6 January 2013. Period caption: “Guided-missile frigate USS Halyburton (FFG 40) transits the Gulf of Aden. Halyburton is deployed with Commander, Task Group 508, promoting maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility.” (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jamar X. Perry/Released)
We’ve talked about the Oliver Hazard Perry Shipyard in Erie, Pennsylvania, and their half-decade-long effort to secure one of the 7 long-decommissioned FFG-7 class frigates currently stored at the NAVSEA Inactive Ships facility at Philadelphia.
The vessel they were looking to acquire, ex-USS Halyburton (FFG-40)has been in storage since 2014 and is the most complete of her class in mothballs, having been on donation hold.
Well, it looks like that isn’t going to happen.
From the museum, repeated in whole for posterity should their site disappear.
November 25, 2024: United States Navy Declines OHPS Phase II Application For Donation of USS Halyburton (FFG-40)
U.S. Navy has declined the Phase II application of the USS Halyburton (FFG-40) to the Oliver Hazard Perry Shipyard. The U.S. Navy listed several reasons for the decision including additional funding on hand, the first 5 years of operating expenditures, and a long-term lease with the Western Erie Port Authority. These were several of the items that the Navy wanted to see more concrete information about.
This is the end of the nearly 6-year-long journey to bring an Oliver Hazard Perry Class Frigate to Erie, Pennsylvania. “This is a sad day for the Oliver Hazard Perry Shipyard and the many Navy veterans who served on the Perry Class Frigates. For the past 5 years, our efforts to bring the USS Halyburton (FFG-40) to Erie have been rigorous and diligent. We have exhausted all available avenues with the Navy and now we have brought the project to an end.” said Dr. Joe Pfadt Chief Executive Officer of the Oliver Hazard Perry Shipyard.
“We gave it our best effort but came up short. This was a long and very detailed process,” said Pfadt. There are no other known plans on the part of the Navy to release a Perry Class Frigate for historic display anywhere else in the country. The USS Halyburton (FFG-40) will most likely be reduced to scrap or used as a target ship and sunk by the Navy.
Of the 51 former USN FFG-7s (another 20 were built for Australia, Spain, and Taiwan), one was sold/transferred to Pakistan, two each went to Poland, Taiwan, and Bahrain (the last just arriving at its new home early this year after a $150 million update), four to Egypt, and eight to Turkey. Of the rest, 12 were sunk as targets, and 13 were scrapped.
The handful that is left in Philly only escaped the cull as they were typically on hold for potential foreign military sale, with Mexico, Thailand, Greece, and Ukraine all mentioned as possible end users but those transfers never materialized, leaving them often open for plunder by the active Navy, foreign governments operating their sisters, and the Coast Guard for useable gear including turbines, Mk 75/38 mounts, CIWS systems, gun control panels, barrels, junction boxes, and other components– meaning they are far less than ideal for use as a museum ship and will more than likely be bound for SINKEXs.
That means, unless a second-hand frigate can be “acquired” from Egypt, Turkey, Poland, Taiwan, or Bahrain by some veterans group at some point in the future once those countries are done with them (it happened before, that’s how USS Orleck and Slater made it over here, purchased privately from Turkey and Greece, respectively), that’s a wrap for the class in U.S. waters.
Perhaps a CG-47 class cruiser could be preserved instead. The time to get started on such an effort would be now.
Built by Boeing in 1962, she was the first of a series of hydrofoil craft designed to evaluate the performance of this kind of propulsion in the modern Navy, one that ultimately led to the design (by Boeing) of the Pegasus-class patrol combatant missile hydrofoils, or PHMs.
Decommissioned by the Navy in March 1975 after a decade of testing, High Point was used briefly by the Coast Guard until her main turbine exploded, then was stricken in 1980.
428-GX-K108129 Patrol Craft, Hydrofoil, USS High Point (PCH-1) underway during a search and rescue exercise off San Francisco by JOC(AC) Warren Grass, 25 April 1975
Powered just by her auxiliary Detriot Diesel, she was retained as a non-commissioned experimental hulk until finally disposed of by MARAD in 1991. She passed through a series of private owners until she came up for sale once again for $70,000– with no takers.
All is not totally lost as a number of relics from the vessel were apparently passed on to a local, free cannery museum on the condition they set up and display the foil propeller.
A Requiem for a Ship that Could Fly; A Ship of local notoriety, USS HIGH POINT PCH-1
There were no flags flying, no bands playing on the pier, no dress uniforms with gold braids waiting to congratulate the captain and crew for a successful mission. No, there was none of that. Only an excavator with a hydraulic crusher awaited. And over a period of four days, in the middle of August, this once proud foilborne warrior was reduced to a heap of scrap and hauled away.
She deserved better, but you can’t save them all.
The only American “fighting foil” left afloat is the ex-USS Aries (PHM-5) museum in Gasconade, Missouri. Please pay them a visit or at least throw them a few dollars.
USS Massachusetts (BB-59), the third of four SoDak super dreadnoughts built during WWII, turned 80 this year.
USS Massachusetts underway somewhere in the pacific (1943)
Of course, she only spent five of those years on active duty (earning 11 Battle Stars fighting the Vichy French and Japanese) and another 15 years in mothballs before shuffling to Fall River, Massachusetts in 1965 to assume an enduring auxiliary role as a museum ship.
Using donations and support from the Commonwealth, “Big Mamie” has been getting a lot of work done including “prepping, priming, and painting the main deck waterways, a complete hull repainting to include all numbers and her name, and welding work to repair main deck stanchions,” while her “her main deck fantail and 40mm gun tubs aft are being completely prepped, primed, and painted as well.”
Museum staff are also taking advantage of a new 3D printing lab aboard the vessel to craft new parts to replace those that have long ago broken or walked off with visitors over the years.
We’ve been following the saga of the Gearing-class destroyer USS Orleck (DD-886)for the past several years. For those who haven’t, the fortune cookie catch up is that the old girl was too late for WWII, but saw lots of combat during Korea– where she received four battle stars and earned a spot in the “Train Busters Club” — and along the gunline off Vietnam for Market Garden– firing fired 11,000+ rounds and earning 10 further stars– as well as was on the team that recovered the Gemini IV space capsule for NASA.
Off Mare Island, 1959
Decommissioned in 1982, she went on to work for the Turks for two decades as TCG Yücetepe (D-345).
Then she was, epically, brought back across the Atlantic where she served as a museum ship in two different Gulf Coast locales for the past 20 years.
Orleck At sea off of Key Largo. Photo by Elsbeth III Captain Wallace Milham.
Entering Jax. If you didn’t see the tow line you would think she is leaving for deployment, the oldest Gearing still in active service. Photo by Ashley Iselborn
Looking great for a 77-year old FRAM’d tin can! Photo by Ashley Iselborn
The Gearing-class destroyer USS Orleck (DD-886)has had a long and happy career, in at least four parts. Laid down 28 November 1944, the 77-year-old warship is about to embark on her fifth.
Her first part, beginning with her U.S. Navy commissioning two weeks after VJ Day, saw the support of post-WWII minesweeping operations off China, combat during Korea– where she received four battle stars and earned a spot in the “Train Busters Club” — followed by tense Taiwan Strait patrols.
Off Mare Island, 1959
The 1960s FRAMing added ASROC and DASH drones just in time to support the recovery of the Gemini IV space capsule for NASA, and deliver naval gunfire support off Vietnam.
Orleck NGFS March 1966, firing on a Viet Cong stronghold near Vung Tau, at the mouth of the Saigon River. Photo by J. L. Means, NPC K-31267
Decommissioned on 1 October 1982, she was transferred to Turkey for the second part of her work career, serving Istanbul as the destroyer TCG Yücetepe (D-345)for another 18 years.
Saved by the USS Orleck Association, the third part of her career saw her brought back “home” in 2000 and opened as a low-traffic museum ship in Orange, Texas, where she had been built by the Consolidated Steel Corporation in WWII.
Then, the historic ship moved to nearby Lake Charles a decade later, where she received even less traffic as the industrial Louisiana coastal city isn’t exactly on the tourism trail. Heck, I tried to tour Orleck three different times when I was passing through between Galveston and Pascagoula but she always seemed closed for one reason or another.
Warship Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2021: The Great White Fleet’s Beautiful Accidental Groupie
Australian National Maritime Museum’s Samuel J. Hood Studio collection. Object no. 00034742
Here we see the Chilean Naval corbeta (corvette) General Baquedano departing Sydney, Australia in late July 1931. A throwback to another era, this steel-hulled single-screw steamer would have a career that spanned over a half-century.
The Chilean Navy in the 1890s found themselves in need of a new buque escuela, or school ship. The role up until then had been shared by the old 2,100-ton corvette Abtao and the battered 600-ton gunboat Pilcomayo, the first the British-built steamer CSS Texas which had never been delivered to the Confederacy and the second built for Peru in Blackwall then captured as a prize after a lopsided naval battle with the Chileans in 1879. Abato, by far, was in the better material condition but was still so worn that an 1884 tender for her sale was not awarded because the offers were so low, forcing the Chileans to keep her in service.
As Baquedano’s career would take her into Antarctic waters occasionally, her hull was made of steel, sheathed in copper, and lined with wood 3.5-inches thick up to three feet above the waterline. Some 240-feet overall, she displaced 2,300-tons. Her armament was Armstrong-made, consisting of four modern breechloading 4.7-inch QFs, assorted 12- and 6-pounders, two water-cooled Maxim machine guns, and a single above-deck torpedo tube for 18-inch Whitehead models, making her a decent little gunboat.
Baquedano with her original black hull as commissioned, is likely seen during speed trials. Via Tyne & Wear Museums
Rigged as a barque, she used Belleville boilers and had a capacity of 300 tons of coal and open stokeholds. Her twin six-crank T3cyl (30, 50 & 81.5 x 48ins) engines were constructed by R & W Hawthorn Leslie, Newcastle, and turned a single centerline screw, with a designed speed of 12 knots. From the below May 1900 edition of The Engineers Gazette, which has much more detail on her powerplant, the Chilean warship would clock 13.75 knots across six hours on her full power builder’s speed trials. Not bad for a barque.
The new corvette was named for the commander of the Chilean forces during the 1879-84 War of the Pacific, Manuel Jesús Baquedano González. Having learned his trade in the circa 1838 War of the Confederacy, the old general spent almost 50 years in uniform and is credited with reorganizing the Chilean military and promoting the formation of both the War Academy and the General Staff, institutions that survive today.
Baquedano and his warhorse Diamante (c. 1881), and in full uniform (c. 1881).
The strongman, who repeatedly turned down roles as Presidente, died in 1897 at age 74.
Career
General Baquedano (Chilean training ship, 1898) burning the dirtiest coal known to man, apparently. NH 49892
Delivered to the Government of Chile in the presence of the country’s charge d’affaires, Aurelio Bascuñán, on 22 August 1899, the new vessel arrived “home” in March 1900 under the command of Captain Ricardo Beaugency.
She left on her first Midshipman and Grumete (cabin boy) cruise just five weeks later, bound for points West Pac via Easter Island, Vancouver, San Francisco, and Honolulu, cycling the Pacific Rim to make calls at Yokohama, Nagasaki, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Batavia, and Sydney, returning to Valparaíso 10 months later in February 1901.
Baquedano would continue such long-reaching annual cruises into 1935– other than gaps from 1911 to 1917 due to economic reasons and the Great War and another during a 1922-26 refit– visiting over 100 ports on six continents.
Her 1903-1905 circumnavigation, for reference.
Baquedano in Chinese waters, 1904. She notably observed several aspects of the Russo-Japanese war firsthand. Repositorio Digital del Archivo y Biblioteca Histórica de la Armada
On her 1906-07 cruise, a delegation was received by Queen Alexandra at Portsmouth, hosted King of Spain Alfonso XIII and his wife Queen Victoria while calling at San Sebastián, circled the Med, and attended the Jamestown Exposition in Portsmouth.
“General Bocordona” one of a set of commemorative Jamestown Exposition souvenir postcards.
In 1908, Baquedano had the curious instance of running into the GWF “on the road” at least two more times, some 8,000 miles apart.
In mid-February, she embarked Chilean President Pedro Montt to review the visiting American warships in Valparaiso, with her Mids aloft and all her glad rags flying.
General Baquedano (Chilean Training Ship, 1899) manning her yards while moored at Valparaiso, Chile, in mid-February 1908, when the U.S. Great White Fleet steamed past the city. General Baquedano is dressed in flags and has Chilean President Pedro Montt embarked. The Chilean destroyer Capitan Thompson is astern. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 45327
General Baquedano (Chilean Training Ship, 1899) at Valparaiso, Chile, with Chilean President Pedro Montt on board, during the U.S. in mid-February 1908, when the U.S. Great White Fleet steamed past the city. General Baquedano is dressed in flags and her crew is manning her yards in honor of the occasion. Collection of Chief Quartermaster John Harold. NH 101484
Then, on 11 September 1908 at the small Western Australian port of Albany, she stood near the British Edgar-class cruiser HMS Gibraltar and the Princess Royal Fortress as USS Connecticut (Battleship No. 18), flagship of GWF commander RADM Charles S. Sperry, along with 14 other Yankee battleships dropped anchor at the outer anchorage of King George Sound. While Gibraltar was there on station, Baquedano under Captain Agustín Fontaine Calvo, had only arrived two days before to take on coal at the end of a six-month Pacific cruise.
“Great White Fleet” World Cruise. Six Atlantic Fleet battleships at Albany, Western Australia for coaling, circa mid-September 1908. The three ships with black hulls (one of which is directly alongside a battleship) are probably colliers. The white-hulled ship at the right is USS Glacier (Storeship, 1898-1922). Also present is a grey British cruiser, probably HMS Gibraltar. Baquedano is likely off-camera to the right with the other half of the GWF or had just left. Collection of Lieutenant Commander Richard Wainwright, 1928. NH 41678
After dutifully exchanging salutes and sending around the appropriate visiting teams for a couple of days, Baquedano would shove off for Talcahuano, arriving back in Chile on Christmas Eve 1908. Meanwhile, the GWF was bound for the East across the Indian Ocean, arriving at Suez, Egypt at roughly the same time. Of note, Teddy’s fleet traveled some 14,556 nautical miles around the world, making the fact that Baquedano met them both at the beginning and rough halfway point, some six months apart, remarkably interesting.
War!
Baquedano listed as a well-armed “surveying ship” in the 1914 Jane’s
During the Great War, the pro-German Chilean government showed a bit of favoritism to Von Spee’s German Pacific Squadron, allowing his ships to take on coal, use their wireless in territorial waters, and often overstay their 24-hour limits without being interned alongside a raft of German merchant vessels who were allowed to sit out the conflict at Valparaiso.
Valparaiso, Chile. November 1914. The German Navy Pacific Squadron at anchor in the harbor. Via Deutsche Reichsarchiv and AWM.
November 4, 1914. Valparaiso, Chile. The flagship of the German East Asia Squadron, armored cruiser Scharnhorst 3 days after the Battle of Coronel.
To be sure, though, the country also allowed the British and their allies to do much the same in the interest of neutrality.
Valparaiso, Chile, 26-27 December 1914. “German merchant ships interned in the Chilean port, as seen from the foredeck of HMAS Australia. This German colony was a base for naval staff and the supply of coal to German vessels. After searching in vain for enemy vessels on its way across the Pacific, the Australian flagship was taking the long route to Jamaica around South America, due to the closure of the Panama Canal to heavy traffic.” AWM EN0076
The Battle of Coronel was fought just off Chile’s coast and, after Von Spee was sent to the bottom of the South Atlantic in the Battle of the Falklands, the sole survivor of his squadron, the exhausted German cruiser SMS Dresden, took refuge in Chilean waters at Más a Tierra– where it was destroyed on 14 March 1915 as a Chilean gunboat stood by and protested via signal flags.
The Chileans interned 315 survivors of Dresden’s crew, although some to include future Abwehr spymaster Wilhelm Canaris released themselves on their own recognizance and made it back to Germany during the conflict.
Corbeta general Baquedano, de la Armada de Chile, circa 1915. Via Chile al día. Tomo I.
Banquedano’s role in the war was limited, serving as a guardship for the interned German merchantmen and her sidelined crew aiding with a bit of muscle ashore as needed.
Late in the war, after the U.S. entered the conflict and, with traditional enemies Bolivia and Peru trying to curry favor with Washington, Chile seized the inactive German-owned nitrate plants in the country and began shipping caliche from the Atacama Desert to the allies.
In 1918, with the war confined at that point to Europe and the Middle East, Baquedano, under the command of Capitán de fragata Manuel Montalva Barrientos set off on her first training cruise since 1910. After visiting Honolulu, Yokohama, Kobe, Itsukushima, Moji, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Batavia, Melbourne, and Wellington, she returned to the port of Valparaíso after the Armistice. Importantly, she inspected Easter Island at least twice during this cruise, an island made important again during the war as the seized French trading schooner Lutece, captured at Mopelia Island by five shipwrecked crew members of the reefed German commerce raider Seeadler, had arrived there in October 1917 and been interned by the local Chilean authorities.
Interwar
Between December 1922 and March 1926, with her unique engines giving up the ghost, Baquedano was overhauled and received a new engineering suite as part of an extensive rebuild. Her armament was also modified, landing her elderly torpedo tube and some of her smaller mounts.
Corbeta Baquedano Buque-escuela fondeado en el puerto de Antofagasta.
Her 10-month 1927 midshipman cruise spanned the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.
Her 1928-29 cruise went even further, visiting throughout the Med and Baltic Seas before calling at Philadelphia and New York on the way back home.
Training ship, corvette General Baquedano crossing the Kiel canal, Germany, during her 1928-1929 instructional voyage. Note she now has an enclosed deckhouse. In this cruise, the frigate captain Julio Pinto Allard commanded the vessel. Repositorio Digital del Archivo y Biblioteca Histórica de la Armada
Her 1929-30 cruise swapped back to the Pacific, traveling as far up the coast as San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver.
Chilean training ship [at C.P.R. pier] [General Baquedano], 1929. Vancouver City Archives. AM1535-: CVA 99-2388
Taking on coal, 1929. Photo by Walter Frost. Vancouver City Archives. AM1506-S3-2-: CVA 447-2233.1
Her 1931 West Pac cruise was extensively cataloged when she called at Sydney’s East Circular Quay on 16 July 1931 and spent two weeks in the city. The visit apparently attracted a lot of local interest, and the daily activities of the Chileans were reported in the Sydney Morning Herald. This included playing a soccer match against members of the cruiser HMAS Canberra, presenting a wreath at the Martin Place Cenotaph— which had just been completed in 1926– and the crew displaying their rigging skills while aloft and open to receive visitors from the curious public.
Procession of Chilean sailors alongside their ship Corbeta general Baquedano, at East Circular Quay, 24 July 1931. The wreath is likely the one presented at the Martin Place cenotaph. Australian National Maritime Museum’s Samuel J. Hood Studio collection. Object no. 00034748
Working with a hardhat diver over the side and a manual compressor. Australian National Maritime Museum’s Samuel J. Hood Studio collection. Object no. 00034747
Cadets aloft showing off their skills. Australian National Maritime Museum’s Samuel J. Hood Studio collection. Object no. 00034750.
The epic young bluejacket pose. Australian National Maritime Museum’s Samuel J. Hood Studio collection. Object no. 00035047
Visitors of the best type when dockside in Sydney. Australian National Maritime Museum’s Samuel J. Hood Studio collection. Object no. 00034744
The time in Australia was among her last great overseas cruises, sticking closer to home for a few years save for trips to Easter Island. Even this ended after 1935 when it was decided the almost 40-year-old sailing ship would be of better use as a pierside trainer for the Arturo Prat Naval School and the Alejandro Navarrete Cisterna School of Grumetes. Her sailing was limited to day runs and coastal trips, almost always under power rather than sail.
WWII
Jane’s entry, 1946.
Chile, as in the Great War, was pro-German in 1939 and maintained Berlin-tilted neutrality for the first part of the conflict. The Chilean Navy in 1941 took over the interned F. Laeisz Hamburg’s four-masted steel-hulled barque Priwall, largely with a crew drawn from Baquedano and her service academies, and sailed her as the nitrate-carrying training ship Lautaro until the latter was lost by accidental fire at sea in 1945. By that stage of the war, Chile had cast her lot with the Allies, her Navy contributing to the defense of the Pacific end of the Panama Canal and patrolling from Easter Island.
By 1951, it was decided to replace the old corvette with a surplus and ideal schooner brig that was languishing on the builder’s ways in cash-strapped post-war Europe. Ordered originally for the Spanish Navy from Echevarria and Larrinaga shipyards of Cádiz in 1946 as Juan de Austria but never completed, the 3,750-ton school ship was baptized Esmeralda, delivered in June 1954, and arrived in Valparaíso on 1 September of that year.
Esmeralda (BE-43) was built in Spain and acquired by Chile in 1952. She made her first instructional cruise in 1955. Known as the La Dama Blanca (The White Lady), she is in active service today, although much less well-armed than Baquedano, carrying only saluting cannons and a small arms locker. Original photograph via the Armada de Chile.
With a new tall ship picking up the torch, Baquedano was decommissioned 5 June 1954– the same week Esmeralda was delivered– and sold for scrapping to the Pacific Steel Company in 1959.
Epilogue
Baquedano is remembered in period artwork, primarily postcards.
Chilean novelist and short fiction writer Francisco Coloane Cárdenas, part of Chile’s famed Generación del 38 art movement, although a Communist later in life, was born the son of a whaler skipper and served in the Chilean Navy as a quartermaster in the late 1920s and 30s. This included a stint on our subject school ship in 1933 that served as inspiration for his coming of age novel El último grumete de la Baquedano (The Last Cabin Boy of Baquedano).
Published in 1941, El último grumete de la Baquedano is considered a national treasure in Chile and is part of the compulsory reading list maintained by the country’s Ministry of Education.
In continuous publication for 80 years, the sailing novel was made into a movie of the same name in 1983, filmed aboard Esmeralda.
Three units of the Chilean Navy have been christened with Baquedano’s name besides our training corvette to include a brown water gunboat for the Amazon, a River-class frigate, formerly HMCS Glace Bay (K414), which served in the 1950s and 60s; and a Broad Beam Leander-class frigate, formerly HMS Ariadne (F72), which was active in the 1990s.
Baquedano’s name will surely sail again.
Specs: Displacement: 2500 t Length 240 ft Draft 18 ft Engines: 2 x T3cyl (30, 50 & 81.5 x 48ins) 1500ihp, 1 x Screw, (refitted in 1920s) Speed: 12 knots practical, 13.75 on trials; also rigged as a Barque Crew: 333 men, with 2/3rds of those cadets and boys Armament: (As built) 4 x 4.7-inch QF 2 x 12pdr (3-inch) 2 x 6 pdr (57mm) guns 2 x machine guns 1 x 18-inch torpedo tube
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Named for a 20-year-old TBF gunner, AOM3 Jack Carter (2686624), who was lost at sea during the Torch Landings after searching for a Vichy French submarine, Mrs. Evelyn Carter Patterson sponsored the new tin can, the late aircrewman’s aunt.
Carter was a TBF Avenger gunner flying from VGS-27 on the escort carrier USS Suwannee (ACV/CVE-27), which has spent the preceding days raining 325-pound depth charges on French cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and even ground targets between Fedala and Casablanca in Morocco. The carrier’s report from the accident on the morning of 10 November 1942, via NARA.
What were the Cannons?
USS Cannon (DE-99) Dravo builder’s photo. USN CP-DE-99-19-N-51457
The Cannon class, ordered in 1942 to help stem the tide of the terrible U-boat menace in the Atlantic, was also known as the DET type from their Diesel Electric Tandem drive. The DET’s substitution for a turbo-electric propulsion plant was the primary difference with the predecessor Buckley (“TE”) class. The DET was in turn replaced with a direct drive diesel plant to yield the design of the successor Edsall (“FMR”) class.
Besides a heavy ASW armament, these humble ships carried a trio of Mk.22 3″/50s, some deck-mounted torpedo tubes to be effective against larger surface combatants in a pinch, and a smattering of Bofors/Oerlikon AAA mounts.
In all, although 116 Cannon-class destroyer escorts were planned, only 72 were completed. Some of her more well-known sisters included the USS Eldridge, the ship claimed to be a part of the infamous Philadelphia Experiment. The vessels were all cranked out in blocks by four yards with Carter— along with class leaders Cannon and Bostwick— among the nine produced by Dravo.
Getting into the war
Commissioned 3 May 1944, with LCDR Francis John Torrence Baker, USNR (Sewickley, Pa.) as her only wartime skipper, Carter reported to the Atlantic Fleet. After two months of shakedowns to Bermuda and back, her first turn in the barrel was, appropriately for her namesake, shepherding Convoy UGS 50 bound for North Africa as the flagship of Escort Division (CortDiv) 79, a task she would repeat before the year was out with Convoy UGS 63 from Norfolk to Gibraltar, arriving at Oran to have Christmas dinner there three days late due to heavy storms.
On her way back through the Med returning home, she had a close brush with one of Donitz’s wolves whenU-870 (KrvKpt. Ernst Hechler) pumped a torpedo into the Liberty ship SS Henry Miller on 3 January 1945.
From Carter’sWar History, in the National Archives:
While Miller was a constructive loss with no injuries to her crew and managed to unload her cargo once towed to port, this was balanced out three months later when U-870 was herself sunk by Allied bombs while dockside at Bremen.
Notably, with the likelihood of engaging a German cruiser or surface raider slim to none by this stage of the war, Carter landed her torpedo tubes at Philadelphia Navy Yard.
She was then assigned to regular antisubmarine patrols from Casco Bay in early 1945 as part of an all-DE submarine Killer Group, a tasking she would conduct for the remainder of the war in the Atlantic. It was with this that she was part of the endgame, moving against the last U-boat offensive against the Eastern Seaboard, one that the brass thought (falsely) might contain V1/V2 rocket carrying subs.
The rumors, mixed with intel that seven advanced U-boats, assigned to Gruppe Seewolf, the last Atlantic Wolfpack, were headed across the Atlantic, sparked Operation Teardrop, an extensive barrier program of ASW assets that ranged the East Coast in early 1945. In the end, Gruppe Seewolf was a dismal failure and the German rocket submarine program never got off the drawing board.
From Carter’s War History, on the engagement she shared with USS Neal A. Scott (DE 769) west of the Azores against U-518, an experienced and successful Type IXC under Oblt. Hans-Werner Offermann, on her seventh patrol. The submarine would not have an eighth:
In May, Carter and her group oversaw the surrender of two U-boats– U-234 (Kptlt. Johann-Heinrich Fehler) and U-858 (Kptlt. Thilo Bode), the latter a Type IXC/40 that had never successfully fired a torpedo in anger, and, true to form, was the first German warship to surrender to U.S. forces without a shot.
U-234, on the other hand, was a big Type XB U-boat built as a long-range cargo submarine with missions to Japan in mind. Commissioned 2 March 1944, she left Germany in the last days of the war in Europe with a mysterious cargo that included dozen high-level officers and advisors, technical drawings, examples of the newest electric torpedoes, one crated Me 262 jet aircraft, a Henschel Hs 293 glide bomb, and 1,210 lbs. of uranium oxide. She never made it to Japan as her skipper decided to make it for Canada instead after the fall of Germany. Two Japanese officers on board committed suicide and were buried at sea while the sub– packed with her particularly important glow-in-the-dark stuff– surrendered south of the Grand Banks, Newfoundland on 14 May, a week after VE Day.
Former U-234 is torpedoed by USS Greenfish (SS-542), in a test, on 20 November 1947, 40 miles northeast of Cape Cod.
Speaking of Japan, after three weeks in New York City, during which the veteran destroyer escort saw “an almost complete turnover in personnel” as it was thought “the Carter would be readied for Pacific duty,” instead the tin can was dispatched to Florida to clock in for lifeguard work on plane guard duty for new aircraft carriers working up in the warm waters down south, carrying 64 members of the USNA’s Class of 1946 with her on their Mid cruise.
Post-VJ Day saw Carter make for the big round of victory celebrations including “Nimitz Day” in Washington, D.C. (where 10,000 locals visited the ship), followed by Navy Day in Pensacola anchored alongside with USS Guadalcanal (CVE 60), Floyd B. Parks (DD 884), and Gunnel (SS 253) where the tiny warship, her glad rags flying, was “open for inspection with myriads of people getting the thrill of being on a warship.”
With the fighting over, at least for now, Carter continued her role as a plane guard in Florida into April 1946, where she was placed “out of commission in reserve” at NAS Green Cove Springs in the St. Johns River and added to the 500-strong mothball fleet that swayed at a series of 13 piers built there just for the purpose.
Carter received one battle star for World War II service.
Jane’s 1946 listing for the 57 strong semi-active Bostwick class, including Carter and noting numerous transfers to overseas allies.
A long second life
While Carter’s initial service would last 23 and ¾ months, others could desperately put the low-mileage destroyer escort to good use.
Ultimately 14 of the Cannon/Bostwick class went to France and Brazil during the war, followed by another eight to the French– who apparently really liked the type– four to Greece (including USS Slater which returned home in the 1990s to become the only destroyer escort afloat in the United States), three to Italy, two to Japan, six to the Dutch, three to Peru, five to the Philippines, two to South Korea, one to Thailand, and two to Uruguay.
When it comes to Carter, she and three sisters: Bostwick, Thomas (DE-102), and Breeman (DE-112), in a short ceremony on 14 December 1948, were transferred to Nationalist (Chiang Kai-shek’s KMT) China. Carter became Tài zhāo (also seen transliterated as Taizhao, T’ai Chao, and Tai Chao) after the capital city in central Jiangsu province in eastern China, with the hull/pennant number DE-26.
The four destroyer escorts were soon put into emergency use. During the last phase of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the 26 loyal ships of the ROCN engaged in the protection of supply convoys and the withdrawal of the Nationalist government and over 1 million refugees to Taiwan.
Carter/Tài zhāo was captured in great detail during this time period in Nationalist use by LIFE magazine.
In this image, she still has her 3″/50 Mk22s up front
Fuzing 40mm Bofors rounds. Note the traditional crackerjack and flat cap used by the Nationalists
Crackerjacks combined with M1 helmets and US Navy Mk II talker helmets
The No. 3 mount now has an additional 3″/50 rather than the 40mm Bofors it held as Carter. Also, that is A LOT of depth charges for those 8 throwers and two rails! Ash cans a-go-go
Needing bigger guns for the work envisioned of them, the Chinese quickly upgraded their two forward 3-inchers to a pair of 5″/38 singles in open mounts, as well as substituting the stern 40mm mount for one of the same which gave the ships a 2+2 format with twin 5-inchers over the bow and a 5-inch over a 3-inch over the stern.
The 1950s saw the fleet heavily involved in the pitched and tense engagements around Kinmen (Quemoy), Matsu (where Carter/Tài zhāo fired 160 5-inch shells against a Red artillery battery ashore), and the Yijiangshan and Dachen Islands in the Taiwan Straits as well as the clandestine Guoguang operations in which the KMT tried to retake the mainland by landing would-be guerilla organization teams in Red territory.
Propaganda shells fired into Red-controlled areas. By John Dominis LIFE
In all, Carter and her three sisters continued to hold the front lines of the Taiwan Straits for 25 years and, for the first decade of that, were the most powerful assets available to the ROCN, a title they held until two Benson-class destroyers (USS Benson and USS Hilary P. Jones) were transferred in 1954. They were also later fitted in the 1960s with Mk.32 12.75-inch ASW torpedo tubes for Mk 44s– which were a lot more effective than depth charges.
Taizhao anchored at the Kaohsiung Xinbin Wharf, late 1940s.
Jane’s 1973-4 listing for the Taiwan Bostwicks, including Carter.
As part of the pressure on Communist China in the tail end of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, the Nixon administration transferred a huge flotilla of more advanced warships to Taiwan between late 1970 and early 1973 that included two GUPPY’d Tench-class submarines (one of which is still active), five Gearing-class destroyers, six Sumner-class destroyers, four Fletchers, and USS McComb (DD-458)— a late Gleaves-class destroyer that had been converted to a fast minesweeper. With all these “new-to-you” hulls, the long-serving destroyer escorts could be retired and, by the end of 1973, Carter and her three sisters in Formosan service had been disposed of for scrap.
While Tài zhāo’s name was not recycled by the ROCN– probably as it is the name of a 4-million person city on the mainland– the ChiCom People’s Liberation Army Navy has had two Taizhous including a Type 053 frigate commissioned in 1982 and a Russian-built Sovremenny-class destroyer (ex-Vnushitelnyy) commissioned in 2005.
PLAN destroyer Tài zhāo, photographed by the Japanese in 2015.
Besides the museum ship USS Slater (DE-766), now sitting dockside in Albany New York, and the pier side training ship USS Hemminger (DE-746) (now HTMS Pin Klao DE-1) in Thailand, there are no Cannon-class destroyer escorts still afloat.
USS Slater is the only destroyer escort preserved in North America– and is Carter’s sistership
The Destroyer Escort Sailors Association honors the men of all the DEs, regardless of class. Sadly, their 45th annual convention last year was their last as their numbers are rapidly declining.
In 1967, Revelle released a 1:248 scale model of “Nationalist Chinese frigate Tai Chao,” complete with box art that showed her racing among bracketed ChiCom shell plumes, no doubt a fitting tribute to those years of the warship’s life spent fighting an undeclared shadow war in the Taiwan Straits.
Specs:
Cannon class DE’s via USS Slater.com
Displacement: 1,240 tons standard, 1,620 tons full load Length: 306.1 ft Beam: 36.1 ft Draft: 11.5 ft full load Propulsion: 4 GM Mod. 16-278A diesel engines with electric drive 4.5 MW (6000 shp), two screws Speed: 21 knots Range: 10,800 nm at 12 knots Complement: 15 officers 201 enlisted men Armament: (1944) 3 × single Mk.22 3″/50 caliber guns 3 × twin 40 mm Mk.1 AA gun 8 × 20 mm Mk.4 AA guns 3 × 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes 1 × Hedgehog Mk.10 anti-submarine mortar (144 rounds) 8 × Mk.6 depth charge projectors 2 × Mk.9 depth charge tracks
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Used as a training vessel for naval reservists on the Great Lakes during the Cold War, she was never given the common GUPPY modernizations that the rest of her class survivors got, and as such is the only World War II Fleet submarine that is still intact, with no stairways and doors cut into her pressure hull for public access.
That means she is still able to float and, although her screws and propulsion plant are quiet, she can be towed in open water, as proved by a recent trip to Donjon Shipbuilding and Repair in Erie, Pennsylvania, where she was in hull maintenance drydocking.
While she has been in fresh water for most of her life, she still needed a lot of TLC, and this shot is after 40 years of marine growth has been removed.
With the torpedo shutters off
What a difference two months in dry dock makes!
She returned to her traditional Cleveland berth yesterday, aided in a 13-hour by the tug Manitou.
The Mk 1 Fire Control Computers that served onboard Big Mamie has been missing for decades and it is becoming difficult to find replacements to restore the plotting room without them. They were removed while the ship was in mothballs and then stricken from the inactive list. In time we have found two incomplete computers and even got one struck below into the Plotting Room. Both of these do not have their star shell computers on top either.
We are still trying to locate these items and need your help out there in the wide world of parts.
Rumor has it that there is a few floating around and one was said to be in the Michigan area, part of a Computer museum that went under. We haven’t been able to chase it down. So if you know of it or any others, please let us in on it so we can restore our battleship to a better exhibit of her past beauty. Thank you all for any help. Trying to keep history alive and well for everyone to enjoy is a team effort.
While not quite a descent into the Dark Ages just yet, that is still a big blow if you think about it. For instance, the Historic Naval Ships Association (HNSA) counts nearly 200 vessels in their “fleet,” which simple math would lead you to deduce that at least 16 will no longer be viable at the end of this crisis, a figure that in reality could be much higher as some museums have numerous ships.
For sure, with everyone sheltering in place, there are no visitors, the key to any museum’s survival. Ships located in states/countries with very strict lockdown seemingly extended forever are surely under the gun.
Last month the Mystic Seaport Museum closed and laid off 199 employees, with no date on the horizon to reopen. At the USS New Jersey (BB62) Museum, with the termination of visitors, and withheld funds from the State of New Jersey, ship managers are almost out of money to maintain the historic Iowa-class battlewagon, the only one that fought in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and the Cold War.
Everett, Washington’s Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum, originally established by Paul Allen, announced, “The current global situation is making it difficult for us to serve our mission and we will spend the months ahead reassessing if, how, and when to reopen.”
How long can large, aging ships located in areas like New York City (USS Intrepid) and San Diego (USS Midway) survive if everything stays shut down in those areas with no expected relaxation of the lockdown rules in the near future?
With all that being said, many vessels have taken advantage of the past couple of months to restore compartments and areas that have long been neglected due to offering 364 days of yearly access to the public.
For instance, check out the USS Alabama/USS Drum‘s social media pages which have detailed an extensive before-and-after restoration of several areas of both the battleship and submarine. They even removed the 30+ planes from the Aircraft Pavilion for deep scrubbing.
USS Alabama’s recently restored sickbay
The Alabama Battleship Memorial Park will open to the public on Saturday morning, May 23, at 8:00 a.m., with new social distancing and hygiene standards in place. The Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum, home of the USS Razorback (SS-394), opened on May 22.
