Above we see the third flight S-class diesel boat, HM Submarine Simoom (P225), underway, likely in 1943, her only year of service. A rather unlucky boat, Simoom fired 15 war shot torpedoes in her career and, although she never hit a target that she intended to punch a hole into, she did manage to spectacularly claim her only “kill” some 80 years ago today.
The mighty S-class
Built to replace the aging boats in RN service, the first pair, HMS Swordfish, and HMS Sturgeon, were ordered in the 1929 program. Small boats, running just over 200 feet in overall length and displacing around 600 tons (900 submerged), they were relatively fast for the day, capable of breaking almost 14 knots on the surface, making them able to catch up to slow-moving merchantmen, and carried a full dozen Mark VIII torpedoes for their six-pack of forward 21-inch tubes. Meanwhile, a 3-inch deck gun and a Vickers light machine gun gave a topside armament. This could be augmented by a dozen mines. Able to operate in shallow waters, with a draft of only 10.5 feet, and able to submerge in 10 fathoms, they could crash dive in just 25-30 seconds with a good crew if needed.
Not bad for a 1920s design.
The 1929 Chatham Dockyard plan of the flight I S-class boats. Chatham would only produce two boats (HMS Shalimar and Sportsman), whereas most were built by Cammell Laird and smaller numbers by Scotts and Vickers.
As noted by Richard Worth in his Fleets of World War II:
“Meant as replacements for the old H-class, they required the same virtues of maneuverability and quick diving. But the Admiralty wanted more– improvements in range, armament, and surface speed. The “S” types became a pillar of His Majesty’s Submarine Force; not remarkable in any respect, rather they performed well all tasks at acceptable levels, a class of well-balanced and workmanlike boats that proved safe and easy to operate.”
A great period color shot of the S-class submarine HMS Seadog (P216), in the foreground moving off, Holy Loch, 1942. The Group 1 T-class submarine HMS Thunderbolt (N25) is in the background. Of note, Thunderbolt was originally HMS Thetis which sank with heavy loss of life in the Mediterranean just before the war and was subsequently salvaged. The two objects seen on her after casing are containers for human torpedo chariots. IWM TR 612
In all, the British would order no less than 73 S-class boats in three flights across 12 construction programs, and they would remain in production from 1930 through 1945, spanning both the interbellum and WWII era. In all, 62 were completed.
Meet HMS Simoom
The name “Simoom” after the desert wind, dates to an 1842 paddlewheel frigate and was used in no less than five other ships by the Royal Navy. The subject of our tale is the sixth and (thus far) final HMS Simoom.
Ordered in the largest batch of S-class boats (20 hulls) under the 1940 war program, she was a third flight vessel and as such had several minor improvements including a slightly higher freeboard forward, a less complicated and simplified engineering layout that allowed a maximum speed approaching 15 knots (one of the batch, HMS Seraph, could hit 16.75 knots). She also had a seventh tube installed, an external one, giving her 13 torpedoes in total. Also, in lieu of a Vickers gun, the 3rd flight S-boats carried a 20mm Oerlikon AAA gun and a primitive air warning RDF receiver. They also carried a Type 138 ASDIC system and a Type 291/291W early-warning radar.
Laid down at Cammell Laird, Birkenhead (a yard that built at least 26 of the class) on 14 July 1941, Simoom was launched the following October and commissioned on 30 December 1942, her construction spanning just under 17 months.
A series of great images were captured of her in April 1943, steaming in conjunction with the captured German Type VIIC U-boat U-570 (HMS Graph, P715).
Her first war patrol off Northern Norway to provide cover for convoy operations to and from Northern Russia in early 1943 was uneventful as was her second in the Bay of Biscay.
Transferring to the still very active Med, her third patrol, off the West coasts of Corsica and Sardinia was a bust.
Her 4th, providing coverage for the invasion of Sicily harassed some coastal shipping and, in the end, she would sink the Italian destroyer Vincenzo Gioberti on 9 August 1943.
Simoon had fired a brace of six torpedoes at the big boys of RADM Giuseppe Fioravanzo’s 8th Cruiser Division (light cruisers Giuseppe Garibaldi and Emanuele Filiberto Duca d’Aosta) but caught the smaller Vincenzo Gioberti instead, making her the last Italian tin can sunk in the war.
Italian destroyer Vincenzo Gioberti, photographed before World War II. NH 47663
She is believed to have taken 95 men to the bottom with her after dramatically breaking in two parts and sinking. Some 171 survivors of Gioberti were recovered by MAS torpedo boats from La Spezia.
The end of Italian destroyer Vincenzo Gioberti, torpedoed by HMS Simoom on 9 August 1943. She was the last Regia Marina destroyer to be lost in the war against the Allies. Photo by “Storia Illustrata” magazine
Other rather sedate patrols followed.
The mysterious end of Simoom‘s tale came in November while on her 7th patrol.
Via Uboat.net:
2 Nov 1943 HMS Simoom (Lt. G.D.N. Milner, DSC, RN) departed Port Said for 7th war patrol (5th in the Mediterranean). She was ordered to patrol between Naxos and Mikonos, Greece. At 1142B/2 she reported that she did not hold the letter coordinates for November and would use those of October. This prompted Captain S.1 to communicate them the following evening.
On the 5th she was ordered to patrol off the Dardanelles, five nautical miles west of Tenedos.
On the 13th she was ordered to leave her patrol area PM on the 15th passing between Psara and Khios, through 35°06’N, 26°44’E and then on the surface from 34°25’N, 29°59′ E. She was due in Beirut at 0901B/20 but this was later corrected to the 19th.
Simoom did not show up at Beirut. She was declared overdue on 23 November 1943.
At 1729 hours, on 15 November, the German submarine U-565 (KL Fritz Henning) fired a single stern torpedo from 2000 metres at a target described as “probably a submarine” on course 250°, one hit was heard after 3 minutes and 48 seconds. The position recorded was Quadrat CO 3381 (36°51’N, 27°22’E or off the east coast of Kos) and it is unlikely that HMS Simoom was in the area. Post-war analysis concluded that she was probably mined on 4 November 1943 on a new minefield laid off Donoussa Island (ca. 37°06’N, 25°50’E).
Her roll of lost, marked “missing presumed killed” 19 November 1943:
ADAM, William G, Able Seaman, P/JX 344969, MPK ANGLESEA, John, Engine Room Artificer 5c, D/MX 102924, MPK BALSON, Lewis F C, Warrant Engineer, MPK BEDFORD, Maurice A, Ty/Leading Seaman, D/SSX 27992, MPK BROADBRIDGE, Thomas G, Stoker 1c, C/KX 83568, MPK CASPELL, George E, Telegraphist, C/JX 163711, MPK COLE, Edward, Stoker Petty Officer, P/KX 83973, MPK CROSS, Charles M, Ty/Sub Lieutenant, RNVR, MPK DAY, Horace C, Signalman, C/JX 207606, MPK ELLIN, Sidney, Petty Officer Telegraphist, C/JX 135616, MPK ELLIOTT, Robert, Able Seaman, P/JX 322974, MPK FRANCIS, Rolland J, Stoker 1c, D/KX 137871, MPK GARBETT, Basil M, Lieutenant, MPK GILL, Geoffrey, Able Seaman, C/JX 235129, MPK GOWLAND, William R, Able Seaman, D/SSX 15958, MPK GRIFFITH, Ben, Petty Officer, D/J 113001, MPK HANNANT, James H, Able Seaman, D/JX 202875, MPK HARRIS, Walter, Stoker 1c, D/KX 134758, MPK HATTON, Charles W, Able Seaman, C/JX 169095, MPK HERD, Charles E, Ordinary Seaman, P/JX 281907, MPK HERSTELL, Norman, Able Seaman, P/JX 347783, MPK JOHNSON, Robert J, Able Seaman, C/SSX 26525, MPK JONES, Louis F, Ty/Sub Lieutenant, RNVR, MPK KENNEDY, Gordon A, Leading Telegraphist, D/JX 154462, MPK KERR, David A, Engine Room Artificer 4c, P/MX 55013, MPK LANDING, John, Leading Stoker, P/KX 84477, MPK LILLYCROP, Francis W, Stoker 1c, P/KX 145412, MPK LOVELL, Ernest A, Able Seaman, P/SSX 18599, MPK MARSDEN, Tom, Engine Room Artificer 4c, P/MX 79301, MPK MASON, George H, Act/Leading Stoker, P/KX 90779, MPK MAY, Sidney J, Able Seaman, C/SSX 30974, MPK MCLENNAN, Harold B W, Ty/Act/Leading Telegraphist, C/JX 259236, MPK MILNER, Geoffrey D N, Lieutenant, MPK MORTIMER-LAMB, Robert J, Ty/Petty Officer, C/JX 145875, MPK OLDING, Walter G, Act/Chief Engine Room Artificer, P/MX 46951, MPK O’LEARY, Michael T, Electrical Artificer 3c, D/MX49539, MPK RAWE, James A, Act/Chief Petty Officer, RFR, P/JX 136102, MPK SALMON, Alfred W, Able Seaman, P/JX 295724, MPK SAUNDERS, Arthur, Able Seaman, P/JX 155201, MPK SCHOFIELD, Bernard P, Able Seaman, C/JX 241234, MPK SEABORNE, William J R, Stoker 1c, D/KX 94051, MPK SHANKS, Thomas S, Ty/Sub Lieutenant, RNVR, MPK SHARP, Norman, Able Seaman, D/JX 223594, MPK SHEPHERD, John V, Stoker 1c, P/KX 83132, MPK SMITH, William J, Stoker 1c, D/KX 145306, MPK SONGHURST, Thomas J, Stoker 1c, C/KX 83463, MPK TAYLOR, James, Engine Room Artificer 4c, C/MX 77617, MPK WARDALE, Irvin, Able Seaman, D/JX 303574, MPK WILSON, William, Act/Petty Officer, P/SSX 18131, MPK
Across over 3,000 patrols, HM submarines sank 158 enemy combatant ships and damaged 54 others, in addition to sinking 1.6 million tons of enemy merchant shipping. A lot of that came from S-class boats.
Nonetheless, they were small and slow by postwar standards. By 1946, Janes listed just 39 S-class boats under the British fleet’s entry and a half-dozen of those warned “may be discarded in the near future.”
Soon, nine would be transferred to France, Portugal, and Israel.
One, HMS Sidon (P259), was wrecked by its own torpedo explosion on 16 June 1955 then refloated and sunk as a target. Another, HMS Sportsman/French submarine Sibylle, was lost off Toulon in 1952 in a diving accident.
Of the dwindling number of S boats still in RN service, most were withdrawn in the late 1940s and 1950s while still relatively young with just a couple lingering on for a few years longer. HMS Sea Devil, completed just after VE-Day, was paid off for disposal at Portsmouth on 4 June 1962, and was the last of the S class in service with the Royal Navy, completing 17 years of service. She was sold to the shipbreaker Metal Recoveries and arrived at Newhaven on 15 December 1965.
The sparsely used trio of boats operated postwar by Portugal (HMS Saga/NRP Nautilo, HMS Spearhead/NRP Nepunto, and HMS Spur/NRP Narval) were disposed of in 1969.
The last of the class afloat, HMS Springer, was used by Israel until 1972 as INS Tanin and had landed commandos in Egypt during the Six-Day War.
Submarine INS Tanin (ex-HMS Springer) arrives at Port of Haifa in 1959. She would be the last S-class boat
Ships are more than steel and wood And heart of burning coal, For those who sail upon them know That some ships have a soul.
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USN photo by LCDR John Leenhouts. DN-SC-88-08301. National Archives Identifier 6430231
Above we see an air-to-air front view of a Spanish AV-8S Matador (Harrier) in flight over the Spanish aircraft carrier Dedalo (R01), below, in the Mediterranean Sea in the summer of 1988. If you think Dedalo looks much like a WWII light carrier, your hunch is correct, and she entered service under a different name and flag some 80 years ago this week.
“30/30” Ships
In 1942, the Navy had its ass in a bind.
Starting the war with just six large-deck fleet carriers, within the first six months of combat was down to just four, and by the end of the year; just a single one of these (Enterprise) was still afloat and operational.
While the first huge and ultra-modern 34,000-ton Essex-class carriers were building as fast as the riveters could rivet and the welders could chip slag, they would not be able to arrive in numbers until 1944. This put the Big Blue behind the Japanese 8-ball in naval warfare.
FDR, himself always a Navy man (he won a naval warfare essay contest while a teenager and slept with Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power upon History on his nightstand before being appointed Asst. Scty of the Navy during World War One), came up with the idea to convert a bunch of cruisers that were already partially complete at the New York Navy Yard over to flat-tops. Although the Navy balked, FDR was the commander and chief, so guess who won?
USS Cleveland CL-55 1942. The Navy wanted between 40-50 of these hardy little cruisers. They settled for much less, and nine of those became aircraft carriers while still under construction
The 14,000-ton Cleveland class light cruisers were designed after the gloves came off in 1940 and the U.S. no longer had to abide by the Washington and London Naval treaties of the 1920s and 30s. As such, these were very large cruisers, at just a hair over 600 feet long, and very fast (33 knots). Designed to carry a dozen 6-inch and a supplemental dozen 5-inch guns, they were also heavily armed.
In all the Navy wanted something on the order of 40 of these cruisers to lead destroyer groups, escort convoys, scout ahead of battle groups, and screen carriers and battleships. Well, FDR carved nine whose hulls were nearing completion but did not have decks, guns, or superstructures installed yet.
A scale model of the Independence-class light carriers and the Cleveland-class light cruiser. Note the hulls.
It was not that hard of a concept. Many of the first carriers were auxiliaries, cruisers, and battleships that had their topside removed and covered with a flat top. Langley, the first U.S. carrier, was a collier. Lexington and Saratoga, the country’s second and third carriers respectively, were originally laid down as battlecruisers.
The first of the class of FDR’s “cruiser carriers,” laid down originally as the cruiser Amsterdam but commissioned instead as the USS Independence, was commissioned on 14 January 1943 and rushed to the fleet. Over the next nine months, eight sisters would join her, roughly one every 45 days on average. They were all constructed in the same yard to keep the program streamlined.
A “30/30” ship, they could make 30+ knots and carry 30+ aircraft while having legs long enough to cross the Pacific and operate on their own for a few weeks before she needed to find an oiler. While they were still much smaller than a regular fleet carrier such as the Enterprise that could carry 80-90 aircraft, they could still put a few squadrons in the air and fill lots of needs.
From U.S. Navy manual FM 30-50: Recognition Pictorial Manual of Naval Vessels, showing U.S. ship silhouettes showing the relative size of the various classes of aircraft carriers, battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. Note the big difference between the size of the large fleet carrier classes (top center), the assorted escort carriers (center to bottom) and the Independence class CVLs, which are right in the middle
Side-by-side comparisons show the principal fleet carriers of the Pacific War compared to an Independence-class CVL. Outside left are the prewar USS Saratoga (CV-3) and USS Enterprise (CV-6), moored near the short-hulled Essex-class USS Hornet (CV-12). Beyond the Hornet is moored the Independence-class USS San Jacinto (CVL-30). U.S. Navy photo 80-G-701512
Worth, in his Fleets of World War II, described the Indys as such:
These were not attractive ships. They had no deck edge elevator, just one catapult, and a small air group (usually 33 planes). Though meant to carry one or two 5-inch DP guns, they never received them. The armor layout provided modest protection, though the first two ships scrambled into service so hurriedly they never got their side armor. In spite of all of this, the design was a success. Not a war winner, it augmented the fleet’s main strength, having sufficient size and speed to bring modern aircraft into battle.
Meet Cabot
The name “Cabot,” after the English-employed Venetian explorer John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto), was one of the oldest in the Navy.
As far back as 5 January 1776, the first Continental Navy squadron under Commodore Esek Hopkins was ordered to sea by Congress to seek the British off coasts of the Carolinas and Rhode Island and in the Chesapeake Bay. The ships under Hopkins’s flag were Alfred, Columbus, Andrea Doria, Cabot, Providence, Hornet, Wasp, and Fly. Sadly, Cabot was also the first Continental naval ship captured by the British, which may be why the Navy waited until 1943 to reissue it.
The second Cabot was laid down as light cruiser USS Wilmington (CL-79) on 16 March 1942, by New York Shipbuilding Co. in Camden, then was reclassified to an aircraft carrier (CV-28) and renamed Cabot during her conversion.
USS Cabot (CV 28), launching at Camden, New Jersey. Photographed April 4, 1943. 80-G-41832
Launched on 4 April 1943, she was reclassified as a small aircraft carrier (CVL-28) just before her commissioning on 24 July 1943 —some 80 years ago this week.
Her first airwing was Carrier Air Group 31, made up of the “Flying Meataxers” of Fighter Squadron 31 (VF-31) and Torpedo Squadron 31 (VT-31), which came aboard in November 1943. CAG 31 would remain on Cabot until 4 October 1944, when CAG 29 (VF-29 and VT-29), late of the USS Santee, came aboard. In general, these CAGs would ship out with 9 TBM/TBF Avengers and 24 F6F-3/5 Hellcats, for a total of 33 aircraft.
They were good at their job.
VF-31 would end up with the highest kill ratio per pilot of any squadron in the US Navy, credited with 165.6 Japanese airplanes destroyed in aerial combat.
For a much deeper dive into her war record, please refer to the extensive 120-page War History completed in late 1945 and available in the National Archives.
We’ll get into the high points below.
Shipping out for the Pacific on 15 January 1944, she joined Task Force 58 and got into the fight for real.
USS Cabot, CVL-28 off Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. 27 AUG 43
Task Force 58 raids in the Carolines, July 1944. RADM J.J. Clark’s task group 58.1 reverses course during attacks on Yap, 28 July 1944. USS HORNET (CV-12) is in the center, with USS CABOT (CVL-28) in the left middle distance and USS YORKTOWN (CV-10) on the right. Six F6F fighters are overhead. Photographed with a K-17 camera from a HORNET plane. 80-G-367247
Crossing the line ceremony on USS Cabot, CVL-28
U.S. Marines drilling on the flight deck of USS Cabot (CVL 28). Photographed by the crew of USS Cabot, July 3, 1944. 80-G-263276
Hitting Truk, the Marshalls, raids on the Palaus, Yap, Ulithi, and Woleai; the Hollandia landings, the famous “Marianas Turkey Shoot,” the liberation of the Philippines, raiding Formosa, Indochina, Hong Kong, Kyushu, and Okinawa, Cabot and her airwing were hard at work.
Just look at this fighting chart chronicling her actions off Formosa, 13-18 October 1944.
Divine Wind
The class would take quite a beating from Japanese aircraft. Sister USS Princeton (CV/CVL-23) was destroyed following a bomb hit during the Battle of Leyte Gulf that sparked fires that got out of hand. Likewise, both sisters USS Belleau Wood (CV/CVL-24) and USS Independence (CV/CVL-22) endured significant damage but pulled through.
Cabot had her own turn in the barrel on 25 November 1944, two days after Thanksgiving.
USS Cabot (CVL-28) is hit by a Kamikaze while operating with Task Force 38 off Luzon, 25 November 1944. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, 80-G-289608
As detailed by DANFS
Cabot had fought off several kamikazes when one, already flaming from hits, crashed the flight deck on the port side, destroying the still-firing 20-millimeter gun platform, disabling the 40-millimeter mounts and a gun director. Another of Cabot’s victims crashed close aboard and showered the port side with fragments and burning debris. Cabot lost 62 men killed and wounded, but careful training had produced a crew that handled damage control smoothly and coolly. While she continued to maintain her station in formation and operate effectively, temporary repairs were made.
Damage to the catapult room of USS Cabot (CVL 28) caused by a crash dive by a Japanese plane. The hole through to the catapult room. The area formerly contained a generator station and crew shelters. 80-G-270879
From her war history:
Back in the fight
Patched up, Cabot returned to action on 11 December 1944, steaming with the force in support of the Luzon operations.
Ernie Pyle shipped out on the Cabot for three weeks and filed reports from her decks on the push to Tokyo.
Pyle, right, on the bridge of Cabot with the skipper –CAPT (later RADM) Walton Wiley Smith (USNA 1920)–during strikes in the North Pacific against Tokyo, February 1945. 80-G-262854-001
The only aircraft carrier he ever visited, Pyle publicized the nickname of the “Iron Woman.”
One of his reports from Cabot:
In the Western Pacific–An aircraft carrier is a noble thing. It lacks almost everything that seems to denote nobility, yet deep nobility is there….It doesn’t cut through the water like a destroyer. It just plows…
Yet a carrier is a ferocious thing, and out of its heritage of action has grown nobility. I believe that today every navy in the world has its No. 1 priority, the destruction of enemy carriers.
That’s a precarious honor, but it’s a proud one.
My Carrier is a proud one. She’s small, and you have never heard of her unless you have a son or husband on her, but still she’s proud, and deservedly so.
She has been at sea, without returning home, longer than any other carrier in the Pacific, with one exception. She left home in November of 1943.
She is a little thing, yet her planes have shot down 228 of the enemy out of the sky in air battles, and her guns have knocked down five Japanese planes in defending herself.
She is too proud to keep track of the little ships she destroys, but she has sent to the bottom 29 big Japanese ships.
She has weathered five typhoons. Her men have not set foot on any soil bigger than a farm-sized uninhabited atoll for a solid year.
They have not seen a woman for nearly ten months. In a year and a quarter out of America, she has steamed a total of 149,000 miles!
Four different air squadrons have used her as their flying field, flown their allotted missions, and returned to America. But the ship’s crew stays on– and on and on.
She is known in the fleet as “The Iron Woman”, because she has fought in every battle in the Pacific in the years 1944 and 1945.
Her battle record sounds like a train caller on the Lackawanna railroad. Listen— Kwajalein, Eniwetok, Truk, Palau, Hollandia, Saipan, Chichi Jima, Mindanao, Luzon, Formosa, Nansei Shoto, Hong Kong, Iwo Jima, Tokyo…and many others.
She has known disaster. Her fliers who have perished cannot be counted on both hands..She has been hit twice by Kamikaze bombs. She has had mass burial at sea..with dry-eyed crew sewing forty-millimeter shells to the corpses of their friends as weights to take them to the bottom of the sea.
Yet she has never even returned to Pearl Harbor to patch her wounds. She slaps on some patches on the run and is ready for the next battle.
My Carrier, even though classed as “light”, is still a very large ship. More than 1,000 men dwell upon her. She is more than 700 feet long…
She has been out so long that her men put their ship above their captain. They have seen captains come and go, but they and the ship stay on forever.
They aren’t romantic about their long stay out here. They hate it, and their gripes are long and loud. They yearn pathetically to go home. But down beneath, they are proud— proud of their ship and proud of themselves.
And you would be too.
Pyle left Cabot at the end of February 1945 and just six weeks later was killed on Ie Shima with the Marines when a bullet from a Japanese machine gun hit him in the left temple below the rim of his helmet.
Cabot would remain on the line until April 1945, when she was sent to Mare Island for a much-needed overhaul.
USS Cabot (CVL-28) flies a long Homeward Bound pennant as she departs the Western Pacific for overhaul in San Francisco, California, on 13 April 1945. She had been operating in the combat zone since January 1944. The view looks aft from the ship’s island, with her SK-1 radar antenna at the left and other shipping in the distance. Aircraft on Cabot’s deck include (from right front): OS2U, SOC, TBM, SB2C, F4U, and F6F types. NH 96958
Sailing back to the front lines, her last combat missions were flown against Japanese-occupied Wake Island on 1 August while en route to Eniwetok.
USS Cabot (CVL-28) Underway at sea, 26 July 1945. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 80-G-262768
She then joined Task Group 38.3 to support the landings of occupation troops in the Yellow Sea area in September and October.
Embarking homeward-bound men at Guam, Cabot arrived at San Diego on 9 November, then sailed for the East Coast.
Cabot earned a Presidential Unit Citation and nine battle stars for service during WWII.
Her end of the war tally sheet, via her War History.
USS Cabot (CVL-28) close-up view of the ship’s port side bridge wing, showing her insignia, circa 1943-44. The design is based on the slogan of Cabot’s first Commanding Officer, Captain Malcolm F. Schoeffel: Up Mohawks, At ‘Em!. Mohawk was the ship’s voice radio call sign at the time. 80-G-263253
Cabot was placed out of commission in reserve at Philadelphia, Pa., on 11 February 1947.
Korean War Service
Independence class light carriers, Janes 1946
Recommissioned on 27 October 1948 after spending just 20 months in mothballs, Cabot was assigned to the nascent Naval Air Reserve training program. Operating first out of Pensacola, then NAS Quonset Point, she would embark NAR squadrons on summer cruises to the Caribbean and make herself available to the training command for carrier deck quals.
SNJ-5B Bu51927, coming to grief on the USS Cabot (CVL-28) sometime before late 1951
It was around this time that Cabot was given a series of quiet upgrades and strengthened flight deck supports that made her both suitable for helicopters and for the weight of larger aircraft such as the F8F Bearcat. The electronics fit was also updated.
Assistant Sec. of the Navy for Aviation, John F. Floberg, does a solo pass USS Cabot CVL-28 on April 18, 1952, in an SNJ Texan. Floberg would get his carrier quals. The cover is the June 1952 edition of Navy Aviation News
F8F-2 Bearcat Naval Air Training Command carrier qual on USS Cabot CVL 28 June 20, 1952
USMC H-19 Chickasaw on an elevator aboard the refit USS Cabot 1952
One of the young budding Naval Aviators she would qual would be the first man on the moon. Before transitioning to the F-9F Panther jet, which he would fly with VF-51 for 78 combat missions over Korea, Neil Armstrong, flying an F8F Bearcat, would make his first six carrier traps on Cabot in March 1950. By August, he had aced his carrier quals.
Armstrong, shown left on Cabot after his first trap. note the 40mm Bofors behind him.
Cabot even made an operational deployment of sorts, embarking COMCARDIV 14 in January 1952, loading a squadron of short-lived AF-2S/AF-2W Grumman Guardians from the “Duty Cats” of VS-24, adding a det of HUP-1 helicopters from the “Fleet Angels” of HU-2 for liaison work and plane guard roles, then setting out for a Med cruise.
USS Cabot (CVL-28) underway, circa 1951–1952, with what appear to be two AF-2 Guardians from Antisubmarine Squadron (VS) 24 “Duty Cats.” NARA image.
same as above
same as above
She returned stateside on 26 March 1952 and went back into the training pipeline for a few more years.
Newly-delivered PA-tail coded T-28B Trojan and T-34 Mentor over Pensacola NAS, note the CVL training carrier below, likely USS Monterey but possibly Cabot or USS Saipan– the latter one of two light carriers built on a Brooklyn-class heavy cruiser hull. The photo is likely from 1955-56.
Cabot was again placed out of commission, in reserve, on 21 January 1955, and was later reclassified to an auxiliary aircraft transport (AVT-3) while mothballed.
Her career in the U.S. Navy had concluded.
A new flag
The Navy had previously transferred two of the remaining eight Indys to France in the 1950s– USS Langley (CVL-27) and USS Belleau Wood (CVL-24), which became La Fayette and Bois Belleau, respectively.
Meanwhile, the Spanish Navy had been chasing the dream of an aircraft carrier, going back to their seaplane tender and balloon carrier, Deadalo, which was active from 1921 through 1934, even getting in some carrier air raids during the Rif War.
With the general post-WWII rapprochement between a still very fascist Franco and the Western allies, the 1953 Madrid agreements thawed the chill between the U.S. and the country, opening it to military aid in return for basing.
Soon, the country would receive its first modern submarine, the snorkel-equipped USS Kraken (SS-370) (taken in service as Almirante García de los Reyes, E-1), later joined by three Guppy’d Balao-class smoke boats. Five Lepanto-class destroyers– WWII Fletcher-class tin cans– starting with USS Capps (DD-550) in 1957, were transferred. These were soon joined by five more FRAM I Gearing class destroyers, starting with USS Eugene A. Greene (DD/DDR-711) in 1972, as the Churruca class. By this time, the Spanish were also getting five new-made Baleares-class frigates, variants of the Knox class destroyer escort/fast frigates updated with Standard SAM suites.
In many ways, the Spanish fleet by the late 1960s was very American.
Looking for a helicopter carrier/amphibious assault ship and being rebuffed when they wanted the converted escort carrier USS Thetis Bay (LPH-6), and after taking a look at the laid-up USS San Jacinto (CVL-30) and passing, the Spanish went with Cabot as she had embarked and supported helicopters in the 1950s and had a better sensor and radio fit than just about any other mothballed flattop on the menu.
Cabot was loaned to the Spanish Navy on 30 August 1967, which renamed her Dédalo (R.01). She was then stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 1 August 1972, and sold to the Spaniards.
In Spanish operations, she would embark 16-24 helicopters in 4-packs starting with H-13 Sioux, H-19 Chickasaws, and Agusta-Bell 204s, then evolving to SH-3 Sea Kings, torpedo-carrying Hughes 500ASW variants, Agusta-Bell AB.212s, and AH-1 Cobras.
Ever thought you’d see a blue Cobra gunship on a WWII light carrier?
Look at how cute the Hughes 500ASWs are!
Spanish Marina ordered eight AH-1G Cobras and flew them in blue livery from Delado. They were the only country besides the US to operate the model
Dédalo, far right, and hospital ship Esperanza del Mar– the ex-4,000-ton WWII coastal minelayer USS Monadnock (ACM-10)– with one of the carrier’s SH-3D Sea King hanging out on her helideck– a tight fit!. Also, note the stacks of a Descubierta-class corvette to the left
Spanish Arma Aérea de la Armada SH-3D Sea King of Quinta Escuadrilla on Dédalo/Cabot with AS-12 missiles and a torpedo rigged for carry
Entry in Janes, 1973
By 1972, Spain bought eight British-built Harriers. Designated VA.1 Matadors in Spanish service, they were essentially modified variants of the USMC AV8A/B series and were classified as AV-8S/TAV-8S models.
Spanish Dédalo/Cabot with Harrier and helicopters
By 1976, the jump jets were active on Dedalo, providing both air defense and strike capabilities for the Spanish fleet, ultimately buying 13 of the type.
An aerial port bow view of the Spanish aircraft carrier DEDALO (R01) underway. Note the mix of Matadors, AB-212s, and Sea Kings. DN-SC-88-08303
Check out this amazing footage of Dedalo operating with her Matadors off the Canary Islands in 1978, “Defensa de las Canarias,” which simulated the repulsion of a Soviet amphibious assault on the chain.
However, with Spain’s WWII-era fleet beginning to show its age in the early 1980s, a refresh was soon underway that saw the Guppy boats traded in for a quartet of new French Agosta-class submarines, the Fletchers and Gearings replaced by a half dozen Santa Maria-class frigates (a Spanish version of the Oliver Hazard Perry-class), and a plan to replace Dedalo.
A port beam view of the Spanish amphibious assault ship DEDALO (PA-01), formerly the USS CABOT (AVT-3), in the foreground and the frigate BALEARES (F-71) participating in exercise Ocean Venture ’81.
The planned Almirante Carrero Blanco, built to a modified U.S. Navy Sea Control Ship study, entered service in 1988 as the 16,700-ton Príncipe de Asturias. Equipped with a 12-degree ski jump and powered by GE LM2500 gas turbines that could push the carrier along at 26 knots, the new Spanish carrier would embark and launch the larger and more advanced AV-8B Harrier II, which was produced locally at CASA’s facility in Seville, Spain, as the EAV-8B Matador.
Príncipe de Asturias (R11)
The old Dedalo, unneeded, was headed to the breakers, and her old AV-8As were soon resold to Thailand for use with that country’s building HTMS Chakri Naruebet, which was based on the design of Príncipe de Asturias and constructed in Spain.
On 12 July 1989, Dédalo was decommissioned, capping a 46-year career.
A brief reprise
Rushing in to save the day was a group of WWII U.S. Navy vets and their supporters. At the time that Cabot was retired, she was by far the only member of her class still around. In addition to her nine battle stars and Presidential Unit Citation for WWII, there was also her Korean War service, her connections to Neil Armstrong and Ernie Pyle, and her Cold War journey that made her worthy of preservation.
Ultimately, she was brought to New Orleans triumphantly in August 1989 when she still looked amazing– having only left Spanish naval service the month prior. Within months, she was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service.
Then, sadly, the successive efforts to preserve her all tanked for one reason or another, typically money-related (or lack thereof), and she sat along one dock or another in the Crescent City for eight years, suffering marine collisions, looting, and neglect.
Being a warship nerd in my 20s at the time, I snuck through a series of fences to get a snapshot of her tied up on a foggy morning near the Mandeville docks.
USS Cabot/Spanish Dédalo, tied up in New Orleans. Photo by Chris Eger
By 1997, with her time all but gone, she was towed to Texas, where she would soon be involved in a confusing series of lawsuits and seizures by the U.S. Marshals for debts owed. Slowly scrapped there over the next several years, she disappeared by August 2001.
As summed up by WWII After WII, who covers her tragedy in detail:
The USS Cabot fiasco was a sad, but in some ways foretelling, end to the boom of WWII warship museums in the United States. From the late 1970s to the early 1990s, these seemed to proliferate – however, with a few exceptions (USS Intrepid in NYC being particularly successful) they were extremely difficult to keep financially sound after opening. To display a P-51 Mustang fighter or M4 Sherman tank ashore doesn’t take a whole lot beyond the purchase cost, but afloat decommissioned ships are “financial zombies” in that even when dead, they require constant money just to stay above the waterline, let alone be profitable, and this only increases as the ship continues to age – the USS Texas saga being a good example. Often visitor admission fees just aren’t enough.
Anger was directed at the original Foundation, who were portrayed in veteran’s circles as idiots, grifters, or both. This is not fair as the original intentions were good; and in fact, much of the early fundraising was done by veterans at a VFW post in Louisiana on their own time. It might be better to say that they had no idea what they were getting into and quickly found themselves in way over their head.
At the National Naval Aviation Museum, the center floor display includes a replica of the wooden flight deck and island superstructure of Cabot. Assisted by his son, the same sailor who painted the original scoreboard highlighting the combat record of the ship and its embarked air groups duplicated his work for the museum.
(Photo: Chris Eger)
(Photo: Chris Eger)
One of her screws and some of her WWII-vintage Bofors mounts went to USS Lexington, which is preserved in Corpus Christi, just a couple of hours away from where she was scrapped.
Meanwhile, the Spanish Navy’s AH-1G Cobras that flew from Dedalo proved to be a time capsule for the U.S. Army and are now gems in the collection of the Army Aviation Museum in Alabama, as most of their type in U.S. service were either scrapped or converted to updated models.
This toothy G-model Cobra served with the Spanish Navy and was recently returned to the U.S. Note the early 7.62mm minigun and 40mm grenade launcher in the chin. (Photo: Chris Eger)
A few years ago, scale model maker Amo released an AV-8S Matador kit (AMO-8505) that features box art by Valery Petelin that includes Cabot/Dedalo cruising below.
AV-8S Matador AMO box art by Valery Petelin, with Delado/Cabot below
Of Cabot’s sisters, besides USS Princeton (CV/CVL-23), which was lost in 1944, USS Independence was extensively damaged in the Crossroads tests and then, filled with radioactive material, was scuttled off the coast of California in deep water in 1951.
Langly/ La Fayette and Belleau Wood/Bois Belleau, after operating with the French off Indochina and Algeria, were returned to the Navy in the 1960s and scrapped, replaced in French service by the new domestically built Clemenceau-class carrier,s which were twice as large and were built from the keel up to operate jets.
USS Bataan (CVL-29), which added seven Korean War battle stars to the six she earned in WWII, was scrapped in 1961.
USS Bataan (CVL-29) was photographed on 22 May 1953, as she was en route to Naval Air Station San Diego, California, following a deployment to Korean waters. Note crew paraded on the flight deck spelling out the word “HOME” and an arrow pointing over her bow. Aircraft on deck include 19 Grumman AF “Guardian” anti-submarine planes and a solitary Vought F4U “Corsair” fighter (parked amidships on the starboard side. NH 95808
USS Cowpens (CVL-25), laid up after the war, was reclassified as an auxiliary aircraft transport (AVT-1) while in mothballs and was scrapped in 1960.
USS Monterey (CVL-26), on which the future president Gerald Ford served aboard in WWII, served as a training carrier (AVT-2) during the Korean War, then was decommissioned in 1956 and scrapped in early 1971.
USS San Jacinto (CVL-30) would be the last in U.S. Navy possession, sold to the breakers in December 1971 after sitting on red lead row for 24 long and unkind years.
The Indys earned a total of 81 WWII battle stars, and it is a crying shame that none remain.
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
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO, has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
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Warship Wednesday, July 19, 2023: Red Sub Circumnavigator
Above we see the type IX-bis S (Stalinets) class “medium” Guards Red Banner submarine S-56 returning to Polyarni in early 1944 from a patrol off the coast of German-occupied Norway. The most celebrated of her class, she claimed one of her biggest “kills” some 80 years ago today.
The S-class
It is a little-known fact that the Tsarist Imperial Navy entered the Great War in 1914 with more submarines in its inventory than anyone else. Following the national disaster that was the Russian Revolution and Civil War, the reformed Red Navy inherited a few of these old boats and even managed to keep some of them in operation into the 1950s!
When it came to new designs, by the late 1920s the Soviets built a half dozen modest 1,300-ton Dekabrist-class (Series I) submarines constructed with Italian expertise, followed by 25 minelaying Leninets-class (L class, or Series II) submarines of the same size which were essentially reverse engineered from the lost British L-class submarine HMS L55 which was recovered by the Soviets, and a staggering 88 Shchuka-class (Series III, V, V-bis, V-bis-2, X, X-1938) “medium” submarines that went some 700 tons and were ideal for use in the cramped Baltic and Black seas.
Then, the Stalinets class in IX, IX-bis, IX-bis-II, and XVI series, began to appear in 1936.
Besides the lessons learned in making the Italian-based Dekabrist-class and English-based Leninets-class boats, the Russians, who were very close to a quietly rearming Weimar Germany in the early 1930s, worked with the Dutch front company Ingenieurskantoor voor Scheepsbouw (IvS), which was, in fact, a dummy funded by the German Weimar-era Reichsmarine using design assets from German shipyards AG Vulcan, Krupp-Germaniawerft, and AG Weser to keep Berlin in the sub-making biz while skirting the ban on such activity by the Versailles treaty.
IvS had previously built boats and shared technology with Finland and Spain and it was with the latter’s planned Submarino E-1 that the Soviet S-series was based.
Spanish submarine E-1 at the shipyard in Cádiz. Built in Spain from 1929-30, Soviet engineers participated in her construction and trails. Although her design would go on to be used as the basis for both the German Type IA submarine and the Russian Stalinets class, ironically, the Spanish Navy never operated E-1, as she was sold to Turkey in 1935 just before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. She went on to fly the star and crescent until 1947 as TCG Gür.
Some 255 feet long and with an 840/1070 ton displacement, the basic Stalinets design was good for 19.5 knots on the surface and a cruising range of 4,000nm. Carrying four forward torpedo tubes and two sterns, they also mounted a 100mm deck gun and a 45mm backup as well as machine guns that could be set up for AAA use. Besides the six 533mm torpedoes in the tubes, they could carry another six spare fish.
Stalinets class
The first flight of three boats used German diesels, something that was corrected in follow-on ships that evolved slightly across their construction, hence the four different flights. In all, some 41 Stalinets would be completed. The first, C-1, was laid down on Christmas Day 1934 (because who needs religion in the worker’s paradise) and delivered on 23 September 1936 while a final eight whose construction began at around the same time languished on the builder’s ways during WWII, and were only finished post-war.
The subject of our tale is the most successful of the class. Of the 33 Stalinets class boats completed in time for WWII, 16 were lost. Of the 30 that saw combat patrols, 19 claimed tonnages. This would include the infamous S-13, which sank five ships including two large transports Wilhelm Gustloff and General Steuben, regarded as among the worst maritime disasters in history.
1946 Janes entry on what was left of the class at that time
Two submarines of the class were awarded the rank of Guards, and seven boats earned the Red Banner, only S-56 was awarded both distinctions.
Meet S-56
A 2nd series (IX-bis) Stalinets, S-56 was intended for service in the Pacific Fleet and therefore was assembled at the Dalzavod works at Vladivostok from a kit sent across Siberia from Leningrad starting on 24 November 1936. Launched Christmas 1939, she was commissioned on 20 October 1941, as the Germans were on the outskirts of Moscow.
With the Soviets eschewing combat against the Japanese until after Berlin was licked, on 6 October 1942, S-56, along with sisters S-51, S-54, and S-55, departed Vladivostok ahead of the ice to join the Red Navy’s Northern Fleet at Murmansk. They would be joined by the Leninists-class minelaying subs L-15 and L-16 sailing from Petropavlovsk on a 17,000-mile transoceanic voyage across both Pacific and Atlantic, maneuvering the seas of Japan, Okhotsk, Bering, Caribbean, Sargasso, Northern, Greenland, Norwegian and Barents with stops in Dutch Harbor, San Francisco, the Panama Canal, Guantanamo Bay, Halifax, and Rosyth.
At least that was the plan.
L-16 was lost en route with all hands, believed torpedoed and sunk by the Japanese submarine I-25 on 11 October 1942 approximately 500 miles west of Seattle. This was even though the Soviet Union and Japan were officially at peace. Fog of war, after all.
While returning to Japan on the surface, I-25 spots two ships, apparently en route to San Francisco. The seas are rough. LCDR Tagami first identifies the ships as two battleships. Later, he identifies them as two “American” submarines. At 1100, he dives and fires his last remaining torpedo. It hits 30 seconds later. Several heavy explosions follow. One of the explosions wrecks a head aboard I-25.
The leading submarine starts to sink rapidly stern first with its bow up 45 degrees. A second explosion follows. When the smoke clears there is only an oil slick on the water. The submarine sinks with all 56 hands (a Russian crew of 55, a naturalized American and American interpreter/liaison officer Sergey A. V. Mikhailoff (USNR) who boarded the submarine at Dutch Harbor) at 45-41N, 138-56E. (Postwar, it is learned that the submarine was Soviet Cdr Dmitri F. Gussarov’s 1,039-ton minelayer L-16 en route from Petropavlovsk, Siberia via Dutch Harbor, Alaska to San Francisco.)
The accompanying Soviet L-15 reports seeing one more wake, fires five 45-mm rounds at I-25 and mistakenly claims a hit on I-25’s periscopes.
The five remaining Russian boats were captured several times by American and Canadian cameras while en route to Murmansk.
Russian S-type submarine probably photographed about 1942. 80-G-636837
The Russian submarine S-54 is seen departing Mare Island on 11 November 1942. USN photo # 6697-42
Russian submarine SS-55 is seen departing Mare Island on 11 November 1942. USN photo # 7001-42
The skippers had a chance to meet and pose for a snapshot in Panama, where they rested from 25 November 25 to 2 December 1942.
From left to right: S-54 skipper, LCDR Dmitry Kondratievich Bratishko, S-51 skipper Captain 3rd rank Ivan Fomich Kucherenko, submarine group commander, Captain 1st Rank Alexander Vladimirovich Tripolsky, commander of S-56 LCDR Grigory Ivanovich Shchedrin, commander L-15 Captain 3rd Rank Vasily Isakovich Komarov, Commander S-55 Captain 3rd Rank Lev Mikhailovich Sushkin. Unfortunately, the names of the American officers are not noted.
Soviet “L” Class submarine (L-15) in Halifax harbor. Date: January 1943. Reference: H.B. Jefferson Nova Scotia Archives 1992-304 / 43.1.4 180.
In March 1943, S-56 became part of the 2nd division of the submarine brigade of the Northern Fleet, after a voyage of 153 days.
Her combat career would encompass 125 days underway on eight patrols against the Germans in which she was declared overdue and likely destroyed no less than 19 times, more an issue of poor radio communications than anything else.
S-56 in the Northern Fleet
She logged 13 attacks and fired 30 torpedoes. This included several runs on German convoys, escaping a surface duel with a pair of escorts, surviving a glancing torpedo strike from the German U-711, and reportedly hitting at least one large freighter with a dud torpedo.
Although she would claim 14 enemy transports and warships sunk with a total displacement of 85,000 tons, her post-war validated tally is a good bit smaller (as are most subs from all sides).
17 May 1943 sank the German tanker Eurostadt (1118 GRT) off the Kongsfjord.
17 July 1943 sank the German minesweeper M 346 (551 tons) west of the Tanafjord.
19 July 1943: Torpedoed and sank the German auxiliary patrol vessel NKi 09 / Alane (466 GRT, former British ASW trawler HMS Warwickshire) off the Tanafjord near Gamvik.
31 July 1943 sank the German merchant Heinrich Schulte (5056 GRT) west of the Tanafjord.
C56 Victory Parade July 1945
Epilogue
In 1954, the now famed S-56 was sent back to her birthplace at Vladivostok via the then very perilous Northern Sea Route through the Arctic, thus becoming the first Russian submarine to circumnavigate the globe.
Decommissioned in 1955, she was retained in the Pacific Fleet as a floating charging station and damage control training hulk, renamed ZAS-8 and then UTS-14.
In 1975, on the 30th anniversary of VE Day, she was installed as a museum ship on the Korabelnaya Embankment, where she remains well preserved today, the last of her class.
She is also celebrated in several heroic Soviet maritime art pieces.
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
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.
Warship Wednesday, July 12, 2023: Mr. Gallatin’s Shallow Water Angel
Halftone photo from “War in Cuba,” 1898. Official U.S. Navy Photograph. NH 191
Above we see the fine Harlan & Hollingsworth-built schooner-rigged steam yacht Almy, with her summer of 1898 warpaint on, as the gunboat USS Eagle during the Spanish-American War. Late of the New York Yacht Club and rushed into naval service, she won what would turn out to be an unexpected victory over the much larger and better-armed Compañía Trasatlántica Española (CTE) steamer Santo Domingo some 125 years ago today.
Fine lines and good bones
In addition to making steam engines and railcars, Wilmington’s Harlan & Hollingsworth were one of the earliest iron shipbuilders. Constructing 347 hulls between 1844 and 1904 when they were acquired by Bethlehem Steel, besides their bread and butter fare like barges, ferries, and tugs, they also won a few Navy contracts (the monitors USS Patapsco, Napa, Saugus, and Amphitrite; the sloop USS Ranger, destroyers USS Hopkins and Hull, and torpedo boat USS Stringham).
Starting in the 1870s, they began a string of more than 30 fine hermaphrodite steam yachts including Dr. William Seward Webb’s Elfrida, William Astor’s Nourmahal, H W Putnam’s Ariadne, W. K. Vanderbilt’s Alva, Cass Canfield’s magnificent Sea Fox, Florida shipping magnate H. M. Flagler’s Alicia, and William DuPont’s Au Revoir.
Another of these yachts was contracted from H&H by New York attorney Frederick Gallatin. A resident of 650 Fifth Avenue (now a 36-story office tower adjacent to Rockefeller Center), he was a grandson of early Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin and from old Hamptons money. Married to Almy Goelet Gerry (daughter of Tammany Hall “Commodore” Elbridge Thomas Gerry, with the title coming as head of the NYC Yacht Club) it was only logical that Gallatin would order a yacht from H&H named for Almy.
Hull No. 256 was 177 feet long overall with a 24-foot beam, she had a nice stiletto-like 7.5:1 length-to-beam ratio and had a draft of just 7 feet with a 14-foot depth of hold. Powered by a single-ended cylindrical boiler pushing a T.3 Cy (18″,23″ & 42-33″) steam engine with a nominal 101 NHP (850ihp) venting through a single stack, she had an auxiliary two-mast sail rig and was good for a stately 12 knots although on her trials she made 15.5 knots. Coal stowage was 85 tons.
View of the engine room, of USS Eagle, built as yacht Almy, at Portsmouth Navy Yard, N.H. 31 August 1916. Note the builder’s plaque on the bulkhead and disassembled engine parts on the deck. NH 54333
Steel-hulled with a 364 GRT displacement, she carried electrical lighting in every compartment as well as topside and was reportedly very well-appointed. Her normal crew, as a yacht, was four officers and 20 mariners.
Delivered to Gallatin in August 1890– just in time to catch the end of “the season”– the New York Times mentioned Almy in its yachting news columns more than a dozen times in the next eight years including one mention in 1895 of an epic blue fishing trip to Plum Gut where “he landed some of the finest fish captured this season.”
Typically, Gallatin would ply her during the summer and, every October, send her back down to winter at the builder’s yard where she would be drydocked and freshly painted every spring, ready to do it all again.
Then came war
As part of the general rush to avenge the lost USS Maine on 15 February, the scions of the NY Yacht Club soon offered up their yachts to be converted to fast dispatch boats and scouts. Ultimately, the Navy bought no less than 28 large yachts, including 13 that topped 400 tons, in addition to almost 70 other auxiliaries for support duties to the fleet.
Several yachts took part in fights with Spanish forces including three, USS Gloucester, Hist, and Vixen, which were present during the Battle of Santiago. Among the former NYYC H&H-built yachts that went to the Navy for the war with Spain were Flagler’s Alicia (renamed USS Hornet after purchase for $117,500) and Dr. Webb’s Elfrida (which was taken in service as USS Elfrida for $50,000).
The 28 yachts converted to armed auxiliaries in 1898. Via The Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, Vol. VI, 1898, click to big up.
While negotiations continued with a Navy purchasing agent, Gallatin allowed Almy to go to the Brooklyn Navy Yard on 26 March to begin her conversion to an armed picket ship. Eventually, he let Almy go for $110,000 on 2 April 1898 and the Navy renamed her USS Eagle, the fourth such vessel to carry that name.
Given a coat of dark paint and armed with a quartet of 6-pounder 57mm deck guns (two forward, two aft) and two Colt machine guns forward of the deck house, her early admission to BNY allowed her to be commissioned three days later under the command of LT William Henry Hudson Southerland (USNA 1872).
Other changes from her civilian life, as detailed by The Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, Vol. VI, 1898, included:
Magazines for supplying ammunition to the above battery were built under berth deck, just forward of the fireroom bulkhead, with ammunition cranes to the hatches, directly over.
Steel plating 7/8 inch thick and 8 feet wide was worked on outside of the vessel for the length of the engine and boiler space.
Her foremast was cut down and made a signal mast, while the mainmast and fittings were entirely removed.
The ornate dining room was cleaned out and fitted up as crew space while extensive wood and brass works were removed.
The vessel was drydocked, cleaned, and painted throughout. All plumbing, drainage system, and auxiliaries were overhauled and put in order. The entire exterior of the vessel, including spars and metal deck fittings, was thickly painted a “lead color.”
She carried 75 men to war, drawn largely from the Naval Militia, when she left New York on 17 April headed for duty with the North Atlantic Squadron on blockade and dispatch duty in Cuban waters. She was at sea when war was declared on 25 April.
By 28 April, Eagle, along with the gunboat USS Nashville and the Montgomery-class unprotected cruiser USS Marblehead, established a blockade off Cienfuegos. The next morning, Nashville seized the Spanish steamer Argonauta which had Col. Corijo of the Third Cavalry Regiment (Regimiento de Caballería “Montesa” N.º 3) and 19 men of its headquarters troop aboard. This sparked a 25-minute naval gunfire duel between Eagle and Montgomery versus three Spanish torpedo boats coming out of the river to contest the affair under cover from a shore battery.
Southerland reported to RADM William T. Sampson that Eagle fired 59 rounds of No.4 shell in the engagement and suffered no casualties, although, ” Two of the enemies shot passed close over this vessel, another close astern, and another within a few feet of the bowsprit.”
On 29 June, Eagle shelled the Spanish battery at Rio Honda, showing that, while her little six-pounders were small, they could still breathe fire.
On 5 July, while Eagle was on the blockading route in the vicinity of the Isle of Pines, she sighted the provision-laden Spanish schooner Gallito five miles to the South and immediately gave chase.
The schooner ran in until about a quarter of a mile from the shore, when she dropped her anchor, and those aboard slipped over her side and swam ashore. Ensign J. H. Roys and a crew of eight men from the Eagle were sent in a small boat to board the schooner. They found her deserted, and while examining her were fired upon by her crew from the beach. Several rifle shots went through the schooner’s sails, but no one was injured. The Eagle drew closer in and sent half a dozen shots toward the beach from her 6-pounders, whereupon the Spaniards disappeared. The Gallito was taken into Key West.
A week later, on 12 July, Eagle came across her biggest prize yet. The Govan-built iron-hulled CTE screw steamer Santo Domingo, some 344 feet in length. Formerly the D. Currie & Co’s Dublin Castle (which carried British troops during the Zulu War), she had been sold in 1883 to Spanish interests and by 1886 was sailing for CTE on a regular Havana to New York service.
Santo Domingo
Otis describes the event:
The auxiliary gunboat Eagle sighted the Spanish steamer Santo Domingo, fifty-five hundred tons, aground near the Cuban coast, off Cape Francis, and opened fire with her 6-pounders, sending seventy shots at her, nearly all of which took effect.
While this was going on, another steamer came out of the bay and took off the officers and crew of the Santo Domingo. When the men from the Eagle boarded the latter, they found that she carried two 5-inch and two 12-pounder guns, the latter being loaded and her magazines open. The steamer had been drawing twenty-four feet of water and had gone aground in twenty feet.
The men from the Eagle decided that the steamer could not be floated, and she was set on fire after fifty head of cattle, which were on board, had been shot.
The Santo Domingo carried a large cargo of grain, corn, etc. While the steamer was burning, the vessel which had previously taken off the crew emerged from the bay and tried to get off some of the cargo, but failed. The Spanish steamer burned for three days and was totally destroyed.
It made big news back home.
On 30 July, Eagle supported the gunboat USS Bancroft with the seizure (twice) of a small Spanish schooner in Sigunea Bay. I say twice because, once taken by two rifle-armed sailors from Bancroft’s steam launch and tied near the wreckage of Santo Domingo devoid of crew, the Spanish promptly sailed out in two small boats to reclaim her, an event that ended with Eagle and Bancroft, by this time joined by the gunboat USS Maple, in a chase and possession of all three small enemy vessels.
Hostilities ceased on 13 August, capping the 16-week conflict.
Continued peacetime service
Post-war, Eagle was painted white, two of her four 6-pounders landed, and she was retained for survey work, a role she was suited for with her extremely shallow 7-foot draft. She then spent much of the next two decades working to compile new charts and corrected existing ones for the waters surrounding Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Haiti– all central to American interests. In this task, she typically had a team of civilian engineers and surveyors aboard.
USS Eagle (1898) at anchor off Norfolk, VA. Jan. 19, 1899. UA 461.33 Henry Bundy Collection
As detailed by DANFS:
Troubled conditions throughout the Caribbean often interrupted Eagle’s surveying duty and she gave varied service in protecting American interests.
She patrolled off Haiti in January and February 1908 and again in November and December and off Nicaragua in December 1909.
In June 1912 she transported Marines to Santiago de Cuba and Siboney to protect American lives and property during a rebellion in Cuba and continued to investigate conditions and serve as base ship for the Marines until 1914.
She also had gunboat duty with a cruiser squadron during the Haiti operation of July 1915 to March 1916 and was commended by the Secretary of the Navy for her creditable performance of widely varied duty.
She then headed back home for a much-needed dry docking and overhaul.
In dry dock at the Portsmouth Navy Yard, N.H. in September 1916. Note bt this time she had her second mast reinstalled. NH 54334
Then came another war
Eagle as she appeared in early 1917. NH 64949
Once America entered the Great War, Eagle returned to Cuban waters as part of the American Patrol Detachment, Atlantic Fleet, and throughout 1917 and 1918 was continually on patrol off Cuba and the southern coast of the U.S. This was while the Ford-built “Eagle boats” were being cranked out in Detroit.
Eagle in Havana Harbor, Cuba, October 1917 NH 54335
At one point, Eagle was detailed to protect an American-owned sugar mill at Manati, Cuba, in early 1917, and did so by putting ashore a modest landing force including hauling one of the ship’s 6-pounders and machine guns ashore– half her armament. It was thought the mill would be an easy target for a German U-boat. A machinist’s mate among the crew, John G. Krieger, had a small portable camera and captured a great array of snapshots during this period.
Men from the Eagle with a mail bag and flag, at Manati, Cuba, in 1917, when the ship’s crew was protecting a local sugar mill. Note the sailors’ crackerjacks are whites that have been “tanned” via the use of coffee grounds. The officer is Ensign Hubert Esterly Paddock, who was with Eagle as Surveying Officer. The donor comments that Paddock surveyed with a motorboat and took regular watches at sea. Of note, Paddock would go on to command the destroyer tender USS Dobbin (AD 3) in WWII and retire post-war, passing in 1980, one of the last U.S. Navy officers left from the Great War. Photographed by John G. Krieger. NH 64955
Mounted Guard furnished by USS Eagle to protect a sugar mill at Manati, Cuba in 1917, shortly after the U.S. entered World War I. Note the motley uniforms and M1903 Springfields. The officer is the ship’s XO, LT (JG) Jerome A. Lee, a skilled electrician who had served on Arctic expeditions before his time on Eagle and would continue to serve through WWII. Photographed by Mr. John G. Krieger. NH 64957
Ford Automobile armed with a Colt M1895 “potato digger” machine gun complete with AAA shoulder rests, staffed by members of the Eagle’s crew, who were guarding a sugar mill at Manati, Cuba, shortly after the U.S. entered World War I. Photographed by Mr. John G. Krieger. NH 64958
Eagle crew members with machine gun-equipped “Gas Car” railway work wagon, assigned to the protection of a sugar mill at Manati, Cuba, in 1917. Photographed by Mr. John G. Krieger and donated by him in 1966-67. NH 64959
A six-pounder gun mounted in a tower at Manati, Cuba, in 1917 by Eagle’s crew. Photographed by Mr. John G. Krieger. NH 64960
Her 1916-17 skipper, LT Henry Kent Hewitt (USNA 1906), seen ashore on service in Cuba with Eagle’s landing party and on the bridge of his gunboat. He would go on to earn a Navy Cross commanding the destroyer USS Cummings escorting Atlantic convoys in 1918 and command the amphibious landing forces for the Torch, Husky, and Dragoon Landings in WWII. After chairing a post-war Pearl Harbor investigation, he would retire as a full admiral. The Spruance class destroyer USS Hewitt (DD-966) was named in his honor, christened at Pascagoula by his daughters. Photographed by Mr. John G. Krieger. NH 64953/64952
The entire landing party, about 40 strong– half the crew– posed for Krieger. NH 64956
Eagle in the Ozama River, Santo Domingo, in July 1917. U.S. Navy Coal Barges Nos. 300 and 301 are in the foreground. NH 64948
Post-war, with that Navy no longer needing a 30-year-old converted yacht with a pair of 6-pounders, Eagle was detached from her southern climes and ordered to Portsmouth Navy Yard in April 1919 to pay off, being decommissioned there on 23 May 1919.
Epilogue
Disarmed and sold by the Navy on 3 January 1920, the former pride of the NYC Yacht Club soon appeared as the tramp coaster Reina Victoria owned by one M.F. Kafailovich, sailing out of Santiago de Cuba.
She was listed in Lloyds as such from 1921 to 1927 and then disappeared.
Her final fate is not known.
As far as relics from Eagle, I can’t find any that exist other than the pennant and ensign of the Santo Domingo which were installed among the 600 banners installed in the United States Navy Trophy Flag Collection in 1913.
Gallatin? His dear Almy passed in 1917 and their $7 million estate was subsequently divided among their six adult children. After this, he withdrew to the Hotel Plaza where he passed in 1927, aged 86. His NYT obit memorialized him by saying “he was well known as a yachtsman.”
Eagle’s Span-Am War skipper, LT William Henry Hudson Southerland, would go on to serve as hydrographer of the Navy from 1901 to 1904, commanding the gunboat USS Yankee as well as the battleship New Jersey (BB-16), taking part in the Great White Fleet’s circumnavigation. Appointed rear admiral in 1910, he later became commander of the Pacific Fleet and was the final Civil War naval veteran (he was a 12-year-old powder monkey in 1865 before becoming a naval apprentice and attending Annapolis) still in active service.
Captain William H. H. Southerland, USN. A circa 1907 photograph was taken at the time he served as Commanding Officer of New Jersey (BB-16). NH 45029
RADM Southerland retired in early 1914 after 49 years of service, just missing the Great War, and passed in 1933. The Allen M. Sumner– class destroyer USS Southerland (DD-743) was named in his honor.
Curiously, other than a WWII Q-ship, USS Eagle (AM-132), which was quickly renamed USS Captor during her construction, the Navy has not elected to use further use the name USS Eagle.
Ships are more than steel and wood And heart of burning coal, For those who sail upon them know That some ships have a soul.
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Warship Wednesday, June 28, 2023: A 22,000-Yard Fish and a One-Man Army
Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-52931
Above we see the Fletcher-class destroyer USS Strong (DD-467)as she highlines mail to the light cruiser USS Honolulu (CL-48) during operations in the Solomon Islands area, circa early July 1943. Our fighting tin can had the misfortune of being lost to what is credited as the longest-range torpedo hit in military history some 80 years ago today, 5 July 1943. A war baby, she had only been in service for 332 days.
Fletcher class background
The Fletchers were the WWII equivalent of the Burke class, constructed in a massive 175-strong class from 11 builders that proved the backbone of the fleet for generations. Coming after the interwar “treaty” destroyers such as the Benson- and Gleaves classes, they were good-sized (376 feet oal, 2,500 tons full load, 5×5″ guns, 10 torpedo tubes) and could have passed as unprotected cruisers in 1914. Powered by a quartet of oil-fired Babcock & Wilcox boilers and two Westinghouse or GE steam turbines, they had 60,000 shp on tap– half of what today’s Burkes have on a hull 25 percent as heavy– enabling them to reach 38 knots, a speed that is still fast for destroyers today.
USS John Rodgers (DD 574) at Charleston, 28 April 1943. A great example of the Fletcher class in their wartime configuration. Note the five 5″/38 mounts and twin sets of 5-pack torpedo tubes.
LCDR Fred Edwards, Destroyer Type Desk, Bureau of Ships, famously said of the class, “I always felt it was the Fletcher class that won the war . . .they were the heart and soul of the small-ship Navy.”
Meet USS Strong
Our vessel was the first named in honor of naval hero James Hooker Strong. A New Yorker who was appointed midshipman in 1829 at age 14, he learned his trade fighting buccaneers while with the Brazil Squadron and spent long years on the Mediterranean and East India Squadrons. Commander of the steamer Mohawk when the Civil War began, by 1863 he was skipper of the steam sloop USS Monongahela as part of the Western Gulf Blockading Squadron. Under Farragut, he sailed Monongahela into the heart of the Confederate stronghold of Mobile Bay and his ship was the first to engage the fearsome rebel ironclad CSS Tennessee.
RADM James Hooker Strong, a hero of the Battle of Mobile Bay, retired from the Navy in 1876 completing a 48-year career. He passed away in 1882. The photo above shows him with a special sword awarded by Congress for the Battle of Mobile Bay.
The first USS Strong (DD-467) was laid down on 30 April 1941 at Bath Iron Works in Maine. Launched on 17 May 1942, sponsored by Mrs. Susan H. Olsen, the great-grandniece of the late RADM James Hooker Strong, and commissioned at the Boston Navy Yard on 7 August 1942, her construction took just under 16 months.
USS Strong (DD-467). Heavily retouched copy of a photograph taken circa the later part of 1942. The retouching, which includes the land in the distance and the ship from the forward smokestack to the top of the pilothouse, was mainly done for censorship purposes, to eliminate radar antennas from the ship’s gun director and foremast. NH 97883
After a quick shakedown in the Casco Bay area and along the East Coast– which included active screening escort missions for the battleship USS Massachusetts— by October Strong was tagging along on convoys in the Caribbean and, by November, she was part of Convoy UGS-2 steering a course for North Africa to take part in the Torch landings.
Returning to New York on westbound Convoy GUF-2, she would sail two days after Christmas 1942 as part of Task Force 39, bound for Nouméa in Free French New Caledonia, the staging area for the push into Guadalcanal and the Solomons.
Strong at the New York Navy Yard three days before Christmas of 1942, Mt. 51, and Mt. 52 of her main battery are prominent in the foreground. Parenthetical numbers refer to recent modifications: (1) the raised platform and foundation for a 20-millimeter Oerlikon on the centerline aft of Mt. 52; (2) the large-type BL radar antennae; and (3) the relocated groups of vertical fighting lights. (U.S. Navy Bureau of Ships Photograph BS-40290, National Archives, and Records Administration, Still Pictures Division, College Park, Md.)
USS Conyngham (DD-371) At Espiritu Santo, New Hebrides, 15 February 1943. The destroyer in the right background appears to be USS Strong (DD-467). 80-G-38661
By March 1943, Strong, along with sisters USS Nicholas, Radford, and Taylor, as part of TG 18.6, was delivering 5-inch shells on the roofs of Japanese shore installations in late-night raids of Kolombangara Island.
Strong delivered 368 shells in that raid, all fired in just under 10 minutes.
Via her report “USS STRONG – Act Rep, Bombardment of Vila-Stanmore, 3/15-16/43” in the National Archives.
On the night of 7 April, while screening the cruiser Task Force 18 off San Cristobal Island, Strong came across one of the Emperor’s submarines, RO-34.
Via DANFS:
Strong’s searchlight revealed the presence of what proved to be RO-34 (Lt. Cmdr. Tomita Rikichi). Strong opened fire with her main battery and machine guns — expending ten 5-inch/38 rounds, 98 40-millimeter rounds, and 288 20-millimeter rounds. The destroyer reported that she struck the submarine three times with her 5-inch fire. During the barrage, RO-34 dove into the sea, down by the stern.
Strong circled RO-34’s location and dropped ten Mk. 6 depth charges and six Mk. 7 depth charges, to ensure RO-34’s journey to the bottom. Before she returned to the task force, Strong observed debris from RO-34 on the surface at 10°05’S, 162°08’E, and she was later credited with the sinking. After the war Japanese records indicated that RO-34 was given orders on 16 April to return to Rabaul, New Britain, which went unanswered, leading to the presumption that she was lost with all 66 souls on board.
USS Strong coming alongside, 1943. Note the highline.
Speaking of aircraft, by 16 June, Strong, steaming with Nicholas (DD-449) and the oiler Monongahela (ironically), encountered a wave of 15 Val bombers joined by another half dozen Zekes. In the fight, all three American ships made it safely out of it while Strong, reportedly firing 194 5-inch, 750 40mm Bofors shells, and 980 20mm shells in just seven mad minutes, splashed three aircraft.
With an active career that saw her sink a submarine, shoot down a trio of incoming bombers, and hit enemy positions with almost 1,200 shells inside a span of just four months– all without any losses or damage of her own– Strong was in for a harsh meeting with fate.
Battle of Kula Gulf
On the night of 4/5 July, Strong, in company with three cruisers and four destroyers, was headed back to Kolombangara for another nighttime gun raid. As the second ship in the column behind USS Nicholas, Strong steamed into the Kul Gulf just after midnight on the 5th and plastered Japanese positions on Kolombangara Island, then around the Bairoko Inlet on New Georgia Island.
Via Destroyer Report: Torpedo and Mine Damage and Loss in Action: 17 October 1941 to 7 December 1944
While the cruisers moved off, with Nicholas as a screen, the destroyers USS Chevalier and O’Bannon moved in to assist Strong with rescue operations. All during the rescue, Japanese 140mm guns at Enogai Inlet kept firing star shells and AP rounds, some of which landed awfully close including both “shorts and overs.” Chevalier came alongside and managed to take off about three-quarters of the ship’s company before Strong’s depth charges exploded, wrecking Chevalier’s radars and sound gear.
USS Chevalier (DD-451) Moored to the Government Wharf, Tulagi, Solomon Islands, 6 July 1943. Her bow was damaged while rescuing the crew of the sinking USS Strong (DD-467) during the 5 July 1943 Battle of Kula Gulf, and her 5/58 gun mount # 3 shows the effects of a hang-fire, explosion, and fire immediately after that rescue was completed. Courtesy of Rick E. Davis, 2012. This is a cleaned version of National Archives’ Photo # 80-G-259220.
Through the courageous actions of the men of the USS Chevalier, most of Strong’s crew was safely taken aboard before the destroyer sank. Some 46 of her 325-man complement were listed as missing including several last seen “floating on a raft in the Kula Gulf.”
A standout of the Alabama football team, Miller was with the Crimson Tide when they won the national championship at the Rose Bowl in 1931 with a 24-0 shutout of Washington State. Old “Rose Bowl” Miller went on to become a southern lawyer who volunteered for the Navy in 1941 and, eschewing JAG work for surface warfare, was assigned to Strong as the destroyer’s 20mm and stores officer.
Making it to nearby Japanese-held Arundel Island, Miller survived there for 39 days, alternatively fighting, and coming on top in lop-sided battles against malnutrition, dehydration, and Japanese troops before he was recovered. 190225-N-ZV259-0184
Strong received three battle stars for her short but spectacular service in World War II,
Post-war, it was established that Strong was likely holed by a Type 93 Long Lance torpedo from the Japanese Akizuki-class destroyer Niizuki, fired from no less than 11 nautical miles. If true, it is the longest confirmed wartime torpedo hit on record. Fittingly, Niizuki was sunk the next night in a clash with American surface ships.
CDR Joseph H. Wellings, Strong’s only commander, would earn the Bronze Star Medal, with Combat Distinguishing Device “V” and the Silver Star Medal for the destruction of the submarine RO-34 and the destroyer’s other actions. Following the sinking of the Strong, he was hospitalized until January 1944, then went on to command DESRON TWO for which he earned a Gold Star in lieu of the Second Bronze Star Medal, with Combat “V” for actions in the Philippines in early 1945. Post-war, he would command the cruiser USS Columbus (CA 74) and hold a series of senior appointments, retiring as a rear admiral in 1963. Admiral Wellings died on March 31, 1988. His papers take up 32 boxes in the U.S. Naval War College Archives.
As for “Rose Bowl” Miller, the hard-to-kill lieutenant was awarded the Navy Cross, two Silver Stars, six Bronze Stars, two Purple Hearts, and 27 other individual and unit decorations.
Miller was awarded the Navy Cross, personally bestowed on him by Eleanor Roosevelt, seen here in a Red Cross uniform, who was on a Pacific swing with the American Red Cross. Note Halsey looking on. 190225-N-ZV259-0185
Miller’s story was dramatized by the Navy in his lifetime, a real “One-Man Army”:
And he appeared on an episode of This is Your Life, hosted by Ronald Reagan.
Miller retired as a Navy Captain before passing away in 1978.
As for Strong’s Fletcher-class sisters, 24 were sunk or evaluated as constructive total losses during WWII including Strong’s companion Chevalier, which was scuttled after being torpedoed by a Japanese destroyer during the Battle of Vella Lavella, 6 October 1943. These ships were sent into harm’s way.
The rest of her surviving sisters were widely discarded in the Cold War era by the Navy, who had long prior replaced them with more modern destroyers and Knox-class escorts. Those that had not been sent overseas as military aid were promptly sent to the breakers or disposed of in weapon tests. The class that had faced off with the last blossom of Japan’s wartime aviators helped prove the use of just about every anti-ship/tactical strike weapon used by NATO in the Cold War including Harpoon, Exocet, Sea Skua, Bullpup, Walleye, submarine-launched Tomahawk, and even at least one Sidewinder used in surface attack mode. In 1997, SEALS sank the ex-USS Stoddard (DD-566) via assorted combat-diver delivered ordnance. The final Fletcher in use around the globe, Mexico’s Cuitlahuac, ex-USS John Rodgers (DD 574), was laid up in 2001 and dismantled in 2011.
Today, four hard-charging Fletchers are on public display, three of which in the U.S– USS The Sullivans (DD-537) at Buffalo, USS Kidd (DD-661) at Baton Rouge, and USS Cassin Young (DD-793) at the Boston Navy Yard. Please try to visit them if possible. Kidd, the best preserved of the trio, was used extensively for the filming of the Tom Hanks film, Greyhound.
The name USS Strong was recycled during the war for a new Allen M. Sumner-class destroyer (DD-758) laid down on 25 July 1943 by Bethlehem Steel Co., San Francisco. Commissioned on 8 March 1945, she made it to the Japanese Home Islands just in time for VJ-Day. She would then be highly active in the Korean War, conducting gun strikes up and down the peninsula, and then go on to conduct gunline conducting harassment and interdiction missions against North Vietnamese water-borne logistic craft in the 1960s.
USS Strong (DD-758) underway off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii on 21 May 1968. Photographer: PHCM Louis P. Bodine. Official U.S. Navy Photograph NH 107152
This second Strong received one battle star for Korean service and three battle stars for service in Vietnam before she was decommissioned and struck from the Navy list on Halloween 1973, transferred to Brazil for further service before being lost at sea while headed to the breakers in 1997.
With that, both USS Strongs rest on the sea floor.
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
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.
Warship Wednesday, June 28, 2023: The Tsar’s Jutland Veteran
Archivio Centrale dello Stato
Above we see the Italian light cruiser Bari moored at Patras in Axis-occupied Greece in May 1941. Note her laundry out to dry, her 5.9-inch guns trained to starboard, and her crew assembled on the bow with the band playing. A ship with a strange history, a wandering tale, she was lost some 80 years ago today.
The Muravyov-Amurskiy class
No fleet in military history was in desperate need of a refresh as the Imperial Russian Navy in the 1910s. Having lost 17 battleships (depending on how you classify them), 13 cruisers, 30 Destroyers, and a host of auxiliaries to the Japanese in 1904-1905, the Russians were left with virtually no modern combat ships except those bottled up in the Black Sea by the Ottomans. Also, with lessons learned from the naval clashes, it was clear the way of the future was dreadnoughts, bigger destroyers, and fast cruisers.
To fix this, the Russian Admiralty soon embarked on a plan to build eight very modern 25,000-ton Gangut, Imperatritsa Mariya, and Imperator Nikolai I-class battleships augmented by a quartet of massive 32,000-ton Borodino-class battlecruisers. With the age of the lumbering armored cruiser over, the Russians went with a planned eight-pack of fast new protected cruisers of the Svetlana and Admiral Nakhimov classes (7,000 tons, 30 knots, 15 5.1-inch guns, 2 x torpedo tubes, up to 3 inches of armor) as companions for the new battle wagons.
And, with Russia all but writing off its larger Pacific endeavors, eschewing rebuilding its former battle fleet there in favor of a much more modest “Siberian Military Flotilla” based out of often ice-bound Vladivostok and Petropavlovsk, the Tsar’s admirals deemed that just two light scouting cruisers were needed for overseas use in the Far East, typically to wave the flag, so to speak.
That’s where the Muravyov-Amurskiy class came in.
The two cruisers, at 4,500 tons displacement and 426 feet overall length, were generally just reduced versions of the Svetlana/AdmiralNakhimov classes being built in Russian yards already.
Planned to be armed with eight 5.1-inch guns and four torpedo tubes, they were turbine powered and expected to be fast– able to touch 35 knots at standard weight for short periods although published speeds were listed as 27.5 knots.
Mine rails over the stern allowed for up to 120 such devices to be quickly sown– a Russian specialty.
Their armor was thin, never topping three inches, and spotty with just a protective deck above machinery spaces, a protected conning tower, and 50mm gun shields.
Muravyov-Amursky class in 1914 Janes.
It should be noted the Russian cruisers feel very much like a follow-on to the experimental “cruiser corvette” SMS Gefion (4,275 t, 362 ft oal, 10 x 4-inch guns, 1-inch armor) that Schichau built at Danzig in the mid-1890s for overseas service.
SMS Gefion, commissioned in 1895, would serve briefly in East Asia before she was laid up in 1901. After service as an accommodation hulk through the Great War, she was converted to use as a freighter, Adolf Sommerfeld, in 1920, only to be broken up a few years later.
The two new vessels were to be named after historic 19th Century Russian figures who had expanded the country’s reach towards the Pacific: General Count Nikolay Nikolayevich Muravyov-Amursky, a statesman who proposed abolishing serfdom; and Admiral Gennady Ivanovich Nevelskoy, a noted polar explorer.
General Muravyov-Amursky and Adm. Nevelskoy.
They were ordered in the summer of 1913 from F. Schichau’s Schiffswerft in Danzig, as yard numbers 893 and 894.
The choice to have a German firm build the new cruiser class wasn’t too unusual for the Tsarist fleet as the Russian cruiser Novik and four Kit-class destroyers was built at Schichau in the 1900s while Krupp delivered the early midget submarine Forel at about the same time. The Russian protected cruiser Askold, one of the most successful of her type, was built at Kiel by Germaniawerft while the cruiser Bogatyr was ordered from AG Vulcan’s Stettin shipyards, also in Germany.
Besides German orders and construction at domestic yards along both the Baltic and the Black Sea, the Russians also ordered warships and submarines from France, Britain, Denmark, and the U.S.– they needed the tonnage.
The planned future Muravyov-Amursky at Schichau-Werke, Danzig, on the occasion of her launch, 29 March 1914 (Old Style), 11 April (N.S.).
Ironically, this was at the same period that Russia’s primary military ally was France, whose principal threat was from Germany. However, most Russian Stavka strategists and statesmen of the era assumed that they would be far more likely to fight the Ottomans or Austrians– perhaps even the Swedes– long before the Germans.
Then came August 1914 and relations between Germany and Russia kind of took a turn.
Kreuzer Pillau
When Germany declared war on Imperial Russia, Muravyov-Amursky had been launched just four months prior and was fitting out with an expected delivery in the summer of 1915. Sistership Admiral Nevelskoy was still on the ways with her hull nearly complete. With the Kaiserliche Marine hungry for tonnage, they seized the two unfinished Russian cruisers and rushed them to completion.
Muravyov-Amursky was renamed after the East Prussian town of Pillau, and Nevelskoy after the West Prussian port city of Elbing. Muravyov-Amursky/Pillau was completed in December 1914 and Nevelskoy/Elbing was delivered the following September.
To keep them more in line with the rest of the German battleline, they were fitted with slightly larger (and better) 15 cm/45 (5.9″) SK L/45 guns, the same type used as secondary armament on German battleships and battlecruisers as well as later on most of their cruisers built during the Great War.
Pillau as seen during her German career. Courtesy of Master Sergeant Donald L.R. Shake, USAF, 1981. NHHC Catalog #: NH 92715
SMS Elbing of the Pillau class, circa 1915-16
SMS Pillau shortly after entering service, 1915
Pillau had her baptism of fire in the Battle of the Gulf of Riga in August 1915– ironically against the Russians– while Elbing took part in the bombardment of Yarmouth in April 1916. Both were assigned to the High Seas Fleet’s 2nd Scouting Group (II. Aufklärungsgruppe), commanded by Contre-Admiral Bödicker, and took a key role in the Battle of Jutland.
While Jutland is such a huge undertaking that I won’t even attempt to showcase it all in this post as I would never have the scope to do it properly, Elbing scored the first hit in the battle, landing a 5.9-inch shell against HMS Galatea from an impressive distance of about 13.000 m at 14.35 on 31 May. In the subsequent night action, she was accidentally rammed by the German dreadnought SMS Posen and had to be abandoned, with some of her crew saved by the destroyer S 53 and others landed on the Danish coast by a passing Dutch trawler.
As for Pillau, she was hit by a single large-caliber shell– a 12-incher from the battlecruiser HMS Inflexible— that left her damaged but still in the fight while she is credited with landing hits of her own on the cruiser HMS Chester. In all, Pillau had fired no less than 113 5.9-inch shells and launched a torpedo in the epic sea clash while suffering just four men killed and 23 wounded from her hit from Inflexible.
Her chart house blown to memories and half of her boilers out of action but still afloat, Pillau then served as the seeing eye dog for the severely damaged battlecruiser SMS Seydlitz— hit 21 times by heavy-caliber shells, twice by secondary battery shells, and once by a torpedo– on a slow limp back to Wilhelmshaven with the dreadnought’s bow nearly completely submerged.
German battlecruiser SMS Seydlitz, low in the water after Jutland. The image was likely taken from Pillau, who led her back to Wilhelmshaven from the battle
SMS Seydlitz after the Battle of Jutland, 1916. Amazingly, she only suffered 150 casualties during all that damage and would return to service by November– just six months later. Colorized photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/
Then, her work done, Pillau had to lick her wounds.
SMS Pillau in Wilhelmshaven showing heavy damage to her bridge, caused by a 12-in shell hit from the battlecruiser HMS Inflexible.
She only suffered 27 casualties at Jutland while her sister, Elbing, was lost.
The entry wound, so to speak
Repaired, Pillau took part in the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight on 17 November 1917 as well as other more minor operations before the end game in October 1918 in which her crewed mutinied and raised the red flag rather than head out in a last “ride of the Valkyries” suicide attack on the British Home Seas Fleet.
SMS Pillau passing astern of a ship of the line, winter 1917
SMS Pillau on patrol in Helgoland Bay, 1918 note AAA gun forward
Incrociatore Bari
Retained at Wilhelmshaven as part of the rump Provisional Realm Navy (Vorläufige Reichsmarine) under the aged VADM Adolf von Trotha while 74 ships of the High Seas Fleet surrendered to the British in November 1918 to comply with the Armistice, Pillau was saved from the later grand scuttling of that interned force seven months later at Scapa Flow.
The victorious allies, robbed of the choicest cuts of the German fleet, in turn, demanded Pillau be turned over for reparations along with a further nine surviving battleships, 15 cruisers, 59 destroyers, and 50 torpedo boats. Pillau was therefore steamed to Cherbourg and decommissioned by the Germans in June 1920.
It was decided that Pillau was to go to the Italians as a war prize, with the Regia Marina renaming her after the Adriatic port city of Bari in Italy’s Puglia region. The Italians also were to receive the surrendered German light cruisers SMS Graudenz and SMS Stassburg, the destroyer flotilla leader V.116, and the destroyers B.97 and S.63. Italy would further inherit a host of former Austrian vessels including the battleships Tegtthof, Zrinyi, and Radetzky; the cruisers Helgoland and Saida; and 15 destroyers.
The future light cruiser Bari seen in rough shape, with the provisional denomination “U” painted on her bow, right after being ceded to Italy, Taranto, 5 May 1921.
Embarrassingly, just after she entered service with the Italians, Bari ran aground at Terrasini and was stuck there for a week before being refloated.
Aerial photos of Bari stranded at Terrasini, 28 August 1925.
Still, she went on to have a useful and somewhat happy peacetime service with the Italian fleet.
L’incrociatore leggero Bari late 1920s a
L’incrociatore leggero Bari late 1920s
L’incrociatore leggero Bari late 1920s, seen from the port side.
Bari, fotografiado en Venecia en el año 1931
Italian cruiser Bari, in Venice in the early 1930s. Colorized by Postales Navales
Cruiser Bari (ex SMS Pillau ) in floating dock, 1930s
Italian light cruiser Bari (formerly the German SMS Pillau) moored at the pier in 1933
Italian Light Cruiser RM Bari pictured at Taranto c1929
Bari would be extensively rebuilt in the early 1930s, including a new all-oil-fired engineering suite that almost doubled her range but dropped her top speed to 24 knots. This reconstruction included several topside changes to appearance as well as the addition of a few 13.2mm machine guns for AAA work.
Bari crosses the navigable canal of Taranto after the second round of modification works, circa 1933-40. Compare this to the postcard image shown above taken at the same angle and place that shows her mid-1920s appearance
Bari in the 1931 Janes Fighting Ships
She took part in the Ethiopian war in 1935 and would remain in the Red Sea as part of the Italian East African Naval Command well into May 1938. She then returned home for further modernization at Taranto in which her torpedo tubes were removed and a trio of Breda 20mm/65cal Mod. 1935 twin machine guns were installed and two twin 13.2/76 mm Breda Mod. 31s.
Bari, as covered by the U.S. Navy’s ONI 202, June 1943.
When Italy joined WWII, Bari was soon sent to join the invasion of Greece where she conducted minelaying and coastal bombing missions in the Adriatic and the Aegean. She served as the flagship of ADM Vittorio Tur’s Special Naval Force (Forza Navale Speciale, FNS), an amphibious group that was used to occupy the Ionian Islands including Corfu, Kefalonia, Santa Maura, Ithaca, and Zakynthos. She would also participate in naval gunfire bombardment operations on the coast of Montenegro and Greece against partisans and guerrillas.
Bari in Patras in occupied Greece, as the flagship of the Forza Navale Speciale, May 1941
Another shot from the same above.
Bari moored in Patras, around 18 June 1941, with the ensign of Ammiraglio Comandante Alberto Marenco di Moriondo aboard.
ADM Tur and the FNS, with Bari still as his flag, would go on to occupy the French island of Corsica in November 1942 during the implementation of Case Anton, the German-Italian occupation of Vichy France after the Allied Torch landings in North Africa.
Bari anchored at the breakwater of the harbor of Bastia, Corsica, on 11 November 1942, as the flagship of the Forza Navale Speciale that was then occupying the island after Operation Torch.
The cruiser in Bastia on November 11, 1942, during the Italian landings. Note the steel-helmeted blackshirt troops in the foreground
In January 1943, with the FNS disbanded and ADM Tur assigned to desk jobs, Bari retired to Livorno where she was to be fitted as a sort of floating anti-aircraft battery, her armament updated to include a mix of two dozen assorted 90mm, 37mm, and 20mm AAA guns.
This conversion was never completed.
On 28 June 1943, she was pummeled by B-17s of the 12th Air Force and sank in the industrial canal at Livorno, deemed a total loss.
From 10 June 1940 to the sinking, the Bari had conducted 47 war missions and steamed 6,800 nautical miles.
After the Italian armistice, the Germans attempted to salvage the cruiser for further use but in the end wound up scuttling it once more in 1944. Post-war, she was stricken from the Italian naval list in 1947 and raised for scrapping the following year.
Epilogue
Very few remnants of these cruisers endure.
A painting by German maritime artist Otto Poetzsch was turned into a series of widely circulated Deutsches Reich postcards, used to depict both Pillau and Elbing.
Elbing‘s wreck has been extensively surveyed and studied over the years and is generally considered to be in good shape after spending a century on the bottom of the Baltic. Besides her guns, she has china and glassware scattered around the hull.
The Russian scale model firm Combrig makes a 1/700 scale kit of Pillau.
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
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.
Warship Wednesday, June 14, 2023: Shoestring Tin Dragon
U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 60479
Above we see the Wickes (Little)-class four-piper USS Colhoun (Destroyer No. 85) seen wearing her fresh Great War-era Type N-12, Design K, dazzle camouflage, likely in mid-1918. Our tough flush deck would see rough, albeit short, duty in both world wars.
The Wickes
Colhoun was one of the iconic first flights of “Four Piper” destroyers that were designed in 1915-16 with input from no less an authority as Captain (later Admiral) W.S. Sims. Beamy ships with a flush deck and a quartet of boilers (with a smokestack for each) were coupled to a pair of Parsons geared turbines to provide 35.3 knots designed speed– which is still considered fast today, more than a century later.
The teeth of these 314-foot, 1,250-ton greyhounds were four 4-inch/50 cal MK 9 guns and a full dozen 21-inch torpedo tubes.
They reportedly had short legs and were very wet, which made long-range operations a problem, but they gave a good account of themselves. Originally a class of 50 was authorized in 1916, but once the U.S. entered WWI in April 1917, this was soon increased and increased again to some 111 ships built by 1920.
Wickes class USS Yarnall (DD-143): Booklet of General Plans – Inboard Profile / Outboard Profile, June 10, 1918, NARA NAID: 158704871
Wickes class USS Yarnall (DD-143): Booklet of General Plans – Main Deck / 1st Platform Deck / S’ch L’t P’f’m, S’ch L’t Control P’f’m, Fire Control P’f’m Bridge, Galley Top, After Dk. House and 2nd Platform Deck. / June 10, 1918, Hold NARA NAID: 158704873
Wickes class. A close-up of her stern top-down view of plans shows the Wickes class’s primary armament– a dozen torpedo tubes in four turnstiles and stern depth charges.
Of the 111 Wickes completed, there were three subclasses besides the 38 standard-design vessels built at Bath Iron Works, Cramp, Mare Island, and Charleston. Then came the 52 Bethlehem-designed ships built at the company’s Fore River (26 ships) and Union Iron Works (26 ships) led by USS Little, the Newport News-built variants (11 ships) starting with USS Lamberton, and New York Shipbuilding-built variants (10 ships) led by USS Tattnall.
The subclasses were constructed to a slightly different set of plans modified by their respective builders, which made for some downright confusing modifications later. In addition, the Bethlehem-designed Little variants tended to have shorter legs and proved unable to cross the Atlantic in a single hop without stopping in the Azores for refueling or completing an underway replenishment.
Anyway…
Meet Colhoun
Our subject, USS Colhoun, was the first U.S. Navy ship to carry the name of RADM Edmund Ross Colhoun.
Born in 1821 in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, Colhoun was appointed a midshipman in 1839 and served with Commodores Conner and Perry, at Alvarado and Tabasco, respectively, during the war with Mexico. Master Colhoun resigned from the Navy in 1853 then returned to service as a Commander in the War Between the States with service in both the North and South Atlantic Blockading Squadrons including as skipper of the gunboats USS Hunchback and USS Ladona, and monitors USS Saugus and USS Weehawken.
He wasn’t a bad sketch artist, either:
Gunboat USS Lodona, sketch by Commander Edmund R. Colhoun, from his letter book of 1865-1885 in the Naval Historical Foundation’s Colhoun Collection. He was Lodona’s Commanding Officer during the Civil War. Courtesy of the Naval Historical Foundation, Washington, D.C. NH 51415
Post-war, Colhoun went on to command the South Pacific Station and Mare Island Navy Yard then was promoted to an admiral on the Retired List in 1883. He passed in 1897, aged 75, and is buried at Arlington, Section 1, Grave 617.
Laid down by Fore River at Quincy, Massachusetts, on 19 September 1917, USS Colhoun was launched by RADM Colhoun’s granddaughter on 21 February 1918 and commissioned on 13 June 1918– some 105 years ago this week.
In all, her construction only lasted just 268 days, a wonder of wartime shipbuilding.
Destroyer hulls on the building ways at Fore River, 1 October 1917. Those closest to the camera are the future USS Colhoun (DD-85) and Stevens (DD-86), which had builder’s numbers 280 and 281. The ships on the left are probably the future USS Sigourney (DD-81) and Gregory (DD-82). NH 43019
Ships fitting out at the Fore River shipyard, 19 March 1918. The six “Little” Wickes class destroyers are Little (DD-79), Kimberly (DD-80), Sigourney (DD-81), Gregory (DD-82), Colhoun (DD-8,5) and Stevens (DD-86), which had builder’s hull numbers 274-277 and 280-281 respectively. The freighter at right is Katrina Luckenbach, yard hull # 267, which served as USS Katrina Luckenbach in 1918-19. Most of the equipment on the pier is for her. Note the large submarine being built in the background, under the revolving crane. NH 43022
USS Colhoun (Destroyer # 85) in port, circa late 1918 or early 1919. Note her pattern camouflage and the splinter protection mats hung over the face of her bridge. The ship that is partially visible alongside Colhoun’s starboard side appears to be USS Alert (1875-1922). Donation of Dr. Mark Kulikowski, 2006. NH 104157
Here’s some better details on her camo pattern.
Camouflage Type N-12, Design K plan prepared by the Bureau of Construction and Repair in 1918, for a camouflage scheme for U.S. Navy Flush Deck type destroyers. It shows the ship’s starboard side, bow, set,rn and superstructure ends, and was approved by Naval Constructor John D. Beuret, USN. USS Robinson (Destroyer # 88) is known to have worn this camouflage pattern. USS Colhoun (Destroyer # 85) also appears to have received it. NH 103218
Rushed through construction and further rushed into service, Colhoun was on North Atlantic escort duty just three weeks after she was brought to life, shuttling between New York and European ports, shepherding troopships taking the AEF “Over There” to lick the Kaiser.
USS Colhoun (DD-85) escorting a convoy of troopships, in mid-1918. The two-stack transport beyond her bow is USS Siboney (ID # 2999). Photographed by R. Bowman. Courtesy of Jack L. Howland, 1983. NH 95200
She spent the tail end of 1918 at New London as part of experiments with sound equipment then under development, a job that was interrupted to rush to the rescue of the transport Northern Pacificon New Year’s Day 1919 as she had run aground at Fire Island with a load of Doughboys coming back home. Colhoun embarked 194 of her returning troops and landed them at Hoboken, which was surely a mixed blessing if you have ever been to Hoboken.
USS Colhoun (DD-85) close-up view of the ship’s port side midships area, with her small wartime hull number, probably taken in the Azores circa early 1919. The ship is still painted in World War I dazzle camouflage. Courtesy of the U.S. Naval Library, Treasure Island, California, 1969. NH 67715
Colhoun spent the remainder of 1919 in a series of operations in the Caribbean and off the east coast.
USS Colhoun (DD-85), sans camouflage. Photographed on 15 November 1919. NH 55255
Placed in reduced commission status at Philadelphia Navy Yard on 1 December 1919, Colhoun was given an overhaul and decommissioned there on 28 June 1922, joining almost 100 other tin cans on the yard’s “Red Lead Row” for the next 18 years.
View of part of about 100 U.S. Navy destroyers that saw action in the First World War in storage at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in April 1923. Note that the guns and other vital parts that are exposed to the weather are covered with grease so that the ships could be ready for service at a moment’s notice. When in commission each carried 115 enlisted men and 7 officers. One of the ships identified is USS Ellis (DD-154). NH 69126
Dragon days
While no Wickes were lost to the Germans in 1918, two of the class– USS DeLong and USS Woolsey— were lost while on interbellum service.
Then, with the U.S. Navy having dozens of spare destroyers, especially sticky while trying to lobby Congress for modern new ones (derisively termed “Gold-platers” by salty old destroyerman), no less than 29 often low mileage Wickes tin cans were scrapped or sunk as targets in the 1930s, a few as close to WWII as April 1939. Others were converted just prior to and just after the beginning of the war to fast minelayers (DM) and fast minesweepers (DMS).
Another 27 Wickes class destroyers were transferred to the Royal Navy and Royal Canadian Navy in 1940 as part of the Destroyers-for-bases deal– and seven of these well-used ships later passed on to the Soviets in 1944.
Many of the remaining Wickes in U.S. inventory were soon converted to high-speed amphibious transport (APD).
Such conversions meant landing their 4-inch guns, which went on to equip armed merchant ships, as well as their torpedo tubes. Also leaving were half of their boilers, which dropped their speed down to 25 knots. APDs were given a trio of newer high-angle 3-inch/50 guns, one 40 mm AA gun, and five 20 mm AA guns, and the capability to carry up to 300 Marines or soldiers for a brief period. Where torpedo tubes once were, they now carried four 36-foot LCP landing craft on davits– manned by Coast Guard coxswains.
Once converted, these ships, usually painted in an all-over alligator green scheme, became known as “Green Dragons.”
Colhoun was only the second dragon, picking up the hull number APD-2 on 2 August 1940, while mid-conversion at Norfolk where she had been towed in June. She would be recommissioned on 11 December 1940 and would soon embark on a series of training exercises between Norfolk and the Caribbean.
USS Colhoun (APD-2) February 1942. 80-G-464374
USS Colhoun (APD-2) photographed while tied up to a mooring buoy, circa early 1942. NH 97775
From the same set. Note her pattern camouflage. NH 97776
USS Colhoun (APD-2) photographed in port, circa early 1942. NH 97777
Ringbolt-Shoestring
Within weeks of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent push into the Solomons that followed the Battle of Midway, Colhoun, under the command of T/LCDR George Bernard Madden (USNA 1931) was ordered to sail for the forward Allied staging area in Noumea, French New Caledonia, where she arrived 21 July 1942.
She had been detailed to Operation Ringbolt, the seizure of Tulagi, Gavutu, and Tanambogo islands off the larger Florida island in the Solomon Islands group in parallel to the more complex Watchtower landings across the Sealark Channel to Guadalcanal.
Colhoun, joined by her converted green dragon sisters Gregory (APD-3), Little (APD-4), and McKean (APD-5), would carry Lt. Col. Merritt Edson’s 1st Marine Raider Battalion to Blue Beach as part of Transport Group Yoke on the morning of 7 August.
Port bow view of the high-speed transport USS Colhoun (APD-2) coming alongside the destroyer USS Mugford (DD-389) off Guadalcanal in early August 1942. The Australian War Memorial (P01233.004) contends that this was takeon n 7 August 1942 off Tulagi as she transports elements of the 1st Marine Raider Battalion. This is possibly the last photo taken of the ship. The University of Utah – J. Willard Marriott Library #941326
Then came what has been termed Operation Shoestring, the thin supply line that kept the Marines on Guadalcanal in the fight for the rest of the month.
Just as the Marines’ supply situation became critical, the four fast transports of Transport Division 12 arrived on 15 August, under orders from Vice Admiral Robert Ghormley, the Commander of the South Pacific Area, to make all efforts to keep the Marines supplied. The fast transports (converted World War I destroyers) Colhoun (APD-2), Gregory (APD-3), Little (APD-4), and McKean (APD-5), under the command of Commander Hugh W. Hadley, USN, mostly delivered supplies and gear intended to make Henderson Field operational. The Marines had the benefit of captured Japanese rations, so food was not a critical issue at that point (the four APDs returned on 20 August with rations for the Marines). Another U.S. ship attempting to supply the Marines, the overloaded converted China riverboat Lakotai, capsized and sank all by herself before reaching Guadalcanal.
It was while on Shoestring that Calhoun suffered what Cox described as what “may be the most accurate bombing of a ship by high-altitude horizontal bombing during the war,” when she was hit by at least four bombs dropped by a flight of Japanese twin-engine bombers on 30 August.
Colhoun sank in under two minutes with the loss of over 50 of her crew. Many of her survivors had to swim to shore and for weeks were counted by the Navy as missing in action, although they were among the Marines.
The report of her loss, filed by her skipper, LCDR Madden, while he was recovering on the cargo ship USS Betelgeuse (AKA-11) along with several other wounded members of his crew:
TransDiv12’s days were numbered.
Just five days later, her sisters USS Gregory (DD-82/APD-3) and USS Little (DD-79/APD-4)— luckily just after transferring a Marine Raider Battalion to Savo Island– would be sunk in a one-sided night action with three much stronger Japanese destroyers. Nimitz observed, “Both of these small vessels fought as well as possible against the overwhelming odds … With little means, they performed duties vital to the success of the campaign.”
Meanwhile, the last of the original four green dragons of TransDiv12, USS McKean (DD-90/APD-5), was sunk in November 1943 by a torpedo from a Japanese G4M Betty bomber off Empress Augusta Bay.
Colhoun earned one battle star for her World War II service.
Thomas Crane Public Library. Fore River Shipyard Postcard Collection
As for her Guadalcanal skipper, LCDR Madden earned a Silver Star for his actions on Calhoun. He would go on to command the destroyers USS Williamson (AVD 2), USS Young (DD 580), and USS Shields (DD 596). He retired postwar as a rear admiral.
Besides the ill-fated four DD/APDs of TransDiv12, at least nine other Wickes class destroyers were lost during World War II in U.S. service. The remainder were scrapped between 1945 and 1947.
Today no Wickes-class tin cans survive. The last one afloat, USS Maddox (DD–168), was scrapped in late 1952 after serving in the US, then RN, then Canadian, then Soviet navies.
However, one of the class, USS Walker (DD-163), has been given new life in the excellent alternate history series Destroyermen written by Taylor Anderson.
Meanwhile, the Colhoun name was recycled for a new Fletcher-class destroyer (DD-801) laid down on 3 August 1943 at Seattle, by the Todd Pacific Shipyards. Sponsored by Capt. Kathryn Kurtz Johnson, WAC, a great-grandniece of the ship’s namesake, she commissioned on 8 July 1944.
USS Colhoun (DD-801) lies to in Puget Sound, 21 July 1944, painted in a disruptive three-color camouflage. Official U.S. Navy Bureau of Ships photo 19-N-7125
DD-801’s career would be much shorter than her predecessor, and she was awarded one battle star for her World War II service at Okinawa, where she was sunk as a result of the first heavy kamikaze raid on 6 April 1945. Some 35 members of Colhoun’s crew died and 21 were injured.
USS Colhoun (DD-801) hit by a suicide bomber off Okinawa, Ryukyu Islands. The destroyer is zigzagging at high speed during the attack. Note the oil slick to the left from a bomber shot down by fire from ship and fighter planes. Photographed by USS Anzio (CVE 57) pilot Lieutenant Junior Grade T. N. Banks, April 6, 1945. U.S. Navy photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 80-G-317257
The Navy has not used the name of RADM Edmund Colhoun since then.
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
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.
Above we see a fantastic original Kodachrome from 80 years ago of a female shipyard worker at Electric Boat in New London with an acetylene torch near the forward escape hatch of a building Gato-class submarine. Inscribed on the hatch is the hull number SS-243, making this the future USS Bream.
A couple of other great shots from that day, seemingly centered on the rear hatch:
About the Gatos
One of the 77 Gatos cranked out by four shipyards from 1940 to 1944 for the U.S. Navy, they were impressive 311-foot long fleet boats, diesel-electric submarines capable of extended operations in the far reaches of the Pacific.
Able to swim an impressive 11,000 nautical miles on their economical power plant while still having room for 24 (often cranky) torpedoes. A 3-inch deck gun served for surface action in poking holes in vessels deemed not worth a torpedo while a few .50 and .30-cal machine guns provided the illusion of an anti-aircraft armament.
A development of the Tambor-class submarines, they were the first fleet boats able to plumb to 300 feet test depth, then the deepest that U.S. Navy submersibles were rated.
Meet Bream
Our subject, Bream, was the only U.S. Navy ship to carry the name of the “A common food and game fish of the carp family typically found in lakes and slow rivers,” as noted by DANFS.
USS Bream (SS 243), insignia, showing a fish nipping a horned Japanese admiral. Photographed by Lieutenant Commander Charles Jacobs, USN, on 14 August 1943, at her builder’s yard, the Electric Boat Company, Groton, Connecticut. National Archives photograph: 80-G-468313.
Built by Electric Boat Co. of Groton, Connecticut, she commissioned on 24 January 1944, one of the staggering 74 submarines and 398 PT boats EB made for Uncle during WWII.
Her first skipper was LCDR Wreford Goss “Moon” Chapple (USNA 1930), a former heavyweight boxing champion at Annapolis who had already earned two Navy Crosses and two Silver Stars in command of the submarines USS S-38 and USS Permit.
To tell you a bit about Chapple, he was officially reprimanded in February 1942 for bringing 40 officers and men out of besieged Corregidor, pulled on the carpet because of the gross overcrowding on his little boat. Here, he is seen with his wife, Mrs. Chapple, who was the boat’s sponsor, and son, at Bream’s christening. (EBCo Photo)
Following shakedown and exercises on the East Coast and off Panama, Bream crossed “The Ditch” into the Pacific in April 1944 then made for Seeadler Harbor in the Admiralties by way of Australia.
From Seeadler, she put to sea on 29 May for her 1st War Patrol, loaded with Mark 23 torpedoes for the Morotai Strait.
Chasing down contacts and avoiding Japanese sub busters, she made two unsuccessful attacks on passing convoys in early June before hitting paydirt on 16 June when she torpedoed and sank the Japanese army cargo ships Yuki Maru (5704 GRT) and Hinode Maru (1916 GRT) off Halmahera Island. Bream promptly got 25 depth charges dropped on her roof in exchange.
From her patrol report:
Bream ended her 1st War Patrol at Manus on 29 June then put back out for an unsuccessful 2nd War Patrol, south of the Philippines, three weeks later that ended in early September with a return to Australia.
Her 3rd War Patrol would be much more fruitful.
Heading out on 2 October, Moon, besides his command on Bream, was commander for a submarine “search and attack group” (Yankee wolfpack) consisting of USS Raton (SS-270) and USS Guitarro (SS-363), bound for a patrol in the central Philippines, where they would be joined briefly by USS Ray (SS-271).
On the 23rd, Bream torpedoed and damaged the 9,000-ton Japanese heavy cruiser Aoba off Manila Bay, with one of six torpedoes hitting the warship’s No. 2 engine room. In return, the cruiser’s escorts dropped 32 depth charges on our boat.
From Bream’s patrol report:
The heavily damaged Japanese cruiser Aoba
Aoba limped into Cavite Navy Yard near Manila for emergency repairs. She would eventually make it back, slowly, to Kure but her damage was deemed irreparable and she never sailed again. Related to a floating AAA battery, Aoba was later sent to the bottom there at the hands of TF 38 carrier aircraft.
On 24 October, Bream ran across floating debris that included several dead bodies (listed by Moon as “non-survivors”) and six Japanese who they took prisoner after one sailor, White, “showed unusual solicitude in diving overboard to retrieve one who slipped back into the water.”
From her patrol report:
These EPOWs were quartered in the forward torpedo room and then transferred to Australia-bound sister USS Cod (SS-224) five days later, with Moon noting in his ship’s log “Cod was not too crazy about the Japs.”
Then, on 4 November, the Bream-Guitarro-Ray wolfpack shared the sinking of the Japanese seaplane tender/transport Kagu Maru (6806 GRT), picked off from convoy TAMA-31A off Dasol Bay, Philippines. The poor Kagu Maru, carrying troops of the 218th Naval Construction Unit, had no chance, being hit by one of four torpedoes from Bream, then one of eight torpedoes from Guitarro, and finally two of two from Ray in a third attack.
During the November 4 attack, Bream was also attacked by a Japanese plane, which dropped two bombs that resulted in a near miss that nonetheless caused some flooding and damage to our boat.
From her patrol report:
Two days later, on 6 November, the pack found the Japanese heavy cruiser Kumano west of Lingayen.
From her patrol report:
Japanese heavy cruiser Kumano anchored at Rabaul, with a Mitsubishi F1M Pete reconnaissance seaplane in the foreground, December 4-5, 1942
Part of the cover force for convoy MATA-31, Kumano had narrowly avoided the submarine USS Batfish the day prior but, out of a staggering 23 torpedoes fired from the Bream-Guitarro-Ray-Raton wolfpack, two made good, blowing off the cruiser’s bow section and flooding all her engine rooms. Dead in the water, Kumano had to be towed into Dasol Bay with an 11-degree list. Towed from there to Santa Cruz harbor, she was found still under repair on 25 November by aircraft from the carrier USS Ticonderoga and bombed to the bottom of the harbor.
By that time, Bream’s submariners were already throwing back a cold one in Australia and returned home early.
Her third patrol ended after just 52 days (35 submerged), with Bream traveling 10,833 miles. Her primary reason for calling it quits early was that she only had three torpedoes left. It would be her most successful patrol.
There, plankowner skipper Moon Chapple was pulled from his boat, given a Gold Star in lieu of the Second Silver Star Medal, and sent back to New London to become a tactics instructor at the Submarine School, replaced by LCDR James Lowell Page McCallum.
Targets thinned out notably by this stage of the war, with most subs managing only to bag the occasional coaster or trawler via surface action as the small fry wasn’t worth wasting a torpedo on. For instance, Bream on 14 March 1945 bagged the auxiliary submarine chaser Keihin Maru (76 GRT) in a surface action in the Java Sea, while on her 5th War Patrol, after adding no tonnage on her 4th Patrol in early 1945.
An extensive depth charging in March that cut her 5th Patrol short led to the submarine’s periscopes, her starboard shaft, and both of her screws being replaced in Freemantle, a patch job that was done in three weeks. She was thought capable of another patrol and sortied out on 20 April.
On her 6th War Patrol, Bream came across the German minesweeper/submarine depot ship Quito (1230 GRT) off Borneo’s Tanjong Puttion on 29 April, just a week away from VE Day. Loaded with fuel for Monsoon U-boats, she had been steaming from the oil fields of Balikpapan for Jakarta, and, with her daily position reports intercepted by the Navy’s FRUMEL unit in Melbourne, she was never going to make it.
From her patrol report:
The next day, a severely burned survivor from Quito, picked up by the submarine USS Besugo (SS-321), passed on the identity of the fireball that Bream had sent to the bottom.
Later on the same patrol, Bream was given orders to recon the anchorage at Miri in Japanese-occupied Borneo, where she found no shipping but was spotted by a passing American B-24 who got overly excited. As noted in her war history, “USS Bream made the big time on the 22nd when a U.S. Army plane reported her as a carrier, but still no targets. No flight pay either.”
She was also pressed into duty as a minelayer, sowing 23 Mark 12 mines off Pulo Ob in the Gulf of Siam on 8-9 May. Ironically, she would have to get really involved in navigating such fields directly after.
While on lifeguard duty in the Philippines in late May, she picked up the pilot of a downed USAAF P-51 Mustang on the 19th “after barreling through a minefield at four main engine speed,” then negotiated a different minefield on the 26th to pluck four survivors of a downed B-25 bomber from the water. The patrol report noted, “We are mighty ready to get these boys but wish they wouldn’t pick the minefields to ditch in.”
After 18 months and six hard charging patrols, during which she received rail cars full of depth charges and at least two air-dropped bombs, Bream was in need of refit and left Saipan in June 1945 for Bethlehem Steel Company shipyard at San Francisco.
She stopped off at Pearl on the way and a series of photos, taken by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, likely stationed ashore rather than part of her crew, were taken. It is rare that images of wartime Gatos exist, and these are some of the best, despite their poor condition.
USS Bream (SS 243) entering Pearl Harbor after a successful war patrol. Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, 15 June 1945. 80-G-325193
USS Bream (SS 243) entering Pearl Harbor after a successful war patrol. Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, 15 June 1945. 80-G-325192
Note her rough appearance. Hard to believe she is only been in the fleet for 18 months at the time this image was snapped. This is a fighting submarine! USS Bream (SS 243) entering Pearl Harbor after a successful war patrol. Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, 15 June 1945. The two large ships directly behind the sub at the center of the photo are both later Baltimore class cruisers.
USS Bream (SS 243) entering Pearl Harbor after a successful war patrol. View of the conning tower. Note her homeward-bound pennant and mounted Oerlikons. Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, 15 June 1945. 80-G-325197
At the Pearl Harbor submarine base, crew members touch up the rusted areas on USS Bream (SS 243), which has just completed a successful war patrol. Note her 5″/25. Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, 15 June 1945. 80-G-325172
Another great view of the 5″/25. At the Pearl Harbor submarine base, crew members touch up the rusted areas on USS Bream (SS 243), which has just completed a successful war patrol. Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, 15 June 1945. 80-G-325173
USS Bream (SS 243). Crew members inside torpedo tube. Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, 15 June 1945. 80-G-325176
USS Bream (SS 243). Crew members in engine room spaces. Note the “patrol beard” and the snipe chewing a cigar. Talk about old-school Navy! Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, 15 June 1945. 80-G-325181
In true Navy tradition, shipmates of John O. Tibs toss him overboard from USS Bream (SS 243) at Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, on his promotion to Chief Machinist’s Mate. Photographed by Photographer’s Mate First Class L. Strawger, 15 June 1945. 80-G-495544
Bream was in San Francisco on VJ Day. Following her refit, she was decommissioned there on 31 January 1946 and was placed in reserve.
Bream earned four battle stars for her World War II service.
Cold War
After five years in mothballs, war came again and Bream was dusted off for Korea, then, along with six other sisters– USS Angler (SS-240), USS Grouper (SS-214), USS Bashaw (SS-241), USS Bluegill (SS-242), USS Cavalla (SS-244), and USS Croaker (SS-246), she was selected to become a submarine hunter-killer (SSK) via an SCB 58 conversion, sometimes called a “Grouper conversion” after the first boat that underwent the transition from fleet boat to SSK.
Comparing Fleet Boat Gato to SSK Gato. Forgive the bend in the page. The SSK conversion did not have that crazy hull deformity
As noted by DANFS:
As a part of the Navy’s fleet expansion program in response to the communist invasion of the Republic of Korea, Bream was recommissioned on 5 June 1951 and reported to Submarine Squadron 3, Pacific Fleet. From June 1951 until August 1952, she was engaged in type training and provided services to the Fleet Sonar School at San Diego. She was decommissioned once again on 10 September 1952 to undergo conversion to an antisubmarine “killer” submarine at the San Francisco Naval Shipyard.
The conversion included the installation of a snorkel, which enabled her to take in air and operate her diesel engines while submerged. In addition, her conning tower was streamlined, the habitability of the crew’s living spaces was improved, and special sonar listening equipment was installed. The warship was redesignated SSK-243 in February 1953. Bream was placed back in commission on 20 June 1953.
USS Bream (SSK-243) photographed during the 1950s. Description: Courtesy of Commander Donald J. Robinson, USN (MSC), 1974. Catalog #: NH 78980
USS Bream (SS-243) USN 1042361
Our new SSK would spend the next decade on a series of training, exercises, antisubmarine warfare tactical development duty, and West Pac cruises. Shifting her homeport to Pearl Harbor in 1956, she roamed the largest ocean Pacific spanning from Adak, Alaska to Aukland, New Zealand, and from Hong Kong to Pago Pago, notably spending both Christmas Day 1957 and 1962 in Yokosuka.
Bream (SS-243) is seen here on 1 January 1962 off the coast of Hawaii. The fairwater has been streamlined and all guns removed. Also, she has been fitted with an enlarged sonar dome on her bow. USN Archives photo # USN-1039531 courtesy of All Hands magazine by the Naval Historical Center, April 2002, pg. 47 & submitted by Bill Gonyo. Text courtesy of The Floating Drydock, Fleet Subs of WW II” by Thomas F. Walkowiak.
In April 1964, Bream was reclassified as an auxiliary submarine (AGSS-243), as were most of her remaining sisters still in U.S. Navy in service, and switched primarily from duty as a warfighting submarine to a training boat, largely in conjunction with ASW assets such as destroyers and patrol aircraft as an OPFOR. This included a trip to Vietnam in late 1965 as well as three extended WestPac deployments to perform the same services to allies in the South Korean, Taiwanese, and Philippine fleets.
Bream (AGSS-243) underway in the Pacific in the late 1960s, via Navsource.
With time not kind to these old WWII-era diesel boats, and the Navy desperately wanting to be SSN-only, Bream was slated to decommission in 1969. On 28 June, she and four sisters– USS Bluegill (AGSS 242), 1944 Wolfpack pal USS Raton (AGSS 270), USS Tunny (AGSS 282), and USS Charr (AGSS 328), were decommissioned on the same day.
Raton (AGSS-270) and Bluegill (AGSS-242) during the decommissioning ceremony at Mare Island on 28 June 1969. Bream (AGSS-243), Tunny (AGS-282) and Charr (AGSS-328) are forward of Raton and Bluegill. Chara (AE-31) is in the background. Photo courtesy of the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum via Darryl L. Baker. Via Navsource.
In a fitting allegory that there would be no going back for these old “smoke boats,” Bream was struck from the Naval Register and sunk as a target, on 7 November 1969, sent to the bottom in tests of the new Mk48 heavyweight torpedo by the Skipjack-class nuclear-powered submarine USS Sculpin (SSN 590).
Her battle flag is one of 49 preserved in the Submarine Force Library and Museum and is certainly colorful.
Note her six service stripes for her patrols, the minelaying flag, the Swazi for the German ship Quito, two rising suns for the two Japanese cruisers she accounted for, and the lifeguard flag for the five Army aviators she plucked from the Japanese minefields off Takao in the PI. Note that she is seen sailing into the setting sun. She had a busy 18 months.
As for her WWII skipper, “Moon” Chapple commanded the heavy cruiser USS Pittsburgh in the Korean War and would go on to retire as a rear admiral in 1959. He died in 1991, aged 83.
USS Bream, docked at Pearl Harbor, photo by Bob Droke
As for her sisters, other Gatos lived on, although an amazing 20 were lost in the Pacific during WWII. The last two Gato-class boats active in the US Navy were USS Rock (SS-274) and Bashaw (SS-241), which were both decommissioned on 13 September 1969 and sold for scrap. Nine went to overseas allies with the last, USS Guitarro (SS-363) serving the Turkish Navy as TCG Preveze (S 340) in one form or another until 1983.
A full half-dozen Gatos are preserved in the U.S. so please visit them when you can:
USS Cavalla is at Seawolf Park near Galveston, Texas
USS Cobia is at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum in Manitowoc, Wisconsin
USS Cod is on display in Cleveland
USS Croaker is on display in Buffalo, New York
USS Drum is on display on shore at Battleship Memorial Park in Mobile, Alabama
USS Silversides is on display in Muskegon, Michigan
Two of these, Cavalla and Croaker, are rare SSK Gato conversions, like Bream, while Cod and our boat were liked via the POW incident.
Ships are more than steel and wood And heart of burning coal, For those who sail upon them know That some ships have a soul.
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The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
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Above we see a great 1968 image of the Edsall-class destroyer escort-turned-radar picket, USS Falgout (DER-324) with a bone in her teeth during a Westpac deployment. Some 25 years old at the time, of note her christening occurred 80 years ago this week.
A vessel that saw combat against the Germans while on convoy duty during WWII, she would continue to serve in Korea and as a Cold Warrior, seeing the atomic starburst no less than nine times.
The Edsall class
A total of 85 Edsall-class destroyer escorts were cranked out in four different yards in the heyday of World War II rapid production with class leader USS Edsall (DE-129) laid down 2 July 1942 and last of class USS Holder (DE-401) commissioned 18 January 1944– in all some four score ships built in 19 months. The Arsenal of Democracy at work–building tin cans faster than the U-boats and Kamikazes could send them to Davy Jones.
The U.S. Navy destroyer escort USS Edsall (DE-129) underway near Ambrose Light just outside New York Harbor on 25 February 1945. The photo was taken by a blimp from squadron ZP-12. Edsall is painted in Camouflage Measure 32, Design 3D. U.S. Navy photo 80-G-306257
These 1,590-ton expendable escorts were based on their predecessors, the very successful Cannon-class boats but used an FMR type (Fairbanks-Morse reduction-geared diesel drive) propulsion suite whereas the only slightly less prolific Cannons used a DET (Diesel Electric Tandem) drive. Apples to oranges.
Armed with enough popguns (3×3″/50s, 2x40mm, 8x20mm) to keep aircraft and small craft at bay, they could plug a torpedo into a passing enemy cruiser from one of their trio of above-deck 21-inch tubes, or maul a submarine with any number of ASW weapons including depth charges and Hedgehogs. Too slow for active fleet operations (21 knots) they were designed for coastal patrol (could float in just 125 inches of seawater), sub-chasing, and convoy escorts.
Meet Falgout
The hero of our story, USS Falgout, is the only ship named for Seaman 2c George Irvin Falgout, a resident of Raceland, Louisiana who was a posthumous recipient of the Navy Cros for his actions while serving on the heavily damaged cruiser, USS San Francisco (CA-38) at Guadalcanal in November 1942. Falgout reportedly “remained at his gun, blazing away at a Japanese aircraft until it crashed his station.”
His citation:
The only ship named in his honor was constructed by Consolidated Steel Corp, Ltd., Orange, Texas (all the Edsalls were built at one of two Texas Gulf Coast yards) and sponsored at launch by his sister, Mrs. H. J. Guidry. She was commissioned on 15 November 1943 with an all-Coast Guard crew under CDR Henry A Meyer, a Coast Guard regular who earned his first thin gold stripe in 1931.
The CNO, ADM Ernest J. King, had, in June 1943, ordered the Coast Guard to staff and operate 30 new (mostly Edsall-class) destroyer escorts on Atlantic ASW duties, trained especially at the Submarine Training Centers at Miami and Norfolk. Each would be crewed by 11 officers and 166 NCOs/enlisted, translating to a need for 5,310 men, all told.
By November 1943, it had been accomplished! Quite a feat.
The USCG-manned DEs would be grouped in five Escort Divisions of a half dozen ships each, 23 of which were Edsalls:
These ships were soon facing off with the Germans in the Atlantic and Mediterranean.
Following shakedown along the East Coast and the Caribbean– where Falgout picked up 11 survivors from the American tanker Touchet that was torpedoed and sunk on 3 December 1943 by German U-boat U-193— our new destroyer escort was bound for the Med in February 1944 as part of the escort of Convoy UGS 32 to Casablanca, and returned to New York with GUS 31.
Then came Convoy UGS 38 out of Hampton Roads to Bizerte in Tunisia in April. This crossing proved much more contentious and suffered from German air attacks by waves of Junkers and Heinkel bombers with the Benson-class destroyer USS Landsdale (DD-426) sunk after hits from torpedo-carrying Ju 88s on the night of the 20th. Falgout expended no less than 600 rounds of 20mm and 16 rounds of 40mm on bombers that came close enough to swat.
While on the next homeward bound convoy, GUS 39, Falgout’s sistership USS Menges (DE 320), was hit by a G7es acoustic torpedo from U-371 on 3 May. The German fish destroyed a third of the tin can, and created casualties of a third of the ship’s crew but would amazingly survive the war. Just two nights later, the Buckley-class destroyer escort USS Fechteler (DE-157), would be sunk near Falgout by German submarine U-967, with the bulk of the crew rescued.
Not all the Coast Guard-manned DEs would come through to VE-Day. USS Leopold (DE-319) of CortDiv 22 was torpedoed by U-255 and later sank in the North Atlantic, 400 miles south of Iceland on 10 March 1944, with a loss of 13 officers and 158 men. Two other classmates with Navy crews, USS Frederick C. Davis (DE-136) and USS Fiske (DE-143), would also be lost in the Atlantic to U-boats.
Falgout would make two further roundtrips to Bizerte and back followed by three to Oran and back, although not coming as close to death as on UGS 38/GUS 39. Notably, however, she did pluck four Ju88 crewmembers from the water following a raid on GUS 45 in July 1944.
USS HAMUL (AD-20) Caption: At Bermuda in early 1944, while serving as flagship of the DD-DE shakedown group (CTG-23.1). Alongside are: CALCATERA (DE-390), PRIDE (DE-323), FALGOUT (DE-324), ALGER (DE-101), and EICHENBERGER (DE-202). Description: Collection of Captain D.L. Madeira, 1978. Catalog #: NH 86271
She was in Oran when the news of the German surrender was received.
Her final WWII skipper was a young LCDR Henry C Keene, Jr.,(USCGA 1941), who had been aboard the Treasury-class cutter USCGC Bibb (WPG-31) earlier in the war when that vessel plucked 235 survivors (and a dog) from U-boat-infested waters in the North Atlantic. Keene would later retire in 1965 as commander of Ketchikan CG Base and go on to be a noted Superior Court judge in Alaska. Meanwhile, the good CDR Meyer, who was the greyhound’s first commander, would continue his career with the Coast Guard for at least until 1956, retiring sometime later as a full captain.
For her 14 convoys, Falgout received one battle star for her wartime service, her only casualty being EM3c James G. O’Brien who died in a 1944 accident while on libo in Casablanca, falling from a second-story window.
After limited post-war service, during which she spent most of 1946 “in commission, in reserve” in Charleston with a caretaker crew (the USCG was returned to the Treasury Department in December 1945, and most of its wartime personnel discharged and Navy-owned ships returned) Falgout was classified “out of commission, in reserve” 18 April 1947 and lowered her flag.
The Edsall class, 1946 Janes.
Break out the white paint.
With the dramatic surge in air and maritime traffic across some downright vacant stretches of the Pacific that came with the Korean War, the USCG was again tapped to man a growing series of Ocean Stations. Two had been formed after WWII and the Navy added another three in 1950, bringing the total to five.
These stations would serve both a meteorological purpose– with U.S. Weather Bureau personnel embarked– as well as serve as floating checkpoints for military and commercial maritime and air traffic and communication “relay” stations for aircraft on transoceanic flights crisscrossing the Pacific. Further, they provided an emergency ditch option for aircraft (a concept that had already been proved by the Bermuda Sky Queen rescue in 1947, which saw all 69 passengers and crew rescued by the cutter Bibb.)
As detailed by Scott Price in The Forgotten Service in the Forgotten War, these stations were no picnic, with the average cutter logging 4,000 miles and as many as 320 radar fixes while serving upwards of 700 hours on station.
Ocean station duty could be monotonous at one moment and terrifying the next, as the vessels rode out storms that made the saltiest sailors green. One crew member noted: “After twenty-one days of being slammed around by rough cold sea swells 20 to 50 feet high, and wild winds hitting gale force at times, within an ocean grid the size of a postage stamp, you can stand any kind of duty.”
A typical tour was composed of arriving at Midway Island for three weeks on SAR standby, three weeks on Ocean Station Victor midway between Japan and the Aleutian Islands, three weeks on SAR standby at Guam, two weeks “R and R” in Japan, three weeks on Ocean Station Sugar, three weeks on SAR standby Adak, Alaska, and then back to home port.
To stand post on these new ocean stations and backfill for other cutters detailed to the role, the Navy lent the USCG 12 mothballed Edsalls (Newell, Falgout, Lowe, Finch, Koiner, Foster, Ramsden, Rickey, Vance, Lansing, Durant, and Chambers), nine of which the service had originally operated during WWII.
To man these extra vessels and fill other wartime roles such as establishing new LORAN stations and pulling port security, the USCG almost doubled in size from just over 18,000 to 35,082 in 1952.
The conversion to Coast Guard service included a white paint scheme, an aft weather balloon shelter (they would have to launch three balloons a day in all sea states), and the fitting of a 31-foot self-bailing motor surfboat for rescues in heavy weather. The USCG designator “W” was added to the hull number, as was the number 100, therefore, our vessel went from USS Falgout (DE-324) to USCGC Falgout (WDE-424).
Falgout’s sister, the Edsall-class USS Durant (DE-389/WDE-489/DER-389) in her Coast Guard livery. Note the WWII AAA suite is still intact. Falgout carried the same white and buff scheme.
Falgout was on loan to the Coast Guard between 24 August 1951– the second Edsall so converted– and 21 May 1954, in commission for duty as an ocean station vessel out of Tacoma, Washington.
Schenia notes that she pulled eight patrols in this period including two on OS Queen, two on OS Sugar, one on OS Nan, and two on OS Victor in addition to serving as the policing cutter for the International Cruiser Race Regatta in British Columbia in 1952 and the Lake Washington Gold Cup Race in 1953.
Besides nine Edsalls, two similarly loaned ex-Navy seaplane tenders, two 180-foot buoy tenders, and nine existing 255-foot/327-foot Coast Guard cutters also clocked in on Pacific Ocean station detail, with a total of 22 vessels and their crews earning the Korean Service Medal during the conflict. The Pacific Ocean station cutters in all assisted over 20 merchant and Navy vessels in distress, including one transoceanic airliner during the war.
The USCG-manned Edsalls were all retrograded to the Navy in 1954, with the last, Chambers, striking 30 July. It turned out that the Navy had other plans for these humble vessels, now double war vets.
DER
Falgout, laid back up after her 32 months of USCG service during Korea, was picked to become a radar picket ship, and given a new lease on life, reclassified into the Navy at Mare Island on 28 October 1954 as DER-324.
The DER program filled an early gap in the continental air defense system by placing a string of ships as sea-based radar platforms to provide a distant early warning line to possible attack from the Soviets. The Pacific had up to 11 picket stations while the Atlantic had as many as nine. A dozen DEs became DERs (including Falgout) through the addition of SPS-6 and SPS-8 air search radars to help man these DEW lines as the Atlantic Barrier became fully operational in 1956 and the Pacific Barrier (which Falgout took part in) by 1958.
To make room for the extra topside weight of the big radars, they gave up most of their WWII armament, keeping only their Hedgehog ASW device and two Mark 34 3-inch guns with aluminum and fiberglass weather shields.
DER conversion of Edsall (FMR) class ships reproduced from Peter Elliot’s American Destroyer Escorts of WWII
Detail of masts. Note the WWII AAA suite, one of the 3″ guns, and centerline 21-inch tubes have been landed
Her conversion complete, Falgout was recommissioned on 30 June 1955.
30 June 1955: Mare Island NSY, Vallejo, Cal. – Radm. Frederick L. Entwistle, USN (Commander, Mare Island Naval Shipyard) is commissioning speaker at the ceremony marking USS Falgout’s re-commissioning. Lcdr. Walter P. Smiley is on the far right of the photo. (U.S. Navy photo #DER-324-063055-1TH) via Darryl Baker, Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum, via Navsource.
30 June 1955: Mare Island NSY, Vallejo, Cal. – Colors are raised aboard USS Falgout at Mare Island after her conversion at the shipyard. (U.S. Navy photo #DER-324-063055-3TH) via Darryl Baker, Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum, via Navsource.
She was assigned to Seattle as a homeport, with orders coming from the Continental Air Defense Command, heading out to serve regular radar picket in the Early Warning System.
USS Falgout (DER 324) underway
In March 1959, this changed to duty out of Pearl Harbor.
On 31 January 1961, she received her 10th skipper, LCDR Samuel Lee Gravely Jr., a mustang who enlisted in 1942 and went through NROTC in 1944 to earn his commission. Gravely had previously served on USS PC-1264 in WWII, then aboard the battleship USS Iowa during Korea and the cruiser USS Toledo (CA-133), and served as executive officer and acting commander of the destroyer USS Theodore E. Chandler (DD-717) immediately before taking command of Falgout. This act, noted by the NHHC, put Gravely as the first African-American to command a combat ship.
Dominic
In late 1962, Falgout, with Gravely as skipper, was detailed to Joint Task Force 8, operating out of Pearl Harbor, for Operation Dominic.
Sparked by the Soviet resumption of nuclear testing after the 1958–1961 moratorium, Dominic would see no less than 31 air dropped, high-altitude rocket, parachuted, and underwater tests of prototype and existing weapons (including the first Polaris SLBM war shot) carried out over the Eastern Pacific spanning from the coast of California to Christmas and Johnston Island.
Falgout would closely participate (sometimes within 90 miles of the detonation) in at least nine of these tests, all off Johnston Island as part of TU 8.3.6, while she would be a more distant weather ship (over 500 miles away) for much of the remainder of the other tests, in the latter tasked with chasing off Soviet spy trawlers.
The Defense Nuclear Agency’s 432-page report on Operation Dominic I compiled in 1983, has the below rundown of Falgout’s nine hottest experiences:
Notably, of the more than 80 Army, Navy, and Coast Guard vessels that took part in or supported Dominic I, only 16, Falgout included, had personnel with “suspect” radiological film badges.
And the detonation maps for Tightrope (Operation Fishbowl, less than 20 kt), Housatonic (9.96 Mt), Calamity (800 Kt), Chama (1.6 Mt), and Bumping (11.3 Kt):
Dominic Chama blast, 18 October. B-52 Airdrop; 11,970 Feet detonation. This was a free-fall LASL test of the Thumbelina device in an Mk-36 drop case.
Another shot of Chama. This was a test of a lightweight small-diameter device, possibly a replacement for the W-38 (the 2-4 Mt warhead for the Atlas and Titan I missiles). The results are variously described as “thoroughly successful” while the yield was reported to be below the predicted value.
Tightrope. Nike Hercules Missile Airburst; 69,000 Feet. Carrying the LASL-designed W-31 air defense warhead.
Continued service
Brushing the dust off Dominic off her decks, Falgout would continue to be based out of Pearl for the rest of the decade.
USS Falgout (DER 324) at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, June 1963
DE-397 Wilhoite Feb 1966 Pearl Harbor with Falgout DER 324
From 1966 to 1969 Falgout rotated to service along the coast of Vietnam where she served in Operation Market Time, attempting to interdict Viet Cong maritime traffic. This would include the TEE SHOT V operation which saw our tin can serve as a mother ship in Qui Nhon Bay to two 50-foot PCFs including berthing for two spare PCF crews.
A stalwart of the Brown Water Navy in Vietnam: the PCF. Here, PCF-94 of Coastal Division 11in the Gulf of Thailand, March 1968. USN 1130655
As detailed by NHHC, TEE SHOT V “was established in the coastal area from Dong Phu village south to Chanh Oai village to detect and capture or destroy any hostile craft attempting to exfiltrate the area…During the operation a total of 2,448 junks were detected, 1,210 inspected and 484 boarded. Twenty-three persons and six junks with a total of seventeen tons of salt were apprehended and delivered to VNN authorities.”
On 10 October 1969, Falgout was decommissioned at Mare Island after just over 14 years of service to the Navy and four to the USCG under Navy orders. Her fellow DERs shared a similar fate, either laid up in mothballs or transferred to overseas allies.
USS Falgout and Canberra laid up at Stockton, California on 20 May 1972. The bow of USS Canberra (CA-70) is visible astern. Probably photographed by Ted Stone. Courtesy of Ted Stone, 1980. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval History and Heritage Command. Catalog #: NH 90588
1973 Janes on the Edsall class DERs.
On 1 June 1975, Falgout was struck from the NVR then in early 1977 was towed out to sea off the coast of California and sunk as a target.
Epilogue
Few relics of Falgout remain, although much of her deck logs and WWII war history is digitized in the National Archives.
As for LCDR Gravely, once he left Falgout in 1963, he went on to complete 38 years of service, command USS Taussig (DD-746), USS Jouett (DLG-29), Naval Communications Command, Cruiser-Destroyer Group Two, the Eleventh Naval District, Third Fleet, and the Defense Communications Agency.
In 1976, while serving as commander of the Third Fleet, he was promoted to Vice Admiral. He passed away in 2004 and is buried in Arlington.
The Flight II Burke, USS Gravely (DDG 107), is named for him. Here seen Oct. 26, 2013, with an MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter from the “Swamp Foxes” of Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron (HSM) 74 overhead. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Billy Ho/Released) 131026-N-QL471-333
As for the rest of the Edsalls, the former Coast Guard-manned USS Forster (DE/DER-334/WDE-434) may possibly still be afloat in Vietnam as the pier side trainer Dai Ky, while ex-USS Hurst (DE-250) which has been in the Mexican Navy since 1973, is still in use limited use as the training ship ARM Commodore Manuel Azueta (D111).
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.
Warship Wednesday, May 17, 2023: Hugo’s Everlasting Clouds
Swedish Marinmuseum photo identifier D 8751
Above we see a nice view of the Royal Swedish Navy drawn up at Karlskrona, circa 9 July 1904, dressed for Queen Sofia’s 68th birthday. The line includes an array of immaculate coastal battleships (pansarbat) and cruisers to the left including Oden, Aran, Wasa, Tapperheten, Thule, Thor, and Gota; the sleek new Yarrow-built destroyer (Sweden’s first) Mode, center, and, foreground, the 850-ton torpedkryssare (torpedo cruiser/torpedo boat tender) Psilander.
Directly in front of the dowdy Psilander is the old training brig Falken. To the right, floating like clouds, are the twin new gleaming skeppsgossefartygeten (ships boys ships) Najaden and Jarramas.
While everything you see has long since been scrapped, the two tall ships have endured.
HM Övningsfartyg
Designed by famed Swedish naval engineer Hjalmar Hugo Lilliehøøk– who had a hand in every single one of the above vessels– Najaden (Swedish for Naiad, or water nymph) was the first of the twins and was built at Orlogsverftet in Karlskrona in Sweden in 1897 as a training ship (Övningsfartyg) for the Swedish Navy. As such, she would be at the disposal of the Skeppsgossekaren (The Ship’s Boy Corps), a formation that dated back to 1685 and was responsible for recruiting, raising, and training young boys in the art of seamanship.
The beautiful three-masted full-rigger– claimed by many to be the smallest made– Najaden was compact, at just 160 feet overall, counting her bowsprit, and could carry a full 24 sheets including jibs and staysails although the typical 16-sheet rig used covered over 8,000 sq. ft. of canvas by itself.
With a draft of just 12 feet, she was capable of speeds as fast as 17 knots, her main mast towering 82 feet above her deck.
Swedish Royal Navy sail training ship HMS Najaden
At some 335 tons, she was much larger than the circa 1877-built Falken (Falcon), which drew only 110 tons on her 77-foot length. This allowed Najaden to carry a crew of 20-25 professional cadre and as many as 100 naval cadets and boy sailors, easily three times those on the smaller Falken. Her typical complement was 118, including 92 boys. Her regular year-round crew consisted of 5 officers, 6 NCOs, a ship’s doctor, and 14 ratings, almost all of which served as instructors as well.
For an armament, used primarily for training and signaling, she carried a small arms locker of rifles and pistols, a pair of 3-pounder 47mm guns, and a quartet of 1-pounder 37mm pieces.
Najaden proved so successful that an updated sister ship, Jarramas, was ordered from the same yard in 1899. The pair differed in construction when it came to hull material, with Najaden sporting an iron hull and Jarramas using steel. As such, Jarramas was the last sailing vessel to be built at Orlogsverftet, the end of an era. She carried the name of King Charles XII’s famed circa 1716 frigate, which was a Swedish corruption of the Turkish word for “mischievous.”
Jarramas proved even faster than her sister, logging 18.3 knots on at least one occasion. Neither ship was ever fitted with engines although by most accounts they did have generators for electrical lights and ventilation fans.
Övningsskepp typ Jarrasmas och Najaden
Jarramas under segel. Note the colorized accents to the flags and bow crest. D 14975_1
Jarramas under inspektion D 8874
Jarramas MM01916
HM Övningsfartyget Jarramas DO14939.126
Every spring the ships were rigged to run summertime trips to Bohuslän on Sweden’s West Coast or along the Gulf of Bothnia on the East Coast, stopping at various Baltic ports. Happy duty.
Najadens besättning 1902 D 8766
Wars
During the Great War, both ships canceled their summer trips and were used by the Swedish Navy as receiving ships and dockside training vessels, their classroom space was used to school recruits.
Once the guns of August fell silent again, they resumed their former schedules.
Najaden 1923 D 15061_14
Najaden 1923 D 15061_12
Najaden 1923 D 15061_3
Jarramas 1924, Lübeck D 15061_49
Gruppbild ombord Najaden 1923 D 15061_2
Swedish Royal Navy sail training ship HMS Najaden photographed off Karlskrona in 1933, sister Jarramas in the distance
Jane’s 1931 listing for Falken, Najaden, and Jarramas. Falken would be disposed of in 1943 after 66 years of service.
In 1939, the old Skeppsgossekaren was replaced by the newer Sjömansskolan, which still exists.
Najaden at the time was demasted and laid up, used during WWII as a stationary receiving ship.
Postwar, she was then towed to Torekov just south of Halmstad to serve as a breakwater. Her name was quickly reissued to a Neptun-class submarine that would commission in 1943 and serve through the 1960s.
Neptun-class Ubat Najaden underway, July 1953, at Hårsfjärden.
Meanwhile, Jarramas lingered in service until 1948, including use as a training ship in protected waters during WWII.
Post War Rescue
Najaden, in poor material condition and without her masts, canvas, or rigging, was saved by an outpouring of support by the people of the west coast city of Halmstad, who in the 1950s paid for a non-sailing restoration at Karlskrona that saw new masts stepped and some of her rigging plan restored.
She endured this “town ship” mission until 2013, during which she was twice again rebuilt (1989 and 1990-1996) and would host sea scouts, festivals, local events, and parties. A floating fixture of the community. In 2014, she was sold to a new group of enthusiasts who towed her to a new homeport in Fredrikstad in Norway, where her preservation continues.
Although not seaworthy, she is still used for seminars and conferences, lectures, concerts, and other activities, lying by the quay.
They hope to one day make her seaworthy once again, under a Norwegian flag. Of note, when she was built, Norway and Sweden were unified, so in a sense, she has a bit of Norwegian heritage as well.
As for Jarramas, replaced by the new 128-foot training schooners HMS Gladan (S01) and HMS Falken (S02) in 1947, her days in the Swedish Navy came to an end.
However, just as Najaden was saved at Halmstad, Jarramas was saved by the city of Karlskrona where she was preserved as a museum ship and coffee shop of all things. Extensively renovated over the years, she reportedly requires extensive continuous maintenance, which led her to be taken over by the Marinmuseum in 1997.
Today, Jarramas is the centerpiece of the Marinmuseum in Karlskrona, preserved as Sweden’s last full rigger, alongside the minesweeper HMS Bremön, the motor torpedo boat T38, the Cold War era fast attack craft HMS Västervik, and the submarines HMS Neptun and HMS Hajen.
The minesweeper Bremön (rear), the FAC Västervik, and the full rigger Jarramas at the pier by the Marinmuseum in Karlskrona.
It’s great to see that both sisters are still with us.
Meanwhile, the Swedes still use the gleaming white circa 1940s skolfartyg schoonersGladan and Falken as the nation’s tall ship training squadron.
HMS Falken (S02)
They are assigned to the Skonertdivisionen at the Naval Academy and are based in Karlskrona, nearby the old Jarramas.
Ships are more than steel and wood And heart of burning coal, For those who sail upon them know That some ships have a soul.
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