk 14 gun mountings carried by Hovey and Long. 80-G-455918

Part of the combined U.S. fleet moored in Balboa harbor on 25 October 1934. Ships present include two battleships at dock, three cruisers, while the leviathan destroyer tenders USS Whitney (AD-4) and Dobbin (AD-3) nurse more than 40 destroyers. Among the latter are McFarland (DD-237), Goff (DD-247), and Long (DD-209). 80-G-455966

In the summers of 1936 and 1937, the Navy sent destroyer squadrons (along with the carrier USS Ranger) into Alaskan waters to get a feel for fleet operations in that increasingly valuable territory. As Alaska was far removed from the CONUS, and its Aleutians chain rather close to Northern Japan– with Attu island just 1,300 miles from Hokkaido while some 2,800 miles from Seattle– the writing was on the wall that the territory could find itself a difficult battleground should war come between the U.S. and the Empire.

Following these deployments, at the urging of a report by RADM Arthur J. Hepburn’s board, the Navy in 1938 recommended the construction of a naval base on sprawling Amaknak Island, at Dutch Harbor, with the first troops arriving there in June 1941.

Long and her direct sister Hovey, accompanied by half-sisters USS Dallas (DD-199), Wasmuth (DD-338), Zane (DD-337), and Trever (DD-339), made the 1937 sortie.

The photos from the cruise show an idyllic window into what would be an interbellum period.

Talk about a recruiting poster! USS Long (DD-209) underway during an Alaskan cruise, circa 1937. Note her twin 4/50 gun mountings. She was one of two ships of her class to carry these weapons and would trade them in during WWII for a quartet of 3″/50s. NH 63243

Destroyers USS Long (DD-209) and USS Wasmuth (DD-338) in Chelkate Inlet with the Kakuhau Range Mountains in the background during an Alaska cruise, 1937. NH 109579

USS Long (DD-209) leading USS Wasmuth (DD338), during the Alaskan cruise of 1937. NH 51845

Clemson class destroyers maneuvering at sea during an Alaska cruise. Left to right: USS Wasmuth (DD-338), Long (DD-209), USS Zane (DD-337), and USS Trever (DD-339), 1937. NH 109560

Destroyers in Wrangell Narrows, after view of USS Dallas (DD-199), USS Wasmuth (DD-338), and USS Long (DD-209) following North Flat South end lights in Wrangell Narrows during an Alaska cruise, 1937. NH 109578

Destroyers USS Long (DD-209) in front with USS Trever (DD339) and USS Zane (DD-337) in the rear during an Alaska cruise, 1937. NH 109581

Destroyers USS Wasmuth (DD-338) and USS Long (DD-209) maneuvering while flying their flag signals during an Alaska cruise, 1937. NH 109582

During the 1937 Alaska cruise, destroyer USS Dallas (DD-199) noses her bow toward the city of Juneau, the capital of the Alaska Territory, situated on the Gastineau Channel with a population of about 4,500 people. USS Long (DD-209) and USS Wasmuth (DD-338) are already docked in the foreground, with a 250-foot Lake class Coast Guard cutter of the Bering Sea Patrol to the right. NH 109568

Now that is MWR! Sailors from USS Dallas, Long, and Wasmuth fishing in Auan Creep Hump Back Bay, Alaska NH 118928

Destroyers docked at Skagway, Alaska: USS Dallas (DD-199), USS Long (DD-209), and USS Wasmuth (DD-338) as they dock side by side at Skagway, Alaska, with snow-covered mountains in the background, 1937. NH 109565

The cruise would also see some dramatic images captured, with Long leading the pack of greyhounds.

USS Long (DD-209) leading other destroyers in a change of course, during the Alaska cruise, in 1937. NH 51353

USS Long (DD-209) leading sister USS Wasmuth (DD 338) through Fitzhugh Sound, British Columbia, during the Alaskan cruise of 1937. NH 51847

Long rolling, during the Alaska cruise, in 1937. NH 51350

Destroyer tender USS Dixie (AD-14), was photographed in early 1940 with USS Long (DD-209) alongside. NH 89401

DMS Conversion

With the class having so many hulls, and the Navy steadily building more advanced classes of destroyers, the Clemsons saw many of these aging greyhounds converted to other uses including as “green dragon” fast troop transports (ADP) able to put a battalion ashore via davit-carried LCVPs, fast minelayers (DMs) carrying 80 mines, small seaplane tenders (AVD) capable of supporting a squadron of flying boats such as PBYs, and fast minesweepers (DMS).

In late 1940, nine of the class– Chandler, Southard, Hovey, Hopkins, Zane, Wasmuth, Trever, Perry, and Long, became ersatz minesweepers. Long became DMS-12 on 19 November 1940.

The DMS conversion meant the installation of mechanical sweep gear, primarily a pair of paravane cranes on the stern (port and starboard), along with large deck-mounted cable winches, and space for four vanes and kites.

They still had their depth charge racks (repositioned forward and angled outboard), guns (which were downgraded), and two Y-gun depth charge throwers to continue to work as escorts, as well as (eventually) an SC radar. Gone were the torpedo tubes and, as they didn’t need to be too fast, they landed the No.4 boiler and had their exhaust vented into three shortened funnels, with the fourth removed. Generator sets were upgraded to provide 120kw vs the original 75kw. This still allowed a 25-knot speed.

From Long’s 29 October 1943 plans at Mare Island, detailing her crew at the time as well as her battery (four 3″50 Mk 20 DPs, five 20mm Oerlikons) and powerplant:

Her profile, 29 October 1943, as DMS-12, note the shadow of her original four tall stacks now replaced by three smaller ones:

Compare the difference between her 1930s four-piper profile and the one seen during WWII:

NH 67630 compared to NH 81358

It was in this configuration that Long found herself when Pearl Harbor was attacked.

War!

Based at Pearl Harbor with several of her sisters as part of Mine Squadron 2, Long escaped the Japanese attack on 7 December 1941 due to the fact she and four DMS sisters were at sea as escort for the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis (CA‑35) at the time some 800 miles southwest conducting a simulated naval bombardment of remote Johnson Island.

From Indy’s War Diary:

Returning to Pearl with the cruiser-DMS force on 9 December, Long steamed into the still-smoking harbor, then soon after began a series of antisubmarine patrols around the islands.

Long alternated this duty over the past six months with running coastal escorts among the Hawaiian Islands and with runs to Midway, Palmyra, and far-off Canton, where the Navy was building an airstrip.

Then came a stint in Alaskan waters following the Japanese attack on Dutch Harbor and the occupation of Attu and Kiska. Serving in the familiar old territory for the next 15 months, she narrowly avoided destruction in a collision with the destroyer USS Monaghan (DD‑354) in heavy fog, and fired her first shots in anger, on 31 January 1943 against Japanese air attacks on Amchitka’s Constantine Harbor with three fellow Clemsons.

In May 1943, she was assigned to TG 51.3 of RADM Francis Rockwell’s TF 51, the Attu Assault Force. Standing out of Cold Harbor as part of the screen for Rockwell’s flag on the battlewagon USS Pennsylvania on 4 May, seven days later she and the fellow fast minesweepers USS Elliot (DMS-4) and USS Chandler (DMS 9) broke off from the main force and swept the lanes to the landing beaches on Japanese-held Attu.

The 12th saw a repeat, this time in Massacre Bay.

The rest of the month saw Long revert back to her destroyer DNA and provide escort and ASW patrol around the island, including the spirited pursuit of a sonar contact on the 15th.

While there were known Japanese midget submarines based in the Aleutians, and larger subs passing through, post-war records didn’t support a “kill” claim for this incident.

Then came the Kiska and Adak operations until, finally, Long was dispatched back to Pearl Harbor in September 1943 for some warmer service.

USS Long (DMS-12) photographed during World War II. Courtesy of D. M. McPherson, 1974. NH 81358

Following a refit and escort and patrol operations in Hawaiian waters, Long was dispatched to the Southwest Pacific to join in the New Guinea operations in February 1944. Operating as part of TF 76, she supported the landings there and in the Admiralties and Hollandia, (Operations Reckless and Persecution) both sweeping mines and escorting.

It was at Humboldt Bay on 22 April 1944 that she was able to both run her paravanes and get hits on shore targets, firing 253 rounds of 3″/50 and 660 of 20mm on the landing beaches of Cape Tjeweri, Cape Djar, and Cape Kassoe, just prior to the LVTs and LSTs carrying the 162nd and 186th Regiments of the 41st “Jungleers” Division hitting the beach.

Switching gears and sailing north to the Marianas, Long was on hand for the occupation of Saipan in June and the liberation of Guam in July, in each cases conducting preinvasion mine sweeps to clear lanes, then providing radar picket and guard ship duties, followed by convoy work.

Similar operations in the Palaus in September and October included a very hectic week during the landings during which Long, Hovey, and fellow DMS vessels were zapping mines left and right. In all, Long destroyed at least 45 Japanese mines during the Palau operation, all via 3-inch gunfire– some as close as 100 yards– following sweeping.

A sample day: 

This brought Long into the drive to liberate the Philippines after nearly three years of Japanese occupation.

Sailing under orders with Minesweeping Unit 1 in early October, she spearheaded the invasion of the PI at Leyte Gulf, successfully clearing Japanese mines off Dinagat and Hibuson, as well as in the Dulag‑Tacloban approach channel and the soon-to-be-infamous Surigao Strait, all while fighting off Japanese air attacks.

A sample of these operations, that of 19 October 1944:

She spent the Battle of the Surigao Strait guarding empty transports bound in convoy for Manus, narrowly avoiding contact with the Japanese surface.

Late December saw her return to the PI to sweep for the landings at Lingayen Gulf. Just after the New Year, while in the Mindanao Sea, she survived a series of furious Japanese air attacks, continuing her yeoman job of sweeping.

Long’s luck ran out on 6 January.

Two Japanese Zeke 52s approached from low over the beach, dropping down to just 25 feet of the deck, with one strafing and crashing into (DD-232/APD-10) and the other coming fast at Long broadside on her port side. Although LT Stanley David Caplan, Long’s 16th and final skipper, rang up 25 knots and ordered everything on board to fire on the incoming planes. Despite three 3″/50s and three 20mm Oerlikons opening up and hits being observed, it was already over.

As detailed in an 11-page report by Caplan, who survived the maelstrom:

Her old twin, Hovey, was on hand and immediately stood by to help, as did her sister Chandler, and the fleet tug USS Apache (AT-67).

Caplan observed a five-foot hole in Long’s side, penetrating to the officer’s wardroom and the forward living compartment, with fire observed just over the No. 1. magazine. Nonetheless, 26 men responded to Caplan’s call for volunteers to attempt to reboard and save their faithful old tin can.

While organizing the return from Apache’s deck, disaster struck.

Waiting overnight, by the next morning, Long’s main deck, just after the forecastle about midships, was underwater, while her screws were showing on the stern. Her back was broken. There was nothing left to save. Landing on the sinking ship with 12 volunteers to make sure the ship’s sensitive gear was wrecked, Caplan and party soon departed after just five minutes, leaving just “30 seconds to a minute to the good” before the destroyer capsized then went down in two pieces at 1115 on 7 January.

Six men were killed in the attack on Long, with two others later passing from their injuries.

Sadly, Hovey would perish a few hours before her sister took her final dive, hit by a Japanese Kate torpedo bomber, carrying a fish, around 0455 on the 7th. By dawn, she was lost, and the men she had taken off Long, some 120 survivors, went back into the water. The Chandler and Apache moved in to make their second extended rescue in 24 hours.

Some 35 bluejackets injured in Long’s initial kamikaze strike and another 28 from her that picked up wounds while on Hovey were transferred to the large sick bay on the battleships USS California and USS West Virginia. Two dozen men from Brooks and Long who were aboard Hovey when she sank were never found.

Both Hovey and Long earned Navy Unit Commendations for their service, both for action at Palau.

Besides the NUC, Long earned at least night battle stars during her WWII service including:

  • 11 May 43 – 31 May 43 Attu occupation
  • 2 Feb 44 – 8 Feb 44 Western New Guinea operations
  • 29 Feb 44 – 4 Mar 44 and 7 Mar 44 – 11 Mar 44 Admiralty Island landings
  • 18 Apr 44 – 25 Apr 44 and 2 May 44 Hollandia operation (Aitape Humbolt Bay-Tanahmerah Bay)
  • 13 Jun 44 – 18 Jul 44 Capture and Occupation of Saipan
  • 12 Jul 44 – 25 Jul 44 Capture and Occupation of Guam
  • 6 Sep 44 – 14 Oct 44 Capture and occupation of southern Palau Islands
  • 12 Oct 44 – 20 Oct 44 Leyte landings (as well as 4 Jan 45 – 18 Jan 45), and Battle of Surigao Strait

Epilogue

Long’s war diaries are in the National Archives along with her circa 1943 plans. 

The Navy never saw fit to recycle the name, despite her nine battlestars and NUC. The same goes for Hovey.

The twins rest somewhere in the Lingayen Gulf, very close to each other, near position 16º12’N, 120º11’E.

LT Caplan, born in 1915 in Elmira, New York, and commissioned via ROTC in 1940, had already survived Pearl Harbor with a commendation for his actions that day. He likewise survived the war and passed in 1999 on dry land in Florida, aged 84.

There are no Clemsons preserved. No less than 16 sisters in addition to Long and Hovey were lost during WWII.

For more information on the Clemsons and their like, read CDR John Alden’s book, “Flush Decks and Four Pipes” and/or check out the Destroyer History Foundation’s section on Flushdeckers. 

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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

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

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

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

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025: Frozen Comanche

Posted on by 5 comments

Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday to 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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025: Frozen Comanche

USCG image.

Above we see the 165-foot (A) Algonquin-class U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Comanche (WPG 76) with her warpaint on, circa 1942, while part of the oft-forgotten Greenland Patrol during WWII. With Greenland and its defense in the news right now, it is worth revisiting the ship that started the whole discussion, so to speak.

The Algonquins

In 1934, the Coast Guard moved to construct a half dozen new ice-strengthened patrol gunboats (by Navy standards). These were based on the successful circa 1915 165-foot ice-breaking cutter Ossipee (WPG 50) but constructed with a reinforced belt at the waterline and a cutaway forefoot, features that, combined with their geared turbine drives– the first for the USCG– were thought capable of breaking up to two feet of sea ice.

USCGC Ossipee, view taken circa 1916, shortly after her completion. NH 89751

Coast Guard 165-foot cutter Ossipee, Boston Navy Yard, April 1932. Note her 3-inch guns forward. Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection

As noted by Scheina:

The plating doubled around the bow, the cutaway forefoot, short length, and medium draft made these cutters good ice boats. They had a heavy steel belt around the vessel at the waterline and relatively short bilge keels, so in a seaway they had a tendency to roll considerably.

Built for a total of just under $3 million in Public Works Administration construction allotments, three of these new cutters– Algonquin (WPG-75), Comanche, and Mohawk (WPG-78) — were awarded on 14 October 1934 with Pusey & Jones Company of Wilmington, Delaware while a week later on 23 October a second trio– USCGC Escanaba (WPG-77), Onondaga (WPG-79) and Tahoma (WPG-80)-– were contracted with Defoe on the Great Lakes at Bay City, Michigan.

Using a pair of side-by-side Foster-Wheeler high-pressure boilers to feed a centerline 1,500shp Westinghouse double-reduction geared turbine mated to a single screw, the Algonquins could make a paint-peeling 12.8 knots at full RPMs or a more economical 9.4 knots, with the latter allowing a 5,000nm range– long enough legs to wallow across the Atlantic if need be or pull far-off Bering Sea and International Ice Patrols.

Algonquin on trials in the Delaware River, 1934

A peacetime crew of six officers and 56 men could handle the cutter and a main battery of two 3″/50 guns, curiously arranged abreast of each other on the foc’sle, backed up by a pair of two quaint old 6-pounders off the bridge wings, provided a top-side armament. Typical of Coast Guard cutters for the time, the 3-inchers were almost always well greased up and covered, only fired on annual gunnery exercises, while the 6-pounders were used more liberally for law enforcement, saluting, line-throwing, and signaling. Typical peacetime allowances per cutter included 55 service rounds and 110 “Navy” blanks per 6-pounder and 60 service rounds per 3-incher.

There were also enough small arms to send a light platoon-sized (30-man) landing force ashore, arranged in a six-man HQ team, two eight-man rifle squads, and an eight-man machine gun detachment. The 1938 small arms allowance for cutters of this size was for 40 M1903 Springfield rifles with bayonets and slings, 15 M1911 pistols with two magazines apiece, two M1917 Lewis guns, and at least one Thompson sub gun, all fed by 2,400 rounds of .30 caliber ball for the Lewis guns and rifles and a whopping 6,000 of .45 ACP for the pistols and Tommy guns. A full 38 sets of “landing force gear”, including a FAK, mess kit, canteen, web belt with pouches, haversack, and pack carrier, were stored for such use.

Coast Guard cutter crew made up in landing force kit. Note the M1903 Springfield rifles. USCG Historian’s Office, CG-09231220211-G-G0000-025

These cutters also had magazines for legacy 238-pound guncotton or smaller new 150-pound TNT electrically detonated “wrecking mines” used in destroying derelicts– or in reducing hazardous icebergs and blasting paths in the ice sheet.

Coast Guard destroying a derelict with TNT mines. March 1927. An explosion on the water throws lumber through the air. In the foreground is the railing of a Coast Guard ship with the American flag flying. The caption reads, “Destroying a derelict with TNT mines. The Coast Guard destroys or removes from the path of navigation hundreds of such derelicts each year.” NARA 26-G-03-21-27(1)

As detailed by a 1935 Yachtsman article, these cutters typically carried a 36-foot motor launch with a 20hp engine, two 26-foot Monomoy-type surf boats, and a 19-foot surf boat, the latter three vessels oar-powered.

Electrified, these cutters had an extensive radio suite (three transmitters and four receivers) with the vessel’s radio call letters prominently displayed for overhead aircraft, interior and topside lighting, refrigerators and reefers sufficient for length patrols, and a pair of remote-controlled 12-inch incandescent searchlights on the flying bridge overhead.

Meet Comanche

Our cutter is the second to carry the name of the fierce Native American tribe in the USCG.

The first, a 170-foot vessel which was the service’s first attempt at a “modern” steam cutter in 1897, originally commissioned as the USRC Windom and, after serving during the Spanish-American War and the Great War, policed against rumrunners in the Gulf of Mexico during Prohibition before she was disposed of in 1930.

The original USCGC Comanche, formerly USRC Windom, seen in 1920. CG Historian’s Photo.

Our Comanche, laid down at Pusey & Jones in late 1933, was launched in September 1934 and commissioned in December.

Comanche seen on 26 November 1934, post-delivery but before commissioning in a rare period color photo. Note she does not have her Navy-owned main and secondary batteries fitted yet but does have her gleaming white hull, buff stack and masts, and black cap.

The Coast Guard has never been overstaffed, and the plankowners of her first crew were transferred hot from the old cutter Gresham, which was being decommissioned for the first time and was co-located at Wilmington. As Gresham still had stores aboard while Comanche did not, her crew had to walk back to their old cutter for meals for the first several days.

Her 1934 deck log for commissioning, detailing her initial five officers and four men transferred from the USCG inspector office at the builder’s yard, while 43 other men came from Gresham:

One of her enlisted inherited from Gresham, 44-year-old S1c Maurice D. Jester, listed above, had volunteered for the service in 1917 as a surfman. A chief boatswain mate by 1941, Jester was given a temporary lieutenant’s commission post-Pearl Harbor and, in command of the 165-foot USCGC Icarus (WPC-110), would sink one of the first U-boats (U-352) by an American ship in WWII, earning a Navy Cross in the process.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Comanche was stationed at Stapleton, New York, on Staten Island, and carried out the typical varied missions of the Coast Guard, often deploying to Florida for patrols and naval training exercises in the summer.

CGC Comanche in service, 1930s. Note that she has her armament installed

A page covering a typical day while on one such stint deployed to the Sunshine State:

Having an ice-cruncher bow, she also pulled down the additional task of light ice-breaking on the Hudson River in winter.

Comanche Hudson River ice patrol, Saugerties, 1938

Comanche Hudson River Ice Patrol, 1939

March 1936. “This image depicts the Coast Guard cutter Comanche, which found the pictured vessels stuck fast in the ice off Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and broke the ice to free them.” NARA 26-G-04-27-36(8)

War! (In Denmark)

Despite being neutral, Denmark was invaded by Germany on 9 April 1940.

German Linienschiff Schleswig-Holstein off Denmark on April 9, 1940, sending landing forces ashore

This led to a tense occupation that, for the first three years or so, still “allowed” the Danes to keep their military, so long as it remained in skeletal format, hiding in its garrisons and ports.

The majority of the ships of the Royal Danish Navy would be immolated or drowned by their faithful crews in August 1943 when the Germans moved to capture them once the veil of civility was removed from the occupation. Despite being almost totally disarmed and de-fueled to comply with German armistice requirements, a handful of vessels managed to make it across the Oresund to neutral Sweden or were lost trying.

A few vessels outside of metropolitan Denmark- such as the two armed Icelandic Coast Guard cutters Aegir and Odinn and two smaller vessels in Greenland waters, which we will get to- escaped German custody or destruction to prevent such custody. A beautiful 212-foot three-masted schoolship, the Danmark, filled with Danish merchant marine and naval cadets, was on an extended visit to America in 1940 and would end up clocking in after Pearl Harbor, crew included, to train over 5,000 USCG and USMM officer cadets during the war as USCGC Danmark (WIX-283).

Meanwhile, in giant colonial Greenland, the world’s largest island, the entire armed Danish military presence in April 1940 amounted to the Royal Danish Navy inspektionsskip Maagen and opmålingsskib (survey ship) Ternen. Small shallow draft sailing cutters with auxiliary diesels had an 11-member crew, a single ancient low-angle 3-pounder (37mm) M/84 cannon, and some small arms. Four larger corvette/frigate-sized inspection ships existed– Besytteren, Islands Falk, Hvidbjornen, and Ingolf— but were in Denmark getting ready for their summer patrols and thus were trapped there under German occupation.

The Royal Danish Navy’s opmålingsskib (survey ship) Ternen, left, and inspektionsskip Maagen, right, wintered in Greenland waters and thus were there in April 1940, escaping German capture. They were small cutters, at about 70 feet oal and 100 tons displacement, good for about 8 knots on their single diesel engine.

Other than the two cutters, the only other armed body in Greenland was the police under their inspector (Politiinspektør for Østkysten), the multi-hatted Danish polar explorer Ejnar Mikkelsen– who was back in Denmark at the time. The force had two stations (politistationer), at Eskimonæs (to cover the Norddistriktet) and Ella Ø (to cover the Syddistriktet), with just two officers at each location. This was to enforce the law over a territory about three times larger than Texas. Even this token group was only created in 1933 to answer the dispute with Norway over what was called Erik Raudes Land in north-east Greenland, with the League of Nations arbitrating that if Denmark wanted to continue to claim all Greenland as its territory, it had to maintain a permanent presence.

Although Norse settlements went back to the 9th Century, the island’s population in 1940 was still just hovering around 18,000, and the four police officers and 22 navy personnel described above were all that was needed for its constabulary purposes.

Worse, there were some serious German efforts to win the hearts and minds of the locals via a “religious mission” in Nuuk, which sent emissaries out to isolated settlements along the coast. 

From a post-war report by Danish journalist Ole Vinding: 

a small group of Greenlandic Nazi sympathizers in Sisimiut, where anti-Danish sentiment is said to have been particularly pronounced among parts of the Greenlandic population. Based on eyewitness accounts, Vinding reports on the practices and symbols of the Nazi movement, whose followers are said to have saluted with arms on Adolf Hitler’s birthday, taught children the “Sieg Heil” at school, adapted their sealskin boots (kamikker) to look like military boots, and adopted the German salute. Last but not least, the members of the group are said to have worn swastika armbands decorated with an upright polar bear outside the white circle. According to Vinding, two catechists trained in Nuuk are said to have spread the gospel of National Socialism in the North Greenland colony. In Nuuk, the friendliness towards Germany was notorious at times and even divided Danish officials on this issue. However, the friendly attitude towards Nazi Germany in the Greenlandic administrative capital did not [according to Vinding] turn into “pure Nazism”.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military had long bumped along the Greenland coast, including the Navy visiting it during the Polaris expedition of 1871–1873, the Juniata and Jeannette expeditions in 1873 and 1879-81, the Greely Relief Expedition in 1884, and the well-known Peary Arctic Expedition in 1898-1901.

This continued into the 20th Century.

The U.S. Army Air Corps, which embarked on a record circumnavigation of the globe via floatplane in 1924, made sure to photograph elements of Greenland’s southern coastline on the pass.

In 1928, the 125-foot USCGC Marion carried out two full months of extensive oceanographic and iceberg studies of the region, fleshing out charts and adding to the general knowledge of the 450,000 sq. miles of the Davis Strait, with copies forwarded to the Danish Hydrographic Office. Her skipper was LT Edward Hanson “Iceberg” Smith, a polar ice nerd who had attended MIT before joining the Revenue Cutter Service in 1910, loved working the International Ice Patrol, and went on to attain a Ph.D. in oceanography from Harvard.

USCGC Marion alongside a glacier in Baffin Bay, Canada. August 1928. The Active-class patrol boat, built for the Rum War, would go on to serve through WWII and was only disposed of in 1962. NH 46401

In 1933, the American Geographical Society wrapped up a trip to nearly all the fjords in Greenland between 72°30’ and 74°North latitude, including photogrammetric mapping of the valleys, glaciers, and mountains, and depth charting the fjords with echo-sounding equipment. Five years later, American meteorologist Clifford MacGregor conducted a groundbreaking study on the formation of polar air masses over Greenland.

To complicate things, the chief industry in Greenland in 1940 was an immense and strategically important cryolite mine at Ivittuut (Invigtut, also seen as Ivigtut)– a vital mineral used at the time to smelt aluminum. The largest known natural deposit of cryolite in the world was at Ivittuut, where about 150 mostly Canadian and Scandinavian miners toiled in the pits for the rare substance under the employ of the Kryolith Mine-og Handelsselskabet A/S.

Kryolitminen, Ivigtut, Greenland, 1937. The ships are the Danish patrol gunboat Hvidbjørnen (right) and the mines tender, the 1,200-ton coaster SS Julius Thomsen. Hvidbjørnen, trapped in Denmark in 1940, was scuttled by her crew during the war, while Thomsen, taken over by the British, survived and kept up a regular transit between Canada and America and the mine during the war. THM-18645

With all this in mind, the two Danish Landsfogeder (governors) of Greenland, Eske Brun and Aksel Svane, invoked a 1925 emergency clause that allowed the colony to govern itself in the event of war. Moving forward, the Landsfogeder coordinated with the Danish ambassador in Washington, Henrik Kauffmann, to act as a sovereign nation per the Monroe Doctrine for the U.S. to protect Greenland and keep it neutral.

Kauffmann met with his American counterparts in D.C. on 10 April 1940, the day after the Germans rolled into Denmark. The response was warm.

But first, there needed to be a U.S. presence in Greenland.

Comanche to the rescue!

With the State Department in high gear to recognize the new (if temporary) independent government in Greenland and with the blessing of the island’s local administrative councils, Comanche, then in New York City’s Pier 18, made ready to sail in early May 1940. This shortcutted the planned British “Force X” being organized in Canada to seize the island.

Comanche took aboard Consul James K. Penfield and Vice-consul George L. West on State Department orders. Also sailing on the cutter would be Maurice R. Reddy, the assistant director of the American Red Cross, tasked with assessing Greenland’s need for supplies as the last ship from Denmark had arrived the previous October. She also carried a detachment of five spare Coast Guard radiomen, which would be landed to operate the infant consulate’s radio station and provide security.

Every nook and cranny of the 165-foot cutter was packed with extra provisions, heavy on canned goods, salted meats, and tinned fish. The crew was issued heavy sheepskin coats and purchased commercial in the city’s garment district. Also included as cargo, as detailed by the New York Times, was a “complete outfit of office furniture for the consulate,” and a “fairly large quantity of lumber fastened down on the forward deck. It was supplied to the Red Cross and will be used to build sheds to shelter supplies sent later.”

As detailed by Penfield in the American Foreign Service Journal:

The poor little 165-foot Comanche was so loaded down (thanks largely to the superhuman efforts of the Despatch Agent, Mr. Fyfe) that even the Captain’s shower was stuffed with boxes of books, skis, snowshoes, rubber boots and duffle bags full of parkas, woolen underwear and heavy socks. But in spite of its load it pitched and rolled its way to St. Johns with such gusto that we thought we’d never know the meaning of the word horizontal again, except in the very unsatisfactory relative sense of a body in a bunk (when it wasn’t pitched out onto the deck).

Leaving NYC on 10 May 1940– the same day Germany invaded neutral Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands on his sweep through the Lowlands while the British preemptively occupied Iceland for the Allies– the little overseas mission arrived at Godthab (now Nuuk), on Greenland’s west coast, on 20 May.

A thrilled-looking U.S. Consul James K. Penfield (right) and Vice Consul George L. West Jr. (left) arrive in Greenland aboard Cutter Comanche. (Acme News Pictures Inc. 1940).

Discharging her cargo and passengers, Comanche proceeded 200nm down the coast to become a station ship at Arsuk Fjord, directly adjacent to the cryolite mining concern.

Soon, 14 Coastguardsmen recently “discharged” from the service took up newly established positions as uniformed security guards on the staff of the Invigtut cryolite mine, paid a hefty $125 per month (the average non-rate in the USCG made about $50 a month) for the next 12 months with a $225 bonus for completing the contract, all paid by the local Greenland government. The funds to pay these guards, as well as to buy a “surplus” 3″/50 gun, eight Lewis guns, and 55 M1903 rifles landed via USCG cutter, along with shells and bullets for said ordnance, came from a $1 million cash deal from Uncle Sam for local goods negotiated by Brun in a delegation carried back to America by the USCGC Campbell.

This original detachment was soon joined by a 15th man, late from the interned training ship Danmark. A replacement shift of 20 similarly recruited “newly civilianized” USCG men would arrive in July 1941 and guard the mine until May 1942, when the U.S. Army took over the watch.

Comanche at Shipshaven, Ivigtut Greenland 1941

Besides Comanche, two larger cutters soon followed: the 327-foot Treasury class cutters Campbell (June 1940) and Duane (August), with both of the 5-inch gunned twin-screwed cutters suffering issues in the ice. By 10 September, both the 327s were sent back to the U.S. The icebreaking USCG Northland also arrived in August and would operate on the wild east coast of Greenland, where a plan was made with local officials to clear the remote Northeast coastline of its 20-odd inhabitants with the assistance of the Free Norwegian Navy gunboat Fridtjof Nansen.

Comanche was relieved at Ivittuut on 4 September 1940 by the 250-foot Lake class cutter Cayuga. By January 1941, Northland and Cayuga had returned to the U.S. for the worst of the winter, leaving behind the 15 guards at the mine and five radiomen at the consulate to hold down the island until April 1941, when Cayuga and Northland would return.

Meet the Greenland Patrol

On the first anniversary of Germany’s occupation of Denmark, 9 April 1941, the U.S. and Greenland entered into a formal defense agreement.

With a special U.S. survey team carried by Cayuga to Greenland, working from Ternen and the local Greenland administration’s motorboat JP Koch, coupled with Northland’s J2F Duck, efforts were made to map the coast. The 240-foot USCGC Modoc (WPG-46) arrived in May and joined the efforts– coming uncomfortably close to the running fight against the German battleship Bismarck and the Royal Navy in the process.

On 1 June 1941, the South Greenland Patrol, under USCG LCDR H.G. Beford, was established around Modoc (flag) Comanche, the 110-foot icebreaking harbor tug USCGC Raritan (WYT-93), and the famed polar schooner Bowdoin (commissioned in the Navy on 16 June as IX-50).

A week later, the sister organization, the Northeast Greenland Patrol, was formed in Boston around Northland, USCGC North Star, and the 70-year-old retired cutter Bear, the latter recommissioned in naval service as USS Bear (AG-29). The force would be led by now-LCDR Iceberg Smith, USCG.

With the two patrols consolidating in Greenland waters by mid-July, by early August, the first PBY flying boats were arriving, the first maritime aircraft based year-round on the island. The PBYs would eventually be operated by a dedicated unit, Patrol Squadron Six (VP-6 CG) as an all-Coast Guard outfit home-based at Narsarssuak (Narsarsuaq), Greenland, a base soon coded as Bluie West One (BW-1).

By early September, Comanche, with an Army survey team aboard, was back in local waters making reconnaissance patrols of the Southeast Greenland fjords. She would later go on to establish the lce Cap Station at Igtip Kangertiva, a bay on Greenland’s southeast coast that went on to be dubbed “Comanche Bay” for obvious reasons, as well as Weather Station Able (later Bluie West 7) at Gronne Dal (Grønnedal).

The survey work by these cutters and aircraft resulted in the 178-page volume “Greenland Pilot & Sailing Directions” by 1941.

Quietly, the entire Coast Guard was transferred to the Department of the Navy on 1 November 1941, by Executive Order 8929, although it should be noted that, under E.O. 8767 of June 1941, the USCG was authorized to operate as a part of the Navy.

USN ONI 56 Escanaba class 165As, including Comanche and Onondaga

Eventually, there were upwards of 25 Allied– primarily American– bases in Greenland during WWII.

At its height, some 5,500 military personnel were based on the island.

(Note Comanche Bay)

In 1942 alone, 86,000 tons of cryolite were shipped to the U.S. and Canada for use in aluminum production.

Meanwhile, on 26 June 1942, the first large-scale trans-Atlantic ferry flights of Allied military aircraft to Britain using Greenland and Iceland began. Comanche was there, as noted by her XO in a post-war interview, serving as the visual aide and radio beacon at the fjord entrance to the main airbase, Narsarsuak, for the first USAAF trans-Atlantic flight of B-17s. The ship logged the arrival of 26 B-17s on that first day, from 2:40 am to 10:30 pm.

The so-called North Atlantic Route saw three fields in Greenland– Narsarssuak (BW-1), Angmagssalik (Bluie East 2), and Sondrestrom (BW-8)– used as a stopover between Maine/Newfoundland and Iceland, trans-shipping as many as 300-400 aircraft per month, primarily B-17, B-24, and B-25 bombers, to Europe.

B-17s ferry flight through Greenland, Jan 1945 U.S. Air Force Number 122001AC 342-FH_000017

War comes to the Greenland Patrol.

Comanche was tied up at Ivigtut on 7 December 1941, a dry Sunday that saw local temperatures hovering around 34 degrees. By that point, she had spent most of the previous 19 months in the Danish colony’s waters.

While I can’t find that the Germans ever attempted a serious move against the cryolite mine at Invigtut, they did come to Greenland in search of something else.

As early as 11 September 1941, the cutter North Star, visiting Eskimonaes, had a report from local hunters of a flagless two-masted steamer poking around Young Sound. Chased down the next day, the steamer was the 105-foot Norwegian sealer Buskoe, which had delivered a German agent– Jacob R. Bradley– and meteorological personnel ashore.

With a need to help forecast the weather in Europe and the Atlantic, and being cut off from meteorological reports from Canada in 1939 and America in 1941, the Germans needed weather stations in the Arctic. This led to somewhat disjointed efforts by the German Army, Luftwaffe, and Kriegsmarine weather services to establish their own. Even the Abwehr got involved with their own hybrid weather/listening stations.

The Kriegsmarine sowed the icy Barents and Greenland Seas with at least 15 unmanned Wetterfunkgerät See (WFS) radio-transmitting weather buoys. While their employment would seem ideal, these 33-foot-tall buoys were not well-liked by the U-boat crews tasked with deploying them as they took nearly two hours of assembly on the surface in calm seas with the boat’s torpedo crane as muscle– and that’s if everything went right. Plus, they had a planned lifespan of 10 weeks once deployed, but most of them went dark well short of that.

Most of the 15 assorted manned stations were established in Svalbard (Spitzbergen) while one (Schatzgräber) was set up off Russia’s arctic coast on Franz Josef Land. An unmanned station was even set up (and only found decades later) on the coast of Labrador!

As part of this, the Kriegsmarine moved to establish no less than four fixed (Edelweiss I and II, Holzauge, and Bassgeiger) as well as one migratory (Zugvogel, on sea ice) weather station in Greenland during the war.

The counter to this was Greenland’s first and only army, the locally-recruited Nordøstgrønlands Slædepatrulje (Northeast Greenland Sledge Patrol), which blended Danish police officers and Danish, Greenlandic and Norwegian fur trappers into an irregular force, almost devoid of military training, that would get into at least two firefights with German weather troops along the 700-mile stretch of Greenland’s most rugged coastline.

The Northeast Greenland Sledge Patrol would grow to 27 members during WWII. Armed with their own hunting rifles and a few short M1889 Danish Krag engineer carbines (ingeniørkarabin) and uniformed only with an armband, one member of the patrol would perish in a fight with weather station Holzauge personnel.

The Germans, for their part, sometimes went on the offensive, with their own patrols burning down half of Greenland’s police stations, when they attacked the Eskimonæs station (BE-5) in March 1943, driving off the two Danes in residence at the time. While destroying radio and weather equipment, they were good enough to leave a storage shed with food largely untouched and the post’s Danish flag unceremoniously stuffed into a box

The station was attacked by a German force on the night of March 23-24, 1943. The Germans burned the main building but first took down the flag and left it in a box. Note the kennels of the sled patrol.

It was in this atmosphere that the Greenland Patrol carried on its war.

Original caption: White Phantoms of the Northern Seas. The breathless beauty of an iceberg floating from the Arctic holds the gaze of Coast Guardsmen, lining the rail of a combat cutter. Frequently, the sturdy Coast Guard Cutters on the Greenland Patrol encounter these floating islands of glistening ice – dazzling to look upon but hazardous to the ships that pass over the northern lanes.

Coast Guard in Greenland: USCG crew on a water-cooled .50 caliber Browning mans their gun on patrol. 17 October 1942. NARA 26-G-10-17-42(2) 205580166

Kungnat Bay, Greenland. Coast Guard sentry keeps watch as the armed trawler USCGC Arundel (WYT-90) lends assistance to a freighter in the middle distance, 1 February 1943. 26-G-3491

The ensuing so-called “Weather War” saw well-armed and J2F-4 amphibian-equipped USCG combat icebreakers round up 60 German POWs, smashing two weather stations in the process while capturing a third that was recently evacuated, and chasing down three armed Kriegsmarine trawlers– Kehdingen, Coburg, and Externsteine, taking the last as a prize in October 1944.

This image depicts a Coast Guardsman on watch aboard a vessel in Greenland, painted by Coast Guard Combat Artist Norman Millet Thomas, in February 1943. NARA 26-G-02-06-43(1)

This image depicts a USCG landing party from the cutter Northland (WPG-49) gathering captured German remote radio-weather station equipment that had been parachuted in on Northeast Greenland, in September 1943. Note the M1903 Springfields, shaggy dog, and the mixture of blue, grey, and OD Navy and Army gear. NARA 26-G-3501

German POWs on deck of the USCGC Northland (WPG-49) in 1944 as part of the Weather War off Greenland. These may be from the Cape Sussie weather station (Unternehmen Bassgeige), taken down in late July 1944, and landed by the German trawler Coburg.

Comanche at times also served as a floating kennel, running sled dogs from location to location in addition to her work clearing paths through the ice, standing guard at the cryolite mine, and escorting convoys.

From her July 1943 deck log:

Fighting Arctic Wolves

Besides the defense of the cryolite mine and the skirmishes of the Weather War already mentioned, it should be pointed out that the fight against German U-boats, even in these frozen waters off Greenland, was very real.

On 4 September 1941– three full months before Pearl Harbor, the destroyer USS Greer (DD-145) narrowly missed a torpedo fired by U-652 in Greenlandic waters while en route to Iceland.

Comanche served on numerous convoys (SG-19, SG-29, SG-30, SG-37, SG-52, SG-74, GS-27, GS-34, GS-39 et.al.) running ships from Newfoundland to Greenland and back, often tossing ash cans and Mousetrap rockets on suspect underwater contacts.

Comanche, still in her peacetime scheme, escorting SS Munago, 1941, South Greenland, Peary Museum

Comanche in her wartime outfit. She carried a QCL-2 sonar, SF radar, had her 6-pounders replaced with 20mm Orelikons, mounted two depth charge racks, carried four “Y” gun projectors (with allowance for 14 depth charges) had two 7.2-inch Moustrap ASW rocket devices installed.

The report from one such brush with a sonar contact incident:

She also had to pick up the pieces.

Such as in the rescue of freighter USAT Nevada in December 1943. The 950-ton cargo ship, part of Convoy 5G-36, en route from St. John’s to Narsarssuak, became separated in 20-foot high seas and 60-mile-per-hour winds, with snow squalls that ended with her holds flooded.

Comanche was the closest to her and went to work, catching up to her while still about 200 miles south of Greenland.

From her deck log :

Steamship Nevada (American Freighter, built 1915) photographed from the deck of the USCGC Comanche (WPG-76) as Nevada was foundering in the North Atlantic, circa 15-18 December 1943. Comanche was able to rescue twenty-nine of those on board Nevada, but thirty-four lost their lives during the abandonment of the storm-crippled ship. In 1918-1919 Nevada had briefly served as USS Rogday (ID # 3583). NH 66258

Her most famous rescue came during the sinking of the 5,649-ton USAT Dorchester, a pre-war M&MT cruise ship built for 314 passengers that had been turned into a 750-space troopship. On Dorchester’s fifth convoy run (third to Greenland), leaving outbound on 29 January 1943, she was assigned to SG-19 out of St. Johns bound for Narsarssuak with a complement of seven officers, 123 crewmen, 23 Navy armed guards, 16 USCG, 597 Army personnel, and 155 civilian passengers.

M&MT passenger steamer S.S. Dorchester (1926-1943) photographed during 1942 as a USAT SC-290583

Riding shotgun on SG-19 was Comanche and her sister USCGC Escanaba (WPG 77), as well as the larger 240-foot cutter USCGC Tampa (WPG-48). Also in the convoy were the Norwegian steam merchants Biscaya and Lutz, whose holds were full of cargo and building materials to construct bases.

Six days out, in heavy seas and rough weather while 150 miles southwest of Greenland’s Cape Farewell, U-223 (Kptnlt Karl-Jürg Wächter) crept in close enough at 0102 in the predawn of 3 February to fire five torpedoes at the largest vessel in the little arctic convoy– Dorchester— and the transport soon went down. While Tampa moved to shepherd Biscaya and Lutz to nearby Skovfjord (Tunulliarfik) on Greenland’s southern tip, Comanche and Escanaba stood by in the dark and frigid waters to pick up survivors.

Using the “rescue retriever” technique for the first time– which amounted to a rubber-suited volunteer on a line dropping overboard and coming back up with a person– Escabana scooped up 81 survivors from the water and rafts and 51 from one lifeboat. Lacking the same protective suits as used on her sister, nonetheless, three officers and nine enlisted men of Comanche personally picked up 41 survivors from another lifeboat and 57 from rafts and the freezing water. 

After the Dorchester slipped beneath the waves on 3 February 1943, the USCGC Comanche and Escanaba rescued dozens of survivors from the doomed Army troopship. (Painting by Robert Lavin, via U.S. Coast Guard History Office)

Dorchester Torpedoed by Perry Stirling, showing Escanaba and Comanche picking up survivors (USCG painting)

Of the more than 900 souls aboard Dorchester, the sea claimed 674, largely due to hyperthermia, with men succumbing to the cold within minutes of hitting the water. The sinking of Dorchester is regarded by the Navy as the “heaviest loss of personnel suffered in any U.S. convoy during the war.”

Among those lost to Poseidon were four Army clergy members, all lieutenants– Methodist minister George L. Fox, Reformed Church in America minister Clark V. Poling, Catholic Church priest John P. Washington, and Rabbi Alexander B. Goode– who voluntarily gave up their own life jackets when the supply ran out then reportedly joined arms, said prayers, and sang hymns as they went down with the transport.

They are well-remembered as the “Immortal Chaplains” and were posthumously granted the Chaplain’s Medal for Heroism in 1961.

Speaking of heroism, one of Comanche’s fearless retrievers, STM 1c Charles Walter David, Jr., 25, suffering from hypothermia and pneumonia, died in a hospital ashore in Greenland after the rescue operation, and he was interred in the permafrost. In addition to saving Dorchester survivors, he is also credited with bringing Comanche’s XO, a fellow retriever, back after the officer was suffering exposure.

His widow, Kathleen W. David, and newborn son, a young son, Neil Adrian David, were presented with his Navy and Marine Corps Medal, posthumously.

Further illustrating the danger of the waters around Greenland during the war, Escanaba was lost on the early morning of 13 June 1943 in an explosion off Ivigtut, with the official conclusion that she was struck by either a torpedo or a mine. Only two of her crew survived. Another smaller cutter, the converted trawler Natsek (WYP-170) would vanish without a trace in December 1942 while out of Narsarssuak bound for Boston. Meanwhile, Northland sighted and attacked a U-boat in the Davis Strait on 18 June 1942 reportedly almost catching a German torpedo for her trouble.

All in all, nearly 50 American warships served on the Greenland Patrol during the conflict, almost all of these Coast Guard assets. Of those cutters, four of Comanche’s five Algonquin class sisters clocked in, with the only exception being USCGC Onondaga (WPG-79), which spent the war fighting the Japanese in Alaskan waters.

Upwards of 300,000 U.S. military aircraft were produced during the war, with the rare mineral harvested from the Greenland shale a big part in making that happen.

Post-war service

VE Day found Comanche at the USCG Yard at Curtis Bay, Maryland, undergoing a much-needed 30-day overhaul that she entered on 17 March 1945. Once she emerged, she received orders to proceed to Iceland for air-sea rescue duties from June through September 1945.

Once the Coast Guard transferred back to the Treasury Department from the Navy on New Year’s Day 1946, Comanche had her wartime armament removed, and her homeport shifted to Norfolk. However, the service, flush with very new ships (13 255-foot Owasco class cutters were commissioned in 1945-46) shoehorned into a peacetime budget, soon put all the remaining Algonquins into storage in an “in commission, in reserve” status, with reduced crews.

Comanche decommissioned 29 July 1947. Cleared for disposal, she was sold on 10 November 1948 to the Virginia Pilots Association, who used her as a floating office and barracks boat until 1984, when the 50-year-old historical cutter was donated to the Patriots Point Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, for use as a floating museum.

The nuclear-powered freighter NS Savannah, the retired 327-foot Treasury-class cutter USCGC Ingham (WPG 35), and the former USCGC Comanche, all the way to the right, are almost unrecognizable after 35 years as a pilot boat, at Charleston’s Patriots Point Naval Museum in the late 1980s. Savannah has been in Baltimore since 2008, and Ingham is now at Key West.

Comanche’s career as a museum ship was short-lived, being seriously damaged by Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and closed.

This led to her donation to the South Carolina DNR for use as a reef in 1992.

She is located 22.5 miles North of Charleston Harbor at a depth of 110-120 feet and is a popular wreck dive.

Epilogue

Comanche’s war diaries are digitized in the National Archives, although she is sometimes listed incorrectly as USS Comanche.

A few stirring interviews with her wartime crew remain. One of these is with EM 2c Richard N. Swanson, one of the volunteer retrievers on the Dorchester rescue, who earned his Navy and Marine Corps Medal the hard way.

Patriot’s Park saved some of the relics still aboard the Comanche in 1992 and has them at the park. They also donated one of her wartime 2,100-pound anchors to the Florence Veterans Park ashore in SC.

The cutter’s 1934-marked bell has been at the Arlington, Virginia, barracks of the Coast Guard Ceremonial Honor Guard since at least 1999, where it is used in annual remembrances and individual “ringing out” ceremonies.

The Honor Guard was established in 1962 and performs an average of 1,200 ceremonies each year across the United States. It is housed in the Coast Guard’s old Washington Radio Station in Alexandria, and Comanche’s well-polished bell is on its quarterdeck.

The service recycled the name for a third Comanche.

The Coast Guard acquired the former Navy 142-foot Sotoyomo-class auxiliary ocean tug USS Wampanoag (ATA-202) and placed her in commission as the medium endurance cutter Comanche (WMEC-202) in February 1959. Based in California except for a two-year stint in Corpus Christi, Texas, she was involved in several high-profile blue water rescues across a 21-year second career.

The third Comanche (ex-Wampanoag) is preserved as a floating museum in the Seattle area.

On 16 November 2013, the Coast Guard officially commissioned the USCGC Charles David Jr (WPC 1107) in honor of Comanche’s lost Dorchester retriever. His body had been reinterred at Long Island National Cemetery post-war.

His granddaughter was the ship’s sponsor.

Rear Adm. Jake Korn, Coast Guard Seventh District commander; Sharon David, granddaughter of the cutter’s namesake and sponsor of the Coast Guard Cutter Charles David Jr; and Chris Bollinger, president of Bollinger Shipyards, look at information about Charles W. David Jr. before the commissioning ceremony. Steward’s Mate 1st Class Charles David Jr. was posthumously awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for his part in saving the lives of nearly 100 U.S. Army soldiers and members of his own crew during World War II. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Mark Barney.

Likewise, former Comanche plank owner, the sub-busting LCDR Maurice Jester, has his name on a sistership of David, USCGC Maurice Jester (WPC-1152).

As for Greenland, despite a short (1946-50) hiatus, the Danish Navy’s elite sled patrol is still a thing, dubbed Slædepatruljen SIRIUS, with two bases and 65 supply huts, and was recently promised to be bolstered by the government in Copenhagen.

In 1951, the Danish Naval Station Grønnedal was established as a year-round home for Greenland Command, since 2012 the Arktisk Kommando, which has a permanent staff of 36 civilians and military personnel in a big blue building in Nuuk.

Arktisk Kommandos hovedkvarter in Nuuk

In the summer, a force of three modern 1,700-ton Knud Rasmussen class OPVs, augmented by another four 3,500 Thetis-class OPFs, roam the Greenlandic littoral.

Danish patrol vessel HDMS Knud Rasmussen (P570) ice-breaking in Greenland waters, December 2022, around Narsaq, Narsarsuaq, and Qassiarsuk

The Greenland Police is still seen as a district of the Danish state police, numbering 300 members. There is no local territorial defense force. 

The Danish Home Guard (Hjemmeværnet), which numbers some 44,000 volunteers in Denmark, has activated small groups to support operations in exercises in Greenland in recent years, but doesn’t have HJV units among Greenland’s cities and towns.

However, a new six-month Arktisk basisuddannelse (Arctic Basic Education) civil defense/auxiliary police style course, based in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, and staffed with a dozen instructors and support personnel, has been stood up.

The six-month Arktisk Basisuddannelse course, open only to Greenlanders, mimics the Danish military basic training course and blends field and classroom instruction

The program has been recruiting youth from among 13 towns and settlements across Greenland and graduated its first 19 students in November 2024. 

Arktisk basisuddannelse (Arctic Basic Education) students, Greenland’s first “home guard” style class. While many may go on to join the Arktisk Kommando or Greenland police and fire agencies, it isn’t a requirement. 

When it comes to U.S. bases, the Americans pulled out of most of the BW/BE stations by 1947 with a few exceptions: BW-1 (Narsarsuaq) closed in 1958 and Stromfjord (BW-8) in 1992, while Pituffik Space Base (formerly Thule AB, formerly BW-8) is still very much a thing, supported by the USCG, MSC, and Canadian Coast Guard and operated by the Space Force. The Army had Camp Century (including a novel underground nuclear reactor) there in the 1960s. The USAF also had four unmanned DEW stations in Greenland between 1960 and 1990.

The Coast Guard, meanwhile, still frequently gets to Greenland waters where they continue to work with local and Danish forces.

USCGC Campbell transited south along the west coast of Greenland overnight with the Royal Danish Navy vessel HDMS Knud Rasmussen and rendezvoused in a position just offshore of Evighedsfjorden (Eternity Fjord). CGC Campbell received HDMS Knud Rasmussen’s Executive Officer, Commander Bo Ougaard, on board to serve as an ice pilot and provide local knowledge to assist CGC Campbell in safely entering and transiting Evighedsfjorden. Once inside Eternity Fjord, CGC Campbell launched their MH-65 Dolphin aircraft and proceeded up the fjord to the head where the glacier begins. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Seaman Kate Kilroy DVIDS 200907-G-NJ244-002

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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

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

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

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

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

 

Warship Wednesday on a Friday Dec. 27, 2024: Taking a Licking

Posted on by Leave a comment

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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday on a Friday, Dec. 27, 2024: Taking a Licking

Above we see the Balao-class fleet submarine USS Bergall (SS-320) upon her triumphal return to Freemantle, Australia, some 80 years ago this week, on 23 December 1944, on completion of her epic Second War Patrol. The path of a 278-pound 8-inch shell fired from the Japanese heavy cruiser Myoko is clearly marked, having passed from port to starboard through the sub’s pressure hull.

But you should see the other guy!

The Balaos

A member of the 180+-ship Balao class, she was one of the most mature U.S. Navy diesel designs of the World War Two era, constructed with knowledge gained from the earlier Gato class. U.S. subs, unlike those of many navies of the day, were “fleet” boats, capable of unsupported operations in deep water far from home. The Balao class was deeper diving (400 ft. test depth) than the Gato class (300 feet) due to the use of high-yield strength steel in the pressure hull.

Able to range 11,000 nautical miles on their reliable diesel engines, they could undertake 75 day patrols that could span the immensity of the Pacific. Carrying 24 (often unreliable) Mk 14 Torpedoes, these subs often sank anything short of a 5,000-ton Maru or warship by surfacing and using their deck guns. They also served as the firetrucks of the fleet, rescuing downed naval aviators from right under the noses of Japanese warships.

Some 311 feet long overall, they were all-welded construction to facilitate rapid building. Best yet, they could be made for the bargain price of about $7 million in 1944 dollars (just $100 million when adjusted for today’s inflation) and completed from keel laying to commissioning in about nine months.

An amazing 121 Balaos were completed through five yards at the same time, with the following pennant numbers completed by each:

  • Cramp: SS-292, 293, 295-303, 425, 426 (12 boats)
  • Electric Boat: 308-313, 315, 317-331, 332-352 (42)
  • Manitowoc on the Great Lakes: 362-368, 370, 372-378 (15)
  • Mare Island on the West Coast: 304, 305, 307, 411-416 (9)
  • Portsmouth Navy Yard: 285-288, 291, 381-410, 417-424 (43)

We have covered a number of this class before, such as the sub-killing USS Spikefish and USS Greenfish, the rocket mail-slinging USS Barbero, the carrier-slaying USS Archerfish, the long-serving USS Catfish, the U-boat scuttling USS Atule, the Busy Bug that was the USS Bugara, and the frogman Cadillac USS Perch —but don’t complain, they have lots of great stories.

Meet Bergall

Bergall was named for a small fish (Tautogolabrus adspersus) found along the East Coast.

Via the State of New York Forest, Fish, and Game Commission, 1901, painted by SF Denton.

Laid down on 13 May 1943 at Electric Boat in Groton, Bergall launched just nine months later and commissioned on 12 June 1944, her construction running just 396 days.

Electric Boat Company, Groton, Connecticut. Shipway where future USS Bergall (SS-320) is under construction, circa summer 1943. Two welders are at work in the foreground. 80-G-K-15063

Her plankowner skipper, T/CDR John Milton Hyde, USN, (USNA 1934), had already earned a Silver Star as executive officer of the Salmon-class submarine USS Swordfish (SS-193) across four Pacific war patrols that bagged 11 Japanese ships and commanded that sub’s sister, Snapper (SS-185) while the latter was under overhaul.

Bergall carried out shakedown operations off New England for three weeks then, following post-shakedown availability at New London, set out for the Pacific via the Caribbean and the Panama Canal, pausing to rescue the two fliers of a crashed Army training plane in the Mona Passage off Puerto Rico.

She arrived at Pearl Harbor on 13 August and was soon ready for battle.

War!

Made the flagship of SubRon 26’s SubDiv 262, Bergall departed from Pearl Harbor on 8 September 1944 on her First War Patrol, ordered to hunt in the South China Sea.

Arriving off Saipan on the 19th, she soon had her first encounter with the Empire’s fighting men:

Her first contact with the enemy came a day and a half west of Saipan when in the high periscope she sighted a small boat containing five Japanese infantrymen. Bergall closed, attempting rescue, but the efforts were abandoned when the Japanese made gestures that indicated that they wanted us to leave them alone and that we were the scum of the earth. The Americans marveled at the pride and insolent bearing of the enemy, admired their courage, and pitied their stupidity.

Continuing West, she damaged a small Japanese transport vessel with gunfire east of Nha Trang, French Indo-China on 3 October with an exchange of 5-inch (20 rounds) and 40mm (40 rounds) gunfire, and six days later sank a small (700-ton) Japanese cargo vessel just south of Cam Ranh Bay with a trio of Mark 14 torpedoes.

She followed up on that small fry on 13 October by stalking a small four-ship convoy off the coast of Vietnam and sent the tanker Shinshu Maru (4182 GRT) to the bottom via four Mk 23s– and survived a five-hour-long depth charging in retaliation.

On the 27th, she torpedoed and sank the big Japanese tanker Nippo Maru (10528 GRT) and damaged the Japanese tanker Itsukushima Maru (10007 GRT, built 1937) south-west of Balabac Strait, a heroic action seeing the two vessels were protected by a thick escort of four frigates.

On her way back to Freemantle on 2 November, she sank, via 420 rounds of 20mm, a small junk loaded with coconuts and chickens east of the Kangean Islands. Hyde noted in his patrol report “Regret the whole affair as picayune.”

Bergall’s very successful First War Patrol ended at Freemantle on 8 November 1944, covering 15,702 miles. Seventh Fleet authorized a Submarine Combat Insignia for the patrol and credited the boat with sinking 21,500 tons of Japanese shipping.

Not a bad first start!

Hyde would pick up his second Silver Star while the boat’s XO, LCDR Kimmel was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with Combat “V.”

Cruiser Shootout

On 2 December 1944, Bergall departed Fremantle for her Second War Patrol, ordered once again to hunt in the South China Sea.

On 13 December, nearing sunset, our boat spotted a large ship at 35,000 yards off Royalist Bank and made a plan to attack after dark.

Over the next couple of hours, running in just 12-to-14 fathoms of water, she fired six Mk 23s while on the surface and received gunfire back. It turned out she blew the stern off the heavy cruiser Myoko and left her dead in the water. In return, the surfaced submarine was bracketed by shells typically credited as being 8-inchers from Myoko but more likely 5-inch shells from the escorting Japanese destroyer Ushio. One of these zipped right through Bergall’s pressure hull, a disaster that kept the submarine from surfacing while floating some 1,200 miles inside Japanese territory.

Her patrol report on the attack:

While the shell impact left no personnel casualties, the sub was severely damaged and, with no welding capability, repairs consisted of a mix of brazed and bolted plates, plugged with pillows and mattresses:

With all guns manned, demolition charges set for scuttling, and her damage patched up as best as possible, Bergall headed for home and was grateful when, on the morning of 15 December, she rendezvoused with the Gato-class submarine USS Angler (SS-240).

Transferring 2/3rds of her crew (54 men and one officer, the junior ensign) to Angler, Hyde noted of the attempt to make the Karimata Strait:

“if mandatory we could dive in shallow water and sit on the bottom. With Angler near at hand the enterprise didn’t seem too bad for the skeleton crew and officers. To have scuttled our ship in itself seemed unthinkable and it wasn’t much further to deep water in the right direction that it was in the wrong. The weather was very much in our favor too. The sky was heavily overcast with rain storms coming from the west-northwest.”

The men who remained aboard, all volunteers, comprised eight officers and 21 crew, the latter including at least three chiefs. This allowed an underway watch bill with two officers on the bridge, two men (helm and radar) in the tower, three (Chief of Watch, Aux, and I.C.) in the control room, and one EM in the maneuvering room.

By the end of the 16th, Bergall and Angler cleared the Karimata Strait without incident.

By the 18th, they cleared the Lombok Strait– just skirting Japanese patrol boats in the dark.

Making Exmouth on the tip of Western Australia’s North West Cape on the 20th, Bergall was able to remove the lightly brazed plating from the torpedo loading hatch and had new plates arc welded in place, enabling her to make for Freemantle on the 23rd where she ended her abbreviated patrol.

Hyde would receive the Navy Cross for the patrol and three other officers received the Silver Star.

The patrol was later dramatized in an episode of The Silent Service coined, “The Bergall’s Dilemma.” Hyde appears at the end of the episode for a brief comment.

As for Myoko, arriving at Singapore via tow on Christmas day, she would never sail again under her own power and surrendered to the Royal Navy in September 1945.

Japanese Heavy Cruiser Myōkō in Singapore four days after surrendering to Royal Navy units, tied up alongside the submarines I-501 (ex U-181) and I-502 (ex U-862) – September 25, 1945 IWM – Trusler, C (Lt) Photographer IWM A 30701

Captain Power visits the damaged Japanese cruiser. 25 September 1945, Singapore. In May 1944, five ships of the Twenty-Sixth Destroyer Flotilla attached to the British East Indies fleet, led by HMS Saumarez, with Captain M L Power, CBE, OBE, DSO, and BAR, as Captain (D), sank the Japanese cruiser Haguro in one hours action at the entrance to the Malacca Strait. When Saumarez entered Singapore Naval Base, Captain Power with his staff officers, paid a visit to Myoko, the sister ship of Haguro, now lying there with her stern blown off after the Battle of the Philippines. Crossing to the deck of the Myoko via the conning tower of a German U-boat, Captain Power and his party were met by Japanese officers who took them on a comprehensive tour of the ship. Two British naval officers examine what is left of the Myoko’s stern. IWM A 30703

Cuties

Patched up and taking on a supply of diminutive new Mk 27 passive acoustic torpedoes– dubbed Cuties as they only went about half the size of Mk 14s and 23s— Bergall left Fremantle on 27 January 1945 for her Third War Patrol, ordered to scour the Lombok Strait of small Japanese escorts and move on to the South China Sea.

However, with a short range (just 5,000 yards), the shallow-water Cuties had to be used up close to work. Carrying a warhead with just 95 pounds of Torpex, they were meant for killing small escorts.

Between 27 January and 7 February, Bergall made five nighttime attack runs with Cuties while in the Lombok, each time allowing a single slow (12 knots) Mk 27 to swim out at ranges as close as 200 yards. The result was in sinking of the Japanese auxiliary minesweeper Wa 102 (174 tons)– picking up two survivors and making them POWs– and damaging the store ship Arasaki (920 GRT).

Moving toward the Philippines, Bergall sank the Japanese frigate Kaibokan 53 (745 tons) and damaged the tanker Toho Maru (10,238 GRT) off Cam Ranh Bay.

Then, on 13 February, working in conjunction with fellow subs USS Blower and Guitarro off Hainan island, she came across a ripe target for any submariner– a pair of Japanese battlewagons– the hybrid battleship/carriers Ise and Hyuga.

She ripple-fired six Mk 14s in a risky daylight periscope attack from 10,000 yards– without success.

She ended her patrol on 17 February at recently liberated Subic Bay, PI, having traveled 6,070 miles.

The “Cutie Patrol” would be immortalized in an episode of The Silent Service, “The Bergall’s Revenge.”

The hits keep coming

The boat’s uneventful Fourth War Patrol (5 March to 17 April) which included a special mission (typically code to land agents) and rescuing four USAAF B-25 aircrew from the water, ended at Freemantle.

Bergall then left Australia on 12 May 1945 on her Fifth Patrol, bound to haunt the coast of Indochina.

On the morning of the 18th, she battered a small Japanese coastal freighter in the Lombok Strait but didn’t get to see it sink as enemy aircraft were inbound.

Joining up with an American wolfpack in the Gulf of Siam including USS Bullhead (SS-332), Cobia (SS-245), Hawkbill (SS-366), and Kraken (SS-370), she sighted a small intercoastal convoy of tugs and barges in the predawn moonlight of 30 May, and sank same.

Then, on 13 June, she swept a mine the hard way while chasing an enemy convoy.

Ironically, the minefield, a mix of three dozen acoustic and magnetic-induction type mines, had been laid by Allied aircraft out of India in March and was unknown to the Seventh Fleet command. While the mine, which had at least a 490-pound explosive charge, was believed to be some 90 feet away from the hull when it went off, and Bergall’s hull retained integrity, it nonetheless rocked the boat severely.

From her damage report: 

The impact of the detonation jarred the entire ship. Personnel were knocked off their feet, tossed out of bunks, and in the maneuvering room were thrown up against the overhead. Lighting failed in the maneuvering and after torpedo rooms. The overspeed trips operated on Nos. 2 and 3 main Diesel engines, which were on propulsion, and No. 1 main Diesel engine, which was charging the batteries, causing all three engines to stop and thereby cutting off power to the main propulsion motors.

However, just 20 minutes after the explosion, Bergall had restarted her engines and was motoring away. While still capable of operations, her engineering suite was so loose and noisy it was thought she would be unable to remain operational and she was ordered to Subic, arriving there on 17 June.

Quick inspection at Subic found that the facility was unable to effect repairs and Bergall was ordered to shlep some 10,000 miles back to New London via Saipan, Pearl Harbor, and the Panama Canal.

Arriving at New London on 4 August 1945, she was there when the war ended.

Bergall earned four battle stars and a Navy Unit Commendation (for her 2nd patrol) for her World War II service. Her unconfirmed record at the end of the war included some 33,280 tons of enemy shipping sunk across five sunken warships and five merchantmen along with another 66,000 tons damaged.

Her WWII battle flag carried an upside-down horseshoe with the number “13” inside of it since so many incidents in her service had occurred on the 13th day of the month.

CDR Hyde, when he left the vessel in September 1945, was given a farewell watch by his crew. Engraved on its back was a large “13.”

As for Myoko, she towed to the Strait of Malacca in 1946 and scuttled off of Port Swettenham (Port Klang), Malaya.

Cold Warrior

Finishing her repair and overhaul– she picked up new sensors including an SV radar– Bergall rejoined the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in December 1945 and, as part of SubRon1, would spend the next five years stationed in Hawaii. This typically involved a series of reserve training dives, simulated war patrols and cruises between the West Coast and Hawaii, ASW exercises with the fleet, and acting as a tame sub for maritime patrol squadrons.

From December 1948 through February 1949, she roamed to the West Pac, visiting Australia and Japan for a bottom mapping exercise, a cruise that earned her a Navy Occupation Service Medal and a China Service Medal.

Bergall at Brisbane in December 1948, note she is still largely in her WWII configuration. Via Navsource. Photo courtesy of John Hummel, USN (Retired).

Transferring to the Atlantic Fleet in June 1950, she had her topside streamlined, landing her deck guns and receiving a new sail, then, between November 1951 and April 1952, received a Fleet Snorkel conversion at Philadelphia Navy Yard.

Bergall circa 1950, with her topside streamlined but before her snorkel conversion.

USS Bergall (SS-320), 22 July 1952. USN 479940

Bergall, in the spirit of her “lucky 13” nature, lost her periscope twice within five years during her peacetime service.

The first, in 1949, was to a passing Van Camp tuna boat off the California coast.

The second, during LANTFLEX on Halloween 1954, had her periscopes and radar masts where sliced through by the destroyer USS Norris (DDE-859)’s bow, luckily without any casualties.

Ironically, USS Angler, the same boat that stood by Bergall after she was holed in the fight against Myoko a decade prior, stood by her and escorted the sub into port.

Bergall (SS-320) as a causality on 2 November 1954. Photo and text i.d. courtesy of Mike Brood, bergall.org.

Repaired, she completed two Mediterranean cruises (9 Nov 1955-28 Jan 1956 and 31 Aug -6 Dec 1957), and, once she returned, was reassigned to Key West Naval Station for preparations to be handed over at military aid.

Bergall 1958, returning from Bermuda just before she was handed over to a NATO ally as military aid. Via Bergall.org

Turkish Guppy Days

Between May 1948 and August 1983, the Turkish Navy would receive no less than 23 second-hand U.S. Navy diesel submarines, all WWII-era (or immediately after) fleet boats.

These would include (in order of transfer): ex-USS Brill (SS 330), Blueback (SS 326), Boarfish (SS 327), Chub (SS 329), Blower (SS 325), Bumper (SS 333), Guitarro (SS 363), Hammerhead (SS 364), Bergall (SS 320), Mapiro (SS 376), Mero (SS 378), Seafox (SS 402), Razorback (SS 394), Thornback (SS 418), Caiman (SS 323), Entemedor (SS 340), Threadfin (SS 410), Trutta (SS 421), Pomfret (SS 391), Corporal (SS 346), Cobbler (SS 344), Tang (SS 563), and Gudgeon (SS 567).

Our Bergall would sail from Key West on 26 September 1958, bound for Izmir, Turkey, where she would arrive 19 days later.

On 17 October, she was decommissioned and handed over in a warm transfer to the Turkish Navy in a ceremony that saw her renamed Turgutreis (S-342), officially on a 15-year lease.

The highlights of the handover ceremony, in Turkish: 

Ex-Bergall/Turgutreis (S-342) in Turkish service. She would take part in the Cyprus War in 1974, among other operations with the Turkish fleet.

 

Turkey’s collection of Snorkel and GUPPY modified U.S. Navy fleet boats via the 1960 edition of Janes, to include Bergall/Turgutreis.

While in Turkish service, Bergall in the meantime had her name canceled from the Navy List in 1965 and was stricken from the USN’s inventory altogether in 1973, with ownership transferred to Istanbul.

Following the delivery of new Type 209 submarines from West Germany, Bergall/Turgutreis was no longer needed for fleet operations and in April 1983 she was decommissioned.

Renamed Ceryan Botu-6, she was relegated to pier side service at Golcuk Naval Shipyard for another 13 years, where she was stripped of parts to keep other American boats in operations while serving as a battery charging boat with a 15-man crew, primarily of electricians.

In June 1999, Ceryan Botu-6/Turgutreis/Bergall was pulled from service and sold for scrap the following year.

Turkey only retired its last two ex-USN “smoke boats,” Tang and Gudgeon, in 2004

Epilogue

Few lingering relics remain of Bergall.

Her War History and deck logs are in the National Archives. 

Her wartime skipper, John Milton Hyde (NSN: 0-73456), retired from the Navy following Korean War service as a captain with a Navy Cross and three Silver Stars on his salad bar. He passed in 1981, aged 71, and is buried in Arlington’s Section 25.

“The Old Man” completed 12 war patrols, five of them on Bergall.

The Navy recycled the name of its rough-and-tumble Balao for another vessel, SSN-667, a Sturgeon-class hunter-killer built, like her namesake, at EB, ordered on 9 March 1965.

USS Bergall (SSN-667) conducts an emergency surfacing test off the east coast, in September 1969. K-77428

Commissioned on 13 June 1969 (!) her ship’s crest carried five stars in a salute to the old Bergall’s five WWII Pacific war patrols. In another, less Navy-approved similarity to her namesake, she suffered a casualty-free peacetime collision with the submarine rescue vessel USS Kittiwake (ASR-13).

Notably, SSN-667 was the first submarine in the fleet to carry the Mk 48 heavy torpedo on deployment, as well as the first east coast-based submarine to carry a DSRV, and earned two Navy Unit Commendations. She decommissioned on 6 June 1996.

A vibrant veterans’ group saluting both Bergalls endures.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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

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

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

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

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2024: Ignore the orders, we will save the Sailors

Posted on by 2 comments

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.

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2024: Ignore the orders, we will save the Sailors

U.S. Navy photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 80-G-299180

Above we see, some 80 years ago today, the cramped deck of the tiny “WGT” (John C. Butler-class) destroyer escort USS Tabberer (DE-418), crowded with shocked and waterlogged survivors of the lost destroyers USS Spence (DD 512) and USS Hull (DD 350). LCDR James A. Marks, USN, the former skipper of Hull, is being brought aboard to the left.

How had Tabberer survived the tempest that sent a trio of three larger greyhounds to the bottom? Keep reading.

The Butlers

At just 306 feet long overall, the 1,750-ton Butlers were not built to slug it out in surface actions, as they only mounted a pair of 5″/38 DP guns and a trio of 21-inch torpedo tubes, which was about half the anti-ship armament of contemporary U.S. Navy destroyer. Alternatively, they did come to war with an impressive anti-submarine armament for their size in the form of two Mk 9 depth charge racks, and eight Mk 6 K-gun projectors, along with 100 “ash cans” to keep them at work, making them popular in convoy escort in the Atlantic. A fixed 24-spigot Mk 10 Hedgehog ASW rocket launcher rested in a box between the No. 1 5-inch gun and the forward 40mm twin.

Likewise, they had a decent AAA suite for their to include a mix of 15 to 20 40mm and 20mm cannons, which would come in handy in smoking attacking Japanese planes at low level. The typical fit was two twin Bofors, one forward and the other aft, along with 10 Oerlikon singles clustered in four mounts around the bridge wings, four amidships around the stack, and two aft sandwiched between the stern 5-inch mount and the depth charge racks.

Camouflage Measure 32, Design 14D prepared by the Bureau of Ships for a camouflage scheme intended for escort ships of the DE-339 (John C. Butler) class. This plan, showing the ship’s starboard side, stern, superstructure ends and exposed decks, is dated 17 May 1944 and was approved by Commander William C. Latrobe, USN. 80-G-109627

Using a pair of “D” Express boilers and a matching set of two Westinghouse geared turbines (hence the WGT designation), they had 12,000 shp installed, allowing the Butlers to run up to a theoretical maximum of 24 knots (although one of the class, USS Samuel B. Roberts, made an estimated 28.7 knots while on a torpedo run against impossible odds by raising pressure on her boilers past the safe limit and diverting steam to the turbines.)

USS John C. Butler (DE-339) underway, possibly off Boston Navy Yard

While not fast enough for fleet operations, this was enough for convoy and patrol work. It also allowed them to have a nice, long range of some 6,000 nm when poking along at 12 knots.

Capable of being produced rapidly, some 293 Butlers were on the drawing board at one time or another from four shipyards (Boston NSY, Brown SB, Federal SB, and Consolidated Steel), with many constructed in fewer than six months apiece.

However, “just” 83 were completed, ranging from USS John C. Butler (DE-339), which was laid down on 5 October 1943 to USS Vandiver (DER-540) which, although laid down only a month later, languished on the builder’s ways until she was finally commissioned in 1955.

Meet Tabberer

USS Tabberer (DE-418) was the first vessel named in honor of Lt. (jg.) Charles Arthur Tabberer.

Born in 1915, he enlisted in the USNR’s aviation cadet program in 1939 and, a newly minted ensign with a set of gold wings on his chest, was assigned to Fighting Squadron 5 (VF-5) in early 1941, flying first the pokey F3F biplane and then the F4F Wildcat.

Making j.g. on 29 May 1942, Tabberer and his squadron flew from the old USS Saratoga (CV-3) for the invasion of Guadalcanal and he perished on 7 August during a swirling dogfight under near suicidal odds.

Lt. (jg.) Tabberer earned the Distinguished Flying Cross, posthumously:

DE-418 was one of 23 Butlers built at Brown Shipbuilding Company, Houston, Texas. Laid down on 12 January 1944 she was launched on 18 February 1944, sponsored by Mrs. Mary M. Tabberer, widow of the late Lt. (j.g.) Tabberer.

Tabberer’s sister, the famed future USS Samuel B. Roberts (DE-413) leaving the ways at Brown Shipbuilding Company, Houston, Texas, 20 January 1944. All 23 of the Butlers built at Brown were side-launched.

USS Tabberer was commissioned on 23 May 1944, her construction period spanning just 132 days.

USS Tabberer (DE-418) underway near Houston, Texas (USA), circa in May 1944. She is painted in Camouflage Measure 31, Design 22D. U.S. Navy Bureau of Ships photo BS 95010A

Tabberer’s first skipper was LCDR Henry Lee Plage, USNR (Georgia Tech NROTC ’37). A Florida insurance adjuster who volunteered for active duty and sea service in 1941, Plage had already picked up some solid chops as a small escort sailor, commanding the subchaser USS PC-464 in 1942, then serving as XO on the Evarts-class destroyer escort USS LeHardy (DE-20) and then skipper of her sister, USS Donaldson (DE 44), until just two months before Tabberer was commissioned.

Following an abbreviated shakedown cruise across the Gulf Coast and up the East Coast to Boston NSY– one of the yards where her sisters were built– Tabberer spent two weeks in post-shakedown availability then left for Hawaii via the “Ditch.”

She arrived at Pearl Harbor on 7 September, to spend a month working up with the ships she would deploy with to the West Pac. Of her 225 officers and men, only about 10, primarily chiefs, were regular Navy.

On the night of 9 October, while acting as a plane guard for the Casablanca-class escort carrier USS Anzio (CVE-57), Tabberer made her first rescue at sea in the form of one of the flattop’s aviators.

It would be just one of many for our tin can.

War!

On 16 October 1944, with sequential escort sisters USS Lawrence C. Taylor (DE 415), Melvin R. Nawman (DE 416), Oliver Mitchell (DE 417), and Robert F. Keller (DE 419) of Escort Division 72, Tabberer joined the new anti-submarine Hunter Killer group (T.G. 12.3, later T.G. 30.7) built around Anzio and her embarked air group. The overall commander of the group was Captain George Cannon Montgomery (USNA ’24), a tough career naval aviator from Alabama.

USS Anzio (CVE-57) underway at sea, on 21 May 1945, with an Avenger (TBM-3E) and three Wildcats on deck. NH 96548

The Anzio group– consisting entirely of ships that were all just barely off their shakedowns– would be responsible for at least five confirmed “kills” of Japanese submarines in the eight months between 18 November 1944 and 16 July 1945: I-41 (Kondo), RO-43 (Ts’kigata), I-368 (Irisawa), I-361 (Matsuura) and I-13 (Ohashi). Using Anzio’s embarked Wildcats and Avengers of VC-82/VC-13 to spot and pin the Japanese boats in place, the greyhounds would get to finish off the carcass and sift through the wreckage to find out which of the Emperor’s boats they killed.

This type of work was extremely dangerous for small escorts such as the Tabberer and her sisters as their compact hulls couldn’t shrug off a torpedo hit of any sort. At least two Butlers were lost to Japanese subs in October 1944 alone: USS Shelton sunk by RO-41 off Morotai, and USS Eversole by I-45 east of Leyte.

Besides her task in helping to send Japanese subs to the cold and dark embrace of Poseidon, Tabberer continued to perform the yeoman work long familiar to escorts in a carrier group– that of plane and lifeguard to the flattop’s aircrews. On at least two further occasions (7 July and 12 July 1945) she plucked soggy Anzio aircrews from the drink after water landings and delivered them back “home” via breeches buoy.

USS Anzio pilot and observer began to extricate themselves after their TBM-1C (Bu# 73282) crashed on take-off, 21 December 1944. 80-G-298075/80-G-0298071

Pacific maelstrom

While at Ulithi Lagoon with the rest of the Anzio group, on 6 December 1944, the group logged 39-knot winds in squalls and high seas.

With the weather slacking, and operations in the Philippines looming (the landings at Mindoro), the group left Ulithi on Sunday 10 December on orders from Com3rdFlt (Halsey), linking up with a replenishment group of oilers (T.G. 30.8) along the way. The next few days saw Anzio’s DEs race at flank speed to investigate sonar contacts as the skies grew grey.

As detailed by NOAA: 

The Navy’s Fleet Weather Center in Pearl Harbor had analyzed the sparse data in the area to show the typhoon much further east than it was and forecast it to move northward, avoiding the Fleet. However, the U.S. Army Air Force forecast center on Saipan sent a reconnaissance flight and found the storm heading toward Halsey and with estimated winds of 140 knots (260 km/hr). Capt. Reid Bryson tele-typed the observations to Pearl Harbor, but the Navy forecasters didn’t believe him and did not forward the information to the Third Fleet. Halsey’s chief aerologist, CDR George Kosco, who would later dub the storm “Cobra”, also believed the typhoon was closer than Pearl Harbor was depicting but still thought their southeastern course would avoid the worst of the storm.

By the 17th, the jeep carrier observed that a “tropical typhoon was developing and approaching during the day, with wind and sea increasing in intensity and Anzio laboring heavily. The northerly course toward the rendezvous assigned, 15 30′ N, 127 40′ unfortunately led near the path of the typhoon.”

That afternoon, she lost an Avenger on approach, with the crew picked up by Oliver Mitchell, and three planes in her hangar broke loose during a 19-degree roll to port. One of her escorts, Melvin Nawman, noted the ship’s barometer was dropping at .02 per hour, every hour.

USS Anzio. Rolling heavily while trying to maintain course and speed during a typhoon east of the Philippines, 17 December 1944. Note TBM Avenger heavily lashed to the flight deck. 80-G-298079

By 0629 on the 18th, Capt. Montgomery signaled Halsey that the Anzio group, along with the refueling group, were giving up on heading northeasterly to their assigned rendezvous point– into the storm– and instead reversed course south for safety. The 512-foot/11,000-ton jeep carrier had difficulty that morning holding a steady course against the wind abeam even with a 30-degree rudder and turns for 5 knots on one engine and 15 on the other.

Typhoon Cobra, as observed by radar. NOAA photo

The worst of the storm hit the two groups around 1000 and, losing radio and visual contact with the rest of her group, Anzio measured winds of 90 knots sustained before the vanes on her anemometer were carried away. Her Met department estimated she was taking 120-knot winds and seeing 60-foot seas. She rolled 36 degrees to starboard then 38 to port, losing two planes stored topside overboard while 11 others cracked up. By 1400 the seas became calmer, the winds dropped to gale force, and soon she was able to start maneuvering again. However, as the storm went by, she was only in contact with one of her five escorts who had somehow managed to remain on station– Lawrence C. Taylor.

The other DEs had suffered indeed.

Robert Keller and Oliver Mitchell, blown several miles off by the cyclonic force and heavy seas, remained out of contact with Anzio over the horizon until 1903. Keller had narrowly avoided a collision with Tabberer who was sighted around 0930 in the trough of a 60-foot swell and then vanished from radar. Mitchell lost TBS and radar contact with Melvin Nawman at 0908 and with Tabberer at 1213.

Nawman rolled an amazing 62 degrees and she lost her mast including all her radar and TBS gear. She only managed to ride best at 4 knots, right full rudder, to the NW. Steaming alone and blind back toward Ulithi at 15 knots, she contacted a passing PBM via blinker to ask the flying boat to relay that she was still afloat and headed in. Later that afternoon she spotted a different refueling group, TG 30.8.6, and fell in with it. She arrived back at Ulithi on 23 December, coming alongside the tender USS Markab to begin immediate repairs.

As for our Tabberer, her top weight was removed where possible and, fully ballasted and battened down on orders from her skipper, she survived an amazing roll of 72 degrees to starboard while visibility fell to about 30 feet and wind speed came at over 100 knots. The ship’s barometer bottomed out at 27.92 inHg (921 millibars, within the range considered “Category 4” on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale) at 1230 on the 18th. At 1351, she lost the top of her mast and by 1828 the entire mast buckled while the escort was on a 50-degree roll, with the ship having to stop all engines and break out a cutting torch and axes to cut away the offending wreckage– at the loss of her radio, radar, and TBS ability.

In the darkness, CRM Ralph Tucker climbed to the highest point remaining on Tabberer— her stack– to rig a makeshift TBS radio antenna– good for a couple of miles– and saw a light in the still-heaving seas. A light attached to a voice. A voice attached to QM3 August Lindquist, of the destroyer USS Hull (DD-350), one of the escorts of the Anzio group’s adjacent T.G. 30.8 refueling group.

As retold by LCDR Plage, Tabberer’s skipper:

Hull, under the somewhat controversial command of LCDR James A. Marks, (USNA ’37) had been lost during the storm after suffering 80-degree rolls as her bunkers were almost empty. Without getting too much into the weeds, Marks is thought by many to be the basis of the fictional LCDR Queeg of Caine Mutiny fame.

Besides Hull, USS Monaghan (DD-354) and USS Spence (DD-512), both also riding light with the refueling group, were lost in the storm. Monaghan rolled to starboard at least six times and on her final roll continued and capsized. Spence succumbed to a 72-degree roll that flooded her electrical system, killing her pumps and lights, leaving a follow-on roll to deliver the coup de grace.

Between the Hull, Spence, and Monaghan, no less than 718 souls perished on the sea on or about 18 December 1944. Nimitz noted later that “It was the greatest loss that we have taken in the Pacific without compensatory return since the First Battle of Savo.”

Besides the skippers of Spence (LCDR James Andrea, USNA ’37) and Monaghan (LCDR Floyd Garrett, USNA ’38), several newly minted ensigns of the Annapolis Classes of ’44 and ’45 were lost on their first assignments. 

Over the next several days, 3rd Fleet ships scoured the seas for survivors.

Just 24 men were recovered from Spence, 10 of those by the destroyer escort USS Swearer (DE-186), part of the screen for the jeep carrier USS Rudyerd Bay (CVE-81).

USS Brown (DD-546), part of the screen for the light carriers of TG 38.1, rescued the six survivors from Monaghan as well as 13 men of Hull’s ship’s company from a life raft on 21 December, delivering them to Ulithi on Christmas Eve.

Anzio group escort Robert Keller found four additional survivors of the Hull on the 21st. The same day, Mitchell and Lawrence C. Taylor each recovered three men who were “beyond human help” and later consigned them to the deep with honors.

As for our Tabberer, she picked up 55 living men at peril on the sea: 41 from Hull including her skipper and four other officers, and 14 from Spence on the 20th. The latter came due to Plage disobeying orders to retire.

Keep in mind that Tabberer was using her big 24-inch searchlights only about 150 miles off the coast of Japanese-occupied Luzon, in waters thought crawling with enemy submarines.

With the waves still too high to launch small boats, Tabberer went for the recovery in the old-fashioned way and used her cargo nets and close-in maneuvering to get near enough for the survivors to grab on.

Volunteers with safety lines and lifejackets went over the side to help those who could not.

Typhoon Cobra (Halsey’s Typhoon), December 17, 1944. Survivors of USS Spence (DD 512) and USS Hull (DD 350) were rescued by USS Tabberer (DE 418) after the typhoon had capsized the U.S. destroyers on December 17, 1944. Shown: Tabberer’s gunnery officer Lieutenant Howard J. Korth, USNR, in water where he added to the rescue. Note, the other destroyer lost was the USS Monaghan (DD 354). Photograph released on January 21, 1945. U.S. Navy photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 80-G-299181

As a twist of fate, Tabberer had Escort Division 72’s only doctor, LT Frank W. Cleary, aboard going into the storm, and all of the 55 men she pulled from the ocean survived.

Typhoon Cobra (Halsey’s Typhoon), December 17, 1944. Survivors of USS Spence (DD 512) and USS Hull (DD 350) were rescued by USS Tabberer (DE 418) after the typhoon had capsized the U.S. destroyers on December 17, 1944. Shown: Officers and men of USS Hull (DD 350) recuperating from their ordeal onboard USS Tabberer (DE 418). Note, the other destroyer lost was the USS Monaghan (DD 354). Photograph released on January 21, 1945. U.S. Navy photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 80-G-299182

The seriously damaged, blind, and mute Tabberer remained on station for 40 hours.

Plage sent the below memorandum to all hands on the 20th after the escort made her belated turn to Ulithi:

When she rolled into the immense 3rd Fleet anchorage, she looked pretty rough.

Almost unidentifiable.

USS Tabberer demasted after Typhoon Cobra

Legend has it that, when passing the mighty battlewagon USS New Jersey, Halsey’s flagship, she was signaled:

“What type of ship are you?”

Weary and exhausted, his vessel packed with 55 survivors he had to fight both the sea and the brass to save, Plage had his signalmen proudly reply: “Destroyer escort. What type are you?”

In addition to the serious damage to Tabberer and Nawman, three light carriers, another three escort carriers, three destroyers, and the cruiser USS Miami also sustained yard-worthy injuries, with many losing men to the sea during the storm. For example, on the light carrier USS Monterrey (CVL 26), three men were killed and another 34 seriously injured. At least 19 other vessels logged lesser damage.

USS Santa Fe (CL 60) rolls heavily, 53 degrees, as she rides out of a wave encountered in the South China Sea during Typhoon Cobra, December 1944. 80-G-700024

Destroyer in heavy seas during heavy weather in the China Sea. Possibly taken during a typhoon in December 1944. Photographed from USS New Jersey (BB-62) by LCDR Charles Fenno Jacobs, USNR. The destroyer wears camouflage design 9d. 80-G-470284

The entire Third Fleet was sidelined for 18 days following Cobra.

Nimitz noted, “Some 146 planes on various ships were lost or damaged beyond economical repair by the fires, by being smashed up, or by being swept overboard.”

It was a hell of a lick.

Plage was presented a Legion of Merit by Halsey himself during a 20-minute visit and inspection on 29 December.

In the name of the President of the United States, the Commander, Third Fleet, United States Pacific Fleet, takes pleasure in awarding the Legion of Merit to 

LIEUTENANT COMMANDER HENRY L. PLAGE

UNITED STATES NAVAL RESERVE

for service as set forth in the following

CITATION

For exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service to the Government as Commanding Officer of the U.S.S. Tabberer operating in the Western Pacific war area from December 18, 1944 to December 20, 1944. During this period, while his ship was combating a storm of hurricane intensity and mountainous seas causing severe damage, Lieutenant Commander PLAGE directed the rescue of fifty-five survivors from two destroyers which foundered as a result of the same storm. In spite of seemingly insurmountable hardships and adverse conditions, he persisted in the search for survivors for fifty-one hours. Lieutenant Commander PLAGE’s courageous leadership and excellent seamanship through treacherous and storm-swept seas and his timely reports aided materially in the rescue of additional survivors by other ships which later arrived at the scene. His outstanding conduct was in keeping with the highest tradition of the United States Naval Service.

W. F. Halsey

Admiral, U.S. Navy

In addressing the assembled crew, Halsey was frank:

Your seamanship, endurance, courage, and the plain guts that you exhibited during the typhoon we went through are an epic of naval history and will long be remembered by your children and their children’s children. It is this spirit displayed throughout the world by the American forces of all branches that is winning the war for us.

Plage had recommended decorations for those who had spent considerable time in the water aiding men who were either too weak or injured to climb the boarding nets unassisted. These included the ship’s XO, LT Robert M. Surdam, the ship’s gunnery officer, LT Howard L. Korth, TM1/C Robert Lee Cotton, and BM1/C Louis Anthony Purvis. The brass authorized the Navy & Marine Corps Medal, the highest non-combat decoration awarded for heroism by the United States Department of the Navy, for these four men.

Dressed in their best and gathered in the wardroom of USS Tabberer after the Typhoon Cobra rescue are seated (left to right): LT Robert M. Surdam, USNR; LCDR Henry L. Plage, USNR, and LT Howard L. Korth, USNR. Standing, (left to right): TM1/C Robert Lee Cotton and BM1/C Louis Anthony Purvis. This photo was likely taken on 29 December 1944 during Halsey’s visit to the battered ship at Ulithi Atoll. 80-G-299183

Tabberer, and all hands, were the first to receive the new Navy Unit Commendation (although others would receive it retroactively for past service that predated the honor).

THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY

WASHINGTON

The Secretary of the Navy takes pleasure in commending the

UNITED STATES SHIP TABBERER

For service as follows:

For extremely meritorious service in the rescue of survivors following the foundering of two United States Destroyers in the Western Pacific Typhoon of December 18, 1944. Unmaneuverable in the wind-lashed seas, fighting to maintain her course while repeatedly falling back into the trough, with her mast lost and all communications gone, the U.S.S. TABBERER rode out the tropical typhoon and, with no opportunity to repair the damage, gallantly started her search for survivors, steaming at ten knots, she stopped at short intervals and darkened her decks where the entire crew topside, without sleep or rest for 36 hours, stood watch to listen for the whistles and shouts of survivors and to scan the turbulent waters for small lights attached to kapok jackets which appeared and then became obscured in troughs blocked off by heavy seas.

Locating one survivor or a group, the TABBERER stoutly maneuvered windward, drifting down to her objective and effecting rescues in safety despite the terrific rolling that plunged her main deck underwater. Again and again, she conducted an expanding box search, persevering in her hazardous mission for another day and night until she had rescued fifty-five storm-tossed and exhausted survivors and had brought them aboard to be examined, treated, and clothed.

Brave and seaworthy in her ready service, the TABBERER, in this heroic achievement, has implemented the daring seamanship and courage of her officers and men.

All personnel attached to and serving on board the TABBERER, during the above-mentioned operation, are hereby authorized to wear the NAVY UNIT COMMENDATION RIBBON.

James Forrestal

Secretary of the Navy

Continued Service

Sent to Pearl Harbor NSY on 30 December in company with her storm-damaged sisters Nawman and Conklin (DE 439), the three patched-up tin cans escorted another Cobra survivor, the light carrier USS Monterey (with future President Gerald Ford aboard as a junior officer) to Oahu via Eniwetok for repairs. Proceeding at 15 knots, they made Pearl on 10 January 1945, with Tabberer docking at Berth Baker 17.5.

The workers at Pearl worked fast in 1945 and, just a fortnight later, both Nawman and Tabberer, fresh and looking new, set out for Eniwetok as part of T.U. 16.8.5, the covering force for Convoy PD-275-T.

Transferring to the 5th Fleet on 28 January 1945 saw the Anzio group switch numbers from TG 30.8 to TU 50.7.1. Tabberer and Nawman rejoined the group at Saipan on 7 February– the first time back with Anzio since Cobra hit some seven weeks prior.

Joining up with other baby carriers– including USS Rudyerd Bay, Saginaw Bay (CVE 82), Makin Island (CVE 93), Luga Point (CVE 94), and Bismarck Sea (CVE 95), the force, under RADM G.R. Henderson, headed for Iwo Jima.

Tabberer was present for the five-plane kamikaze attack during the night of 21-22 February that hit the latter carrier, sending her to the bottom with 318 gallant sailors. The destroyers of the screen rescued 625 men from the water that night.

Large explosion on board Bismarck Sea (CVE-95), after she was hit by a kamikaze during the night of 21-22 February 1945, while she was taking part in the Iwo Jima operation. She sank as a result of her damage. Photographed from Saginaw Bay (CVE 82). 80-G-335103.

Regrouping, the force continued their operations off Iwo for 42 days, with Tabberer typically spending burning the midnight oil (and jo pots full of coffee) running nightly ASW sweeps of the area while rousing her sleepy gun crews back to GQ during daylight as enemy planes came in close.

Given a short few days of downtime in San Pedro Bay in mid-March, Tabberer would spend the next six weeks screening assorted TF38 vessels during the invasion of Okinawa, again in night-time ASW sweeps supporting Anzio, spending another 52 days at sea under combat situations.

USS Tabberer (DE 418) underway replenishment, taken from the escort carrier USS Makin Island (CVE-93) on 25 March 1945. 80-G-323053

Sent to Guam for a short yard period in early May, by the 23rd of that month she was back on station off Anzio, sanitizing shipping and supply routes between the Marianas and Okinawa of Japanese submarine activity.

This continued for the next several weeks, with the Anzio group ordered closer to Tokyo in July to screen replenishment ships just offshore of the Japanese Home Islands. This saw Tabberer’s crew engage in target practice on assorted floating mines belonging to the Emperor and rescue aviators from both an F4F and a TBM. 

TBM lost from Anzio, July 1945

Post VJ Day, she was sent to Korean waters on occupation duties, berthing at Jinsen (Incheon) on 11 September for nine days before being sent to Okinawa.

On 7 October, steaming out of Buckner Bay with her fellow tin cans of Escort Div 72 (without Anzio for once), they made for Tsingtao, China, the treaty port that had been under Japanese control since they wrested it from the Germans in 1914, followed by the troopship USS Dade (APA 99), filled with U.S. Marines returning to China for the first time since 1941. From there, the force went to Taku, China on the 12th, with Tabberer sinking two floating Japanese mines via gunfire– the mines apparently missing the memo that the war was over. On the 15th she saved a lost Allied aviator from the water off Taku anchorage and then escorted a convoy of LSTs and LSMs from Chinese waters to Okinawa.

Detonating three more floating mines on 19 October, she then escorted USS Blue Ridge (AGC2) to Tsingtao and Taku, sinking another mine on the 23rd and a 75-foot derelict coaster on the 29th. Remaining in Taku at the disposal of Com7thPhib until 15 November, she was sent as an escort for three auxiliaries returning to Okinawa before heading back to Taku by the end of the month with her old friend, Melvin Nawman.

Tabberer would remain in Chinese waters until 22 December 1945 when she was ordered back to to CONUS for the first time since August 1944, stopping at Okinawa, Eniwetok, and Pearl Harbor before entering San Francisco on 15 January 1946 with her homeward-bound pennant whipping overhead.

“With over 110,000 miles of steaming behind her, the Tabberer has contributed her share to the records set and glory earned by the ships of the Navy’s Pacific Fleet,” ended her official War History.

She was placed out of commission, in reserve, at San Diego on 24 April 1946.

In her 15 months of WWII service and four months on occupation duty, Tabberer earned four battle stars, received the Navy Unit Commendation, and survived the Navy’s worst storm suffered at sea.

Cold War

With the Korean War mobilization, Tabberer was dusted off and recommissioned on 7 April 1951. Ordered to the East Coast, she was homeported at Newport for the next decade.

September 1953. USS Tabberer (DE 418) at sea off Newport, Rhode Island. Note the Cold War-era big hull numbers, her twin 40mm Bofors behind mount No. 1, and her WWII-era sensors. Note there are two rockets loaded in her deck-mounted Mk 10 Hedgehog. 80-G-626823

Her taskings were typically being used as an ASW exercise vessel for subs out of New London and in taking Annapolis and NROTC midshipmen on summer cruises to the Caribbean and back, interspersed with trips down south to get her annual gunnery tables at Vieques to help beat the old smoke boats at Key West.

Speaking of which…

In November 1954, she suffered a collision with the submarine USS Diablo (SS-479) while in ASW exercises off Block Island that caused no casualties and left both vessels still afloat.

In the mid-1950s our DE underwent a series of modifications including landing her 20mm guns along with her fixed Mk 10 Hedgehog as well as her surface torpedo tubes, installing a remotely trainable 24-spigot Mk 15 Hedgehog device forward. Her 40mm twins were moved to platforms amidship, instead of twin 3″/50s which would have added too much weight.

She also picked up accommodations for a squadron commodore and his staff to allow Tabberer to serve as the flagship of an escort squadron. She rated more modern radar (SPS-6), sonar, and communications upgrades.

USS Tabberr (DE-418) seen 1950s after her modernization. Note her trainable 24-spigot Hedgehog ASW system, just behind her No. 1 mount and more modern radar package on her mast. Courtesy of Mr. Ted DiCecco, Avondale, Pennsylvania. NH 73660

Same as above. Note her hull number repeated on her No.1 mount. You can also make out the two twin Bofors mounts aft of her stack. NH 73661

On 30 August 1957, as part of Operation Deep Water, a test of Atlantic convoy duty should WWIII break out, Tabberer got operational from Key West, bound for Europe as the flagship of CortRon12.

Her outbound squadron comprised four other WWII-era DEs including her old bosom buddy, Melvin Nawman. By 2 September, the escorts linked up off the Virginia Capes with a mixed group of nine troopships, auxiliaries, and phibs, packed with a reinforced Marine brigade, to shepherd over to Europe at the regal speed of 12 knots. Engaging Allied OPFOR submarines along the way, the circular convoy stepped it up to 14.5 knots and made it successfully to Naples by noon on 14 September.

Attached to PhibGroup2, Tabberer, and company spent the next seven weeks in a series of amphibious warfare exercises and friendly port calls in the Mediterranean ranging from Saros Bay, Turkey (the country had joined NATO in 1952) to Patras, Greece; Suda Bay, Crete; Palermo, Sicily; Palma, Spain, and Gibraltar.

The exercise saw 8,000 Marines hit the beach in Gallipoli, linking up with a Turkish Army corps, simulating a response to a Soviet attempt to seize the straits. It was notable as it was both the first Marine vertical envelopment during an overseas deployment and the first time that a U.S. Marine joint air-sea-ground task force had been used in a NATO exercise. Supported by three full carrier battle groups, it sent a message.

Leaving “The Rock” late in the night of 7 November, the five aging but still operable DEs set out across the Atlantic again. Without having to shepherd a convoy, they made Bermuda without issue on the morning of 15 November, pulling up to the British colony at 19.5 knots. Following a couple days of libo, the DEs, led by Tabberer with ComCort12 still aboard, made Key West on the 19th. It was her last operational deployment.

Transferred to Philadelphia, she would spend the next two years in the same sort of laid-back semi-reserve service she had before Operation Deepwater.

Effective Friday, 2 September 1960– the 15th anniversary of VJ Day– USS Tabberer was decommissioned at Philadelphia, having been towed, cold iron, under the bridge to the Reserve Basin and, placed in mothballs for the second, and final, time on the 1st.

The Butler class listing in the 1960 Janes. Most of these vessels were in mothballs. 

On 1 July 1972, Tabberer’s name was struck from the NVR and in October 1973 she was sold for scrapping to Mr. David Hahn, of Key West.

Navy destroyer escorts USS Raymond (DE-341), USS Oswald (DE-767), USS Melvin R. Nawman (DE-416), USS Tabberer (DE-418), and USS Coffman (DE-191) laid up at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, Pennsylvania (USA), circa in early 1973. By Jim Cunliffe via Navsource

Epilogue

Few lingering relics remain of Tabberer.

Her War History and deck logs are in the National Archives. 

No Butler class destroyer escort is preserved or remains in service.

She has a tribute marker at the National Museum of the Pacific War (the Nimitz Museum) in Texas.

The Navy, in its wisdom, has not elected to reuse the name Tabberer for another vessel.

For the men associated with the vessel, her most famous wartime skipper, LCDR Henry Lee Plage, remained on sea duty after the war and gave the Navy 17 years of service before retiring in 1954. Returning to Florida, he passed in 2003, aged 88, leaving behind a batch of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

Plage. The Navy could use a destroyer named in his honor.

Of the 92 survivors rescued from the sea after Typhoon Cobra, 55 were saved by Tabberer. Those men went on to lead their own lives and create children to carry on their own stories.

The most senior of those survivors, LCDR Marks, the lightning rod skipper of the ill-fated USS Hull, committed suicide in 1986.

Capt. George Montgomery, the gold wing-wearing leader of the Anzio group that gave the order counter to Halsey to turn his ships south, earned a Legion of Merit of his own for his group’s work off Iwo and Okinawa in 1945.

Basketball team, USS Anzio, 1945. “Over two years, undefeated.” Capt. Montgomery at center.

Post-war, Montgomery joined the staff of the Naval War College and was commander of a fleet air wing in the Caribbean then capped his career, appropriately, as Chief of Naval Air Safety before retiring in 1954 after 30 years in the Navy. RADM Montgomery passed in 1992, aged 92. He was survived by a son, retired Navy Capt. George C. Montgomery Jr., three grandchildren; and a great-grandson. It seems the salt was in the blood.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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

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

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

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

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday Dec. 11, 2024: Cathedral Slugger

Posted on by Leave a comment

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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024: Cathedral Slugger

Above we see the magnificent modified York-class heavy cruiser HMS Exeter (68), entering Grand Harbour, Valetta, Malta, likely during her service with the Mediterranean Fleet’s 1st Cruiser Squadron at Alexandria, during the Abyssinian crisis between October 1935 and July 1936.

Simultaneously the final British warship to be built with 8-inch guns and the last “Washington” treaty cruiser built for the Royal Navy, she would use her guns to good effect against a tough “pocket battleship” some 85 years ago this week.

The Yorks

Sometimes referred to as the “Cathedral” class cruisers, York and her near-sister HMS Exeter (68) were essentially cheaper versions of the Royal Navy’s baker’s dozen County-class cruisers, the latter of which were already under-protected to keep them beneath the arbitrary 10,000-ton limit imposed by the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. Weighing in at 8,250 tons, the Yorks were intended not for fleet action but for the role of sitting on an overseas station and chasing down enemy commerce raiders in the event of war.

York mounted six 8″/50 (20.3 cm) Mark VIII guns in three twin Mark II mounts. Fairly capable guns, they could fire a 256-pound SAP shell out past 30,000 yards at a (theoretical) rate of up to six rounds per gun per minute. Importantly, they carried 172 rounds per gun, up from the 125-150 carried by the preceding County class, a factor which allowed a slightly longer engagement time before running empty.

Bow turrets of HMS York. Photograph by Mrs. Josephine Burston, via Navweaps

Notably, Exeter was completed with the same main gun but in Mark II* mounts, which allowed for a shallower 50-degree elevation.

Cruiser HMS Exeter training her 8-inch guns to starboard

Exeter vessel also had a slightly different “straight” arrangement for her funnels and masts, whereas York’s carried a slant, giving each sister a distinctive profile.

Exeter’s 1930 rigging plan

HMS York. Note the slant to her masts and stacks. Photograph by Walter E. Frost, City of Vancouver Archives Photo No. 447-2863.1

Rounding out the cruisers’ offensive armament was a half-dozen deck-mounted 21-inch torpedo tubes a battery of DP 4-inch guns and a few Vickers machine guns to ward off aircraft.

Built with overseas service in mind, they could cover 10,000nm at 14 knots. Able to achieve 32.3 knots due to having 80,000-ship via Parsons geared steam turbines, they sacrificed armor protection for speed and magazine space, with just 1 inch of steel on their turrets and a belt that was just 3 inches at its thickest.

Exeter, Janes 1931

As noted by Richard Worth in his excellent tome, Fleets of World War II:

In trimming down the County layout, designers managed to retain several features, though sea keeping suffered. Protection also received low priority; the armor scheme (similar in proportion to the County type) included some advances, but all in all, the Yorks seemed even more vulnerable, especially in the machinery spaces.

 

Meet Exeter

Ordered as part of the 1926 Build Programme, Exeter was the fifth RN vessel to carry the name since 1680 and carried forth a quartet of battle honors (Adras 1782, Providien 1782, Negapatam 1782, and Trincomalee 1782) from these vessels. Constructed for £1,837,415 by HMNB Devonport Dockyard, Plymouth, she launched on 18 July 1929.

Her sponsor at the christening was Lady Madden.

Anchored off Plymouth, England, during her builder’s trials in May 1931. NH 60806

 

Bestowed with the familiar motto, Semper fidelis, Ever Faithful, she long maintained a relationship with her ancient namesake cathedral city along the River Exe.

On 23 May 1931, just before she was commissioned, HMS Exeter’s skipper and officers visited the town’s Mayor H W Michelmore, at the Exeter Guildhall. By tradition, Royal Navy ships named after a town are given a small gift by the town, and the Mayor announced that a model of the hall, paid for by public subscription, would be made of silver. Michelmore and a crowd of local dignitaries presented the finished model, about the size of a breadbox, three months later.

“On behalf of myself, my officers and ships crew, and of those who will come after us, I thank you most heartily and sincerely for the beautiful gift you have given us,” her plankowner skipper, Captain (later RADM) Isham W. Gibson, told the delegation. “We hope that you will count us as citizens of Exeter, afloat.”

NH 60803

Exeter, August 1931. NH 60804

Peacetime idyllic cruising

She was a striking vessel for her age. A true peacetime cruiser.

For the next decade, she would embark on a series of “waving the flag” port visits around the globe as she shifted between North America and West Indies Station, based in Bermuda, to the Mediterranean Fleet. This would involve roaming along the coast of Latin America, trips through the Panama Canal with corresponding port calls on the West Coast of America as far north as Esquimalt, BC, and cruising along the Caribbean.

On one such port call, the U.S. Navy dutifully took lots of close-up photographs of her armament and layout that were no doubt forwarded to the ONI, hence their preservation for posterity.

Exeter, .50 cal quad Vickers anti-aircraft machine gun mount. Note the Bluejackets aboard. NH 60811

Shagbats! Exeter with Supermarine Walrus amphibians on catapults. NH 60809

Same as above, NH 60810

Exeter 4″ anti-aircraft gun. NH 60808

Exeter At Montevideo, Uruguay in 1934. NH 60816

Exeter in Balboa harbor, canal zone, 24 April 1934. NH 60812

HMS Exeter, Panama Canal, 1930s. 33rd infantry honor guard at the Miguel locks. N-173-3

HMS Exeter, Northbound, Gamboa Signal Station, March 8, 1935, 185-G-2031

HMS Exeter returning to Devonport from the Mediterranean in July 1936, note her “homeward bound” pennant.

British heavy cruiser HMS Exeter, 1936

HMS Exeter at the Royal Naval Dockyard, on Ireland Island, Sandys Parish, in the British Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda, with Gibb’s Hill Lighthouse beyond, circa 1936

Aerial view of HMS Exeter, Panama Canal Zone, circa early 1939. NH 60807

Exeter off Coco Solo canal zone, circa 1939. NH 60814

Get the Graf!

Skipping a planned dockyard period at Devonport in early August 1939 due to rising tensions in Europe, Exeter’s crew was recalled from leave and prepared to return to service with the South Atlantic Division of the West Indies Squadron, escorting the troopship Dunera to Cape Verde before diverting to Freetown.

On her bridge was newly promoted Capt. Frederick “Hooky” Secker Bell, a fighting sailor who served as a mid on HMS Challenger in the Cameron Campaign in 1914, on board the battleship HMS Canada at the battle of Jutland in 1916, and, as a young lieutenant in 1918, was one of only two survivors of his destroyer when it was sunk from under his feet by one of the Kaiser’s U-boats. He had been XO of the battlewagon HMS Repulse just before moving into Exeter’s captain’s cabin– a battleship man in a cruiser.

When Hitler sent his legions into Poland in September, Exeter was in passage to Rio de Janeiro, and, clearing for war service, she soon took up station off Rio for the purpose of trade defense and interdicting German shipping.

By early October, with German surface raiders afoot in the South Atlantic, Exeter joined Hunting Force G along with the older but more heavily armed County-class heavy cruiser HMS Cumberland (9,750 tons, 8×8″ guns, 31 knots, 4.5-inch belt) and the Leander-class light cruisers HMS Ajax and HMNZS Achilles (7,270 tons, 8×6″/50s, 32.5 knots, 4-inch belt), with the force ranging from the Brazilian coast to the Falklands.

These hounds would eventually find fruit in the chase for the German Deutschland-class panzerschiff cruiser KMS Admiral Graf Spee (14,890 tons, 6×11″/52, 8×5.9″, 28.5 knots, 3.9-inch belt), however, its strongest asset, Cumberland, was in the Falklands under refit at the time, leaving our Exeter and the two lighter cruisers, Ajax and Achilles, to fight it out.

Kriegsmarine Panzerschiff Admiral Graf Spee im Spithead U.K. 1937. Colorised photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/

A detailed retelling of what is now known to history as the Battle of the River Plate would be out of the scope of this post, but, beginning with Graf Spee’s sighting of Force G at 0520 on the morning of 13 December, and ending when the engagement broke off around 0730 with the big German cruiser retreating into the River Plate estuary, is the stuff of legend.

In those swirling two hours, Graf Spee had been hit at least 70 times by British 8- and 6-inch guns, with the German suffering 36 killed and another 60, including her captain, Hans Langsdorff, wounded– in all about a fifth of her complement. While in no danger of sinking and still very much able to fight– albeit with only a third of her 11-inch shells left in her magazines– the panzerschiff had her oil purification plant, desalination plant, and galley destroyed, factors that would make a 6,000 mile run back to Germany likely impossible.

Graf Spee also gave as good as she got, with Exeter, pressing the fight against the larger ship repeatedly, getting the worst punishment in the form of hits from seven 660-pound 11-inch shells– ordnance she was never expected to absorb. Listing and with her two front turrets knocked out, Exeter had 61 dead and 23 wounded crew members aboard and could only make 18 knots. With only one turret still operable– and under local command only– Captain Bell had vouched that he was ready to ram Graf Spee before the German had retired.

As detailed by Lt Ron Atwill, who served in Exeter during the battle:

  • ‘A’ and ‘B’ turrets were out of action from direct hits.
  • ‘Y’ turret firing in local control.
  • The Bridge, Director Control Tower, and the Transmitting Station were out of action.
  • A fire was raging in the CPO’s and Serving Flats.
  • Minor fires were burning on the Royal Marine messdeck and in the Paint Shop.
  • There were no telephone communications – all orders had to be passed by messengers.
  • The ship was about four feet down by the bows due to flooding forward and had a list to starboard of about eight degrees due to some six hundred and fifty tons of water which had flooded in splinter holes near the waterline plus accumulations of fire fighting water. This degree of list is quite considerable and makes movement within the ship very difficult when decks are covered with fuel oil and water.
  • Only one 4-inch gun could be fired.
  • Both aircraft had been jettisoned.
  • W/T communications had completely broken down – mostly due to aerials having been shot away.

HMS Exeter (68) as seen in 1939, shows splinter damage to ‘A’ and ‘B’ turrets and the bridge from the German cruiser Admiral Graf Spee. While her rear ‘Y’ turret was intact, its electrical system had suffered a short from saltwater intrusion and was down to manual control. CDR RD Ross photo IWM HU 43488

Swiss cheese splinter damage to Exeter’s stacks. Splinters had riddled the ship’s funnels and searchlights, wrecked the ship’s Walrus aircraft just as it was about to be launched for gunnery spotting, and slaughtered her exposed torpedo tube crews. Shrapnel swept the bridge, killing or wounding almost all the bridge personnel and knocking out most of the ship’s communications and navigational tools, forcing the vessel to be directed by one of the compasses pulled from a launch. CDR RD Ross photo IWM HU 43505

With no means to fight left at her disposal other than the single 4-inch open mount still working, Exeter remained on watch with the lighter Ajax and Achilles, both damaged and nearly out of shells, keeping station at the Plate’s mouth should Graf Spee attempt to escape. Cumberland, rushed 1,000 miles from the Falklands in just 34 hours, arrived to reinforce the force late on the night of 14 December and relieve Exeter, who was ordered to retire to the Port Stanley for emergency repairs.

Ordered by Berlin not to have his ship interned in Uruguay, options were limited to Langsdorff, Graf Spee’s skipper. Partially due to his ship’s damage, and partially because the three British cruisers at the river’s mouth could bird-dog him should he put to sea, a factor acerbated by openly exaggerated signals that RN carriers and battlewagons were rapidly inbound (they were in fact still five days away), Langsdorff landed his crew– who he refused to sacrifice in vain– scuttled his ship in Montevideo, and then blew his brains out.

Admiral Graf Spee in flames after being scuttled in the River Plate estuary, 17 December 1939. IWM 4700-01

Later Allied inspection of Graf Spee’s hull showed Exeter got in at least three hits from her “puny” 256-pound 8-inchers, including the key destruction of her oil purification plant, the blow that cut off the big cruiser’s legs.

Admiral Graf Spee, ship’s port bow, taken while she was at Montevideo, Uruguay in mid-December 1939, following the Battle of the River Plate. Note crew members working over the side to repair damage from an eight-inch shell fired by the British heavy cruiser Exeter. The notation The ‘Moustache’ refers to the false bow wave painted on Admiral Graf Spee’s bows. The original photograph came from Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison’s World War II history project working files. NH 83003

Admiral Graf Spee photograph of a shell hole in the ship’s forward superstructure tower, made by an eight-inch shell fired by the British heavy cruiser Exeter. The sketch below shows the location of the hole, and describes it as large enough to crawl through. Taken on board the ship’s wreck in the River Plate, near Montevideo, Uruguay, where she had been scuttled in December 1939. Page from an intelligence report prepared by USS Helena (CL-50) during her shakedown cruise to South America. The photograph was taken on 2 February 1940 by Ensign Richard D. Sampson, USN. NH 51986

Admiral Graf Spee photograph of the interior of the ship’s forward superstructure tower, showing damage caused by an eight-inch shell fired by the British heavy cruiser Exeter during the Battle of the River Plate. Cut wires and the absence of a fire control tube were noted on the original report in which this image appeared. Taken on board the ship’s wreck in the River Plate, near Montevideo, Uruguay, where she had been scuttled in December 1939. Photographed on 2 February 1940 by Ensign Richard D. Sampson, USN, for an intelligence report prepared by USS Helena (CL-50) during her shakedown cruise to South America. NH 51987-A

Arriving at Port Stanley on 20 December, Exeter would remain there for a month, patched up with steel plate salvaged from the old Grytviken whaling station while her wounded were cared for in local homes, until the battered cruiser began her slow voyage back to England. She arrived at Plymouth on 15 February 1940.

HMS Exeter arrives back in the UK after emergency repairs at Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands following the battle of the river Plate. Lighter paintwork can be seen where the damage was patched up.

Churchill, at the time First Lord of the Admiralty, visited the cruiser and addressed the crew. The bulldog had come “to pay my tribute to her brave officers and men from her shattered decks in Plymouth Harbor”

Arrival at Plymouth with Churchill coming aboard. IWM HU 104428

On 23 February, her celebrated crew marched through the City of London. Bell was made a companion knight of the Bath while the other members of the crew would pick up two DSOs, seven DSCs, and nearly 40 DSMs.

Leap Day 1940 saw Bell lead 87 members of his crew on a Freedom of the City parade with fixed bayonets through Exeter, where seemingly the entire town turned out. The cruisermen brought with them a host of souvenirs to hand over to the city including Exeter’s shell-torn White Ensign and her bell, left with the city for safekeeping.

Pacific maelstrom

Exeter’s extensive repair would stretch for a year and included rebuilding her gun houses, installing new catapults and torpedo tubes, as well as modernization that saw a Type 279 search radar, Type 284 gunnery control radar, tripod masts, and improved anti-aircraft armament shipped aboard. The latter included landing her old 4.1-inch singles for four twin 102/45 QF Mk XVIs along with two massive octuple 40mm 2-pounder MK VIII mounts.

In that period, her near-sister, York, was lost to MTMs of Xª Flottiglia MAS in Suda Bay.

HMS Exeter, off Devonport after refit, March 1941, by Harold William John Tomlin. IWM A3553

HMS Exeter, off Devonport after refit, March 1941 hoisting Walrus, by Harold William John Tomlin. IWM A 3555

Stern view, same place and time as above. A 3552

Exeter’s ninth and final skipper, Capt. Oliver Loudon Gordon, took command on 11 March 1941.

Following post-refit workups with the Northern Patrol in April 1941, Exeter was transferred to the East Indies Squadron, which was beefing up as tensions with the Empire of Japan were at an all-time high. Likewise, Bell was ordered to a new position as Flag Captain to the Flag Officer, Malaya,

Sailing south with a military convoy on 22 May– while keeping an eye out for the raiding Bismarck and Prinz Eugen— she arrived in Freetown on 4 June and Durban two weeks later before spending the next six months as escort a series of different slow convoys (CM 014, BP 012, CM 017, and MA 001) shuttling around the Indian Ocean.

On 7 December 1941, she was ordered to Singapore to join the ill-fated Force Z– the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser HMS Repulse. She didn’t make it to join the force before it was destroyed by Japanese land-based bombers three days later in the South China Sea.

Instead, Exeter leaned into her speed and, under the combined ABDA Command in Java, she spent January and February 1942 as part of several different Allied convoys (DM 001, BM 010, BM 011, BM 012, JS 001, and SJ 5) running troops to Singapore and around the Dutch East Indies.

HMS Exeter firing at Japanese aircraft which unsuccessfully attacked convoy JS1 in the Bangka Strait during the 14/15 February 1942, NIMH 2158_017924

A harbor tug crosses the bow of the 8-inch gun cruiser HMS Exeter as she lies anchored in the congested harbor of Tanjong Priok, the port for Batavia, now Jakarta, in the first days of February 1942. Exeter helped clear the congestion, taking thirty merchant ships to sea. AWM P04139.003

On 25 February, Exeter, along with the RAN Leander-class light cruiser HMAS Perth (sister to Ajax and Achilles) and destroyers HMS Electra, Encounter, and Jupiter, were detailed to join the ABDA’s Eastern Striking Force under Dutch RADM K.W.F.M. Doorman at Soerabaja, which was then renamed the Combined Striking Force. Doorman’s force was slight, made up of just the Dutch light cruisers HrMs De Ruyter and HrMs Java, the heavy cruiser USS Houston (CA-30), and a mix of nine Dutch and American destroyers, mostly old “flush deckers” from the Great War.

Of the five allied cruisers, only Houston was more powerful than Exeter, carrying nine cramped 8″/55 guns in her thin hull. However, only six of Houston’s 8-incher were operable as her aft turret had been knocked out in an earlier air attack. Further, only Exeter had radar.

Rushing out to confront a force of 30 Japanese troops transports on 27 February 1942 protected by RADM Takeo Takagi’s two heavy cruisers, two old light cruisers, and 14 destroyers, things got pear-shaped pretty fast in what became known as the First Battle of the Java Sea.

A flurry of over 90 Long Lance torpedoes sank a Dutch destroyer while a lucky 7.9-inch hit from the Japanese Myoko-class heavy cruiser Haguro penetrated to Exeter’s aft boiler room and knocked six of her eight boilers offline, dropping the British cruiser’s speed to just five knots.

Retiring South towards Surabaya via the Sunda Strait with Encounter and the American destroyer USS Pope (DD-225) escorting, Exeter had the supreme misfortune of running into the four Japanese heavy cruiser sisters Nachi, Haguro, Myoko, and Ashigara, along with their four escorting destroyers, supported by the carrier Ryujo over the horizon, on the morning of 1 March.

Although Exeter had managed to increase her speed to 23 knots by this time, it was far too slow to avoid being overtaken by the armada of bruisers and fast greyhounds. The disparity in ordnance in big guns alone– 40 7.9″/50s vs six 8″/50s– was staggering before even taking into account smaller guns and torpedo tubes.

Japanese shells rain down around HMS Exeter during her ill-fated encounter in the Java Sea

Despite Encounter and Pope bravely making smoke and attempting torpedo runs against impossible odds– the same sort of bravery later seen by American escorts in the defense of Taffy 3 in October 1944– it was all over in about three hours and all of the Allied vessels were sent to the bottom piecemeal.

Exeter sinking on 1 March 1942 after engagement with Japanese Cruisers off Java. This Japanese photo was captured by U.S. Forces at Attu in May 1943. Collection of Admiral T. C Kinkaid, USN. NH 91772

NH 91773

Exeter sinking after engaging Japanese heavy cruisers in the Java Sea, 1 March 1942. Image taken from the captured Japanese wartime booklet “Victory on the March” 80-G-179020

Exeter earned three battle honors (River Plate 1939, Malaya 1942, and Sunda Strait 1942) to add to the four she carried forward.

Epilogue

Over the next two days, Japanese destroyers would pick up some 800 Allied survivors from the three lost warships in the water after the battle including 652 men of the crew of Exeter, the cruiser remarkably “only” losing 54 in the battle itself. A large reason why so many of Exeter’s crew survived the battle was that Capt. Gordon, his ship lost, ordered her evacuated before the final bloody game could play out. Like Capt. Langsdorff at Montevideo, Gordon owed it to his men not to ask them to perish in vain.

Tossed into the hell that was the Japanese POW camp systems no less than 27 of Pope’s sailors, 37 of Encounter’s, and 30 from Exeter died in the prison camps, usually from either malaria or pneumonia. When it came to Japanese camps, they typically lost a full quarter of those housed within.

Recovered from camps in the Celebes, Macassar, and Nagasaki in September 1945, Exeter veterans were given emergency medical care and repatriated. AWM photos

The wrecks of Encounter, Exeter, and Pope have been extensively looted by illegal salvagers.

Capt. Gordon, while being removed from Japan on USS Gosper (APA-170) in October 1945, finally had a chance to deliver his 12-page report on Exeter’s final battles to the Admiralty, via U.S. channels. With the traditional English gift of understatement, he noted that, during the evacuation of the cruiser, “The ship was evidently leaking oil fuel considerably, which, with a slight lop, made conditions in the water decidedly unpleasant, at first.”

July 1942 portrait of Capt. Oliver L Gordon, RN, HMS Exeter, who was captured in the Java Sea. Capt Gordon was a prisoner of war in Zentsuji Camp, Shikoku, Osaka, Japan. He later wrote of his experiences both in command of the Exeter and as a prisoner of war in Japan in the book Fight It Out, published in 1957, and passed in 1973. AWM P04017.059

As for “Hooky” Secker Bell, Exeter’s commander during the fight with Graf Spee, he escaped Singapore before the fall in 1942 and survived the war. In January 1946 he took command of the battleship HMS Anson, was named an ADC to King George VI, and retired on health grounds in January 1948.

In 1956, he served as an advisor to the film The Battle of the River Plate which included the huge Des Moines class heavy cruiser USS Salem as the Graf, Achilles as herself, the light cruiser HMS Sheffield as Ajax, and the light cruiser HMS Jamaica as our Exeter.

Her 1931-marked bell and River Plate battle-damaged ensign, along with a scale model of the cruiser, are in Exeter as part of the city’s archives.

St Andrews Chapel in Exeter has several relics and a memorial stained glass window which incorporates the ship’s badge.

She is celebrated in maritime art, and for good reason.

HMS Exeter at Plymouth in 1940: Back from the Graf Spee action, by Charles Ernest Cundall. IWM (Art.IWM ART LD 1848)

Battle of the River Plate, 13 December 1939 watercolor by Edward Tufnell, RN (Retired), depicting the cruisers HMS Exeter (foreground) and HMNZS Achilles (right center background) in action with the German armored ship Admiral Graf Spee (right background). NH 86397-KN

Admiral Graf Spee vs Ajax, Achilles, and Exeter painting by Adam Werka

The Battle of the Java Sea, painting by Van der Ven. From left to right two American destroyers (Four stackers), cruiser Hr.Ms. De Ruyter, HMAS Perth, HMS Exeter, Hr.Ms. Witte de With, Hr.Ms. Kortenaer (sinking) and HMS Jupiter. NIMH 2158_051001.

The Royal Navy, when passing through the Sunda Strait, typically holds a memorial service for the lost cruiser and her escorts.

HMS Montrose showers the now-calm waters of the Java Sea with poppies over the site where 62 men lost their lives when cruiser HMS Exeter and destroyer HMS Encounter fell victim to the Japanese, 2019. MOD photo

In 1980, a Type 42 destroyer, HMS Exeter (D 89), joined the fleet to perpetuate the name. She earned the ship her eighth battle honor (Falklands- 1982) and was only decommissioned on 27 May 2009.

October 1987. Gulf Of Oman. A starboard beam view of the British destroyer HMS Exeter (D-89) underway on patrol while stationed in the region as part of a multinational force safeguarding shipping during the war between Iraq and Iran. PH1 T. Cosgrove. DN-ST-93-00902

A veterans organization for all the past Exeters endures. 

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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

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

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

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

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday Dec. 4, 2024: Danish E-Boat Days

Posted on by One comment

Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday to 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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024: Danish E-Boat Days

Foto: Tøjhusmuseet

Above we see a great Royal Danish Navy recruiting poster from 1951 by Aage Rasmussen. Reading roughly, “A healthy life. A future – become a naval officer,” it shows a well-dressed lieutenant in the Danish RN style uniform, complete with Marineglas 6×30 binos produced by Carl Zeiss.

You may find the planing torpedo boat– the hull number, P558, makes it Musvaagen— in the poster’s foreground familiar. We’ll get into that.

The Danish TB Saga

Denmark loved fast torpedo boats probably longer than any other naval force in history, fielding no less than 108 of them between 1879 and 2000.

Danish torpedoer Hajen, first of her type in service to the King of Denmark

As we have touched on with a past Warship Wednesday (“A Tough Little Wolf”) which focused on the Great War-era Søridderen and Tumleren classes, the country had 17 such TBs on hand going into 1914.

The green-painted Tumleren class torpedo boat Vindhunden aside the anchored panserskibet coastal defense ship Peder Skram at Østre Mole. Commissioned in 1911, Vindhunden and her class would be retired by 1935. (Aarhus Stadsarkiv)

Danish Tumleren class torpedo boat Vindhunden in Aarhus Harbour between 1919 and 1924, note the cutlass worn, likely by the crew’s bosun. There is just so much I love about this image from the dirty whites and flatcaps to the drying kapok life jackets and the grimy snipe catching a smoke. (Aarhus Stadsarkiv)

During WWI, the country managed to construct 10 further vessels of the 126-foot Springeren class, the last two of which were finished in 1919. This allowed the country, interbellum, to retire elderly boats left over from the late 19th Century.

June 1927. Three Great War-era Springeren-class TBs in Aarhus harbor including Søhunden (Nr.7), Narhvalen (Nr.5), and Havhesten (Nr.6), June 1927 at the Østre Mole. At the time, Søhunden was under the command of HKH Kronprins Frederik, the Danish heir. (Photo: Aarhus Stadsarkiv)

By 1929, six big (195-foot) and well-armed Dragen/Glenten-class torpedo boats began entering service, which gave enough breathing room to the Danish admiralty to finally put the last of their pre-1914 TBs (the six members of the Søridderen and Tumleren classes) to pasture, and downgrade the Springeren-class to fast mine warfare vessels (capable of both laying and sweeping).

Danish Torpedobåden Dragen T1 overhead. Capable ships of 335 tons, the Dragen/Glenten-class torpedo boats carried two deck guns, two bow-mounted 17.7-inch tubes, and 4 or 6 further 17.7-inch tubes on turnstiles.

Danish torpedo practice 1939 Torpedobåd affyrer skud i Aarhus Bugten.

Danish Torpedobåden Dragen (T1). THM-12146

Danish Mandskab, Torpedosektionen Dragen class in background 1937-38 THM-6114

Danish Aarhus Harbour, torpedo boats T1 Dragen, T2 Hvalen, and T3 Laxen are located at the Quay 1939, iced in

Danish torpedo boat T3 Laxen in Aarhus Bay in the autumn of 1939

Aarhus, Denmark, Torpedo boats T2 Hvalen, T5 Høgen, and T4 Glenten, 1939. Note the six chemical smoke cylinders on the stern and twin 75-foot mine rails on each boat.

Then came WWII.

Denmark entered the conflict in 1939 the same way it had in the First World War, as a neutral. To enforce this neutrality on the sea, she had the aforementioned Dragen/Glenten TBs in her fleet– balancing several small gunboats, 10 fast minesweepers (the old Springeren-class TBs, sans torpedoes), four submarines, the training cruiser (artilleriskib) Niels Juel, and the old bathtub battleship (kystforsvarsskib) Peder Skram.

Ordered not to resist when the Germans blitzkrieged through the country in April 1940, and then largely disarmed, the Danish Navy was further humiliated by its government and ordered to “lease” their beautiful Dragen/Glentens to the occupier in February 1941. The Kriegsmarine used them as U-boat support ships and torpedo retrievers, numbered TFA1 through TFA6.

One, TFA3 (ex-Dragen) was lost to a mine, while the other five were in condemned condition by the end of the war.

Wrecked former Danish torpedo boats, the Dragon class, photographed in Flensburg harbor after Donau’s explosion, 14 June 1945. A4= “ex-Glenten”, 5= “ex-Hvalen, 6= “ex-Laxen” THM-6979

Post-war, the Danish Navy, which had committed ritual scuttling in 1943 to escape German capture, only had a single torpedo boat left, Havkatten, a circa 1920 member of the Springeren class had been able to escape to Sweden and returned home in 1945 as the flagship of the Free Danish Brigade’s 133-member flotilla (Den Danske Flotille).

Officially rerated in the 1930s as a minesweeper, Havkatten only had a single 17.7-inch torpedo tube still mounted in her bow– but no torpedoes!

The torpedo boat Havkatten, which escaped to Sweden on 29 August 1943, returns to Copenhagen on 11 May 1945. Her 27-member crew at this point manned two 57mm AAA guns and a 40mm Bofors. FHM22287

Besides Havkatten, the Danish flotilla at VE Day only contained three small 80-foot coastal mine boats (MS 1, MS 7, and MS29), each with a 12-man crew and armed with a 20mm cannon, nine even smaller coast guard launches with 5-man crews, and the 41-foot motor launch Fandango, with the latter types only armed with small caliber machine guns.

Schnellboote Solution!

Looking to get back into the TB business after WWII, the easiest way to pull this off was for the Danes to get reparations in the form of former Kriegsmarine Schnellboote, or E and S-boats in Allied parlance.

The Danes had the hulk of one, S116, on hand already in 1945.

As chronicled by Die Schnellboote Seite, beginning in early 1947, OMGUS, the U.S. occupation government in Germany, authorized the sale of 10 scratch-and-dent German E-boats collected at Bremerhaven for $80,000. With that also came whatever 21-inch torpedoes and parts could be scrounged.

S64 in Kriegsmarine service with the panther emblem of 4. Schnellbootflottille. Post-war, she was the Norwegian Lyn and then the Danish Stormfuglen

Hejren (P566) ex-S117, in Danish green livery.

Copenhagen kept reaching out concerning similar boats and obtained four more from U.S. stores in 1948, and another four from the British.

In 1951, the Danes picked up six E-boats from Norway, where they had been in coastal service.

Ultimately, the Danes would own no less than 22 former German E-boats and eventually get 18 of them working.

The first operational, appropriately dubbed Glenten (T51), formerly the Kriegsmarine’s S306, entered service in July 1947, and those that followed are typically known as the Glenten class in Denmark even though the boats came from several slightly different German classes. Meanwhile, in English-speaking sources, these are often broken down by former German sub-classes: Glenten/T51/S170, Gribben/T52/S38, and Havørnen/T53/S139.

See table:

German Number

German class, builder

Entered Service

Seized By

Norwegian Name

Danish Name

Entered Danish Service

Danish Number

S15

S14 Lürssen

27 February 1937

USN

N/A

(Cannibalized)

(1947)

T46

S115

S109 Schlichting

30 May 1942

UK

N/A

(Cannibalized)

(1947)

 

S116

S109 Schlichting

4 July 1942

Denmark

N/A

(Cannibalized)

(1945)

 

S122

S26 Schlichting

21 February 1943

UK

N/A

(Cannibalized)

(1947)

 

S306

S151 Lürssen

Incomplete

USN

N/A

Glenten

07/31/1947

P551 (T51)

S107

S26 Schlichting

6 July 1941

USN

N/A

Gribben

04/15/1948

P552 (T52)

S216

S151 Lürssen

27 December 1944

USN

N/A

Havoarnen

11/19/1948

P553 (T53)

S133

S26 Schlichting 

31 December 1943

USN

N/A

Hærfuglen

03/21/1949

P554 (T54)

S206

S151 Lürssen

31 August 1944

 

USN

N/A

Hoegen

03/28/1949

P555 (T55)

S127

S26 Schlichting 

10 July 1943

USN

N/A

Isfuglen

07/08/1949

P556 (T56)

S305

S301 Lürssen

29 March 1945

USN

N/A

Jagtfalken

07/08/1949

P557 (T57)

S79

S26 Lürssen

27 June 1942

Norway

N/A

Musvaagen

07/15/1950

P558 (T58)

S196

S171

Lürssen

3 July 1944

UK

N/A

Raagen

11/01/1949

P559 (T59)

S97

S26 Lürssen

25 March 1943

USN

N/A

Ravnen

01/10/1953

P560 (T60)

S207

S171

Lürssen

19 September 1944

UK

N/A

Skaden

10/07/1950

P561 (T61)

S64

S26 Lürssen

2 November 1941

USN

Lyn (1947)

Stormfuglen

10/08/1953

P562

S303

S301 Lürssen

24 February 1945

USN

E2, Brann

Taarnfalken

05/12/1952

P563

S85

S26 Lürssen

7 December 1942

USN

Storm

Tranen

11/03/1955

P564

S302

S301 Lürssen

12 February 1945

USN

E1, Blink

Falken

02/07/1953

P565

S117

S109 Schlichting

8 August 1942

USN

B97, Tross

Hejren

01/05/1956

P566

S195

S171

Lürssen

10 July 1944

USN

E3, Kjekk

Lommen

04/21/1955

P567

S68

S26 Lürssen

1 July 1942

 

USN

N/A

Viben

11/03/1955

P568 (T62)

By late 1954, the fleet reached its zenith, with 15 former German E-boats in active service, a full decade after WWII ended.

Danish Glenten class Schnellbooten. Note the boat to the right has been retrofitted with a U.S. 40mm L60. THM-24118

Havørnen (P-553, ex-S216), Danish Glentenklassen Schnellboote. THM-24131

Jagtfalken (P-557, ex-S79) Danish Glentenklassen Schnellboote. THM-24132

Musvaagen (P-558, ex-S79) first in a nest of Danish Glentenklassen E-boats.THM-24137

Same as above, with Musvaagen’s name plainly visible on the deck house. Note the forward 20mm cannon mounts and starboard torpedo tube hatch.THM-24145

Isfuglen (P-556) outboard of a group of Danish Glentenklassen S-boats. THM-24129

As acquired by the Danes, most of these boats had two 21-inch forward torpedo tubes- the first time the Danish Navy went with such large fish– with two torps loaded and room for a reload, giving them the capability to carry four torps. War-surplus German G7 straight runners were used.

Torpedo fired by Danish Glentenklassen Schnellboote. THM-24148

Deck-mounted armament at first typically consisted of anywhere from two to five 20mm/65 Flak C30/C38s. The guns were classified as the Mk M/39 LvSa in Danish service. The boats also had some capability to run a few mines and/or depth charges on stern racks.

2 cm Flugabwehrkanone 38 Danish Glentenklassen Schnellboote. Note the American M1 helmets. THM-24157

2 cm Flugabwehrkanone 38 Danish Glentenklassen Schnellboote E-boat S-boat THM-24156

2 cm Flugabwehrkanone 38 Danish Glentenklassen Schnellboote. THM-24150

With all the E-boats running 114 feet in length on similar hulls, the force was all powered by a trio of Daimler-Benz diesels, albeit in three different variants across the classes. Even the slower models could still touch 38 knots at a full clip, at least for the length of a couple of attack runs, while the zestier of the herd could log 45. Their range was typically 700 miles, more than enough to cover the narrow Kattegat and Skagerrak straits. 

One of three 3,000 hp Daimler-Benz MB518 diesels on a Danish Glentenklassen Schnellboote. Other models included 2,500 hp MB511s or 2,000 hp MB501s. THM-24154

By 1951, with NATO standardization, the Danish E-boats started landing their German-made flak guns in favor of, first, a single 40mm/60 Mk M/36 Bofors aft, and then by late 1955 an improved new Swedish-made 40mm/70 Bofors SAK 315 single (M/48 LvSa in Danish service) as well a U.S. supplied 20 mm/70 Mark 7 Oerlikon (Mk M/42 LvSa) forward.

40mm Bofors L60 on Danish Glenten class Schnellboote. THM-24121

March 1957. 40mm Bofors L70. Danish boats mounted these on the stern and had a 20mm single forward in the “zero gravity” area near the bow. Note the U.S. M1 helmets. Aarhus Archive. 

Likewise, they received a small surface search radar and NATO pennant numbers, transitioning from the Danish T series (e.g. T54) to the NATO P series (e.g. P554).

In Danish service, these craft typically had 22 member crews including two officers, two petty officers, and 18 ratings.

Gangway guard for a Danish Glentenklassen Schnellboote. Note the M1 Garand rifle (adopted as the M/50 GarandGevær). THM-24141

In Danish service, boats were originally in a grey/green livery but the country did experiment with a flash white scheme as well.

4 September 1953. The MTB tender HMDS Hjælperen (A563) in Aarhus Harbor together with six motor torpedo boats, all former S-boats. Note that four are painted flash white and two are grey/green. Note the forward mounts have been landed (Photo: Aarhus Stadsarkiv)

Glenten (P551, ex S306) with the experimental flash white scheme

Our subjects were augmented in service by 10 brand-new Danish-built Flyvefisken and Falken-class vessels, which were constructed at Copenhagen based on a scaled-up 118-foot version of the German design they had been working with since 1945.

12 August 1959, Danish torpedo boats motortorpedobåde in the harbor off Vejerboden. Five Danish motor torpedo boats: Sværdfisken (P505), Flyvefisken (P500), Glenten (P551), and Falken (P565). The boats are part of a large NATO squadron of 69 ships that docked in Aarhus Harbour. Of note, Sværdfisken and Flyvefisken, despite their lower pennant numbers and appearance, are actually brand-new TBs commissioned in 1955, built at Orlogsværftets, København as an ode to the German E-boats. Note their stern 40mm L70s and surface search radar fits. (Photo: Aarhus Stadsarkiv)

The first to be decommissioned by the Danes, Hærfuglen (ex-S133), Isfuglen (ex-S127), and Musvaagen (ex-S79) were all early boats with smaller diesels and were pulled from service in November 1954. Speed was everything with these boats, after all.

By 1960, the Danes still had 11 left in service. Via the 1960-61 Janes:

However, all things fast eventually run out of time, and by September 1965, the last, Viben (ex-S68), was withdrawn, capping some 20 years of E-boat fun under the Dannebrog.

November 1957 Motortorpedobåde entering Aarhus (Base). (Photo: Aarhus Stadsarkiv)

Epilogue

None of the Danish-operated E-boats survive. 

Supplemented by the newer Flyvefisken and Falken-class near-sisters, they were replaced by a half-dozen of the Soloven (British Vosper Brave-Ferocity type). Short boats at just 98 feet, they carried four torpedo tubes and could reach a paint-peeling 50 knots.

Danish Soloven (Sea Lion) Class Vosper Brave SØHUNDEN (P514).

Finally, in 1974 the Danish Navy introduced their penultimate torpedo boat, the 10 ships of the Willemoes class. Sleek 139-footers running on Rolls-Royce Proteus gas turbines, they could make 40 knots and carry a combination of Harpoon AShW missiles, up to six torpedo tubes for modern wire-guided torpedoes, and a 76mm OTO Melera.

Danish Willemoes klassen torpedo missile boats

The Willemoes would remain in service until 2000.

The end of an era.

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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

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

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

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

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024: Ron Three

Posted on by 3 comments

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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024: Ron Three

French Navy image

Above we see the white-hulled U.S. Coast Guard Reliance-class cutter Valiant (WMEC 621), steaming alongside the French Navy’s surveillance frigate FS Ventose (F733) on 29 Sept. 2024, while underway in the Windward Passage. Valiant, built in the 1960s, originally carried a 3″/50 DP gun of the same sort they used to put on submarines in WWII, but since the 1990s has only carried a 25mm chain gun forward. Ventose, which is only marginally larger than the cutter, totes a 3.9″/55 DP gun in a CADAM turret recycled from the old carrier Clemenceau.

The French, in their design concept behind Ventose and her sisters, intended them for solo overseas constabulary service, roughly akin to what the USCG’s large cutters have done for over a century Sadly, the Coast Guard long ago landed their big guns and today just have 57mm pop guns on even their largest cutters.

It wasn’t always like that.

Coast Guard Squadron Three

Immediately after the Gulf of Tonkin Incident in 1964, the Navy got heavily involved in Southeast Asia. One rub of the situation was that road-poor Vietnam had a river and stream-dotted 12,000-mile coastline and a myriad of some 60,000 small craft in its littoral. That meant the only way you could halt and screen this shallow-water maritime traffic was by getting your own shallow-water assets and the saga of the “Brown Water Navy” and Operation Market Time was born.

At first, the Navy tried to grow its own force from local vessels, the Junk Force, augmented by old destroyers, mine warfare vessels, and some 82-foot Coast Guard patrol boats, the latter the start of a decade-long multifaceted involvement by the Guard in Vietnam.

By August 1965, TF 115 comprised eight large U.S. Navy vessels (primarily DERs augmented by MSOs and MSCs), 11 Coast Guard WPBs, 15 VNN Sea Force ships, and 215 junks. These were soon augmented by hundreds of the new 50-foot PCFs (Swiftboats), and the Navy sent more and more old destroyers and escorts into the near-shore zone for interdiction and naval gunfire support.

ADM Roy Johnson, Commander Pacific Fleet, forced in March 1967 to reassign Market Time DERs to a new interdiction campaign, known as Operation Sea Dragon, against lines of communication in North Vietnam, requested five Coast Guard high endurance cutters (WHECs) to replace the DERs in the Market Time barrier. Thus was born Commander, Task Unit (CTU) 70.8.6 (Coast Guard Squadron Three).

The Ships

In early 1967, the Coast Guard had 37 of what they termed at the time “high endurance cutters,” larger ocean-going vessels that were expected to be pressed into service as destroyer escorts/patrol frigates should WWIII start.

Between 4 May 1967 and 31 January 1972, no less than 31 HECs completed lengthy deployments to Vietnam, one of them twice. These weren’t short cruises. All were at least six months long while many were well past that to nine or ten months. Keep in mind this was while the agency was still part of the civilian U.S. Transportation Department (they have been part of Homeland Security since 2003) and not transferred wholesale to the Navy as in WWI and WWII.

These 31 ships included six of six 327-foot Treasury-class cutters that had seen convoy escort and amphibious landing operations in WWII; nine of 18 smaller and almost as well-traveled 311-foot Casco-class cutters (former WWII Navy Barnegat-class small seaplane tenders); nine of 13 stubby 255-foot Owasco-class cutters which entered service just after WWII, and the seven of nine brand-new 378-foot Hamilton-class cutters which included such modern features as helicopter hangars and gas turbine powerplants.

Nine of the 18 311-foot Casco class cutters would serve in CGRON3 off Vietnam– and two of them would transfer to the RVNN at the end of their U.S. service (listing via the 1960 ed of Janes)

A big reason these were sent to Vietnam was that they had a relatively shallow draft (12.5 feet on the 311s and 327s, 17 on the 255s, and 15 on the 378s), allowing them to operate close to shore, surface search radar (SPS-23, augmented by SPS-29 air search), had a decent commo suite that allowed interfacing with Big Navy C4I assets, had crews familiar with sometimes sketchy coastwise interdiction in a littoral, and, most importantly, all carried a simple and easily supportable Mark 12 DP 5-inch gun (in enclosed Mk 30 single mountings with local Mk. 26 Fire Control) and knew how to use it.

The Deployments

In all, the 31 cutters sent to Vietnam steamed 1,292,094 combined miles on station, spending some 62.6 percent of their time underway conducting 205 Market Time patrols.

Five Casco class Barnegat class cutters 311 USCG Squadron Three, probably taken in Subic Bay on the way to Vietnam in 1967

CGRON3 headed to Vietnam in a column from Subic Bay

This was enabled by 1,153 underway replenishments and a smaller number of vertical replenishments.

At sea off Vietnam. Australian destroyer HMAS Hobart approaching a Mispillion class replenishment oiler USS Passumpsic (AO-107) as it is tanking a Coast Guard 311-foot HEC, likely CGC Pontchartrain. AWM Photo P01904.005 by Peter Michael Oleson.

The Coast Guard sent eight deployments of HECs to support CGRON3 with the first five each comprised of five high-endurance cutters. The sixth deployment included three high-endurance cutters, with two of the three turned over to the Vietnamese Navy at the end of the tour. The seventh and eighth deployments each consisted of just two cutters.

First Deployment

USCGC Barataria (WHEC 381) 4 May 67 — 25 Dec 67 (Casco)
USCGC Half Moon (WHEC 378) 4 May 67 — 29 Dec 67 (Casco)
USCGC Yakutat (WHEC 380) 4 May 67 — 1 Jan 68 (Casco)
USCGC Gresham (WHEC 387) 4 May 67 — 28 Jan 68 (Casco)
USCGC Bering Strait (WHEC 382) 4 May 67 — 18 Feb 68 (Casco)

Naval Base Subic Bay – USCG Squadron 3, first deployment, showing five freshly-painted Casco-class cutters alongside the repair ship USS Jason (AR-8) in late April before heading to Vietnam. Note this is before the Coast Guard adopting their now famous bow “racing stripe” 221206-G-G0000-120

A rusty and hard-serving USCGC Barataria (WHEC 381) off Vietnam in late 1967 showed a less than gleaming appearance. Note she doesn’t have a racing stripe yet and her 26-foot Monomoy is away. 230807-G-M0101-2004

From Barataria’s history: 

Barataria set a fast pace of effectiveness during her deployment in Vietnam waters. Underway 83 percent of the time, the cutter cruised over 67,000 miles without a major mechanical or electrical failure. Keeping a close watch on all moving craft in her surveillance area, Barataria detected, inspected, or boarded nearly 1,000 steel-hulled vessels traversing her area, any one of which could have been a trawler trying to sneak supplies to the enemy. Barataria was called upon many times to use her main battery against shore-based enemy troops who were aggressively engaged with Allied forces. Representative of the high state of readiness and training of the cutter’s men is the fact that U.S. Army spotter planes reported all rounds on target, never once falling out of the target area. On one mission three direct hits were scored on point targets that had been spotted by aircraft. She returned to the US on 12 January 1968 and was reassigned to San Francisco.

Second Deployment

USCGC Androscoggin (WHEC 68) 4 Dec 67 — 4 Aug 68 (Owasco)
USCGC Duane (WHEC 33) 4 Dec 67 — 28 Jul 68 (Treasury)
USCGC Campbell (WHEC 32) 14 Dec 67 — 12 Aug 68 (Treasury)
USCGC Minnetonka (WHEC 67) 5 Jan 68 — 29 Sep 68 (Owasco)
USCGC Winona (WHEC 65) 25 Jan 68 — 17 Oct 68 (Owasco)

255-foot Owasco class USCGC Minnetonka (WHEC 67), Vietnam

Of the above, Winona noted in her history that:

She steamed 50,727 miles, spent 203 days at sea, treated 437 Vietnamese, sunk one enemy trawler, destroyed 50 sampans and damaged 44 more, destroyed 137 structures and damaged 254, destroyed 39 bunkers and damaged 27, destroyed two bridges and damaged another, destroyed 3 gun positions and killed 128 enemy personnel, expending a total of 3,291 five-inch shells.

All in a day’s work.

Third Deployment

USCGC Bibb (WHEC 31) 4 Jul 68 — 28 Feb 69 (Treasury)
USCGC Ingham (WHEC 35) 16 Jul 68 — 3 Apr 69 (Treasury)
USCGC Owasco (WHEC 39) 23 Jul 68 — 21 Mar 69 (Owasco)
USCGC Wachusett (WHEC 44) 10 Sep — 1 Jun 69 (Owasco)
USCGC Winnebago (WHEC 40) 20 Sep 68 — 19 Jul 69 (Owasco)

USCGC Wachusett (WHEC-44) in the Vietnam era

“W O W . . . . . .The initials of these three high endurance cutters spell out that expression of surprise as they nest alongside Riviera Pier at the U.S. Naval Base, Subic Bay, R.P. The three, Winnebago, Owasco, and Winona, along with a fourth unit of Coast Guard Squadron Three, the Bibb, was in Subic Bay for inchop, outchop, and upkeep, marking the first time that this many ships of the five-cutter squadron had visited there since it was formed 18 months ago. The squadron is a part of the Seventh Fleet’s Cruiser Destroyer Group and the cutters serve on the Coastal Surveillance Force’s Operation Market Time in Vietnam.” COMCOGARDRONTHREE PHOTO NO. 101068-01; 18 October 1968; Dale Cross, JOC, USCG, photographer

Owasco’s history notes that on her Vietnam deployment:

By the end of her tour overseas, she had supplied logistical support to 86 Navy Swift boats and 47 Coast Guard 82-foot patrol boats. She had detected 2,596 junks and conducted 178 “actual boardings and 2,341 inspections,” exceeding the “results of any Squadron Three cutter thus far.” She conducted 17 Naval Gunfire Support Missions, firing 1,330 rounds of 5-inch ammunition.” She was officially credited with killing four enemy soldiers, destroying 18 bunkers, and damaging 10, destroying 11 “military structures” and damaging 17, destroying 550 meters of “Enemy Supply Trails,” destroying 1 sampan, 1 loading pier, and interdicting 3 “Enemy Troop Movements.” She carried out 49 underway replenishments while in theatre and her medical personnel carried out 7 medical and civil action programs (MEDCAP), treating 432 Vietnamese civilians.

Fourth Deployment

USCGC Spencer (WHEC 36) 11 Feb 69 — 30 Sep 69 (Treasury)
USCGC Mendota (WHEC 69) 28 Feb 69 — 3 Nov 69 (Owasco)
USCGC Sebago (WHEC 42) 2 Mar 69 — 16 Nov 69 (Owasco)
USCGC Taney (WHEC 37) 14 May 69 — 31 Jan 70 (Treasury)
USCGC Klamath (WHEC 66) 7 Jul 69 — 3 Apr 70 (Owasco)

Both Taney and Spencer had already seen much WWII service, with the former being at Pearl Harbor and the latter a bona fide U-boat slayer. Here, on April 17, 1943, USCGC Spencer sinks U-327. National Archives Identifier: 205574168 https://catalog.archives.gov/id/205574168

Fifth Deployment

USCGC Hamilton (WHEC 715) 1 Nov 69 — 25 May 70 (Hamilton)
USCGC Dallas (WHEC 716) 3 Nov 69 — 19 Jun 70 (Hamilton)
USCGC Chase (WHEC 718) 6 Dec 69 — 28 May 70 (Hamilton)
USCGC Mellon (WHEC 717) 31 Mar 70 — 2 Jul 70 (Hamilton)
USCGC Pontchartrain (WHEC 70) 2 Apr 1970 — 25 Oct 1970 (Owasco)

Sixth Deployment

USCGC Sherman (WHEC 720) 22 Apr 70 — 25 Dec 70 (Hamilton)
USCGC Bering Strait (WHEC 382) 17 May 70 — 31 Dec 70 (Casco)
USCGC Yakutat (WHEC 380) 17 May 70 — 31 Dec 70 (Casco)

Seventh Deployment

USCGC Rush (WHEC 723) 28 Oct 70 — 15 Jul 71 (Hamilton)
USCGC Morgenthau (WHEC 722) 6 Dec 70 — 31 Jul 71 (Hamilton)

Eight Deployment

USCGC Castle Rock (WHEC 383) 9 Jul 71 — 21 Dec 71 (Casco)
USCGC Cook Inlet (WHEC 384) 2 Jul 71 — 21 Dec 71 (Casco)

Interdiction

The primary reason for these big cutters to be in Vietnamese waters was to sanitize them by combing out vessel traffic smuggling contraband, primarily small arms and munitions, to Viet Cong guerillas in the south. They did this in spades, closing with some 69,517 vessels in the five years that CGRON3 was part of Market Time. Of these, no less than 50,000 were inspected alongside, while 1,094 were boarded and searched.

At Sea – USCG Squadron 3, Vietnam. Note the 26-foot Mark V Motor Surf Boat, YAK2, likely from CGC Yakutat, dating the photo to 1970. The nine-man crew includes at least two M16s and five flak jackets, hinting at a five-man boarding team. 221206-G-G0000-119

CGC Winona on Market Time Patrol by JOC Dale E. Cross, USCG. Note the M16-armed Coastie on the lookout to the right while the flak-vest-equipped junior officer goes over a mariner’s papers. 231220-G-G0000-107

CGC Winona on Market Time Patrol by JOC Dale E. Cross, May 16, 1968. Release No. 36-68 231220-G-G0000-106

New armaments were fitted to assist with this type of seagoing asymmetric warfare. Cutters typically picked up at least two (later cutters carried as many as six) .50 caliber air-cooled M2 Brownings on pintel mounts.

Also new were pintel-mounted 81mm mortars which could be used either for launching illumination parachute rounds, in counter-ship operations, or in suppressing fire near-shore (out to 4,500 yards).

At Sea – USCG in Vietnam – Market Time – Squadron Three with a detainee on deck, one of at least 128 detained and handed over to local ARVN assets. Note the loaded M2 .50 cal to the left and the sidearm-equipped CPO on watch. 221206-G-G0000-121

CGC Klamath on Market Time, showing off her new 50 cal and mortar emplacement

The 81mm mortar was mounted on either side of the No. 1 (5-inch) mount

311-foot Casco (Barnegat) class cutter Half Moon firing the 5″/38 on NGFS in Vietnam. Note the two mortars on the base of the superstructure between the ship’s Hedgehog ASW device

Campbell’s mortar team

Campbell’s mortar team “hanging an 81” ashore

The circa early 1960s small arms lockers for HECs included 40 M1 rifles, five M1 carbines, 17 .45 caliber M1911s, two Thompson SMGs, and two M1919 .30-caliber LMGs. With Vietnam on the schedule, this was updated.

Clark’s Commandos: CGC Klamath’s Market Time boarding team. Note the M16s, flak vests, .45s, and shotguns

Campbell’s boarding team, casual in flak vests and cut-off dungaree shorts, complete with M16s

From Shots that Hit, a Study of USCG Marksmanship, 1790-1985 by William Wells:

The cutters exchanged their M1 rifles and Thompson SMGs for the M16 rifle. However, many Coast Guardsmen were exceptionally adept at procuring arms of any nature. The use of revolvers in many calibers and models was common, as were communist weapons of which the AK-47 was the favorite. In addition to the M16, the M79 grenade launcher and the M60 machine gun were added. As far as weapons on board the cutters, it was an anything-goes allowance.

Naval Gunfire Support

The large cutters of CGRON3 conducted no less than 1,368 combined NGFS missions, firing a staggering 77,036 5-inch shells ashore. Keep in mind that most of these cutters only carried about 300 rounds in their magazines, so you can look at that amount of ordnance expended being something like 250 ship-loads.

Minnetonka (WHEC-67) providing fire support during the Vietnam War. Note the loose uniform of the day

Minnetonka’s 5-inch “Iron Hoss” blistered after all-night fires

USCGC Wachusett (WHEC-44) NGFS Vietnam

CGC Waschusett At Sea with USCG Vietnam Squadron 3, logging gunfire missions, with the spades due to “digging dirt.” 221206-G-G0000-118

USCGC Cook Inlet conducts a fire support mission off the coast of Vietnam, in 1971

Color photograph of Cutter Duane performing gunfire support mission with its forward 5-inch gun off the coast of Vietnam. U.S. Coast Guard photo.

PONTCHARTRAIN NGFS Vietnam 1970 Photo by LeRoy Reinburg

5/”38 from USCG Hamilton-class cutter providing NGFS off Vietnam

Powder and shell consumption was so high that some cutters would have to underway replenish or VERTREP 2-3 times a week while doing gun ops.

“Crewmen cart high explosive projectiles across the deck of the 311-foot U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Half Moon for the ship’s five-inch gun to hurl at a Viet Cong emplacement near a U.S. Special Forces Camp in the Song on Doc area, South Vietnam.” Coast Guard Photo Rel. No. 6215; 12/67;

PONTCHARTRAIN receiving 5-inch powder cases UNREP Vietnam 1970 Photo by LeRoy Reinburg

As described by John Darrell Sherwood in his War in the Shallows: U.S. Navy Coastal and Riverine Warfare in Vietnam:

To the casual observer, the all-white hulls of Market Time’s high-endurance cutters looked like angels of mercy, but the 5-inch 38-caliber gun mounts on these ships could let loose significant destructive power upon an unsuspecting enemy up to nine miles away. Nine men worked in the cramped confines of these turrets, enduring extreme heat and the ever-present smell of gun grease and cordite, to place ordnance on targets.

In built-up areas like Song On Doc, where the Viet Cong often sheltered in structures, the methodology for dislodging defenders was to set the initial rounds to burst in the air to kill anyone exposed outdoors. Assuming troops will then run for bunkers and slit trenches soon after a bombardment begins, the next shots would be set to hit the ground and explode. Gunners would then walk the rounds across a target area like a checkerboard so as to cover as much of the kill zone as possible. White phosphorus represented the grand finale. Since many Vietnamese structures were made of bamboo, it did not take many well-placed WP rounds to transform a small village or small settlement into smoldering ashes. Shards of white phosphorus extending outwards from an airburst shot literally created a rain of fire, igniting everything in a wide dispersal area.

Commander Herbert J. Lynch, who commanded Winona (WHEC-65) in early 1968, claims it was “nothing to fire 50 rounds of shoreside support. We did so much shooting we had to re-barrell the gun.”

The shallow draft of the cutters was key.

Again, Sherwood:

Although many of these rounds consisted of unspotted harassment and interdiction missions that did little more than tear up ground and knock down palm trees, when Coast Guard vessels were allowed to fire at actual targets, the results could be devastating. For instance, on 27 August, Half Moon conducted a gunfire mission against Viet Cong troops operating on the Ca Mau Peninsula in An Xuyen Province. Subsequent intelligence reports stated that 5-inch fire destroyed three enemy buildings and killed 11 Viet Cong.

On 26 September 1967, Yakutat (WHEC-380) destroyed or damaged 27 fortified enemy positions, four sampans, and an enemy canal blockade in a single gunfire support mission off the coast of An Xuyen Province.

The high endurance cutters, with their relatively shallow 22-foot draft, were the only ships with 5-inch guns capable of operating in the shallow waters of An Xuyen Province and much of the rest of the IV Corps area.

“Sometimes we would go into areas with only one or two feet clearance between the hull and sea floor,” recalled Captain Robert W. Durfey, who commanded Rush (WHEC-723) in 1970, but “fortunately the bottom was mostly mud.”

Another anecdote from the USCG Historian’s office:

The Cutter Rush, working with an Australian destroyer, brought its guns to the aid of a small Special Forces camp in the village of Song Ong Doc. The village, located in the middle of Viet Cong-held territory, was being overrun. Gunfire from the two ships drove off the attackers and left 64 Viet Cong dead.

The results, as reported back by ground and air observers, included 2,612 structures destroyed, another 2,676 damaged, and body counts (Vietnam was big on body counts) including 529 enemy KIA and 243 enemy WIA.

Surface engagements

When it came to fighting often heavily-armed enemy cargo trawlers, several pitched sea fights, typically at night, are all but lost to history.

One such fight in March 1968, as told by Sherwood:

The Coast Guard cutter Androscoggin (WHEC-68) made radar contact with the infiltrator at 2047 local time and began maintaining covert surveillance. Early in the morning of 1 March, the trawler crossed into the 12-mile contiguous zone 22 miles from Cape Batangan, and Androscoggin soon challenged it by firing an illumination round. The trawler responded with machine gun fire, and Androscoggin returned fire with her 5-inch 38-caliber guns, hitting the trawler in the starboard quarter. Army helicopter gunships, Point Welcome, Point Grey, and PCFs -18 and -20 joined the attack as the trawler headed toward the beach. At 0210, the trawler beached itself and blew itself up in two attempts. During the battle, machine-gun rounds hit Androscoggin and other units but caused no casualties. Salvage crews later recovered a variety of military cargo from the scene, including 600 rifles, 41 submachine guns, and 11 light machine guns along with ammunition. Of the North Vietnamese crew, all that was recovered was a head and a full set of teeth.

Another fight on the same night saw Winona close to within 550 yards of an armed trawler that lit up the cutter with a mix of .50 caliber and .30 caliber machine guns, hitting the little 255-foot cutter at least 13 times and wounding three of her crew. Once Winona got her 5-incher into play, however, the trawler “disintegrated” with the entire fight lasting just two minutes.

From her history:

“We shadowed the trawler for six long hours into the night before it finally turned for the beach, our cue to intercept. Closing to 700 yards we illuminated and challenged them to stop when a running gun battle ensued. The effect in the night outfourthed the 4th of July. .50 cal. tracers, fiery red in the black, streaked both ways, punctuated by 5″ gun flashes, white with the intensity of burning magnesium. The ricochets whined off into the distance, or metal piercing rounds thwacked through steel. For seven minutes we fought until a 5” round found home at the base of the trawler’s deckhouse, and the night was day, and our ship rocked from the explosion that rained debris on our decks. For meritorious achievement that night, Captain Lynch was awarded the Bronze Star. Lt. Commander [J.A.] Atkinson, conning officer, Lt. [M.J.] Bujarski, gunnery officer, and BM3 “Audie” Slawson, director operator were awarded Navy Accommodation Medals. All four were authorized a Combat “V”.”

There were no enemy survivors. Enemy fire pierced Winona’s hull and deckhouse six times and also left several dents but she sustained no personnel casualties.

Capt. Paul Lutz describing the battle between the cutter Sherman and the large armed trawler SL3 at the mouth of the Mekong on the night of 21 November 1970:

“Sherman sinks armed enemy vessel, SL3, at Mekong River mouth, 21 November 1970” by John Wilinski

After the first round in direct fire with point detonating rounds, I saw an explosion and a bright illumination of the enemy vessel. I knew that prior enemy vessels had usually destroyed themselves when caught by allied forces and accordingly I thought it must be a self-destruct explosion. However, as our succeeding rounds showed as they hit there was the same marked explosion and a vivid illumination of the enemy vessel. Sherman was firing her forward 5″ 38 caliber gun at a maximum rate of fire (as I remember 18 rounds/minute) and every round hit and brilliantly illuminated the enemy. The rhythmic hit, hit, hit, etc. were synchronized with the firing of Sherman’s 5-inch gun and were awesome to observe. After about 8 to 10 rounds (and hits), taking about one half a minute the enemy ship was stopped and brightly burning.

Navy divers later found the trawler full of .60 caliber machine guns and recoilless rifles along “with enough ammunition and weapons to arm a division.”

Motherships

Operating between two and 20 miles offshore, these big cutters were often the closest thing to “The Fleet” that was available to the truly small boats that were running missions inshore.

They proved a home away from home for the growing fleet of CGRON1’s 82-foot patrol boats, of which ultimately 26 were deployed to Vietnam.

Point class cutter refueling from USCGC Dallas in Vietnam

Point class refueling from USCGC Dallas in Vietnam.

USCGC Point Lomas (WPB-82321) alongside the 327-foot USCGC Duane WHEC 33 1968 Vietnam

They also proved of vital support to Navy PCFs, with the small 50-foot Swiftboats typically having to swap out crews every 24 hours to remain on station. This meant lots of hot meals provided for these Brown Water sailors in the cutters’ mess, cold seawater showers, and a place to drop off mail and grab an (often warm) bunk. Then of course the boats would top off their fuel and water, and grab some snacks and ammo as a parting gift before motoring off with a rotated crew.

CGC Bibb in Vietnamese waters with a six-pack of nursing Swiftboats 200227-G-G0000-1003

The cutters also served as a floating hospital, with the ship’s corpsmen and public health service doctors ready to do what they could.

Wounded Swiftboat personnel being transferred to USCGC Campbell

As told by Mendota, who was only a 255-footer herself, a good 30 feet smaller than any cramped destroyer escort fielded in WWII!:

Mendota was not only home to the 160 men who were permanently assigned as her crew. She also served as a mother ship to U.S. Navy Swift boats and their crews, and to a lesser degree the Coast Guard 82-foot patrol boats, which operated in the inner barrier closer to shore. Mendota serviced the 82-footers 40 times during her stay while the Swift boats received logistic support daily, and the crews alternated being on board Mendota every other day. The medical staff also aided 51 men who had been wounded in action.

In all, CGRON3 logged 1,516 small craft replenishments over its five-year history.

Medcaps

As part of the “winning hearts and minds” concept, these big cutters were also active in humanitarian initiatives during lulls in combat. Ongoing Medical Civil Action Program, or MEDCAP, services saw the cutters land their medical personnel ashore to provide public health aid to locals.

This is well-told by Chief Hospital Corpsman Joseph “Doc” White, who served on CGC Bering Strait in 1970 and had to race ashore to respond to an attack on Song Ong Doc village.

Chief Joe White providing medical care to local Vietnamese and their children during a visit to a village in South Vietnam. (Via Mrs. Misa White, USCG photo 201218-G-G0000-1003)

“Doc” White providing medical care to wounded Vietnamese villagers. (Via Mrs. Misa White, USCG photo 201218-G-G0000-1005)

Besides the MEDCAPs, the cutter’s crews were also involved in assorted Civic Action Projects that ranged from installing playground equipment at a village school to passing the hat for enough donations for a refrigerator for the Saigon School for Blind Girls.

As detailed by Sebago’s history:

She was assigned to Coast Guard Squadron Three, Vietnam, serving in theatre from 2 March to 16 November 1969, while under the command of CDR Dudley C. Goodwin, USCG. She was assigned to support Operation Market Time, including the interdiction of enemy supplies heading south by water and naval gunfire support [NGS] of units ashore. By July 1968, she had conducted 12 NGS missions, destroying 31 structures, 15 bunkers, 2 sampans, and 3 enemy “huts.”

Combat duties were not all the cutter did. The Sebago’s medical staff, including the cutter’s doctor, Public Health Service LT Lewis J. Wyatt, conducted humanitarian missions in Vietnam, treating over 400 villagers “for a variety of ills.” The crew visited the village of Co Luy, 80 miles south of Da Nang, and built an 18-foot extension to a waterfront pier for the villagers. She also served as a supply ship for Coast Guard and Navy patrol boats serving in Vietnamese coastal waters.

This from sistership Mendota:

The crew of Mendota also participated in humanitarian missions while serving in Vietnam. These missions were concentrated on the village of Song Ong Doc, on the Gulf of Thailand. The medical team conducted MEDCAPS (Medical Care of the Civilian Population), treating over 800 Vietnamese for every variety of medical malady during 14 visits to the village. The crew also helped rebuild a small dispensary. In addition, assistance was rendered to Vietnamese and Thai fishermen who were injured while fishing. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces were also treated by the medical personnel.

Being the Coast Guard, the big cutters took a break from walking their Market Time beat to respond to numerous calls for assistance from mariners in distress.

This included Bibb responding to the Thai M/V Daktachi and her shop crafting her a new drive shaft for her broken fuel pump, Campbell aiding the Filipino vessel Carmelita which had a broken propeller shaft and was drifting in the San Bernadino Strait, Morgenthau rescuing 23 survivors from the sinking merchant ship Joy Taylor, and Owasco pulling off the crew of the SS Foh Hong and towing the flooded vessel to safety. One cutter, Winnebago, chalked up three different maritime rescues, going to the assistance of the swamped Vietnamese coastal freighter Thuan Hing, pulling 35 people from the distressed M/V Fair Philippine Anchorage, and responding to an SOS from SS Aginar.

Endgame

As part of Vietnamization, the Coast Guard did a lot of out-building for the South Vietnamese Navy. The 26 Point class cutters of CGRON1 were all handed over in warm transfers by 1971. Of the 18 311-foot Casco-class cutters operated by the USCG, seven– Absecon, Chincoteague, Castle Rock, Cook Inlet, Yakutat, and Bering Strait — were transferred to South Vietnam in 1971 and 1972.

The last two, Bering Strait and Yakutat, were selected to be used by the Vietnamese Navy as offshore patrol units and operated hybrid mixed crews for the last half of 1970. This earned Bering Strait a haze-grey scheme.

Profile photograph of High-Endurance Cutter Bering Strait in a rare paint scheme of haze gray with Coast Guard “Racing Stripe.” Mackinaw. (Mrs. Misa White)

As detailed by Tulich:

They arrived in Subic Bay in June 1970 with a small cadre of Vietnamese on board, which was supplemented by another contingent at Subic. The VNN personnel were taught the operations of the ship and soon took over important positions in CIC boarding parties, NGFS details, and repair crews. The VNN also performed the external functions of the ship, especially boardings. The VNN officers soon became underway and in-port OODs. Teams assumed engineering watches, navigated, piloted, and provided all the control and most other positions in the NGFS teams. Their training became apparent when a combined USCG/VNN rescue and assistance party from Yakutat extinguished a serious fire and performed damage control on a USN landing ship.

The transfer of Bering Strait and Yakutat at the end of their 1970 deployment, in full color (but silent):

CGRON3 was formally disestablished on 31 January 1972, leaving three shore establishments– the Con Son and Tan My LORAN stations and the USCG Merchant Marine Detachment in Saigon– as the last remnants of the service’s efforts in Vietnam. Even those would be gone by 5 May 1973 when the final Coast Guard personnel departed the country.

Ingham returning from Vietnam in 1969

USCGC Duane (WHEC-33) returning from Vietnam, 1968

Between 1965 and 1973, the USCG sent some 8,000 men to Vietnam– nearly a quarter of its active force– with the bulk of these, more than 6,000, being those afloat with CGRON3.

Seven Coast Guardsmen were killed in action, all with the smaller patrol boats of CGRON1, and their names are listed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. Another 59 were seriously wounded in combat.

Epilogue

Of the seven large cutters handed over to the VNN in 1971-72, six escaped to the Philippines after the fall of Saigon in 1975 and went on to be used to varying degrees by the Filipino Navy for another decade. The seventh ship, the former CGC Absecon, was captured and bore a red flag as part of the Vietnam People’s Navy into the 1990s.

The Coast Guard eventually whittled down its remaining Vietnam Veteran cutters with two, Taney and Ingham, preserved as floating museums in Maryland and Florida, respectively.

USCGC Ingham, both a WWII and Vietnam Vet, retired in 1988, is well-preserved in Key West (Photo: Chris Eger)

The last cutter in service that had fired shots into Vietnam in anger, CGC Mellon, only decommissioned on 20 August 2020, capping a 54-year career.

Ironically, Mellon is slated to be transferred to the Vietnam People’s Coast Guard at some point in the future, where she will join former CGRON3 sister Morgenthau, which has been flying a red flag since 2017.

Vietnamese Coast Guard’s patrol ship CSB-8020, formerly the Hamilton-class cutter USCGC Morgenthau (WHEC-722)

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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

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

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

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

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) Nov. 21, 2024: The Sweet Pea

Posted on by Leave a comment

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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) Nov. 21, 2024: The Sweet Pea

Official U.S. Navy Photograph, 19-N-70346

Above we see the leader of her class of “heavy” cruisers, USS Portland (CA-33) off the Mare Island Navy Yard, on 30 July 1944, spick and span in her new Measure 32 (Design 7d) camouflage livery.

You wouldn’t know it from her rakish good looks, but “Sweet Pea” had already survived three of the four most pivotal sea battles of the Pacific War, and was on her way back to finish out her dance card.

Treaty Cruisers

Portland was the lead ship of the third class of “treaty cruisers” built following the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. Made to be compliant with a 10,000-ton standard displacement maximum (further defined as “heavy” cruisers by the London Naval Treaty of 1931 if they carried guns larger than 6 inches but smaller than 8.1 inches in bore). This saw a whole generation of very lightly protected vessels, leaving armor behind in exchange for shaft horsepower and guns, to make weight.

The 1920s/30s thinking about how cruisers would be employed in a coming war– as commerce raiders and in stopping commerce raiders as well as fast over-the-horizon scouts for the battle line– fit this well. For instance, it would have been interesting had the Graf Spee been chased to ground by three American treaty heavies in an alternative version of the Battle of the River Plate.

The first of the U.S. treaty cruisers, USS Pensacola (CL/CA-24) and Salt Lake City (CL/CA-25), came in under the bar with a 9,096-ton standard (8,689-ton light) displacement and could make 32.5 knots on a 107,000 hp suite of 8 boilers and 4 steam turbines while carrying 10 new 8″/55 guns, only had 518 tons of armor. This was really just proof against splinters and light guns, with even the conning towers protected by just 1.25 inches of plate. By comparison, the WWII-era Atlanta class light cruisers, which were notorious for their thin skin, had more armor (585 tons).

Little wonder these cruisers were often derided as “tinclads.”

The next class, the USS Northampton (CA-26) and her five sisters– USS Chester, Louisville, Chicago, Houston, and Augusta— went slightly heavier at 9,390 tons standard and 8,693 light while having the same horsepower, one fewer 8-inch gun, and a bit more armor (686 tons). Top-heavy, they proved to be violent rollers in heavy seas, a metric that the Navy sought to correct with the next class.

Then came our Portland and her ill-fated sister USS Indianapolis, which were essentially copies of the Northamptons with alterations in weight distribution to improve stability. Some 40 tons of mattressed armor was spread over the bridge work– which was higher– while the masthead was dropped some 30 feet. Using the same 107K shp engineering suite and the same main armament (nine 8″/55 guns in three cramped triple gun houses), the total armor protection remained the same as on the Northamptons (686 tons) while the displacement increased incrementally to 9,315 light.

Treaty heavy cruisers are seen maneuvering off San Pedro, California likely around 1937. The nearest ships are USS Northampton, sisters USS Indianapolis, and USS Portland, along with USS Chester, showing good profiles for these closely related vessels. 80-G-1009038

For what it is worth, the fourth and final class of American treaty cruisers, the Astoria class (with six sisters USS New Orleans, Minneapolis, Tuscaloosa, San Francisco, Quincy, and Vincennes), went just slightly over the “10,000-ton” line at 10,050 standard and more than doubled the amount of armor, bringing 1,507 tons of protection to the game while keeping the same armament and engineering. This was only possible by dropping fuel capacity by a third (from the 847,787 gallons enjoyed by the Portlands to a more meager 614,626 gallons in Astoria). Tellingly, the first U.S. Navy heavy cruisers designed post-treaty, the Baltimore class, shipped with 1,790 tons of armor plate while the follow-on Des Moines class carried a whopping 2,189 tons.

Nonetheless, these extensively compartmented ships, enjoying the benefit of hardy damage control teams– a skill very much learned on the job– would often keep even these “tinclads” afloat after extreme punishment. Those lost during the war only succumbed due to torrents of shells and torpedoes, often hand-in-hand.

As noted by Richard Worth in his Fleets of World War II: 

The most surprising quality in this ill-armored lineage was its ruggedness even with regard to torpedo damage. American cruisers suffered torpedo hits on 31 occasions, but only seven of the ships sank, and none sank from a single hit. By comparison, of the 24 torpedoed Japanese cruisers, 20 sank, three of them after single hits, The Americans had the advantage of their expert damage control, especially after the merciless lessons of Savo Island.

Still, these 17 thin-skinned treaty cruisers, forced to do the work of absent battleships in 1942-43, then used as AAA escorts for the precious carriers and in delivering shore bombardment in 1944-45— none of which were their primary design concept– got the job done, although seven would be left at the bottom of the Pacific along the way.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

For a deep dive into American cruisers in this period, from which all the above figures were pulled, turn to U.S. Cruisers: An Illustrated Design History, by Norman Friedman. 

Meet Portland

Our subject was the first American warship named for the city in Maine. Ordered to be built at commercial yards, Portland (CA-33) was laid down at Quincy, Massachusetts by Bethlehem Steel Corporation’s Shipbuilding Div., on 17 February 1930 while her sister, Indianapolis, was laid down at the nearby New York Shipbuilding Co just six weeks later.

As Prohibition was still a thing, when Portland was launched on 21 May 1932, 12-year-old Ms. Ralph D. Brooks of Portland, Maine smashed on bottle of sparkling water across her bow.

USS Portland fitting out at Boston (Charleston) Navy Yard, December 1932, BPL Leslie Jones collection

USS Portland fitting out at Boston (Charleston) Navy Yard, December 1932, BPL Leslie Jones collection

A good shot of her secondary battery of 5″/25 dual-purpose guns. She had eight of these unprotected mounts, four on each side. At the time, the only other guns she had were her small arms locker, eight water-cooled.50 caliber mounts, and a field gun for her landing company. BPL Leslie Jones collection 

Commissioned on 23 February 1933, Captain (later VADM) Herbert Fairfax Leary (USNA ’05), a Great War Grand Fleet veteran who earned a Navy Cross in 1918 and was fresh off a stint as the Naval Inspector in Charge of Ordnance at Dahlgren Naval Base, assumed command. All her skippers would be WWI-era Annapolis alumni.

While still on her shakedown period, Portland was the first naval vessel at the scene of the lost airship USS Akron (ZRS-4) which had been destroyed in a thunderstorm off the coast of New Jersey on the morning of 4 April 1933, killing 73 of the 76 aboard. She would spend the next 21 days directing the search of a 400 sq. mile area for wreckage and survivors, only coming across the former.

1933- Cruiser USS Portland (CA-33) looking for survivors after the crash of the airship USS Akron.

It was her first brush with Naval Aviation tragedy, this one the greatest loss of life in any airship crash (the “Oh, the humanity” moment on Hindenburg had cost 36).

Once in the fleet, Portland had a very comfortable peacetime career for the next six years. Her class had space and accommodations for a cruiser squadron commodore and his staff and notably was used to escort FDR’s three-week Pacific trip aboard USS Houston in October 1935.

USS Portland (CA 33) at Naval Station, Hampton Roads, Virginia, with the formation of four of her Vought O2U planes overhead, April 24, 1933. 80-CF-392-16

Same as above with a great view of her stern bombardment clock on her aft mast and her secondary 5-inch battery. Note she has a fifth O2U on her catapult. 80-CF-392-15

USS Portland (CA-33) during the fleet review at New York, 31 May 1934 NARA 520826

USS Portland (CA-33) during the fleet review in New York, 31 May 1934. Note four floatplanes on her cats. NH 716

When she called at Portland, Maine for a two-week port call in August 1934, she was mobbed with 25,000 visitors and a delegation of city leaders who presented the skipper a silver service, purchased by the town’s residents via subscription.

USS Portland (CA-33) underway at sea, 23 August 1935. NH 97832

USS Portland during training maneuvers close to shore, 1930s. Southern California UCLA collection 1429_4040

USS Portland, 1930s. Univ of Oregon Collection Z1157

USS Portland, 1930s.Univ of Oregon Collection Z1155

USS Portland, 1930s. Univ of Oregon Collection 67971.0

A great interbellum shot of Portland passing close to Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. Courtesy of Mr. Donald M. McPherson, 169 Birch Avenue, Corte Madera, California, 1969. NH 68314

USS Portland passing under St. Johns Bridge, in Portland Oregon, 1937. Angelus Studio card 74843.0. University of Oregon. Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives

While operating out of Bremerton bound for Dutch Harbor, Alaska in October 1937, Portland, who was nicknamed for a time “The Rolling P” suffered a heavy storm and high seas while hitting 42 degrees on her inclinometer, leaving her with six-foot cracks near midship on each side of her hull that warranted shipyard repair.

This led Robert Ripley, in his “Believe It or Not” series, to claim at that time that no other ship had ever rolled over as far as she had without completely capsizing.

Portland At anchor off Gonaives, Haiti, on 28 January 1939. 80-CF-2134-2

With tensions high between the U.S. and Japan, Portland spent most of 1941 on a series of West Pacific cruises, escorting Army cargo to Manila with stops in New Guinea, Borneo, and Australia.

Gun turret and bridge of USS Portland (CA-33) at Brisbane, 25 March 1941 (StateLibQld 1 100920)

Portland in Sydney Harbor, Australia, March 1941. Note she has on her haze gray but has not been fitted with a radar set at this time. NH 66290

When she arrived at Pearl Harbor on 1 December 1941, her crew was expecting some much-needed downtime.

War!

At 0627 on the early morning of Friday, 5 December, Portland’s crew no doubt grumbled that their 10-day libo– and upcoming weekend– was to be ruined as they weighed anchor and steamed out of Pearl Harbor en route to Midway with the fellow treaty cruisers USS Astoria, Chicago, and Minneapolis and five destroyers.

They were soon joined by the grand old fleet carrier USS Lexington— carrying 18 Marine SB2U Vindicator dive bombers of VMSB-231 to the remote base in addition to the 65 aircraft of her air group, and the oiler Neosho.

Expecting to get some gunnery practice in during the cruise and not wanting to risk the caulking of small boats stored near the guns, Portland’s skipper ordered left behind the ship’s gig, a motor whaleboat, and one of her motor launches at the Pearl Harbor Coal Docks with a 10 man detachment under the command of BMl/c CJ Brame, detached on temporary duty with:

  • Booth, E.K., 375-81-81,MMl/c
  • McKirahan, S. A., 316-68-98, Fl/c
  • Kemph, A. M., 376-13-20, GM3/C
  • Robinson, P. S, 337-37-19 Sealc
  • DeYong, L. R., 356-49-95, Sealc
  • Koine, W. M. ,321-48-33, Seal/c,
  • Reimer, J. R, 337-39-70, Seal/c
  • Sullivan, G. A.,Seal/c
  • Mc Lain, T. E., 321-48-39, Seal/c
  • McKellip, G.,368-48-47, Seal/c

Although the U.S. was still a mighty neutral in World War II, the task force zig-zagged on its way out, steaming at an easy 16 knots, and darkened ships at night.

Still 500 nm southeast of Midway, at 0832 on 7 December, Portland found herself in the war.

From her Deck Log: 

The ship was soon put ready to fight. Her holystoned decks and bright work disappeared under haze grey, never to be seen again.

From Sweet Pea at War: A History of USS Portland by William Thomas Generous:

Portland’s crew spent the rest of the day at hard work, stripping ship. They took down the mess deck’s light globes and unnecessary flammable items, like the wooden paneling in the wardroom. They painted over the topside wooden decks, heretofore beautifully white from so much holystoning, but now made a darker color so the ship would be harder to see from the air. They rigged false radar antennas and made other topside alterations to change the appearance of the ship. One of the things they dumped over the side was the beautiful mahogany brow, the gangway used by the men to pass from the ship to the pier and back when Portland was tied up. By the time Sweet Pea went to general quarters in the evening of December 7, no one in the crew thought it a drill.

LIFE photographer Bob Landry was onboard the cruiser at the tense moment and caught several now-iconic images of her crew getting ready for a real-life shooting war– with echoes of Pearl Harbor in their ears and the knowledge that a giant Japanese striking force could be just over the horizon. Talk about the pucker factor.

USS Portland’s crew painting the ship’s hangar doors darker after Pearl Harbor. LIFE Bob Landry. Note the Sea Gull has its depth charge censored out.

More of the above

Crewmen on USS Portland CA-33 unpack .50 cal ammunition after news is received of the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor. Bob Landry, LIFE.

Portland and the rest of the Lexington carrier group spent the next week searching frantically for the Japanese strike force to the south of Hawaii, combing as far down as Johnson Island– with a continuous airborne combat air patrol overhead. Luckily for them, all they found was an empty ocean as the Japanese Kido Butai had retired to the north.

Meanwhile, BMl/c Brame and his 10-man, 3-boat, 1 rifle (with 10 bullets) detachment, left behind at Pearl Harbor, had spent the “Day Which Will Live in Infamy” very much hard at work in the harbor, rescuing sailors from the flaming waters, carrying returning sailors from the Liberty Landing to their ships, firing their paltry few rounds of ball ammo at low-flying meatballs, and basically just trying not to be killed– by both sides.

As detailed by Seal/c Reimer:

Koine had the rifle loaded in short order and was firing at the planes that came over our area. There was nothing we could do but take cover, standing in knee-deep water under the dock. At that time I lost track of time by the clock. After some time there was a definite lull in the action over the harbor. One of the enemy planes had crashed into some hospital barracks about a hundred yards from our location. Having no idea what to do, we went to the area and helped firemen tend hoses to put out the fire. It was an unoccupied wooden building and not much damage was done. When the fire was out we looked through the wreckage of the plane. At that time I chose to eat the second of my breakfast sandwiches. When I saw part of the torso of one of the occupants of the plane I did not finish my sandwich.

Reimer, Koine, and the gang reunited with Portland when she returned to Pearl Harbor along with the Lexington group on 13 December, mooring at berth C-5 at 1803. Her crew was fleshed out for war service from the Emergency Fleet Pool, augmented with several men late of the sunken battleship USS California.

It was noted in her log that “No records or accounts for the above men were received,” for obvious reasons.

Portland left again at 1141 on 14 December for war service– having spent just over 17 hours at berth.

She would spend the next five months in a series of fruitless patrols between the West Coast, Hawaii, and Fiji. It would be her only quiet service during the conflict.

At least she picked up radar in February 1942 at Mare Island– SC search along with Mk 3 and Mk 4 fire control. She also got a better AAA suite, landing her next to worthless .50 cals, then picking up four quad 1.1-inch Chicago Pianos and 12 Orelikons. 

She would soon need them.

Coral Sea

In the first large sea battle of the Pacific War, Portland served in RADM Thomas Kinkaid’s Attack Group TG 17.2 during the four-day Battle of the Coral Sea on 4-8 May, which intercepted a Japanese invasion force bound for Port Moresby, New Guinea and sank the small Japanese carrier Shoho, damaged the large carrier Shokaku, and gutted the aircrew from the carrier Zuikaku— which effectively zeroed out these three from being part of Nagumo’s First Striking Force at Midway a month later.

Portland provided close AAA support to the carriers USS Yorktown and USS Lexington during the battle and, on the morning of the 8t,h fired 185 rounds of 5-inch, 1,400 rounds of 1.1-inch (bursting a barrel on one of these guns), and 2,400 rounds of 20mm at eight incoming Japanese planes, with her crews claiming at least one splashed.

In all, Portland’s gunners would claim 22 aircraft splashed during the war, and at least another 11 downed with “assists.”

Sadly, the big Lex was in trouble and, ablaze and smoking, began to list.

Battle of the Coral Sea, May 1942. Smoke rises soon after an explosion amidships on USS Lexington (CV-2), 8 May 1942. This is probably the explosion at 1727 hrs. that took place as the carrier’s abandonment was nearing its end. Ships standing by include the cruiser Minneapolis (CA-36) and Sims-class destroyers Morris (DD-417), Anderson (DD-411), and Hammann (DD-412). 80-G-16669.

From Portland’s log:

Portland would take aboard 22 officers, 317 enlisted, and 6 Marines from Lexington’s crew, delivered via breeches buoy and motor launch from the Sims-class destroyer USS Morris (DD-417).

On the evening of the 10th, another Sims, USS Anderson (DD-411), would come alongside and transfer a further 17 officers and 360 men, formerly of Lexington, in the dark. This brought the number of guests at Hotel Portland to 722.

Arriving in Pearl Harbor on 27 May via Tonga, Portland would welcome Capt. Laurance Toombs “Dubie” DuBose (USNA ’13) aboard as her skipper, her third since the war started.

Midway

During the Midway campaign, as part of Task Group 17.2 (Cruiser Group) under RADM WW Smith, along with the cruiser Astoria, Portland was assigned to stick to the carrier Yorktown, one of three American carriers left in the Pacific, and screen the vital flattop from Japanese aircraft.

She did a good job, too.

When Yorktown was attacked by a swarm of homeless Japanese aircraft from the carrier Hiryū on 4 June, Portland filled the sky with 235 5-inch shells, 1,440 1.1-inch shells– rupturing the barrels of two of these guns– and 3,200 rounds of 20mm. She even fired five rounds from her big 8-inchers into the sea to wash the low-flying planes out of the sky. Her gunners claimed at least seven kills.

Her diagram from the action:

Sadly, Yorktown was damaged by at least three bombs dropped by Vals and two Type 91 aerial torpedoes delivered by Kates. Dead in the water but still afloat, once again, Portland began taking on crews from a sinking American carrier– one that was given a coup de grace by a Japanese submarine the next day.

Battle of Midway, June 1942. Two Type 97 shipboard attack aircraft from the Japanese carrier Hiryu fly past USS Yorktown (CV-5), amid heavy anti-aircraft fire, after dropping their torpedoes during the mid-afternoon attack, 4 June 1942. Yorktown appears to be heeling slightly to port and may have already been hit by one torpedo. Photographed from USS Pensacola (CA-24). The destroyer at left, just beyond Yorktown’s bow, is probably USS Morris (DD-417). Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the U.S. National Archives. 80-G-32242

The cruiser would triple the number of men taken aboard from Lady Lex at Coral Sea, hosting an amazing 2,046 survivors from Yorktown for a few days.

From Generous:

In not quite a full day, Sweet Pea took what might have been the biggest at-sea transfer of men between ships in the history of the U.S. Navy. Destroyers Russell, Balch, Benham, Anderson, and Hamman came alongside Sweet Pea between 1835 on June 4, and 1430 on June 5. They delivered, respectively. 492, 545, 721, 203, and finally 85 survivors of the stricken Yorktown The total 2,046 refugees from the carrier almost tripled the number that had come from Lexington after the Coral Sea, itself a figure that had stretched the cruiser’s resources.

Destroyer USS Benham (DD-397), with 722 survivors of USS Yorktown on board, closes USS Portland (CA-33) at about 1900 hrs, 4 June 1942. A report of unidentified aircraft caused Benham to break away before transferring any of the survivors to the cruiser, and they remained on board her until the following morning. Note Benham’s oil-stained sides. The abandoned Yorktown is in the right distance. NH 95574

Battle of Midway, June 1942. USS Portland (CA-33), at right, transfers USS Yorktown survivors to USS Fulton (AS-11) on 7 June 1942. Fulton transported the men to Pearl Harbor. 80-G-312028

USS Portland (CA-33) at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, 14 June 1942 just after Midway, with her crew paraded on deck in Whites. Note the external degaussing cable fitted to the hull side of this ship. NH 97833

USS Portland (CA-33), left, and USS San Francisco (CA-38) (R), as part of Task Force 16, turning to starboard after firing several broadsides during exercises off Hawaii, 10 July 1942. 80-G-7861

Guadalcanal

Sailing forth once again from Pearl Harbor on 15 July 1942 as part of TF 16, she was soon attached to screen the carrier USS Enterprise for the landings at Tulagi and Guadalcanal in early August before splashing three aircraft attempting to sink Enterprise, which is now known as the Battle of the Eastern Solomons on the 24th of August.

The Tarawa Raid

After escorting Enterprise back to Pearl Harbor for repairs– where she would be for six weeks– Portland was cut loose to conduct a single ship raid against Japanese-held Tarawa, Maina, and Apemama in the Gilbert Islands. Acting as TU 16.9.1, she blasted the enemy base with 245 8-inch shells on 15 October while two of her scout planes dropped bombs on a freighter.

Directed to Espiritu Santo, she rejoined the Enterprise Group on 23 October just in time for the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands three days later. In this, her fourth carrier-on-carrier fight in six months, Portland zapped another three planes and reportedly was hit by three Japanese torpedoes that were launched too close to arm!

In all, her crew would have close calls with at least eight torps during the war.

Battle of Santa Cruz Islands, October 26, 1942. Japanese dive bombing and torpedo plane attack on USS Enterprise (CV-6). Photographed by a sailor on USS Portland. 80-G-30202

Third Savo

Needed to help stop the nightly Japanese run down the “Slot” in Ironbottom Sound off Guadalcanal, Portland sailed from Noumea on 7 November and joined a surface action group in the Solomons by the 11th, splashing two Japanese land-based bombers the next day.

By the night of the 12th/13 (as in Friday the 13th), 13 ships under RADM Daniel Callaghan in the cruiser USS San Francisco, with Portland being the only other heavy cruiser, sailed out to meet the Japanese in the Sound. With Callaghan’s force balanced by the light cruisers Helena, Atlanta, and Juneau, along with eight destroyers, they ran right into RADM Hiroaki Abe’s battleships Hiei and Kirishima, the cruiser Nagara, and 11 destroyers.

In the confusing, swirling action, Portland helped pummel the destroyer Akatsuki out of existence, hit the destroyer Ikazuchi with two 8-inch shells to the bow, and delivered several salvos to the battlewagon Hiei.

In exchange, Portland suffered her first enemy hits of the war, with two of Hiei’s 14-inch shells– gratefully HE rounds as the battleship was headed to bombard the Marines at Henderson Field– that exploded when they hit the cruiser’s svelte 4-inch belt.

She also took a dud 5-inch shell through her hangar.

 

What did far more damage was a hit at Frame 134 from a Long Lance torpedo fired either from the Japanese destroyer Inazuma or Ikazuchi, which blew a 60-foot hole in the stern, jamming her rudder in a 5-degree turn to port, blew off her inboard props, and disabled the cruiser’s aft turret. This left Portland performing a series of slow circles– her forward guns still firing four six-gun salvos whenever the burning and nearly stationary Hiei came into view– for the rest of the battle.

From her war damage report: 

It is amazing that Portland only had 17 members of her crew lost in the fight.

Still circling slowly at dawn- picking up American survivors from other ships in the process– Portland spotted the abandoned destroyer Yudachi at 12,500 yards and, with DuBose directing, “sink the S.O.B.” put the tin can below the waves with six 6-gun salvos.

Halsey appreciated the touch, later noting “The sinking of an enemy destroyer by Portland 3 hours and 45 minutes after the night action, while still out of control, was one of the highlights of this action.”

Shortly afterward, with the help of the old minesweeper USS Bobolink (AM-20) and a Yippie (YP-239) who steadied the cruiser’s bow as she steamed slowly, her rudder still locked to the right, Portland made Tulagi just after midnight on 14 November and only narrowly avoided an attack from two PT boats standing guard.

Spending a week camouflaged and hidden from enemy air while repairs were made and her rudders locked in the middle position, Portland was pulled from her hide at Tulagi on 22 November by the tug USS Navajo, which rode shotgun with her to Sydney, where the cruiser arrived on the 30th under her own power

USS Portland (CA-33) in the Cockatoo Drydock, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, circa late 1942, while under repair for torpedo damage received in the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal on 13 November 1942. Note the arrangement of gun directors on her forward superstructure: main battery director atop the foremast, with FC fire control radar; and a secondary battery director, with FD fire control radar, on each bridge wing. Also note this ship’s external degaussing cables, mounted on her hull sides. Courtesy of Vice Admiral T.G.W. Settle, USN (Retired), 1975. NH 81992

After two months in Sydney, she made for Mare Island with stops at Samoa and Pearl Harbor, arriving on the West Coast on 3 March.

In this refit, she upgraded radars to SG and SK sets and beached all her worthless 1.1-inch quads to make room for four quad Bofors.

By late May, she was ready to get back to work.

USS Portland (CA-33) off the Mare Island Navy Yard, California 16 May 1943. 19-N-47582

Alaska

After a training cruise in California waters, Portland arrived in the Aleutians on 11 June 1943 where, as part of TG 16.7, she first blockaded and then bombarded Kiska on 22 July (when the Japanese were still there), fought off a swarm of mysterious unidentified pips on 25/26 July (the “Battle of Sitkin Pip”), covered the fog-shrouded landings on since evacuated Kiska once more on 15/16 August, and covered the close reconnaissance of nearby Little Kiska on the 17th that confirmed it was also abandoned.

Portland left Alaskan waters on 23 September, bound for Pearl Harbor.

Island Hopping

From November 1943 through February 1944, Portland participated in the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaigns, then screened carriers during air strikes against Palau, Yap, Ulithi, and Woleai in March.

She bombarded Darrit Island in the Marshalls at the end of January, firing 149 8-inch shells and a dozen of 5-inch AA common.

Eniwetok and Parry Island got a very serious shellacking by 776 8-inch HC, 35 8-inch AP (used against bunkers as an experiment), 980 rounds of 5-inch, 4,716 40mm, and 1,286 20mm over the course of four days in February. The Bofors were reportedly very good at “hedge trimming” coconut groves to remove cover for enemy positions.

In early March, Portland picked up a new skipper, Capt. Thomas G. W. “Tex” Settle (USNA ’18). A destroyerman during the Great War, he spent most of the 20s and 30s in a series of aviation posts as a test pilot and lighter-than-air (blimp) expert. Having been in charge of Airship Wing Three just before catching a PBY to Eniwetok and never commanded a warship larger than a 165-foot river gunboat, he nonetheless proved ready to take our cruiser into harm’s way.

Portland continued her work.

She screened carriers as they conducted air strikes on New Guinea– where she had four men wounded by splinters from an enemy aircraft attack on 29 March– and the Japanese stronghold of Truk in late April.

Detached with five other cruisers as a surface action group, Portland then conducted a bombardment of Satawan (Satowan) Island in the Caroline’s Mortlock chain, on 30 April 1944, plastering the thin atoll with 89 8-inch shells and coming away with her spotter planes reporting the airstrip there “unusable.” The battalion-sized Japanese force there was left to wither on the vine and only surrendered post-VJ Day.

On 14 May, having been hard at work from Kiska to the Kokoda Trail for a solid year, she was given orders to head to Mare Island for refit and upgrades. 

Her fire control radars were upgraded to Mk 8 and Mk 28 sets and she picked up eight more Bofors (four twins) and five more Oerlikons (singles). This gave her a combined armament of 9 8″/55s, 8 5″/25s, 24 40mm Bofors, 17 20mm Oerlikons, and one catapult with provision for two seaplanes in her hangar. 

Portland, 1946 Janes.

She emerged at the end of July in her final form, including a new camo scheme.

Camouflage Measure 32, Design 7D drawing prepared by the Bureau of Ships for a camouflage scheme intended for heavy cruisers of the CA-33 (Portland) class. USS Portland (CA-33) and USS Indianapolis (CA-35) both wore this pattern. This plan, showing the ship’s starboard side, superstructure ends, and exposed decks, is dated 21 March 1944 and was approved by Captain Torvald A. Solberg, USN. 80-G-109726

USS Portland (CA-33), off the Mare Island Navy Yard, 30 July 1944. Her camouflage is Measure 32, Design 7d. 19-N-70344

Same as above. 19-N-70345

USS Portland (CA-33), view looking aft from the foredeck while at sea in 1944. Note the ship’s two forward 8/55 gun turrets and the arrangement of her forward superstructure. A Mk 33 gun director with Mk 28 fire control radar is atop the pilothouse. The director atop the tripod foremast is an Mk. 34, with Mk 8 fire control radar. The large radar antenna at the foremast peak is an SK. Courtesy of Vice Admiral T.G.W. Settle, USN (Retired), 1975. NH 82031

On 7 August, she left California bound for points West.

Peleliu

Arriving off Peleliu in the Palau Group just before dawn on 12 September, some 4,000 miles west of Pearl Harbor but only 500 miles east of the Philippines, Portland lent her guns to the massive softening-up process covering the Operation Stalemate II landings there that began three days later, a role she would continue for the rest of the month, often working alongside her sister, Indianapolis.

In all, Portland fired 1,169 8-inch HC, another 77 of 8-inch AP in counter-bunker work, 1,945 5-inch, and 10,156 40mm hedge trimmers in support of the 1st MARDIV. Her nights were also busy, popping off 5-inch illumination rounds, as many as 129 a night.

Portland was also the subject of an air attack around 2030 on the night of 19 September when a single-engine plane, believed to be a Japanese Aichi E13A (Jake) floatplane, approached in the dark, dropped two small bombs that landed 200 yards off her port quarter, and caused no damage or casualties.

The P.I.

Given two weeks of forward-deployed downtime at Seeadler Harbor, Manus, Portland sailed with Cruiser Division 4 as part of TG 77.2 for the Leyte Gulf to support the landings there, which began the liberation of the Philippines. Entering the Gulf on the 18th, by 0618 on the 19th, she began delivering naval gunfire support ashore. Over the next five days, she sent 797 rounds of 8-inch and 373 5-inch shells over the beach, plus another 163 5-inch shells to defend against air attacks.

Then came a call on the afternoon of the 24th that Japanese capital ships were sailing up the Surigao Strait, sparking one of the four sprawling engagements that made up the larger Battle of Leyte Gulf.

The last battleship-to-battleship action in history saw VADM Shoji Nishimura’s “Southern Force,” including the old battleships Yamashiro and Fuso, the heavy cruiser Mogami, and four destroyer,s stumble into Oldendorf’s waiting six battleships, four heavy cruisers (including Portland), and four light cruisers, after fighting through a mass of destroyers and PT boats.

Portland sailing into the battle on the evening of 24 October as part of Oldendorf’s left-flank column behind USS Louisville. Minneapolis, Denver, and Columba were following.

Given lots of forewarning due to their PT boat and triple destroyer pickets, as well as superior surface search radar, Portland opened fire at 0352 with her main battery to starboard on enemy ships bearing 186 True, 15,500 yards. The target ended up being Yamashiro, at least the second battleship that Portland would land hits on during the war.

U.S. cruisers firing on Japanese ships during the Battle of Surigao Strait, 25 October 1944: USS Louisville (CA-28), USS Portland (CA-33), USS Minneapolis (CA-36), USS Denver (CL-58), and USS Columbia (CL-56), October 24, 1944. 80-G-288493

In the swirling night action, with Portland running seventh in the column, she got her licks in. She would fire 233 rounds of 8-inch by the time her guns went quiet at 0539, engaging four different targets between 13,700 and 23,000 yards, with her plot radar tracking contacts out to 40,000.

Chief of these targets was believed to be the 13,000-ton heavy cruiser Mogami, with Portland wrecking the bigger ship’s compass bridge and the air defense center while killing her skipper, Capt. Ryo Toma and his XO, Capt. Hashimoto Uroku, along with several junior officers.

Tex Settle, the destroyerman-turned-balloonist, who had left Mare Island just two months prior with a crew filled with hundreds of newly minted sailors and then been thrown into the gunline at Peleliu to get some on-the-job training, delivered a sobering assessment in his action report.

In his own report to Nimitz, Oldendorf noted, “The USS Portland was well handled during this action and her high volume of accurate fire was a material contribution to the complete defeat of the Japanese force.”

Still very much needed, Portland took a brief break at Ulithi to refill her magazines and then, by 5 November, was screening carriers striking Japanese airfields around Luzon. She then spent most of December in a series of AAA engagements against kamikaze strikes while supporting the Mindoro landings.

USS Portland (CA-33) moves into position off Mindoro, just before the opening of the D-Day barrage, on 15 December 1944. Note her camouflage scheme: Measure 32, Design 7d. NH 97834

From 3 January through 1 March 1945, Portland participated in the operations at Lingayen Gulf and Corregidor, including bombarding the vicinity of Cape Bolinao and the Eastern shore of the Gulf while swatting swarms of suicide aircraft.

Off Rosario for almost two weeks, she extensively supported the 43rd “Winged Victory” Infantry Division, dropping photos and sketches of Japanese lines for the unit’s staff via her floatplanes while delivering 485 rounds of 8-inch on-target. In this, U.S. Sixth Army commander, Gen. Walter Kruger, commended the photo recon work of Portland’s pilots.

On 1 March, she retired to San Pedro Bay in the Leyte Gulf for some downtime, maintenance, and provisioning, capping 140 days operational.

She would need it for the next op.

Okinawa

Arriving off Okinawa via Ulithi on 26 March 1945, Portland would become a fixture, conducting operations for almost three months straight. In her first month alone, she survived 24 air raids, shot down at least a quartet of enemy aircraft, assisted with downing another eight planes, and delivered several tons of ordnance.

Portland also scrapped with a Japanese sub.

Between August 1944 and early March 1945, the Japanese Navy sent at least 12 new 86-foot Type D-TEI (Koryu) and 11 80-foot Type C (Hei Gata) midget submarines to hardened pens built for them along Okinawa’s Unten Bay on the island’s northern coast.

Japanese Ko-hyoteki Hei Gata Type C midget submarine Guam 1944. The description from Portland’s action report matches this type to a tee. 

However, through a mixture of pre-invasion Army bomber strikes and Hellcats from USS Bunker Hill and Essex, most were out of action by the time of the landings.

On the nights of the 26th and 27th, the final six operational Japanese midget subs, each carrying a pair of torpedoes forward, crept out to attack the American fleet, sinking the destroyer USS Halligan (DD-584) in the process.

On the morning of 27 March, Portland squared off with HA-60, a Type C, and, while the Japanese boat fired both its torpedoes at the cruiser Pensacola without success, the Portland’s gunners managed to soak the little sub’s periscope and tower with several hundred rounds of 40mm and 20mm while the ship attempting to ram, her stem missing the boat by just 20 feet.

While HA-60 managed to get away, she had a damaged scope which hampered her further attacks. The last Japanese midget sub on Okinawa, HA-60 was abandoned on 31 March.

Sent to Ulithi on 20 April for replenishment and repairs, Portland was back on the gunline with CTG 54.2 off Hagushi Beach on Southwestern Okinawa by 8 May, continuing this vital mission through 17 June.

One of her typical days: 

Her ordnance expended in this second Okinawa cruise:

Besides providing aerial spotting and recon for NGFS and nightly illumination, Portland also stood ready to clock in as a floating triage station, reliving the immense pressure on the dedicated hospital ships. On one occasion, no less than 26 wounded Soldiers and Marines were brought out via landing craft.

Anchored at Buckner Bay when the news of the Japanese capitulation came, the celebrations had to be placed on hold as the Navy had one more mission for the old Sweet Pea.

Endgame

Embarking VADM George D. Murray, Commander Marianas, and his staff on 31 August, Portland was given the task of accepting the surrender of the Japanese Navy’s 4th Fleet, under VADM Chuichi Hara, and the Japanese 31st Army, under Lt. Gen. Shunzaburo Mugikura, who were still holding out at the bypassed fortress of Truk.

Other than the Dutch East Indies, Indochina, Singapore, and Hong Kong, where British and their Commonwealth forces were addressing, Truk was the last large Japanese stronghold in the Pacific. Although its lagoons were filled with 44 wrecks and nearly 300 burnt-out aircraft were hulked on its airstrips, some 40,000 men remained under arms on the outpost. 

Arriving at Truk on 2 September, the event was quick. The Japanese signatories boarded Portland from motor launches at 0920, had a short briefing in the cruiser’s spartan wardroom, then proceeded to the deck where the ceremony took place before the assembled crew at 1015. The delegation left with their copies of the document and Portland raised anchor for Guam directly.

A very happy Japanese Lieutenant General Shunzaburo Mugikura, Commanding General, 31st Army, comes on board USS Portland (CA-33) to attend ceremonies surrendering the Japanese base at Truk, Caroline Islands, 2 September 1945. Truk is visible in the background. Note the wooden grating at the top of the embarkation ladder. Collection of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. NH 62796

Japanese delegation comes on board USS Portland (CA-33), on 2 September 1945, to surrender the base at Truk, Caroline Islands. Those in the front row are (left to right): Lieutenant A.M. Soden, USNR, interpreter; Lieutenant F. Tofalo, USN, Officer of the Deck; Lieutenant General Shunzaburo Mugikura, Commanding General, 31st Army; Vice Admiral Chuichi Hara, Commander, 4th Fleet; Rear Admiral Aritaka Aihara, head of the Eastern Branch of the South Seas Government, and Lieutenant Kenzo Yoshida, Aide to LtG. Mugikura, (carrying bundle). Standing behind them, partially visible, are (left to right): Rear Admiral Michio Sumikawa, Chief of Staff, 4th Fleet; Colonel Waichi Tajima, Chief of Staff, 31st Army, and Lieutenant Ryokichi Morioka, Aide to VAdm. Hara, (carrying briefcase). Note the whaleboat rudder in the left background, and Truk islands in the distance. Collection of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. NH 62798

Japanese delegation’s senior members in the wardroom of USS Portland (CA-33), 2 September 1945. They were on board to surrender the base at Truk, Caroline Islands. Those in the front row are (left to right): Vice Admiral Chuichi Hara, Commander, 4th Fleet; Lieutenant General Shunzaburo Mugikura, Commanding General, 31st Army, and Rear Admiral Aritaka Aihara, head of the Eastern Branch of the South Seas Government. Standing behind them are (left to right): Rear Admiral Michio Sumikawa, Chief of Staff, 4th Fleet, and Colonel Waichi Tajima, Chief of Staff, 31st Army. Collection of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. NH 62799

Japanese delegation in formation on the well deck of USS Portland (CA-33), 2 September 1945. They were on board to surrender the Japanese base at Truk, Caroline Islands. Those in the front row are (left to right): Vice Admiral Chuichi Hara, Commander, 4th Fleet; Lieutenant General Shunzaburo Mugikura, Commanding General, 31st Army, and Rear Admiral Aritaka Aihara, head of the Eastern Branch of the South Seas Government. In the next row are (left to right): Rear Admiral Michio Sumikawa, Chief of Staff, 4th Fleet, and Colonel Waichi Tajima, Chief of Staff, 31st Army. In the rear row are (left to right): Lieutenant Ryokichi Morioka, Aide to VAdm. Hara, and Lieutenant Kenzo Yoshida, Aide to LtG. Mugikura. Collection of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. NH 62801

Japanese Navy Vice Admiral Chuichi Hara, Commander, 4th Fleet, signs the document, at ceremonies on board USS Portland (CA-33) surrendering the base at Truk, Caroline Islands, 2 September 1945. U.S. Navy officers present around the table are (left to right): Lieutenant S.E. Thompson, USNR, Flag Lieutenant; Captain O.F. Naquin, USN, Acting Chief of Staff; Vice Admiral George D. Murray, USN, Commander, Marianas, (seated), who accepted the surrender on behalf of the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet and Pacific Ocean Areas; Captain D.N. Cone, USN, representing Commander, Marshalls and Gilberts; Captain L.A. Thackrey, USN, Commanding Officer, USS Portland; Lieutenant L.L. Thompson, USN, Flag Secretary, and Lieutenant A.M. Soden, USNR, interpreter. Note the Marine Corps photographer in right-center background, and the U.S. flag used as a backdrop. Collection of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. NH 62802

Ironically, on 16 September 1945 in the port of Tsingtao, China, which the Japanese had possessed since taking it away from the Germans in 1914, Sweet Pea’s Surigao Straits skipper, Tex Settle, now a rear admiral, accepted the surrender of six of the Emperor’s remaining destroyers and seven merchantmen along with VADM Shigeharu Kaneko’s Qingdao Area Special Base Force command.

Portland then carried 500 men from Guam to Pearl Harbor, and from there some 600 troops for transportation back to the States.

USS Portland (CA 33) nearing Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, with 500 Naval personnel, 20 September 1945, two weeks after the surrender at Truk. Note men crowded on her decks, and the long homeward bound pennant flying from her mainmast peak. 80-G-495651

Transiting the Panama Canal on 8 October, she was the feature of Navy Day at Portland, Maine on 27 October.

Our well-traveled cruiser consigned to mothballs at Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, was decommissioned there on 12 July 1946.

Struck from the Navy List on 1 March 1959, she was sold for scrap to the Union Mineral and Alloys Corporation of NYC five months later and scrapped.

The Navy lists her as taking part in an amazing 21 Pacific battles and campaigns during WWII:

  • 4 May 42 – 8 May 42 Battle of Coral Sea
  • 3 Jun 42 – 6 Jun 42 Battle of Midway
  • 7 Aug 42 – 9 Aug 42 Guadalcanal-Tulagi landings (including First Savo)
  • 23 Aug 42 – 25 Aug 42 Eastern Solomons (Stewart Island)
  • 26 Oct 42 Battle of Santa Cruz Islands
  • 12 Nov 42 Capture and defense of Guadalcanal
  • 12 Nov 42 – 15 Nov 42 Guadalcanal (Third Savo)
  • 20 Nov 43 – 4 Dec 43 Gilbert Islands operation
  • 31 Jan 44 – 8 Feb 44 Occupation of Kwajalein and Majuro Atolls
  • 17 Feb 44 – 2 Mar 44 Occupation of Eniwetok Atoll
  • 30 Mar 44 – 1 Apr 14 Palau, Yap, Ulithi, Woleai raid
  • 21 Apr 44 – 24 Apr 44 Hollandia operation (Aitape Humbolt Bay-Tanahmerah Bay)
  • 29 Apr 44 – 1 May 44 Truk, Satawan, Ponape raid
  • 6 Sep 44 – 14 Oct 44 Capture and occupation of southern Palau Islands
  • 9 Sep 44 – 24 Sept 44 Assaults on the Philippine Islands
  • 10 Oct 44 – 29 Nov 44 Leyte landings
  • 24 Oct 44 – 26 Oct 44 Battle of Surigao Strait
  • 5 Nov 44 – 6 Nov 44, 13 Nov 44 – 14 Nov 44, 19 Nov 44 – 20 Nov 44: Luzon attacks
  • 12 Dec 44 – 18 Dec 44, 4 Jan 45 – 18 Jan 45: Mindoro landings
  • 15 Feb 45 – 16 Feb 45 Mariveles-Corregidor
  • 25 Mar 45 – 17 Jun 45 Assault and occupation of Okinawa Gunto

These resulted in a Navy Unit Commendation (for Surigao Strait) and in 16 battle stars for World War II service although her crew, in post-war reunions, argue she probably should have gotten more like 18 stars when the Tarawa raid and Aleutians service are included, plus she had a detachment just off Battleship Row during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Still, no matter if it was 16 or 18, that’s a lot of campaign service.

As detailed by Generous: 

Sweet Pea was the only ship at all three of the great battles in the early days of the war when Japan might have won. She was the only heavy cruiser in history that twice faced enemy battleships in nighttime engagements, not only surviving to tell the tale but winning both battles. She rescued thousands of men from sunken ships.  
 
If USS Portland (CA-33) was not the greatest heavy cruiser of them all, let someone else try to make the case.  

Epilogue

Sweet Pea had 14 skippers across her 13-year career between 1933 and 1946, one of which, DuBose, served twice. Of these men, fully half rose to the rank of admiral, one of them, DuBose, to a full four-star. What do you expect from someone who earned three Navy Crosses and a matching trio of Legions of Merit?

Tex Settle twice received the Harmon Trophy for Aeronautics and, for his service in WWII, was awarded the Navy Cross, Legion of Merit, and Bronze Star. He retired from the Navy as a Vice Admiral in 1957 after 29 years of service and passed at age 84 in 1980. Buried at Arlington, in 1998 was inducted to the Naval Aviation Hall of Honor. His papers, appropriately are in the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum’s collections. 

Portland’s records are in the National Archives.

A veterans association, once very vibrant, went offline in 2023. According to the VA, as of 2024, there are just approximately 66,000 living World War II veterans in the United States, which is less than 1 percent of the 16.4 million Americans who served in the conflict.

A memorial site exists, with lots of crew stories. 

Her mast and bell have been preserved at Fort Allen Park in Portland, Maine.

The Navy has gone on to recycle the name “Portland” twice, first for an Anchorage-class gator (LSD-37) commissioned in 1970 and struck in 2004, and then for a San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock (LPD-27) that joined the fleet in 2017.

An elevated starboard bow view of the dock landing ship USS Portland (LSD-37) is underway during Exercise Ocean Venture ’84. DN-ST-86-02284

Gulf of Aqaba (Nov. 15, 2021) The amphibious transport dock USS Portland (LPD 27), right, and the Israeli navy corvette INS Hanit, conduct a passing exercise in the Gulf of Aqaba. 211115-M-LE234-1400. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Alexis Flores)

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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

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

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

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

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

« Older Entries Recent Entries »