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Warship Wednesday, August 27, 2025: A Tour of the Bay

Posted on August 27, 2025 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

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

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Warship Wednesday, August 27, 2025: A Tour of the Bay

Photo by Sub-Lieutenant E R Jones, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, Imperial War Museum catalog # A 30447

Above we see the “battle bowler” clad Lt. R M Howe, DSC, RN, explaining the plan of landing to his platoon of armed sailors and Royal Marines drawn from British Pacific Fleet warships before they disembark from the Buckley-class destroyer escort turned high-speed transport USS Sims (APD-50) into waiting LCVP landing craft to occupy the Japanese Coastal Forts at the entrance to Tokyo Bay on the morning of 30 August 1945, some 80 years ago this month. The item over Howe’s shoulder is one of Sim’s davits.

Knowing the background of the escort’s namesake, the joint operation should be of no surprise.

The Buckleys

With some 154 hulls ordered, the Buckleys were intended to be cranked out in bulk to counter the swarms of Axis submarines prowling the seas.

Just 306 feet overall, they were about the size of a medium-ish Coast Guard cutter today but packed a lot more armament, namely three 3″/50 DP guns in open mounts, a secondary battery of 1.1-inch (or 40mm), and 20mm AAA guns, and three 21-inch torpedo tubes in a triple mount for taking out enemy surface ships.

Buckley-class-destroyer-escort-1944 USS England by Dr. Dan Saranga via Blueprints

Then there was the formidable ASW suite to include stern depth charge racks, eight depth charge throwers, and a Hedgehog system.

Class-leader, USS Buckley (DE-51), cutting a 20-knot, 1,000-foot circle on trials off Rockland, Maine, 3 July 1943, 80-G-269442

Meet Sims

Our ship was the second greyhound named after ADM William Sowden Sims (USNA 1880), the Canadian-born officer who commanded all United States naval forces operating in Europe during the Great War.

He was the epitome of a “joint warrior” before such a thing was in vogue, often bending over backwards to keep his British and French allies happy.

Our humble ship followed the path blazed by a pre-war destroyer, the Bath-built USS Sims (DD-409), which commissioned on 1 August 1939.

USS Sims (DD-409) Off the Kennebec River, Maine, during her builder’s trials, 6 July 1939. Photograph from the Bureau of Ships Collection in the U.S. National Archives. 19-N-20822

After neutrality patrols, DD-409 was sent to the Pacific and became part of TF 17, the screen for the famed carrier USS Yorktown. She was with Yorktown at the Battle of the Coral Sea and took seven bomb hits and a dived Japanese plane to the stern, sent to the bottom after a magazine explosion that left but 13 survivors.

The second Sims was laid down on 7 September 1942 at the Norfolk Navy Yard and launched five months later, sponsored by Mrs. Anne Erwin Sims (nee Hitchcock), the widow of the late Admiral Sims. She had also sponsored the DD-409 four years prior.

Sims and her sister USS Reuben James (DE-153) were the only members of their class to carry the same armament as Buckley, to include a quad 28mm/75 Mk 1 “Chicago Piano” instead of a more effective twin or quad 40mm Bofors mount. The rest of the armament included the same triple 3″/50 DP singles in open, largely unprotected mounts, six 20mm Oerlikons, three 21-inch torpedo tubes, a Hedgehog Mk 10 ASWRL, and an impressive depth charge array.

Sims was commissioned on 24 April 1943 and was soon put to work.

Fighting U-boats across the Atlantic

4 October 1943, USS Sims moored at Pier C of the Brooklyn Navy Yard with the newly commissioned USS Reybold (DE 177) tied up on her port side. Sims had arrived in the Navy Yard on 28 September for scheduled maintenance and repair between convoys. 19LCM-dd68

USS Sims (DE 154) in New York Harbor, 17 April 1944, with a commercial barge and harbor tug alongside. 19-N-64416

USS Sims (DE 154) in New York Harbor, 17 April 1944, with a commercial barge and harbor tug alongside. 19-N-64418

A great stern shot at the same location and date as above, showing off the details of her ASW gear to include two chock-full Mk9 depth charge racks and eight Mk6 K-gun projectors. 19-N-64419

USS Sims (DE-154) in New York Harbor, 17 April 1944. Note the quad 1.1-inch “Chicago Piano” AAA mount just past her stern, No. 3, 3″/50, and her triple Mk15 torpedo tube turnstile amidships. 19-N-64417

After fitting out, Sims completed her shakedown cruise off Bermuda and then was assigned to Task Group (TG) 21.6, tasked with escorting vital tankers in large “CU” convoys from Curacao in the Dutch East Indies (later New York), across the Atlantic to Londonderry/Liverpool, with the return reverse runs being dubbed “UC” convoys.

She made 20 of these runs between July 1943 and September 1944, typically with at least five other DD/DEs:

CU 003 (11/07/43-24/07/43)
UC 003A (30/07/43-10/08/43)
CU 004 (26/08/43 09/09/43)
UC 004 (15/09/43-27/09/43)
CU 005 (13/10/43-24/10/43)
UC 005 (30/10/43-09/11/43)
CU 008 (02/12/43-13/12/43)
UC 008 (18/12/43-02/01/44)
CU 012 (19/01/44-30/01/44)
UC 012 (07/02/44-18/02/44)
CU 017 (10/03/44-20/03/44)
UC 017 (27/03/44-07/04/44)
CU 022 (24/04/44 06/05/44)
UC 022 (10/05/44-20/05/44)
CU 027 (08/06/44-18/06/44)
UC 027 (23/06/44-04/07/44)
CU 032 (19/07/44-29/07/44)
UC 032 (03/08/44-14/08/44)
CU 037 (27/08/44-07/09/44)
UC 037 (12/09/44-23/09/44)

The toughest of these was CU-17, a ten-day West-East slog from New York to Liverpool in March 1944. Shipping out with 22 merchantmen, mostly tankers but with the addition of the troop-filled U.S. Army Transport George S. Simonds, six tin cans, and the Bouge/Attacker class jeep carrier HMS Premier (D23), escorted the convoy.

The only convoy that Sims rode shotgun on that lost a ship, on 19 March, just West of Lands’ End, the German Type VIIC submarine U-311 (Kptlt. Joachim Zander) somehow found itself among the convoy and fired fish into the armed American tanker SS Seakay (10,342 tons), with one of her Navy Guard members killed. Wallowing, she was evacuated and later sent to the bottom with 14,000 tons of vapor oil and 14 aircraft (stored on deck).

Sims and her fellow greyhound pursued Zander and his U-boat relentlessly, but to no avail.

From Sim’s report:

Instead, Zander was boxed in by the Canadian frigates HMCS Matane and HMCS Swansea southwest of Ireland a few weeks later, and U-311 was sent to the bottom, with all hands. Seakay had been the sub’s (and Zander’s) only victim.

USS Sims (DE-154) Underway at sea, circa 1944. NH 107614

Sent to take on the Emperor

Sims became one of the most well-traveled of her class. Whereas most either served in the Atlantic or the Pacific during WWII, Sims got plenty of both.

On 23 September 1944, Sims entered the Boston Navy Yard for conversion into a high-speed transport, or APD. This resulted in her landing all her 3-inch guns, her torpedo tubes, her Hedgehogs, and her K-guns (leaving the stern depth charge racks). She gained a single 5″/38 Mk 12 mount forward as well as two twin 40mm Bofors. Also added were large davits supporting four 36-foot LCVP Higgins boats, and her crew berthing was modified to carry 162 troops in cramped, temporary conditions, even for the 1940s.

Clad in mottled green Measure 31 camouflage, she became a “Green Dragon.” The Navy wanted to convert 50 Buckleys to this spec, but only managed 37 before the end of the war.

The work completed, Sims (now APD-50) departed Boston on 6 December 1944 for Norfolk, where she was used as an amphibious training ship near Little Creek for the next seven weeks.

Shipping out for the Pacific, she arrived at Pearl Harbor on 20 February 1945.

U.S. Navy high-speed transport USS Sims (APD-50) at anchor, circa 1945. She is painted in Camouflage Measure 31, Design 20L. Note her davits and single 5-inch gun. Photo via Navsource

Moving forward for the Okinawa landings, Sims was assigned to TF 51 (CTG 51.5) and on 27 March 1945 sailed from Leyte as an escort for Transport Group Dog. She spent most of the next month supporting the landings, performing ASW patrols, scanning for frequent enemy air attacks, sinking floating mines with gunfire, and rescuing souls at sea (Ensign E.G. Johnson, blown off the cargo ship USS Tyrell on 2 April). During this period, Sims fired 64 rounds of 5-inch, 731 of 40mm, and 1,002 of 20mm, claiming two enemy aircraft downed.

In May, she became the flagship of Capt. J.M. Kennaday, USN, Commander of Transport Division 105, continued more of the same.

The work was hazardous in the extreme.

During a six-week stint off Okinawa, no less than 10 Buckleys were damaged by Japanese aircraft and kamikazes, including one, USS England, which was so heavily damaged that she was never repaired. An 11th, USS Gendreau, was severely damaged by Japanese coastal guns during the same period. Sims was one of these 11, having fought off two kamikazes on 24 May whose near misses remarkably left her with only some popped seams, an oil leak, and 11 injured, four seriously.

A 12th Buckley, USS Bates, was sunk when she was hit by a cluster of three kamikazes at Okinawa on 25 May 1945.

The same day that Bates sank, Sims went to the aid of the damaged, burning, and abandoned USS Barry (APD-29), an old Clemson-class destroyer turned Green Dragon. A volunteer DC boarding party of two officers and 10 men from Sims went aboard and extinguished the blaze in a little over two hours. Later towed to Kerama Retto to be used as a decoy for the kamikazes, the unmanned Barry was sunk there on June 21 by suicide planes.

Meanwhile, Sims returned to Leyte via Saipan in early June to effect repairs, then was back on the line off Okinawa on the 26th, returning to service as Kennaday’s flag. In her stint off Okinawa in May, she fired 32 rounds of 5-inch, 575 rounds of 40mm, and 516 rounds of 20mm in anti-air operations.

Kennaday provided the following accolades:

Tokyo Bay

On 13 August, Sims, with Kennaday aboard, proceeded to Buckner Bay for supplies, then the next morning left with five other APDs– USS Barr, Pavlic, Bass, Wantuck, and Runels, to form Task Unit 30.3.6, shifting to Third Fleet command. The task: prepare for the Tokyo Bay Occupation.

British Pacific Fleet elements attached to the Third Fleet organized a light company-sized landing force– of 22 officers and 120 enlisted, mixed Royal Marines and Tars– to occupy the coastal forts and batteries ringing Sagami Bay, located south of Tokyo Bay, and the island of Azuma.

Sims was detailed as their chariot, and on 20 August, she dispatched her landing craft alongside the battleship HMS King George V, and the Australian destroyers HMAS Nizam and HMAS Napier. The men collected from KGV included a contingent of Kiwi sailors from the cruiser HMNZS Gambia that had been cross-decked to the battlewagon. The force also included a team of Commonwealth war correspondents, which means the images of the event made it into the Imperial War Museum and the Australian War Memorial.

HMS King George V, with LCVPs headed to USS Sims

At sea off Japan, 20 August 1945. Members of the British Landing Force embarking from HMS King George V for USS Sims, which was to ferry them ashore. Sub Lieutenant Leary of HMAS Nizam is in the foreground. (Photographer Capt. J. C. Goodchild). AWM 121207

Sagami Bay, Japan. c. September 1945. LCDR George R. Davis-Goff RNZN, from the cruiser HMNZS Gambia, is addressing men of the British Landing Force on the quarterdeck of their transport USS Sims, only a few hundred yards from the shores of Sagami Bay. The white flag flying on the point in the background denotes the position of a gun emplacement surrendered by the enemy. AWM 019231

A chow line on Sims. Note the beret-clad Royal Marines contrasting against the assorted Commonwealth sailors

The enlisted Commonwealth contingents were excited about the landing as the tars escaped an all-hands call to paint their ships’ upperworks in an effort to remove the signs that the ships had been at sea for a long time. Plus, they were the tip of the occupation force.

Sagami Bay, Japan. Australian Naval personnel took the first snapshots of the Japanese mainland as seen from the decks of their transport USS Sims. There was a rush for cameras to record souvenirs of their first glimpse of the enemy’s territory, as the ship drew near the shores of Sagami Bay. Pictured, left to right: Leading Seaman Ken Edgerton of Orange, NSW; Able Seaman (Ab) Bob Skinner of Underdale, SA; AB Cliff Howard of Alberton East, SA; AB Colin Llewellyn of Cooroy, Qld; AB Bill Ives of Bathurst, NSW, and kneeling, AB Bruce Hazard of Caulfield, Vic. All are members of the destroyer HMAS Napier. AWM 019429

At sea off Japan, 1945-08-27. British landing force personnel on the forecastle of the destroyer USS Sims. Note her new 5″/38. (Photographer, Captain J. C. Goodchild) AWM 121192

New Zealand sailors, comprising part of the British Landing Force, lined up on the quarterdeck of their transport USS Sims before landing on Yokosuka, the largest naval base in Japan, situated in Tokyo Bay. In the background can be seen the gutted Japanese battleship Nagato, once a powerful flagship of the Japanese Navy. A carrier-based plane can also be seen flying overhead. AWM 019233

Capt. Herbert James Buchanan, DSO, RAN, who oversaw the British landing force, watching the party preparing to disembark from Sims. Buchannan, an Australian who joined the Navy as a cadet in 1915, earned his DSO at Dunkirk after his command, the destroyer HMS Valentine, was bombed and sunk by Junkers 87 Stuka dive bombers, leaving him and his crew ashore to organize beach control parties during the evacuation. He had later commanded the destroyers HMS Vanity and HMAS Norman and Napier, the latter of which brought him to Tokyo Bay, IWM (A 30445)

British platoons on the deck of the Sims are preparing to go ashore. IWM (A 30446)

Landing party disembarking from USS Sims to LCVPs IWM (A 30448).

And in the Higgins boats. IWM (A 30449)

The British landing party from USS Sims is taking over one of the Japanese forts. IWM A 30450

Continuing her work with the Occupation Forces, on 30 August, working with fellow APD USS Pavlic, Sims embarked Love Company, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines Regiment, under Major Wallace L. Crawford, and landed them first on Green Beach in Tokyo Bay then, reembarking them on 1 September, took them to Tateyama Naval Air Station on the northeastern shore of Sagami Wan to accept its surrender, reconnoiter the beach approaches for follow-on Army troops, and to make sure the Japanese aircraft there were disabled. Importantly, the “Old Fourth” had been chosen for this task by MacArthur as the regiment had been part of the 1942 Bataan Campaign.

Following the official surrender ceremony on 2 September, Sims brought L/3/4 back to Green Beach on 3 September once they were relieved at Tateyama by the Eighth Army’s 112th Cavalry Regiment.

Sims continued to operate in Japanese waters for the next three months before being ordered stateside, arriving at San Diego with 208 assorted GI and Navy passengers on 17 December, just in time for Christmas.

For her 20 convoys, pursuit of U-317, Okinawa actions, and Tokyo Bay mission, she earned a grand total of one battle star.

Cold War mothballs

Sims was sent through the Panama Canal, destined to be decommissioned at Green Cove Springs, Florida, on 24 April 1946, and was then placed in the Atlantic Reserve Fleet.

Beyond the 37 APD conversions, the Navy converted others of the class, including USS Foss, Marsh, Wiseman, and Whitehurst, which were rigged as power supply ships with two large reels for power cables amidships.

Seven others became radar pickets (DER) with the addition of large air search radar sets on a second mast, while USS Cronin, Frybarger, and Raby were redesignated DEC (escort vessels, control) to guide landing craft to beaches. USS Vammen was converted to a DE (A/S) for testing new anti-submarine warfare sensors and weapons, while USS Francis M. Robinson, Jack W. Wilke, and Malay became EDEs (experimental destroyer escorts) for a time for much the same purpose.

Of the 46 Buckleys loaned to the Royal Navy during the war as the Captain-class, six were lost. Of the USN-operated vessels, USS Fechteler and Underhill were lost in action, as was one wartime APD conversion, USS Bates (APD 47, ex-DE 68).

The Navy retained nearly 100 Buckleys of all types on the Navy List into the early 1960s– but most were in mothballs– and then began whittling them down, with some transferred and the rest scrapped or sunk (12) as targets.

Jane’s 1960 APDs converted destroyer escorts, of both the Buckley and other classes, with Sims listed as a 1960 disposal.

The final Buckley on active duty with the Navy was Wiseman, decommissioned in 1965, while some were retained as pier-side naval reserve training ships as late as 1969. The last five members of the class were removed from Navy custody in 1974– not a bad run for “disposable” ships.

The Navy deleted the “DE” classification in 1975.

Sims, hulked, was sold to the North American Smelting Co. of Wilmington, Delaware, on 14 April 1961 and scrapped.

In a perhaps poignant touch, ADM Sims’ widow, Anne, passed in 1960, the year before the second destroyer to carry his name was sold for scrap. She was 85 and was buried next to her husband at Arlington National Cemetery. The U.S. Naval War College Archives maintain the Sims’ papers.

Epilogue

Today, little remains of Sims other than her logs and reports in the National Archives.

Lt Howe, pictured in the first photo, became a regular and retired from the Royal Navy in April 1958 as an LCDR.

Capt. Buchanan, the Dunkirk hero who commanded the Commonwealth landing force that occupied Yokosuka and the Tokyo Bay coastal forts from the deck of Sims, joined the staff of Admiral Sir Louis Hamilton. He then later commanded the cruisers HMAS Shropshire and Australia. He received a CBE and retired as a rear admiral in 1957 and passed in Sydney in 1965, aged 63.

Post-war, the Navy recycled our ship’s name for the new Knox-class destroyer escort USS W. S. Sims (DE-1059, later FF-1059), commissioned in 1970. She served 21 honorable years and was decommissioned in 1991, then later transferred to Turkey for use as a floating spare parts platform for that NATO ally’s surplus Knoxes.

USS W.S. Sims (FF-1059) underway in the Mediterranean Sea, June 1987. Photographer: PH2 Hensley. DNSC8709254. National Archives Identifier 6418455

It is beyond past time for a new destroyer, the fourth, to carry the name Sims.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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Warship Wednesday, August 20, 2025: Sortie Queen

Posted on August 20, 2025 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Warship Wednesday, August 20, 2025: Sortie Queen

Photo believed to have been taken by a Sgt. Nutter, 4 August 1950. 111-SC-345275.

Above we see a Grumman F9F-2B Panther from Fighter Squadron 112 (VF-112), “Fighting One Twelve,” on the flight deck of the Essex-class fleet carrier USS Philippine Sea (CV-47), during operations off Korea, circa August 1950.

Some 75 years ago this month, this oft-forgotten flattop proved herself to the men holding the embattled Pusan Perimeter in America’s most forgotten war.

And she was just getting started.

Meet the Philippine Sea

Originally to be dubbed USS Wright after the aviation pioneer, our ship was instead the first named for the epic “Marianas Turkey Shoot” battle that sprawled across the Philippine Sea in June 1944.

The future CV-47 was laid down by Bethlehem Steel in Quincy, Massachusetts, on 19 August 1944, just two months after the sea clash. She was launched three days after the Japanese surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay, sponsored by the wife of Kentucky Democratic Senator Albert Benjamin “Happy” Chandler, a man who only narrowly missed becoming FDR’s running mate to some fellow from Missouri earlier that summer.

Launching an Essex-class carrier, the future USS Philippine Sea (CV-47), Bethlehem Steel Co., Quincy, Massachusetts, Wednesday, 5 September 1945. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Record Group 181, National Archives Identifier 38330011.

Incomplete and with no need for more hulls to push on Japan, she could have easily been written off and canceled along with other Essex class sisters such as the would-be USS Reprisal (CV-35) and Iwo Jima (CV-46), which had been laid down before and after Philippine Sea but never launched. The fact that CV-47 was afloat and not still on the builder’s ways at the end of the war probably saved her from an early scrapping. FDR had already canceled CV-50 through CV-55 in March 1945, before they were formally ordered.

USS Philippine Sea nonetheless continued her fitting out process, effectively a replacement for the soon-to-be decommissioned USS Saratoga (CV-3), which was consigned to the Atomic tests at Bikini Atoll and stricken in August 1946.

Philippine Sea commissioned 11 May 1946, Capt. (later RADM) Delbert Strother Cornwell (USNA 1922), in command. Cornwell knew flattops, had earned his wings in 1925, and commanded the jeep carriers USS Nassau (CVE-16) and Suwanee (CVE-27) during the war, earning a Legion of Merit to go along with the latter’s Presidential Unit Citation for operations off Okinawa.

USS Philippine Sea (CV-47) anchored at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, during her 1946 shakedown cruise. National Naval Aviation Museum photo, 1996.488.114.055.

After a month-long shakedown in the Caribbean with the Bearcats, Helldivers, and Avengers of CVG-20 in October 1946, she returned to Boston to join Task Force 68 and prepare the Navy’s big Antarctic Expedition, Operation Highjump.

She would operate aircraft that the designers of CV-9 could never have anticipated.

Amazing High Jump Antics

Cruise Chart used during Operation High Jump, which was the U.S. Navy’s Expedition to the Antarctic during 1946-1947 and was headed by Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd, USN. Collection of Mr. Gerald E. Foreman

For her part of Highjump– which included Byrd’s command ship USS Mount Olympus (AGC-8), two PBM Mariner carrying seaplane tenders, two destroyers, a submarine, two helicopter-carrying icebreakers, two oilers and two cargo ships– rather than a traditional airwing, Philippine Sea carried six huge Douglas R4D-5L Skytrain (Douglas DC-3/C-47) transports on deck along with 57 tons of construction material that was to be used to improve Byrd’s “Little America” base.

The idea was to launch these 29,000-pound 27-passenger aircraft, with their 63-foot wingspan, ashore to help conquer Antarctica. Keep in mind that Doolittle’s B-25Bs were only marginally bigger (67-foot span, 33,000-pound TO weight).

Equipped with skis for operating from the ice cap and assisted by two JATO bottles, CDR William Hawkes (with Rear Admiral Richard Byrd aboard) flew the first of the R4Ds off the deck on 29 January– first carrier take-off for the R4D. Two aircraft made it to Little America that day, while the other four followed on the 30th.

“On 29 January 1947, while still 660 miles off the Antarctic continent, our carrier launched the first of six R4D Skytrain transport aircraft to Little America. CDR William M. Hawkes piloted the first plane, which carried RADM Richard E. Byrd Jr. as a passenger. The aircraft used JATO to take off, and skis attached to their landing gear facilitated ice cap operations. The event marked the first carrier launches for Skytrains.”

All six made it ashore, and these planes, operated along with the six water-borne PBM flying boats for 24 days, logged 650 hours of flight time on photographic mapping flights covering 1,500,000 sq. mi of the interior and 5,500 miles of coastline of the continent of Antarctica, much of it had never before been photographed. Over 70,000 images were captured.

As for the 57 tons of construction material, the carrier cross-decked it over to the icebreaker USCGC Northwind for delivery ashore.

Original caption: Cargo being transferred from the USS Philippine Sea to the Coast Guard Ice-Breaking Cutter Northwind, on Operation Highjump, the Navy’s venture of exploration to the Antarctic. The Coast Guard Ice-Breaker has the task of opening lanes through heavy ice when other vessels with thinner plating cannot force their way through. NARA 26-G-5062

At least a dozen Skytrains, most WWII vets, went on to serve in Antarctica with the “Puckered Penguins” of VX-6 well into the 1960s. One, BuNo12418 (MSN 9358) ex-USAAF 42-23496, “Que Sera Sera,” on Halloween 1956 during Deep Freeze II, brought the first humans to the South Pole since Capt. Robert F. Scott of the Royal Navy reached it in 1912. Its co-pilot for that record-setting mission was the same Bill Hawkes who first flew a Skytrain off the Philippine Sea in 1947.

The U.S. Navy Douglas R4D-5L Que Sera Sera (BuNo 12418, c/n 9358, ex USAAF 42-23496) landing at the South Pole as seen from a U.S. Air Force Douglas C-124 Globemaster. This aircraft was the first aircraft to land on the South Pole on 31 October 1956. Crew: pilot LCdr. Conrad S. Shinn, copilot Capt. William. M. Hawkes; navigator, Lt. John Swadener; crew chief, AD2 John P. Strider; radioman AT2 William Cumbie; Rear Adm. George J. Dufek, Commander Task Force 43 and Commander Naval Support Forces, Antarctica; and Capt. Douglas L. L. Cordiner, Commanding Officer of Antarctic Development Squadron 6 (VX-6). These were the first people to stand at the South Pole since January 1912. The aircraft is today on display at the National Museum of Naval Aviation at Pensacola.

Back to our carrier, in warmer climes

Post-Highjump, the Philippine Sea was soon to carry a series of airwings that could have come right out of the last days of WWII– with the addition of helicopters. She did this while supporting early jets off and on as well.

Returning stateside, she began a relationship with CVAG-9, whose wing included Bearcats, Helldivers, photo/night Hellcats, Avengers, and HO3S-1 whirlybirds. She carried the wing for a short March-May 1947 Caribbean cruise, followed by a February-June 1948 Mediterranean deployment. She made a second Med cruise with the similarly equipped fighter-heavy CVG-7 in January-May 1949, which traded Helldivers for Corsairs.

USS Philippine Sea (CV-47) exercising at sea with another carrier and a heavy cruiser, circa 1948. Note: “E” painted on her stack, location of hull number below the after end of her island; and HO3S helicopter on her flight deck. 80-G-706709

FH-1 Phantom of Fighter Squadron (VF) 171 pictured on approach for recovery on board USS Philippine Sea (CV 47), 24 August 1948. Only 62 of these early jet fighters were produced by McDonnell in the late 1940s and would lead to the development of the much more prolific F2H Banshee. NNAM

Accustomed to the roar of aircraft, crew members work on an anti-aircraft gun aboard USS Philippine Sea (CV-47) as an SB2C-5 Helldiver of Bombing Squadron 9A (VA-9A) roars overhead after launch from the carrier in 1948. This was one of the last carrier deployments with the Helldiver, as it was retired in favor of the Skyraider in June 1949.

USS Philippine Sea (CV-47) looking forward over Mt. 52 (her second 5″/38 twin mount) at embarked CVG-7 aircraft, while the ship lies off Sicily on 29 January 1949. Grumman F8F-1 “Bearcat” fighters are spotted forward. Note Mt. Aetna in the background, also other ships. Identifiable: USS Ellyson (DMS-19) (L) Italian battleship; either Andrea Doria or Caio Duilio. 80-G-402219

USS Philippine Sea (CV 47), moored in Naples, Italy. Photograph released February 6, 1949. 80-G-399785

Then came one more Caribbean cruise in September-November 1949, with CVG-1 embarked.

F8F Bearcat USS Philippine Sea (CV 47) 28 Feb 1950, NNAM

Then came…

Korea

On 24 May 1950, Philippine Sea shifted homeports from the East Coast to the West, arriving at San Diego to join the Pacific Fleet. A month and a day later, North Korean forces swept over the 38th Parallel into neighboring South Korea.

Just ten days into this new war, Philippine Sea left San Diego on 5 July with 95 aircraft of CVG-2 aboard: 32 F9F Panthers, 28 F4U-4B Corsairs, 16 AD-4 Skyraiders. Smaller dets included radar-equipped night fighters (four F4U-5Ns and four AD-4Ns), two F4U-4P photo birds, four AD-3Ws Skyraider early-warning radar pickets, four AD-4Q Skyraider electronic countermeasures aircraft, and a HO3S whirlybird.

The ship’s Disbursing officer drew $1 million in U.S. currency, enough to cover four months’ pay allowances. The ship’s intel shop ordered 150 each blood hits, cloth survival charts, and “pointee-talkies” in both Korean and Chinese for aircrews.

Speeding across the Pacific and stopping in Hawaii for eight rushed days of carrier quals, she arrived off Korea with her sister, USS Valley Forge, as flagship of Task Force 77, on 5 August. Offensive air operations commenced at 1212K, with the launching of a strike group winch had as its mission, the destruction of a railway bridge and two highway bridges near the town of Iri (Iksan), South Korea, in an attempt to halt the oncoming enemy forces.

Between 4 August and 6 September 1950, the Philippine Sea lost four Corsairs and three Panthers in high-tempo ops, with four aviators killed. Running as many as 140 sorties a day, they fired over 351,690 machine gun rounds in strafing runs, along with 4,284 3.5- and 5-inch rockets.

They dropped no less than 3,094 bombs:

Back on the line from 12-21 September 1950 after a short stint in Sasebo, her airwing pulled 868 sorties in those eight days, firing 112,350 rounds in strafing runs along with 2,133 rockets and 748 bombs. They also dropped their first napalm, around the Pusan Perimeter, some 5,780 pounds of jellied gasoline made with Navy Type I powder used in Mk12 (150-gallon) and Mk5 drop (300-gallon) tanks repurposed for the task. Later, thousands of Japanese-made drop tanks were sourced specifically for this purpose.

And so it went, day after day.

F9F Panther of VF-111 in flight over Korea, from USS Philippine Sea

USS Philippine Sea (CV-47). A Grumman F9F-2 Panther of Fighter Squadron 111 (VF-111) being moved by a flight deck tractor, during operations off Korea, circa 19 October 1950. Other planes parked nearby are Vought F4U-4B Corsairs. 80-G-420925

USS Philippine Sea (CV-47). Grumman F9F-2 Panther from Fighter Squadron 112 (VF-112) on the flight deck, during operations off Korea, circa 19 October 1950. Note spectators on “Vultures Row,” the island walkways. 80-G-420946

Besides the Panthers, these bad early days in Korea saw the old “gull-winged angel of death,” the F4U-4B Corsair clock in and perform brilliantly.

John D. Robinson, AO2, USN, of Imperial Beach, CA, pushes a bomb dolly loaded with 100-pound anti-personnel bombs past a partially loaded VF-113 F4U-4B on the flight deck of the USS Philippine Sea (CV-47) as aircraft are made ready for a strike on Korea. NNAM

Vought F4U-4B Corsair Fighters, of VF-113 (300 numbers) and VF-114 “Executioners,” (400 numbers) prepare for launching aboard USS Philippine Sea (CV-47), during strikes on North Korean targets, circa 19 October 1950. Note small bombs, with fuse extensions, on the planes’ wings. 80-G-420926

USS Philippine Sea (CV-47). Ordnance men loading bombs on a Vought F4U-4B Corsair of Fighter Squadron 114 (VF-114), during operations off Korea, circa 19 October 1950. This aircraft is Bureau No. 63034. F4U-4 in the right background has tail code “PP”, indicating that it belongs to squadron VC-61. 80-G-420921

USS Philippine Sea (CV-47). Vought F4U-4B “Corsair” of Fighter Squadron 114 (VF-114) taking off for a mission over Korea, circa 19 October 1950. Other F4Us are following. 80-G-420967.

Vought F4U-4B Corsair, of Fighter Squadron 114 (VF-114). Returns to USS Philippine Sea (CV-47) following a strike on North Korean targets, circa 19 October 1950. 80-G-420942.

Carrier Philippine Sea (CV 47), ordancemen load a 500-lb. bomb on a F4U-4 Corsair, Korea, September 5, 1950 NNAM

One of the Philippine Sea’s F4U-4B Corsairs from VF-113 (Stingers) over Inchon, 15 Sept 1950, with the battlewagon USS Missouri below. NH 97076

And of course, the mother beautiful AD Skyraider, which was capable of carrying much more ordnance than the Corsair.

USS Philippine Sea (CV-47). Ordnancemen hauling bombs on the carrier’s flight deck, preparing planes for attacks on enemy targets in Korea, circa 19 October 1950. A Douglas AD-4 Skyraider of Attack Squadron 115 (VA-115) is behind them, with small bombs on its wing racks. 80-G-420919.

USS Philippine Sea (CV-47). Douglas AD Skyraider of Attack Squadron 115 (VF-115) ready for launching on a strike mission against Korean targets, circa 19 October 1950. 80-G-420934.

As well as some of the first helicopter-borne sea-based CSAR operations in military history by the Sikorski HO3S-1s of Helicopter Utility Squadron One (HU-1).

HO3S-1s of HU-1 on board USS Philippine Sea (CV-47) during operations off Korea, circa 19 October 1950. Crewman is backing off the vacuum before starting the helicopter’s engine. Note the aircraft carrier in the distance, likely Valley Forge. 80-G-420949

Sikorski HO3S-1 helicopter, of Helicopter Utility Squadron One (HU-1). Hovers near USS Philippine Sea (CV-47), awaiting the return of aircraft from missions over Korea, circa 19 October 1950. Crewmen foreground are standing by their stations on one of the ship’s 40mm gun mounts. Note the screening destroyer in the middle distance. 80-G-420950.

During strikes on bridges over the Yalu River, on 9 November 1950, LCDR William T. Amen, the skipper of VF-111 off USS Philippine Sea (CV 47), scored the Navy’s first MiG-15 in a jet vs. jet engagement in Naval Aviation history. Ironically, he did it in a borrowed Panther from rival VF-112.

The high tempo of the ops required a huge logistical support with regular unreps. The war of shifting avgas and ordnance from deck to deck to keep the sorties rolling.

USS Philippine Sea (CV-47) receives bombs from USS Mount Katmai (AE-16) during underway replenishment off Korea, 29 November 1950. Note crewmen standing in the carrier’s forward hangar bay, and Grumman F9F-2 Panther fighters and a LeTourneau crane parked on her flight deck. Crewmen on Mount Katmai are wearing cold-weather clothing. A few days after this photo was taken, Philippine Sea commenced a period of close-support operations in the vicinity of the Chosin Reservoir. 80-G-439879

USS Philippine Sea (CV-47), 250-pound bombs being loaded under the wings of a Douglas AD Skyraider of Attack Squadron 65, during operations off the Korean coast. A cart of 5-inch rockets and a second cart of 250-pound bombs are also present. 80-G-439902

USS Philippine Sea (CV-47) members of the carrier’s Ordnance Department pose with decorated 2000-pound bombs, during Korean War operations, 9 March 1951. Messages painted on the bombs are: Greetings from PhilCee; Happy Easter; and Listen! To This One it will Kill you. Among the planes parked in the background are F4U-4Bs of Fighter Squadron 113 (VF-113). 80-G-439895

The weather in Korea in winter can be unforgiving, as the deck crews on CV-47 found out.

The use of rockets in extreme freezing weather was curtailed as the motors failed to ignite. It was found that napalm wouldn’t gel at the known rates at temperatures below 60 degrees F, and the ship’s ordnance men and officers with a chemistry background had to improvise a system onboard using low-pressure steam, heated gasoline (!), and flexible steel and copper tubing looped inside 55-gallon drums to get it to mix. The 20mm cannons of the Corsairs and Panthers had heaters, but it was found out that their lifespan was only about 30 hours. Even then, the freezing of condensed water on the gun parts and the ammunition trays and cans caused repeated jams. Crews liberally took to using muzzle tape. The hydraulic system on the F9Fs became sluggish with congealed hydrolube at low temperatures to the point that the landing gear took 85 seconds to lower and lock into place.

Still, across 1 November-31 December 1950, her group dropped 4,547 bombs of all types, mainly 100-pound GPs in close air support roles over the push into North Korea and the fight for the Chosin.

As detailed by ADM David L. McDonald in 1964, the four carrier airwings available to the U.S. X Corps (1st MarDiv, 3rd U.S. Inf Div, 7th U.S. InfDiv) at Chosin was key to preserving the force:

For 16 successive days, the surrounded Tenth Corps received on the order of 220 close support sorties a day with a record peak of 315 on one day at the height of the breakout. Each carrier-based sortie remained on station from one to 1.5 hours and made between five and nine attack passes. Over three-quarters of these sorties were provided by carriers, and it is unlikely that the Tenth Corps would have broken out to the coast without them. As a result of the severe losses inflicted on the Chinese by the Tenth Corps and tactical air, the subsequent evacuation of over 100,000 troops and their full equipment was accomplished with negligible loss.

USS Philippine Sea (CV-47) Grumman F9F-2 Panther fighters of VF-111 & VF-112 parked on the flight deck, forward, during a snowstorm off the Korean coast, 15 November 1950. 80-G-439871

USS Philippine Sea (CV-47). Flight deck scene, looking aft from the island, as the carrier is enveloped in a snowstorm off the Korean coast, 15 November 1950. Planes on deck include Vought F4U-4B Corsair fighters and Douglas AD Skyraider strike planes. Note men on deck, apparently tossing snowballs, and what may be a toppled snowman just in front of the midships elevator. 80-G-439869

USS Philippine Sea (CV-47). Crewmen Gerald F. Quay (AMM3c) and Warren E. McKee (PH2c) check braces on a napalm tank during a snowstorm off North Korea, 17 November 1950. The weapon is mounted on the port wing of a Douglas AD Skyraider of VA-115 parked on the carrier’s flight deck. 80-G-422341

AD-4 Skyraider assigned to VA-15, its wing racks loaded with bombs, launches from USS Philippine Sea (CV 47) for a combat mission over Korea, 23 November 1950. NNAM

Vought F4U-4B Corsair BuNo # 62924 landing on USS Philippine Sea (CV-47) after attacking targets in Korea, circa 7 December 1950. This plane belongs to Fighter Squadron 113 (VF-113). 80-G-423961.

USS Philippine Sea CV-47 launching Grumman F9F Panthers off of Korea – Dec 1950 LIFE John Domins

And into January..

Crew members of USS Philippine Sea (CV 47) clear snow from the deck of the carrier so that another strike could be launched against enemy forces in Korea. It was the second time that morning that heavy snow was cleaned off the deck. Photograph released February 23, 1951. 80-G-426797

By late March, with the aircraft and crews of CVG-11 worn out after eight months of round-the-clock operations, Philippine Sea put into Yokosuka and welcomed aboard CVG-2. With the problems with the Panther apparent in cold weather, the new air wing was light on jets but heavy on props, with three full squadrons of Corsairs (VF-64, VF-63, and VA-24) and one of Skyraiders (VA-65).

F4U-4 Corsair VF 63 USS Philippine Sea (CV 47) Korea 1951 NNAM

Leaving Japan on April Fool’s Day 1951, the carrier and her fresh air wing were diverted to Formosa (Taiwan), where her wing carried out a series of “air parades” along the east coast of Communist China for three days to make sure Mao knew where the U.S. stood concerning the semi-independence of the island.

USS Philippine Sea (CV-47) underway at sea, 9 April 1951, while en route to operating areas off Formosa. 80-G-439899

A film shot on 21 April 1951 shows her 5-inch battery at work in a live fire shoot-ex, perhaps one of the last such videos from an Essex-class carrier, along with footage of her escort, the light cruiser USS Juneau (CL-119), and NP-marked F4U-4 Corsairs and AD Skyraiders conducting fight ops.

She then shifted back to Korea, where she was once again in the thick of close air support. Over the next two months, CVG-2 suffered 13 aircraft lost and 139 damaged (some repeatedly) with an average of 103 sorties scheduled per day.

Check out these figures for those two months, including 2 million rounds of ammunition and more than 15,000 bombs– not including 1,973 napalm tanks:

Bomb-loaded F4U-4 Corsairs of VF-24 from Carrier Air Group (CVG) 2, on the flight deck of USS Philippine Sea (CV-47), April–June 1951. Robert L. Lawson Photo Collection UA 410.05

By the time Philippine Sea made it back to the West Coast on 9 June, she had spent 264 days underway and only 76 in port, steaming 108,000 miles. Her airwings had logged more than 12,000 combat sorties, dropping more than 7,000 tons of aviation ordnance.

She set a record of sorts from Yokohama to San Francisco, steaming the distance in 7 days, 13 hours, averaging 25.2 knots.

USS Philippine Sea (CV-47). Passes under the Oakland Bay Bridge as she arrives at San Francisco, California, upon her return from the Korean War zone, circa 9 June 1951. Crewmen on the flight deck are spelling out “CVG 2” in honor of her air group. NH 97322.

Following six months of much-needed rest and refit, Philippine Sea was headed back to Korea with CVG-11 once again, pulling stumps on New Year’s Eve 1951 for a seven-month, one-week cruise.

This cruise saw the arrival of the new and much more advanced Panther photo reconnaissance planes, which replaced the venerable F4U-4P photo Corsairs. Its K438 camera loaded with K17 aerial film in A-8 magazines, they captured miles of prints with one batch of 39 sorties generating 28,745 10x10s, keeping the ship’s photo lab guys busy. For BDA during strikes, WWII-era K-25 camera pods carrying 55-exposure reels were loaded on the occasional Corsair and Skyraider.

USS Philippine Sea (CV-47), LT Zack Taylor of VC-61 Det. M gets ready for a reconnaissance flight over enemy territory while the carrier was operating off Korea in April 1952. His plane is a Grumman F9F-2P photo version of the Panther jet fighter. Note the camera window in the plane’s nose, and Lt. Taylor’s rare, ridged Type H-4 helmet. The F9F-2P removed the four 20mm cannons of the standard F9F-2 and replaced them with photographic equipment. Only 36 F9F-2Ps were made. NH 97114

CVG-11’s second war cruise on the Philippine Sea was more of the same, a daily slog at low level. A war of 100-pound GP bombs and 20mm/.50 cals targeting trucks and railcars from 500 feet.

Korea F9F-2 Panthers of VF-191 “Satans Kittens” return to carrier USS Princeton (CV-37) background is USS Philippine Sea (CV-47)

A sample of one week:

Philippine Sea returned to San Diego on 8 August 1952.

While stateside, our carrier was redesignated an attack carrier, CVA-47, on 1 October 1952, along with most of her class.

Headed back to Korea on 15 December 1952, she carried CVG-9 once again, her original airwing from her 1947 Caribbean and first (1948) Med cruise. By that time, CVG-9 had traded in its Bearcats, Avengers, and Helldivers for two squadrons of Panthers, one of Corsairs, and one of Skyraiders.

This cruise saw the use of unmanned platforms, specifically UF-tail coded F6F-5K Hellcat drones of VU-3K, used in attacks against enemy targets. These typically carried a 2,000-pound bomb centerline and a TV pod slung under their wings, allowing an AD-2Q Skyraider to fly these early cruise missiles into their targets.

Drone F6F-5KD Hellcats assigned to VU-3K launch from USS Philippine Sea (CVA 47) 17 June 1953. These aircraft had bright yellow wings with red bands. NNAM

An F6F-5K Hellcat drone assigned to VU-3K is pictured on the flight deck of USS Philippine Sea (CVA 47), 18 June 1953. NNAM

She kept fighting right up to the ceasefire.

In the three days (24-26 July) before the ceasefire, the three TF77 carriers maxed out on sorties, running an amazing 72-hour total of 1,839 aimed at damming up the Chinese/Nork forces, then on the offensive. USS Princeton’s air group flew 159/142/164 sorties in those three days, and USS Lake Champlain flew 150/148/166. However, Philippine Sea bested them both by hitting 167/166/161, her highest three-day run, and perhaps the highest of any Essex-class carrier in any campaign as far as I can tell.

In the 12 days between 15-27 July 1953, CVG-9 logged 1,098 sorties, with its two Panther squadrons, VF-91 and VF-93, running 283 each, compared to the Corsair unit (VF-94)’s 196 and the AD unit (VA-95)’s 203, showing that the once very finicky F9F had hit its stride. By the time combat operations ended, CVG-9 had chalked up 7,243 combat sorties in its seven months off Korea, with over half, 3,754, attributed to its Panthers. Individual pilots logged 16,841 hours on the cruise, averaging almost 150 per aviator.

CVG-9’s tally sheet for the January-July 1953 cruise:

The close air support was a meat grinder, with 24 aircraft lost (including 21 ditchings and crash water landings) and 38 damaged beyond shipboard repair.

USS Philippine Sea (CVA-47), Lt(JG) Hugh N. Batten lands his damaged Grumman F9F-2 Panther after it was hit by enemy anti-aircraft fire. The photo is dated 12 July 1953– just 15 days from the Armistice Agreement. This plane’s nose covering has been entirely torn away. 80-G-484863

RADM Apollo Soucek, ComCarDivThree flashed, “The hard pushes delivered by Philippine Sea and her air group will long be remembered as a splendid example of fighting Teamwork under difficult conditions. My congratulations on your performance and best wishes for continued success.”

By 30 July 1953, Philippine Sea had logged her 59,553th arrested landing since her commissioning in 1946.

She arrived back on the West Coast on 14 August 1953.

Too late for WWII, the Philippine Sea received nine battle stars for Korean service.

Continued service

Philippine Sea made two further “non-shooting” deployments to the uneasy Western Pacific with a mix of Panthers and Skyraiders of CVG-5 (12 March-19 November 1954) and one with the F9F-6 Cougars and Skyraiders of the short-lived ATG-2 (1 April-23 November 1955).

The 1954 cruise saw her air wing participate in what was later dubbed the “Hainan Incident.” While responding to the downing of a British Cathay Pacific Airways civilian DC-4 en route from Bangkok to Hong Kong by Chinese Lavochkin La-11 fighter aircraft, two PLAAF La-7 fighters unsuccessfully tried to jump the U.S. Navy aircraft and were in turn splashed by Philippine Sea Skyraiders from VF-54.

As noted by Time, “Radio Beijing announced that two American fighters had made piratical attacks on two Polish merchant ships and one Chinese escort vessel, but failed to mention the LA-7s.”

(Kodachrome) USS Philippine Sea (CVA-47) makes a sharp turn to starboard, while steaming in the Western Pacific with the Seventh Fleet, 9 July 1955, with ATG-2 embarked. Photographed by PH1 D.L. Lash. 80-G-K-18429

(Kodachrome) USS Philippine Sea (CVA-47) view looking aft from the carrier’s island, showing AD Skyraiders and F9F Cougars of ATG-2 parked on the flight deck. Photographed on 19 July 1955, while operating with the Seventh Fleet. Photographed by PH1 J.E. Cook. 80-G-K-18466

(Kodachrome) USS Philippine Sea (CVA-47) refueling from USS Platte (AO-24), while operating with the Seventh Fleet, 19 July 1955. USS Watts (DD-567) is also taking on fuel from Platte. Other ships present include two aircraft carriers, a cruiser, and several destroyers and replenishment ships. 80-G-K-18468

(Kodachrome) USS Philippine Sea (CVA-47) operating in the Western Pacific with the Seventh Fleet, 19 July 1955. 80-G-K-18427

Post-Korea, the Philippine Sea remained a “straight deck” Essex and did not undergo the dramatic SCB-125 angled flight deck reconstruction and modernization that 14 of her sisters did.

This left her in the club that included USS Franklin (CV-13) and Bunker Hill (CV-17) which never recommissioned after their 1947 mothballs, and fellow Korean War vets Boxer (CV-21), Leyte (CV-32), Princeton (CV-37), Lake Champlain (CV-39), Tarawa (CV-40), and Valley Forge (CV-45). The latter six axial deck carriers, along with Antietam (CV-36) which had an early angled deck fit in 1952 but no major modernizations, and Philippine Sea, were all rerated as anti-submarine carriers (CVS) in the mid-1950s, intended to operate a mixed wing of two squadrons of S2F Trackers and one of Sikorsky HSS-1 (SH-34) Seabats.

USS Philippine Sea (CVS-47) underway at sea, with eleven S2F aircraft of Anti-Submarine Squadron 37 (VS-37) flying overhead, July 1958. Six of these aircraft are still painted in the older blue color scheme. Photographed by Everett. NH 97323

USS Philippine Sea (CVS-47), August 1956. View showing the ship’s antenna after recent overhauling. Please refer to the chart that shows the name of the antenna with the use of a numerical system. 1. AN/URN3; 2. AN/CPH6; 3. AN/SRO7; 4. AN/SLR-2 DF; 5. UHF; 6. An/URO-4; 7. VHF; 8. An/SPS-6B; 9. An/SLR-2; 10. SG-6B; 11. AN/UPV-1A; 12. AP/SLR-2 DF; 13. AN/SLR-2 DF; 14. SC-5; 15. YE-3; 16. AN/SPN-8A; 17. AN/SPN-12; 18. Receiving Antennas; 19. AN/UPX-1A; 20. AN/SLR-2; 21. AN/SRK-4; 22. AN/SPS-8A; 23. AN/FMQ-2; 24. Receiving Antennas; 25. AN/URD-2; 26. AN/UPN-7; 27. LF-MF Transmitter Whip antennas Aft. Std.; 28. LF-MF Transmitter Whip, antennas Fwd. Stbd. 80-G-696528

Philippine Sea only made two West Pac cruises as a CVS, 5 January- 6 August 1957 and 13 January-15 July 1958, with the latter as part of Operation Oceanlink, which saw her cross-deck aircraft with the Australian carrier, HMAS Melbourne (R21).

USS Philippine Sea (CVS-47) refuels destroyer USS Orleck (DD-886) in May 1957 while on a West Pac cruise. Photo courtesy of the National Naval Aviation Museum, 1996.488.114.056.

As the mammoth Forrestal-class supercarriers entered the fleet in the late 1950s, eight high-mileage SCB 27A/125 Essex-class angled deck conversions were redesignated as CVS to replace the original unconverted axial deck ships. This also allowed these new CVS models to carry A-4 Skyhawks and F-8 Crusaders in a pinch, such as on USS Intrepid (CVS-11)’s three Vietnam cruises in 1966-68, where she carried three squadrons of A-4s and one of Skyraiders augmented by a few F-8/RF-8s for good measure.

This move proved the final nail in the coffin for the Philippine Sea. While a few unconverted sisters, such as Boxer, Princeton, and Valley Forge, caught amphibious helicopter ship (LPH) conversions and lingered on into the 1960s, that was generally a wrap for these old warriors.

Decommissioned 28 December 1958, marking a busy 12-year career, Philippine Sea was berthed with the Reserve Fleet at Long Beach. She was administratively redesignated a training carrier (AVT-11) on 15 May 1959 and struck from the Navy List on 1 December 1969.

Jane’s 1960 Essex class listing the 17 “non-improved” members, PS included

Sold to Zidell Explorations, Inc. of Portland, Oregon, on 23 March 1971, about 600 tons of her armor plate were put to use at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory for use in proton accelerator experiments. Plates from four other Korean War CVS sisters (Antietam, Bunker Hill, Lake Champlain, and Princeton) are also in use there.

Epilogue

Today, little of our carrier remains outside of Fermi Labs.

The NHHC has her Korean War action reports digitized online. Meanwhile, NARA has several videos and images.

At least two of her Korean War skippers, Ira Earl Hobbs (USNA 1925) and Paul Hubert Ramsey (USNA 1927), later rose to the rank of Vice Admiral. Both had started their careers as battleship men, then were minted as aviators and were highly decorated in WWII.

Hobbs and “Sheik” Ramsey. From battlewagons to WWII aviators against the Rising Sun, they went on to command the Philippine Sea during Korea, then retire as vice admirals.

The Navy recycled the name of our carrier for a Flight II Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser, CG-58, commissioned in 1989. She has carried a few relics of her namesake with her all this time.

USS Philippine Sea (CG 58) departed Naval Station Norfolk for her final scheduled deployment, a quiet cruise to the U.S. 4th Fleet area of operations, on 20 January 2025. She is slated to decommission later this year, wrapping over 35 years of service, a stint some three times as long as her flat-topped predecessor. She slung TLAMs in numerous wars, scattered the cremated remains of Korean War pilot Neil Armstrong at sea, and recently battled the Houthis.

Norfolk, Va. (January 20, 2025) The Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Philippine Sea (CG 58), departs from Naval Station Norfolk to deploy to the U.S. Southern Command Area of Responsibility (USSOUTHCOM AOR) to support maritime operations with partners in the region, conduct Theater Security Cooperation (TSC) port visits, and support Joint Interagency Task Force South (JIATF-South) to deter illicit activity along Caribbean and Central American shipping routes. (U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Evan Thompson/Released)

Perhaps a new LHA could carry the name forward.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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Warship Wednesday, August 13, 2025: A Long-Lived Tyne Built Ship

Posted on August 13, 2025 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Warship Wednesday, August 13, 2025: A Long-Lived Tyne Built Ship

Photo: Naval History and Heritage Command NH 58988

Above, we see the fine Armstrong-built Asama-class armored cruiser Tokiwa of the Imperial Japanese Navy photographed in 1899 with a bone in her teeth.

Amazingly, this indomitable warship would serve nearly a half-century and be lost during her fifth war for the emperor, some 80 years ago this week.

The Asamas

The late 19th/early century Imperial Japanese Navy was very European in construction. Ten out of ten battlewagons carrying the Rising Sun flag against the Russians in 1904 were built in the yards of Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Vickers in Britain.

Of the Emperor’s armored cruisers, Izumo and her sister Iwate came from Armstrong, Yakumo hailed from the German yard of AG Vulcan, Kasuga and Nisshin from Ansaldo in Genoa, and Azuma from Ateliers et Chantiers de la Loire in France. Ordered in 1897 alongside these six cruisers were another pair based on an improved design of the Chilean O’Higgins.

The Chilean armored cruiser O’Higgins was built in 1896-98 at Armstrong to the design of Sir Philip Watts for £700,000. The 8,500-ton 412-foot long three-piper could make 21.6 knots on a 30-boiler (16,250 ihp) plant and carried four 8″/40s and 10 6″/40s. She had a Harvey nickel steel armor belt that ranged from 5 to 7 inches, while her conning tower was protected with 8. She remained in Chilean service until 1933.

Sir Philip tweaked the one-off O’Higgins design to add more armor protection (2,100 tons all told) and horsepower to carry it all. Instead of a belt that maxed out at seven inches and the eight-inch CT, this new design rocked as much as 14 inches. It also used extensive compartmentalization with 163 watertight compartments, 32 of which were in the double bottom. This added 1,200 tons to the displacement and stretched the hull to 442 feet. The powerplant dropped the forest of 30 boilers seen on the Chilean ship for a dozen larger single-side cylindrical boilers and upped the ihp to 18,000 to keep the same (or better) speed.

Paid for out of a Chinese indemnity given to Japan as part of the spoils of the 1895 war, these two ships would be named Asama and Tokiwa, after traditional regions in the Empire.

The weaponry would also be stepped up a bit from O’Higgins.

While the Chilean ship carried four EOC 8″/40 Pattern T guns in single mounts, the new Asamas would carry two pairs of improved EOC 8″/45 Pattern U (41st Year Type in Japanese service) guns, the same type which would go on to be carried by the rest of Japan’s armored cruisers as well as the post Russo-Japanese War domestically built Ibuki-class armored cruisers. These were protected by six inches of armor over their gun houses and were serviced by electric hoists from the magazines.

Asama photographed during a visit to an American port between the wars. Note her 8″/45 forward turret. 80-G-188753

Asama photographed during a visit to an American port between the wars. Note her 8″/45 stern turret. 80-G-188754

The secondaries on the Asamas were also beefed up, from the 10 6″/40 QF EOCs on O’Higgins in five-inch turrets and casemates to 14 guns with 10 in casemates and four in single shielded mounts. Tertiary anti-boat armament included a dozen 3″/40 Armstrongs and seven 47/30 2.5-pounder Hotchkiss (Yamauchi) guns. Torpedo batteries included a 450mm tube in the bow and four on the beam. Likewise, two of her steam punts could be equipped with spar torpedoes.

The Asama class, 1914 Janes listing.

Meet Tokiwa

Laid down on 6 January 1898 at Elswick as Yard No. 662/armored cruiser No. 4 (her sister Asama was No. 661), Tokiwa took to the water on 6 July 1898 and was commissioned on 19 May 1899. She made a mean 23 knots on her speed trials.

Tokiwa conducting full power trials, Spring 1899, North Sea off Sunderland

On 19 May 1899, with Captain (later Admiral) Dewa Shigeto in command, Tokiwa left Britain for Yokosuka, completing the 11,000nm voyage in a handy 57 days– a heck of a shakedown cruise.

IJN Tokiwa Navy and Army Illustrated Feb. 10 1900

War (with China)!

Rated as a first-class cruiser, Tokiwa was dispatched on 19 June 1900 to join the Eight-Nation Alliance naval forces in Chinese waters during the Boxer Rebellion. While arriving around the time of the assault against the Taku Forts, she was not used in the assault there, standing by offshore with a dozen other large, allied vessels as smaller gunboats closed in for the work.

However, landing forces from the Japanese ships sent 329 armed sailors ashore to help storm and garrison the forts.

While 54 Japanese marines were dispatched as part of Admiral Seymour’s overland relief expedition to Peking, I can’t say whether any of those came from Tokiwa.

Admiral Seymour’s expedition: Japanese troops on the march by H. M. Koekkoch

Tokiwa returned to Kure on 20 August.

War (with Russia)!

Clustered with the armored cruisers Izumo, Iwate, Azuma, Yakumo, and Asama, along with the dispatch boat Chihaya, Tokiwa formed the 2nd Squadron under VADM Kamimura in 1903. This force proved a key left hook to the right cross of Togo’s 1st Squadron during the war against the Tsar.

Captain Shigetaro Yoshimatsu became Tokiwa’s eighth skipper on 19 January 1904. A professional officer who graduated from the Naval Academy in 1880, he had studied in France and England and fought as a gunnery officer on the second-class cruiser Yoshino during the 1894 war with China. He had been XO on Tokiwa’s sister Asama when she took part in the 1902 Spithead naval review celebrating the coronation of King Edward VII.

Tokiwa. Copied from “War Vessels of Japan,” circa 1905. NH 74381

Three Meiji-era armored cruisers at work. Iwate (left), Tokiwa (center), and Yakumo (right), from the 2nd Fleet during the late Russo-Japanese War. Of note, the 9,500-ton Yakumo was the only large German-built warship in the Japanese Navy, delivered in 1900 by AG Vulcan Stettin. Both Iwate and Tokiwa were built at Armstrong on the Tyne.

Offshore for the initial torpedo boat attack on the sleeping Russian anchorage at Port Arthur on 8 February 1904, she managed a few 8-inch shells lofted when the Russians sortied out the following morning, and thus began the blockade and later siege of that fortress city that would prove the hub on which the conflict revolved.

IJN Tokiwa in 1904

It was off that port that Tokiwa almost captured the Russian destroyer Steregushchiy in March and participated in rebuffing Marakov’s 13 April sortie that ended in his death upon the sinking of his flagship via mines.

Japanese destroyer IJN Sazanami, attempting to tow a sinking Steregushchiy, was lost in action against two Japanese cruisers, while Reshitel‘nyi managed to escape. In the fight, Reshitel‘nyi lost one killed and 16 injured– a third of her crew. William Lionel Wylie painting.

The Russian battleship Petropavlovsk sinks as Adm. Makarov stands bravely on deck. Tokiwa witnessed the scene. Japanese woodblock print

Relieved from the Port Arthur blockade in the summer 1904 to chase down a raiding trio of Russian armored cruisers (Rossia, Gromoboi, and Rurik) out of Vladivostok, Tokiwa, along with the armored cruisers Iwate, Izumo, and Azuma and protected cruisers Takachiho and Naniwa, finally clashed with the Russian cruisers off Ulsan on the early morning of 14 August. With the Russians outnumbered six hulls to three, the six-hour swirling artillery duel turned brutal, and Rurik was sunk, taking some 200 of her crew with her, while the severely damaged Rossia and Gromoboi managed to limp away.

Tokiwa landed some blows against Rossia and was slightly damaged by return fire, with three of her crew injured.

Rossia at Vladivostok after the Battle off Ulsan in August 1904. She suffered nearly 200 casualties from 28 hits delivered by the Japanese squadron, with a few of these coming from Tokiwa. Knocked out of the war for two months, her raiding career was capped.

Then, following the collapse of Port Arthur, came the Valkyrie ride of VADM Rozhestvensky’s 2nd Pacific (1st Baltic) Squadron through the straits of Tsushima. Tokiwa was there.

Battle of Tsushima. May 27, 1905, North of Oki Island. Following the 1st Squadron under the flag of Togo on Mikasa, a photograph was taken from the 2nd Squadron flagship Izumo, showing Azuma, Tokiwa, Yakumo, Asama, and Iwate turning to port at 15 knots.

During the battle, Tokiwa and her squadron engaged the Russians several times, most notably in the destruction of the 14,000-ton Peresvet-class battleship Oslyabya.

Death of the battleship Oslyabya in the Battle of Tsushima. (by Vasily Katrushenko)

When the smoke cleared, Tokiwa had suffered eight hits, mostly from smaller caliber shells, resulting in 15 casualties.

Post-war, she was a darling of the fleet, being chosen to escort Crown Prince Yoshihito (later Emperor Taisho) on his tour of Yamaguchi and Tokushima Prefectures in 1908.

IJN Tokiwa postcard 1908

The same year, she participated in the 1908 Kobe Fleet Review.

The 1908 Kobe Fleet Review (November 18th). From the left of the image: battleships Katori and Kashima, armored cruisers Izumo, Iwate, and Tokiwa, protected cruisers Soya (ex-Russian Varyag), Kasagi, and Chitose; from the right of the image: battleships Mikasa, Fuji, Asahi, Sagami (ex-Russian Peresvet), and Shikishima. A fleet review of the grand maneuvers attended by 48 warships, 52 destroyers, and 11 torpedo boats.

In 1910, both Asama and Tokiwa had their well-worn set of British boilers replaced with 16 more efficient 16 Miyabara boilers as part of a general mid-life refit.

War (with the Kaiser)!

When the Great War kicked off, British-allied Japan soon got involved in the rush to capture (and keep) Germany’s overseas colonies. As part of this, on 18 August 1914, she was assigned to the 4th Squadron along with Iwate and Yakumo, part of VADM Sadakichi Kato’s 2nd Fleet, detailed to blockade and seize the German treaty port of Tsingtao, an operation that began on the 27th of that month and stretched into early November.

A Japanese lithograph, showing the Japanese fighting German troops during the conquest of the German colony Tsingtao (today Qingdao) in China between 13 September and 7 November 1914. Via National Archives.

She was then dispatched to scour the West Pacific– along with other allied assets– in the attempt to run down Graf Spee’s East Asiatic Squadron. Once Spee was sent to the bottom along with most of his squadron in December and the last of his cruisers (SMS Dresden and the Hilfkruezer Prinz Eitel Friederich) were accounted for the following March 1915, the pressure eased and our aging cruiser was allowed to spend the rest of the war in a series of more pedestrian tasks, including a series of Grand Maneuvers.

Battleships Mikasa, Hizen, Shikishima, armored cruisers Izumo, Tokiwa, Azuma, and Nisshin during the Taisho 4 Grand Maneuvers in the Hyuga Nada Sea on October 25, 1915

Tokiwa photographed sometime after the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 and 1920.Courtesy of Mr. Tom Stribling, 1986. NH 101759

NH 58987

NH 58681

Note the “mum” on her bow as she is clustered near U.S. Naval vessels. NH 58679

IJN Tokiwa, French postcard

She became active in a series of globetrotting training cruises, carrying naval academy cadets. This included the 44th class cadet training cruise to the U.S. with Yakumo from 5 April to 17 August 1917. A second cadet training cruise for the 46th class with Azuma from 1 March to 26 July 1919 jogged south to Australia. Azuma and Tokiwa teamed up for a third cruise with the 47th class that roamed to the Mediterranean from 24 November 1919-20 May 1920.

Montage, Practice Squadron with cruisers Tokiwa and Yakumo, 1917, during the cadet training cruise to the U.S. R.A. Iwamura. NH 111677

Ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, Katori, Izumo, Iwate, Tokiwa, Asama, 1919, with HIH Crown Prince Hirohito aboard Katori off Korea. San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive.

Treaty rebuild

By 1921, both Asama and her sister Tokiwa, too slow for fleet operations, were reclassified as coast defense vessels. At the same time, many of Japan’s old armored cruisers were disarmed as part of the Naval Limitation Treaties, and their weapons were reduced.

The 8″/45s removed from Tokiwa and her fellow armored cruisers in the 1920s were recycled for use as coastal artillery, including two twin turrets at Tokyo Bay, four single guns mounted at Tarawa, and another four at Wake Island.

Between 30 September 1922 and 31 March 1923, Tokiwa was converted to a cruiser minelayer. In this, she landed her rear 8″/45 turret, her torpedo tubes, six of her 6″/40s, and all her obsolete 3-inch and 2.5-pounders. She then picked up accommodation for 300 mines on deck tracks for over stern sowing. A similar conversion was done to the old armored cruiser Aso (ex-Russian Bayan).

It was in this mine role that, on 1 August 1927, while training with mines in Saeki Bay, Kyushu, after returning from overseas service in China during the Shandong Intervention, Tokiwa suffered from an explosion that left 35 dead and another 65 injured. Through a combination of magazine flooding and assistance from nearby vessels, a complete disaster was avoided, and she was quickly repaired and returned to service.

The incident led to the redesign of the No. 5 Kai-1 mine to install safety features and a further redesign of several classes of new Japanese light and heavy cruisers to better handle damage.

October 1928, Kure. View from the stern of the battleship Nagato shows the Fuso directly ahead, with the mast and funnel of the Tokiwa, then a mine layer, visible in the background. To the left, the cruiser Nagara is moored in the foreground, with the Furutaka behind it

War (with China, again)!

Once repaired, Tokiwa spent most of the next decade in Chinese waters and frequently landed her sailors and marines for strongarmed use ashore, especially after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931.

Cruiser Tokiwa Rikusentai 2nd Co Cmd Plat in front of the Japanese Middle School (their HQ) on Range Rd, Shanghai, February 11th, 1932, photo by Austin Adachi

CM Tokiwa. View taken at Shanghai, China, 1932, by G.J. Freret, Jr., probably from USS Houston (CA-30). NH 51896

Cruiser minelayer Tokiwa. Passing USS Houston (CA-30), at Shanghai, China, on the Whangpoo River. Photographed by G.J. Freret, Jr., in February 1932. Note the ship’s boat being hoisted aboard by crane. NH 51877

She returned home in 1937 to have her 16 Miyabara boilers, which had been installed in 1910, replaced by 8 Kampon boilers, reducing her speed to 16 knots. During this refit, she hung up the pretext of being a cruiser, and remaining 8″/40s and 6″/40s were removed. This allowed for her mine storage to be bumped to 500 “eggs”, and she had a couple of 40mm and 10 twin 25mm AAA guns installed. Likewise, by this time, her sister Asama had been converted into a training ship.

Tokiwa was on hand in Yokohama Bay with 98 other IJN ships in October 1940 for the largest (and last) grand fleet review in Japanese history.

Battleship Yamashiro and the Type 97 flying boat Yamashiro firing the Imperial salute at the 2,600th Anniversary Fleet Review are the heavy cruiser Suzuya, the armored cruiser Tokiwa, and the seaplane tender Chiyoda.

War (with the Allies)!

On 29 November 1941, Tokiwa sailed from Truk as part of Operation “GI,” the invasion of the British Gilbert Islands, which began on 8 December (Japan time).

The following January, Tokiwa was part of Operation “R,” -the Invasions of Rabaul, New Britain, and Kavieng.

She felt her first Allied sting in a carrier raid at Kwajalein in February from USS Enterprise. Damaged in four near misses from 500-pound bombs, she suffered eight killed and 15 wounded. This sent her to Sasebo for three months of repairs.

Dispatched to respond to the Marine Raiders’ sweep of Makin Island in August 1942, she managed to pull quieter duty for (most of) the rest of the war, narrowly avoiding torpedoes from USS Salmon (SS-182) in 1943 on her way back to the Home Islands. There, she led a minelaying squadron (the 18th Sentai) that sowed over 6,000 mines.

Striking a mine off the Hesaki lighthouse in the Kanmon Strait in April 1945, Tokiwa put into Sasebo again for repairs and added another 10 25mm guns, giving her a final fit of 30 of these weapons (some reports state 37). She also had depth charge racks and throwers installed along with a Type 3 sonar and was fitted with primitive (2-shiki 2-go and 3-shiki 1-go) radars.

After laying minefields in her old 1905 stomping grounds in the Tsushima Strait, she was ironically damaged by a B-29-sown aerial mine on 3 June 1945 off Maizuru harbor. The damage was slight, and she left Maizuru after makeshift repairs for Ominato. In all, between 24 January 1944 and 30 June 1945, she laid 17 series of anti-submarine minefields in Japanese waters.

Five elderly (and mostly disarmed) Russo-Japanese war era cruisers were still afloat in Japanese home waters in the last days of the war: the everlasting sisters Asama and Tokiwa, along with Yakumo, Izumo, and Iwate. All were pummeled by American and British carrier-borne aircraft strikes in late July and early August 1945, with three of the five damaged so extensively they bottomed out in shallow water.

Japanese cruiser Iwate seen sunk off Kure in October 1945. She had been sunk by air attacks on 24 July. Photo by USS Siboney (CVE-112). 80-G-351365

It was at Ominato that Tokiwa was caught by aircraft from USS Essex and Randolph on the afternoon of 9 August. She suffered at least four direct bomb hits and at least that many near misses, crippling the ship and killing or wounding half of her crew. Towed to shallow water off Cape Ashizaki, she was beached, and her crew attempted repairs.

With the end of hostilities, her crew was relieved on 20 September, and she was removed from the Naval List on 30 November.

All these battered old bruisers were unceremoniously scrapped shortly after the war, and only one, Tsushima veteran Yakumo, ever sailed again under her own power– as an unarmed repatriation transport to bring 9,000 Japanese troops home from KMT-occupied Formosa in 1946.

Asama (Japanese training ship, ex-CA) at Kure, circa October 1945. She was scrapped along with her sister and the rest of Japan’s legacy armored cruisers by 1947. Collection of Captain D.L. Madeira, 1978. NH 86279

Epilogue

Today, there are few remains of Tokiwa despite her nearly 50 years (okay, 46 years, 11 months, 17 days) of service.

She is remembered in a variety of scale models

Between 3 October 1898 and 20 September 1945, she had 52 skippers. At least seven of these became admirals.

These included her Russo-Japanese War skipper, Capt. Shigetaro Yoshimatsu, who went on to become a full admiral and the sixth commander of the Combined Fleet (Rengo Kantaishireichokan) in November 1915, a post he held through October 1917.

Shigetaro Yoshimatsu, seen as the skipper of Tokiwa in 1904 and then as Admiral of the Navy in 1915. He passed in 1935, at age 75, having spent 37 of those years in uniform.

Another was Naoma Taniguchi, who, after serving as Tokiwa’s skipper in 1916-17, rose to become a full admiral and commander of the Combined Fleet, then Chief of the Naval General Staff in the early 1930s. Head of one of the IJN’s more rational factions, he was instrumental in the ratification of the Treaty of London and later refused to send ships to respond to the Manchurian Incident. For this, he and his deputy officers were forced into retirement in 1933, leaving more hawkish officers in charge. He passed soon after.

Then there was the Viscount Ogasawara, who translated Mahan into Japanese in 1899, served as Togo’s aide, and wrote several popular works on the Russo-Japanese war at sea, one of which was turned into a movie in 1930. Ogasawara later served as the director of the school that educated then Crown Prince Hirohito and, moving to the retired list in 1921 as a vice admiral, became a naval advisor to the throne through November 1945.

VADM Viscount Naganari Ogasawara was Togo’s aide and Hirohito’s teacher and advisor, taking a break between the two to command Tokiwa in 1912. He passed in 1958, aged 90, having spent 56 years in service. He was one of the last surviving Tsushima vets.

In 1989, the Japanese government recycled the name of the old cruiser for a new Towada-class replenishment ship (AOE-423). The Hitachi SC built vessel almost immediately clocked in on one of modern Japan’s first overseas naval deployments– Desert Shield/Storm, now some 35 years in the rearview. The oiler delivered non-combatant material to Saudi Arabia as part of Japan’s contribution to the coalition effort and has been a familiar consort to allied vessels underway in the WestPac in the past few decades.

A starboard bow view of the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force fleet support ship Tokiwa (AOE-423) as she pulls away from the destroyer USS Decatur (DDG 73) (not shown) after an underway replenishment 15 March 2006. CTR3 Ryan C. Finkle, USN, Photo 330-CFD-DN-SD-06-16313 via NARA

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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Warship Wednesday, July 30, 2025: Ocean Station Savior

Posted on July 30, 2025 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Warship Wednesday, July 30, 2025: Ocean Station Savior

Above we see the 255-foot Owasco-class gunboat, U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Pontchartrain (WPG-70) during rough weather while slogging along in the Pacific, 8 January 1950.

Commissioned during the last days of WWII, some 80 years ago this week, “Ponch” had a lengthy career that included lots of dreary service on Ocean Stations (13 of those shifts during Korea), a Vietnam Market Time deployment, and numerous rescues at sea– including one that was spectacular.

The 255s

The Coast Guard got seriously ripped off by the White House in early 1941 when 10 of its best (and newest) blue water cutters, the entire 250-foot Lake (Chelan) class, were transferred to the Royal Navy as part of FDR’s “Bases for Destroyers” deal. These hardy 2,000-ton turbine-powered low-mileage cutters became Banff-class sloops in RN service and saw lots of service, with three lost during the war and a fourth damaged so badly she was scrapped in the Philippines.

A splendid example of the 250-foot Lake class cutters, USCGC Pontchartrain (WPG-46) and USCGC Chelan (WPG-45), seen on 30 September 1937. Under the canvas awnings are a 5″/51 forward, a 3″/50 aft, and two 6-pounders.

By 1942, with it apparent that the old Lakes would likely never return from overseas (at least not for years) and the U.S. firmly in the war, the USCG moved to build a replacement class of ten ships. To this number was added another three hulls, to finally replace the ancient cutters Ossipee (165 ft, circa 1915), Tallapoosa (165 ft, circa 1915), and Unalaga (190 ft, circa 1912).

Originally a 312-foot design that was a simplified follow-on to the service’s seven well-liked turbine-powered 327-foot Treasury (Campbell) class cutters, which had a provision to carry a JF-2/SOC-4 floatplane as well as two 5″/51s and ASW gear, this soon morphed into a much more compact 255-foot hull with an even heavier armament. The 255-foot oal guideline (245 at the waterline) conceivably allowed them to pass through the then 251-foot third lock of the Welland Canal in Ontario if needed, so they could operate on the Great Lakes at some future date.

The 1945 outfit for the class was twin 5″/38 DP mounts fore and aft, backed up by two quad 40mm Bofors, a Hedgehog ASWRL, two depth charge racks, and six K-guns. Overloaded already in such an arrangement, there was never a floatplane fitted, although the superstructure was divided into two islands to allow a midship location on deck for such a contraption.

While most carried SR and SU radar sets, Mendota and Pontchartrain carried more updated SC-4 and SF-1 radar sets. They all carried a QJA sonar set and Mk 26 FCS.

255 class leader CGC Owasco (WPG-39) off San Pedro, California. 18 July 1945. Note the short hull, packed with twin 5″/38s fore and aft as well as ASW gear and Bofors mounts.

Powered by twin Foster-Wheeler 2 drum top-fired Express boilers and a 3,200 kVa Westinghouse electric motor driven by a turbine, these cutters were good for 19 knots but could sail 10,000nm at 10 knots economically on 141,755 gallons of fuel oil, giving them extremely long legs. Able to navigate in three fathoms of sea water, they could get into tight spaces.

As detailed by the USCG Historian’s Office:

The 255-foot class was an ice-going design. Ice operations had been assigned to the Coast Guard early in the war, and almost all new construction was either ice-going or icebreaking.

The hull was designed with constant flare at the waterline for ice-going. The structure was longitudinally framed with heavy web frames and an ice belt of heavy plating, and it had extra transverse framing above and below the design water line. Enormous amounts of weight were removed using electric welding. The 250-foot cutters’ weights were used for estimating purposes. Tapered bulkhead stiffeners cut from 12” I-beams went from the main deck (4’ depth of web) to the bottom (8” depth of web). As weight was cut out of the hull structure, electronics and ordnance were increased, but at much greater heights. This top weight required ballasting the fuel tanks with seawater to maintain stability both for wind and damaged conditions.

Eleven of the class were to be built on the West Coast at the Western Pipe and Steel Company in San Pedro, California, with the first, Sebago, laid down on 7 June 1943.

Cost per hull was $4,239,702 in 1945 dollars.

Meet “Raunchy Paunchy”

Our subject is the second USCGC Pontchartrain, following in the footsteps of a circa 1928 Lake-class cutter which, transferred to Royal Navy 30 April 1941 as part of the Bases for Destroyers deal, entered service as HMS Hartland (Y00) and, 17 convoys later, was sunk by the French during Operation Reservist, the effort to seize the port of Oran as part of the Torch landings 19 months later.

While there was one CSS Pontchartrain on the Mississippi (for obvious reasons) during the Civil War, the U.S. Navy has never used the name.

One of only two 255s built on the East Coast at the USCG Yard in Curtis Bay, Maryland (alongside sister USCGC Mendota, WPG-69), WPG-70 was the final Owasco-class cutter laid down by hull number, but far from the last completed. They were part of the initial six ships laid down in 1943, while the other eight all had their keels laid down in 1944. Both WPG-69 and WPG-70 were laid down on 5 July 1943.

Launched as Okeechobee on 29 February 1944, our subject was commissioned as USCGC Pontchartrain on 28 July 1945. Had the war not ended six weeks later, she surely would have made for the Panama Canal by Halloween and seen service in the Pacific with her sisters.

Eight of her 12 sisters were completed after VJ Day.

USCGC Pontchartrain (WHEC-70) Aug 1945

USCGC Pontchartrain (WHEC-70) Sep 1945. Note the split superstructure

Not destined to join Halsey for the push on Tokyo, Pontchartrain instead clocked in on a series of more than a dozen Ocean Stations, mid-way navigation, weather, and SAR points set up post-war to help trans-oceanic flights stay on path. Usually a three-week deployment, it was thankless and, on the very beamy 255s, sometimes one heck of a ride punctuated by regular twice-daily weather balloon launches, 450-foot bathythermograph drops every four hours, and an unceasing radio check.

The cutters steamed an average of 4,000 miles per patrol, and, with transit time included, staffed the station for an average of 700 non-stop hours.

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.”

Pontchartrain sister, the 255-ft. U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Escanaba, based in New Bedford, Massachusetts, takes a salty shower bath in rough North Atlantic weather on ocean station ‘Delta’, 650 miles southeast of Newfoundland and east of Nova Scotia

For the record, as noted by Scheina, Pontchartrain stood the lonely guard on 61 occasions:

Atlantic, while stationed at Boston and Norfolk:

20 Oct-10 Nov 46 served on OS C
6-11 Nov 48 served on OS Easy
23 Jan-12 Feb 49 served on OS B
18 Mar-8 Apr 49 served on OS Fox
17 May-7 Jun 49 served on OS Easy
17 Jul-6 Aug 49 served on OS Dog

Pacific, while stationed at Long Beach:

*During the Korean War:

Feb-13 Mar 50 served on OS Oboe
14 May-5 Jun 50 served on OS Peter
4-27 Aug 50 served on OS Nan*
6-26 Mar 51 served on OS Sugar*
13 Apr-5 May 51 served on OS Nan*
8-29 Jul 51 served on OS Nan*
21-29 Oct 51 served on OS Nan*
Nov-2 Dec 51 served on OS Nan*
23 Dec 51-13 Jan 52 served on OS Uncle*
23 Feb-16 Mar 52 served on OS Sugar*
5-25 Apr 52 served on OS Sugar*
29 Jun-20 Jul 52 served on OS Nan*
22 Sep-12 Oct 52 served on OS Nan*
28 Jan-18 Feb 53 served on OS Victor*
30 Mar-20 Apr 53 served on OS Sugar*
2-23 Jul 53 served on OS Uncle*
25 Oct-15 Nov 53 served on OS Uncle
28 Feb-10 Mar 54 served on OS Nan
25 Jul-15 Aug 54 served on OS Nan
17 Oct-7 Nov 54 served on OS Nan
19 Dec 54-10 Jan 55 served on OS Nan
15 May-5 Jun 55 served on OS Nan
18 Sep-8 Oct 55 served on OS Nan
12 Feb-4 Mar 5 served on OS November
8-28 Jul 56 served on OS November
30 Sep-16 Oct 56 served on OS November
21 Dec 56-13 Jan 57 served on OS November
13 May-9 Jun 57 served on OS November
22 Sep-13 Oct 57 served on OS November
17 Feb-8 Mar 58 served on OS November
13 Jul-3 Aug 58 served on OS November
14 Oct-4 Nov 58 served on OS Romeo
7-28 Dec 58 served on OS November
18 Jan-7 Feb 59 served on OS November
27 Sep-17 Oct 59 served on OS November
20 Feb-12 Mar 60 served on OS November
1 16 Jul-6 Aug 60 served on OS November
11-31 Dec 60 served on OS November
7-27 May 61 served on OS November
10-31 Mar 68 served on OS November
12 May-2 Jun 68 served on OS November
14 Jul-4 Aug 68 served on OS November
25 Aug-15 Sep 68 served on OS November
19 Jan-9 Feb 69 served on OS Victor
2-23 Mar 69 served on OS Victor
25 May-14 Jun 69 served on OS November
17 Aug-7 Sep 69 served on OS November
30 Nov- 18 Dec 69 served on OS November
22 Aug-12 Sep 71 served on OS Victor
3-24 Oct 71 served on OS Victor
8-28 Jun 72 served on OS Charlie
15 Aug-8 Sep 72 served on OS Delta
29 Jan-23 Feb 73 served on OS Echo
24 Apr-17 May 73 served on OS Delta
6-26 Sep 73 served on OS Charlie

During this service, her appearance changed significantly.

Laid up from 17 October 1947 to 5 September 1948 as the service ran into post-war budget cuts, she emerged from Curtis Bay with most of her armament removed. Gone were the twin 5-inchers, replaced by a single mount forward. Also deleted were her aft Bofors and all her ASW weapons save for Hedgehog. This nearly halved her complement from over 250 to 130.

USCGC Pontchartrain circa 1958. Note her single 5″/38 DP, with her open Hedgehog and last 40mm Bofors quad mount behind

Pan American Flight 6

It was while on Ocean Station November that our cutter, on 16 October 1956, stood by Pan American World Airways’ Flight 6, Boeing 377 Stratocruiser N90943, the “Sovereign of the Skies,” as she pulled off a water landing while en route from Honolulu to San Francisco.

The clipper, under the command of Pan Am Capt. Richard N. Ogg, with 31 souls aboard, was quickly running out of fuel with a windmilling No. 1 prop and a shutdown No. 4 engine, while still some 250nm out from the California coast.

Nearing OS November, Ogg radioed Pontchartrain, under CDR William K. Earle (USCGA 1940), who provided sea state and weather data to bring the clipper down easily.

The cutter then made ready for SAR and laid a trail of foam to mark the best course, a wet “runway” on the Pacific.

Coast Guard sailors aboard the United States Coast Guard Cutter (USCGC) Pontchartrain use foam from firehoses to lay down a “runway” for Flight 6

The clipper ditched less than 2,000 yards away, just after sunrise.

As noted by This Day in Aviation:

At 6:15 a.m., at approximately 90 knots air speed, the Boeing 377 landed on the water. A wing hit a swell, spinning the airplane to the left. The tail broke off, and the airplane began to settle.

Injuries were minor, and all passengers and crew evacuated the airliner. They were immediately picked up by Pontchartrain.

Captain Ogg and Purser Reynolds were the last to leave the airplane.

Twenty minutes after touching down, at 6:35 a.m., Sovereign of the Skies sank beneath the ocean’s surface.

A USCG film about the incident, including original footage.

Besides Pan Am Flight 6, Pontchartrain escorted the disabled American M/V John C (1950), assisted the disabled F/V Nina Ann (1955), assisted USS LSM-455 aground on San Clemente Island, the disabled yacht Gosling, and the disabled F/V Modeoday (1957), aided the disabled yacht Intrepid (1958), the F/V Carolyn Dee (1959), went to the assistance of M/V Mamie and rescued three from the ketch Alpha (1960), medevaced a patient from USNS Richfield (1961), and assisted the disabled F/V Gaga (1963).

She was a lifesaver.

She was also a fighter.

War!

A quarter-century after joining the fleet, Pontchartrain was finally sent to combat.

USCGC Pontchartrain (WHEC-70) Jan 1970. Note she has her “racing stripe.”

She was assigned to Coast Guard Squadron Three, working in the Vietnam littoral, from 31 March to 31 July 1970. While her 13 stints on wartime Ocean Stations during the Korean War allowed her crew to earn Korean Service Medals, Vietnam was going to be a deployment of naval gunfire support in the littoral, rather than one of quiet radio and weather watches.

USCGC Wachusett (WHEC-44), a 255-foot Owasco-class cutter, providing some blistering NGFS off Vietnam

By this time, the 255s sported SPS-29 and SPS-51 radars, and some had provision for ASW torpedo tubes abeam of the superstructures, the latter aided by SQS-1 sonars. As such, they had been changed from gunboats to the more friendly “high endurance cutters,” or WHECs.

Jane’s 1965 entry for the 255s

Joining CGRON3’s fifth deployment to Southeast Asia, Pontchartrain was the “old man” teamed up with four brand-new 378-foot gas turbine-powered cutters, USCGC Hamilton, Chase, Dallas, and Mellon. Whereas nine of her sisters had been sent to Vietnam previously, Pontchartrain was the last Owasco to pull the duty.

Pontchartrain NGFS Vietnam 1970 Photo by LeRoy Reinburg

While the individual figures for Pontchartrain aren’t available, the large cutters of CGRON3 conducted no less than 1,368 combined NGFS missions during Vietnam, firing a staggering 77,036 5-inch shells ashore. Keep in mind that most of these cutters only carried about 300 rounds in their magazines, so you can look at that amount of ordnance expended as being something like 250 shiploads.

Check out this deck log for one day in July 1970, with Pontchartrain firing 175 rounds by early afternoon against a mix of targets.

Powder and shell consumption was so high that some cutters would have to underway replenish or VERTREP 2-3 times a week while doing gun ops.

Pontchartrain receiving 5-inch powder cases UNREP Vietnam 1970 Photo by LeRoy Reinburg

At sea off Vietnam. Australian destroyer HMAS Hobart approaching a Mispillion class replenishment oiler USS Passumpsic (AO-107) as it is tanking a Coast Guard 311-foot HEC, likely CGC Pontchartrain. AWM Photo P01904.005 by Peter Michael Oleson.

Returning to Long Beach, Pontchartrain settled back into her normal routine and continued Ocean Station, LE, and SAR work, along with the occasional reservist cruise.

In April 1973, the Coast Guard announced that, in conjunction with the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam and the increased use of satellites, the OS program would be discontinued and 10 aging cutters retired– nine of them 255s. Sisters Sebago and Iroquois had already been put out to pasture.

Pontchartrain decommissioned on 19 October 1973, and by the following May, all her sisters had joined her. They would be sold for scrap before the end of 1974.

Epilogue

Some of Pontchartrain’s logs are digitized in the National Archives.

As for her skipper during the Pan Am Flight 6 rescue, CDR William K. Earle would go on to command the tall ship Eagle during Operation Sail—staged in concert with the 1964 World’s Fair—when 23 such ships assembled in New York Harbor. Retiring as a captain, he penned several articles for Proceedings, was executive director of the USGCA Alumni Association, and editor of the group’s journal. The Association maintains the annual Captain Bill Earle Creative Writing Contest in his honor. Captain Earle passed away in March of 2006.

Sadly, there has not been a third USCGC Pontchartrain.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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Warship Wednesday, July 23, 2025: The Phoenix of Heigun

Posted on July 23, 2025 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Warship Wednesday, July 23, 2025: The Phoenix of Heigun

U.S. Navy photo via Japanese Ministry of Defense

Above we see the Tachibana (improved Matsu) class destroyer Nashi (pennant 4810) sinking in the shallow waters off the coast of Heigun Island (Heigunjima) after a strike by carrier aircraft of the U.S. Navy’s TF 38, some 80 years ago this month, on 28 July 1945.

Never fear, for she would rise again.

The Matsu/Tachibana-class

In 1942, the Japanese admiralty sought to replenish their rapidly depleting ranks of Long Lance-wielding fast destroyers with a simplified “war finish” model, designated as the Type D.

Rather than the downright elegant pre-war-designed Type-B/Akizuki class (2,700 tons, 440 feet oal, 8×3.9″ guns, 4x25mm AAA, 4x610mm TT, 56 dc, 33 knots) the Type Ds sacrificed size, speed, and armament in the interest of getting as many “good enough” hulls in the water as possible.

The Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer Akizuki (Type-B/Akizuki-gata) on a trial run off Miyazu Bay. They had a 52,000 shp, three-boiler/two-turbine plant. Beautiful Long Lancers, only a dozen were completed.

As such, the Type Ds were much smaller, just 1,500 tons and 328 feet overall, but on a 2 boiler/2 turbine 19,000shp plant, could still make (almost) 28 knots. Further, while their gun armament was much reduced (three 5″/40 Type 89s in a 1×2 and 1×1 format) they carried many more AAA guns (two dozen 25mm Type 96s) than early war Japanese destroyers and still had room for 32 depth charges and a four-tube Long Lance battery, which gave them a big bite. The big size difference often leaves these ships rated today as destroyer escorts rather than destroyers.

IJN First-class destroyer Momi (Matsu-class) after turning over from the yard in 1944. Note the knuckle bow.

IJN First-class destroyer Momo (Matsu-class) June 3, 1944, on Miyazu Bay trials.

An even more simplified version of the Type D, known in the West as the Tachibana class after the first hull so modified, began to arrive in early 1945. While there were corners cut, such as the use of lower-grade steel, a simpler hull form, more basic engineering, and the omission of a high-angle fire control director, they did have a fit for Type 13 early-warning and Type 22 surface-search radars

IJN First-class destroyer Hatsuzakura (Tachibana-class), August 27, 1945, photo taken by a photo Hellcat from the USS Shangri-La during the ceasefire before VJ Day while the ship was in Sagami Bay. Note the straighter bow rather than the knuckle (chine) bow in the standard Matsu type. These ships ran a pair of Kanmoto Type 3 Hei steam turbines, and their sensors included 2-shiki 2-go and 3-shiki 1-go radars, as well as a 93-shiki sonar.

Tachibana-class destroyer underway off Yokosuka, Japan, post-war on 7 September 1945. Note her fully-depressed 5″ guns. NH 96189

While 154 Matsu-class tin cans were planned, the strangulation of Japan’s war industry at all levels ensured that never happened. As it was, the first, Matsu herself, was only completed in late April 1944, at a point where the endgame was already well on its way.

In the end, just 34 Matsus (including 14 Tachibana subvariants) were completed. Ten of those were lost during the war, and six were too severely damaged to be repaired.

The damaged IJN Tachibana-class destroyer Nire on October 16, 1945. She has been marked with her name in English by the Allied occupation commission. She was only active for about five months and was severely damaged at Kure on 22 June 1945 by USAAF B-29s. Never repaired, she was scrapped in 1948. 80-G-351884

Anywhoo…

Meet Nashi

Laid down on 1 September 1944 (Showa 19) at the Kawasaki Heavy Industries Kobe Shipbuilding Works, Nashi (Pear tree) was the second destroyer to serve under that name with the Imperial Japanese Navy. The first was a Momi-class destroyer completed in 1919 and, small (just 1,000 tons) and armed with older 21-inch torpedo tubes, was obsolete and scrapped in 1940.

One of her first officers assigned was Lt. Sakon Naotoshi, age 19. The second son of VADM Sakon Masayoshi, he joined the Navy as an ensign candidate in September 1943 and, after a quick class on the battleship Ise, shipped out on the Mogami-class heavy cruiser Kumano that November, joining his older brother Masaaki, who was already an ensign. When Kumano was sent to the bottom off Luzon on 25 November 1944, Naotoshi survived and made it back to Japan, made Nashi’s navigator in February 1945 while the destroyer was fitting out.

Nashi, post-delivery in early 1945.

War!

Delivered 15 March 1945, Nashi was assigned to the 11th Torpedo Squadron of RADM Takama Kan and sent to train in the relative safety of the Seto Inland Sea. However, due to scarce fuel supplies, most of this training was at anchor, and she only managed to get underway on a couple of short day trips. Originally tapped to participate in the Valkyrie ride that was Operation Ten-go, the final major Japanese naval operation of the war off Okinawa in April, there was not enough fuel to go around for Nashi and her utterly green crew, and she was left behind.

As described by navigator Sakon:

Nashi continued mainly anchorage training while at anchor. Many of the crew were older so-called national soldiers, but their skill level improved little by little through repeated training. Many of them could not swim, so I took them to a nearby beach and taught them how to swim. The first time was on Tencho-sai, April 29th, but the water was quite cold. I gathered the lookouts, anti-aircraft gunners, and machine gunners and taught them how to identify them, showing them pictures of Japanese and American aircraft. Since there were few opportunities to sail, the navigator had a lot of free time!

In May, she was assigned to the 11th TS’s 52nd Destroyer Division along with her sisters Sugi, Kashi, Kaede, Nire, and Hagi, and, shrugging off a B-29 attack, by early July was being refitted to operate a single Kaiten human torpedo over her stern.

By early July, Nashi and were placed under RADM Takeshi Matsumoto’s 31st Squadron, the Special Naval Corps that was being primed to resist the invasion of the Japanese Home Islands. However, the squadron only had an allotment of 850 tons of fuel oil for its 15 destroyers. As the Matsu-class each carried 370 tons of fuel, this was just a little over two ships’ worth. For this reason, only two ships, Nashi and sister Hagi, were to be in operation, and the rest were to be camouflaged near the coast, with the crews taking turns aboard Nashi and Hagi for training.

Speaking of training, Nashi served off Hikari as the target boat for Kaiten launched by the submarine I-157, then moved to Hirao, where she drilled in receiving and launching a Kaiten of her own (which she did four times in training). Then it was back to Hikari to serve as a target boat for I-36’s Kaiten.

On the 24th/25th July, while off the coast of Ushijima, Nashi was strafed by F6F Hellcats and, according to navigator Sakon, her crew downed two of them with the crew later picked up by a Navy PBY, which they saw from a distance but could not engage. This tracks with the large 1,700-plane strikes on Kure and the Seto Inland Sea done by Third Fleet’s (British) TF 37 and American TF 38 that occurred over 24-28 July and lost a combined 133 carrier aircraft but sank or damaged most of what was left of the Emperor’s Combined Fleet.

As detailed by NHHC:

In the four-day operation, TF-38 flew 3,620 offensive sorties (plus 672 British sorties from TF-37). U.S. aircraft dropped 1,389 tons of bombs, fired 4,827 rockets, and claimed 52 Japanese aircraft shot down and another 216 on ground. There were 170 Navy Crosses awarded, five of them posthumously. The cost was high: 101 U.S. Navy aircraft were downed and 88 men killed.

Speaking of which…

Caught while anchored off the north coast of Heigun Island on 28 July, Nashi was rocketed and strafed in attacks by 10 American carrier-born F6F Hellcats through the morning (NHHC credits her destruction to a bomb hit and a near miss). Her stern AAA magazine on fire and depth charges blowing purple flames, the ship’s captain, LCDR Toshio Takada (who previously had the light cruiser Noshiro as well as the destroyers Hatsuyuki and Kagero shot out from under him), ordered flooding which soon grew out of control and she capsized, taking 60 of her crew with her by 1400. Some 155 survivors were pulled from the water by local fishermen and transferred to her sister Hagi.

Even though the war only had a couple more weeks in it, LCDR Takada was quickly reassigned to command the 42nd Special Attack Squadron while his young navigator, Sakon, became navigator of the destroyer Hatsusakura.

Nashi was removed from the IJN’s List on 15 September 1945.

Of the 18 Matsu/Tachibanas still afloat and relatively intact on VJ Day, some were disarmed and used by their former crews to shuttle Japanese troops back home from their remaining garrisons overseas.

The disarmed former IJN First-class destroyer Tsuta (Tachibana-class), departing for Sasebo Shanghai as a reparation ship, July 26, 1947. Note the Tachibana class’s transom stern, which is different from the more destroyer-like stern on the standard Matsu class. Tsuta was later handed over to the Republic of China on 31 July 1947 in Shanghai, and, rearmed, served for another decade as ROCN Hua Yang,

The “magic carpet” service finished, the Allies divided up the remaining vessels. The Americans sank or scrapped five in 1947-48. The Brits did the same for the five they inherited at Hong Kong and Singapore. The Soviets put four into service and kept them in operation into the late 1950s. Meanwhile, Chiang Kai-shek’s KMT fleet was given four hulls and kept them around until as late as 1961.

The Pacific Red Banner Fleet’s TsL-24. The former Japanese Navy Matsu class destroyer Shii, she was captured in Japan post-war and handed over to the Soviets in 1947 at Nakhodka. She continued to fly a red flag until 1960.

Slow rebirth of the Japanese Navy

Post-war, even though the Japanese naval ministry was being dismantled, a “Sea Sweeping Department” staffed with former naval personnel began operations under the blessing of the U.S. Navy as early as 6 October 1945 to clear more than 55,000 Japanese defensive and 11,000 American offensive mines off the country’s coast. It was a vital mission, with more than 90 ships hitting mines off Japan in the decade after the war, resulting in over 2,700 casualties. Among those needless losses was the USS Minivet (AM-371), sunk four days after Christmas 1945, taking 31 bluejackets with her.

USS Minivet (AM-371) sinking after hitting a mine off Tsushima Island, Japan, during mine clearance operations on 29 December 1945. At right is a Japanese mine-destructor trawler moving in to rescue survivors. Photographed from USS Redstart (AM-378). 80-G-607204

Shuffled from the Demobilization Ministry to the Ministry of Transport, Japan’s Minesweeping Bureau eventually grew to some 300 vessels, mainly small converted trawlers and small left-over air-sea rescue boats, 85-foot Type 1 wooden-hulled subchasers (23 Chiozuru-class), and 108-foot Type 1 wooden-hulled picket boats (10 Ukishima class) armed with a single 13.2mm HMG ala the fictional Shinsei Maru and Kaishin Maru of “Godzilla Minus One” fame, crewed by 10,000 former IJN sailors and officers.

The fictional Shinsei Maru and Kaishin Maru of “Godzilla Minus One” were not too far off from reality.

By 1948, it became the civilian Maritime Safety Agency, a force that is today’s Japan Coast Guard, with the minesweepers part of the Sea Route Clearance Headquarters.

A group of Japan Maritime Safety Agency Ukishima-class minesweeping vessels leaving Kobe Port to take part in the agency’s first boat parade in October 1948. The three vessels from the front are the former Type 1 Patrol boats No. 84, No. 134, and No. 136. Note the agency’s blue and white compass flag flying from each, rather than a Hinomaru or Rising Sun Flag.

By October 1950, 20 MSA minesweepers were sent to assist the UN forces in the Korean War as part of the “Japanese Special Minesweeping Force (Nihon tokubetsu sōkaitai).” Growing to 43 vessels operating in five divisions and in tandem with RN and USN forces, for two months, they actively swept mines in Wonsan, Incheon, Haeju, Gunsan, Jinnampo, and other areas. One of these Japanese MSA sweepers, MS-14, hit an enemy mine during clearing operations at Wonsan and sank, with one fatality and 18 injuries.

By August 1952, the uniformed National Safety Agency Guard (Kei Bitai) was formed– later becoming the Safety Security Force and the Maritime Self-Defense Force, today’s Japanese navy– inheriting the mine mission. Organized at the time around 10 small minesweepers, the U.S. Navy quickly transferred eight 136-foot YMS-1-class minesweepers and four 138-foot Bluebird-class minesweepers to the force after the U.S. and Japan Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement was signed in March 1954, while the Japanese government began production of 30 assorted Atado, Yashiro, and Kasado-class minesweepers domestically.

However, the JMSDF needed some actual warships, rather than just a few squadrons of very lightly armed mine craft.

The U.S. Navy soon began loaning 18 beat-up WWII veteran Tacoma-class patrol frigates mothballed in Yokosuka to the budding JMSDF starting in 1953.

Dozens of ex-Soviet used Tacoma-class PFs were laid up at Yokosuka in January 1951. NH 97295

The first of these was ex-USS Ogden (PF-39) on 14 January 1953, which became JDS Kusu (PF-1), and so forth. In Japanese service, these became known as the “Tree” class due to their traditional arboreal names.

JMSDF Kusu (Tree)-class frigates, former Tacoma-class patrol frigates, complete with rebooted IJN Rising Sun Flag. These ships were in extremely poor condition when transferred, having been Lend-Leased to the Soviets late in WWII and only returned in 1949, then placed in storage at Yokosuka. Notably, footage of them in JMSDF service appeared in 1954’s original Godzilla. While loaned to the Japanese military for initially five years, they were all eventually transferred outright and continued to serve into the 1970s.

On 19 October 1954, the two well-worn Gleaves-class destroyer-minesweepers, ex-USS Ellyson (DMS-19) and Macomb (DMS-23), were transferred to Japan and became JDS Asakaze (DD-181) and Hatakaze (DD-182), respectively. They were followed the next June by two retired Bostwick destroyer escorts, ex-USS Amick (DE 168) and Atherton (DE-169), which entered service as Asahi and Hatsuhi.

ex-USS Ellyson Macomb as Asakaze (DD-181) and Hatakaze (DD-182)

Domestic Japanese warship production resumed in 1954 as well, with the twin 2,340-ton Harukaze-class destroyers, completed with U.S. weapons and sensors, laid down at Mitsubishi’s Nagasaki SY, followed by three small 1,000-ton Type B Akebono/Ikazuchi class destroyer escorts.

JDS Yukikaze (DD-102), one of two new Harukaze-class destroyers, is Japan’s first post-WWII domestically built warship. Commissioned in July 1956, she looks very American with her SPS-6 radar and Mk 12 5″/38 DP mounts, and radar-directed Bofors.

And then the JMSDF remembered the poor old Nashi.

Meet Wakaba

The local fishermen’s association in Heguinjima purchased the wreckage of the broken and long-submerged Nashi from the government in the early 1950s for its value in scrap (1.6 million yen) and to raise the hulk and move it offshore, where it would serve better use as a reef. With the blessing of the regional finance ministry, they hired the Hokusei Senpaku Kogyo Co., Ltd. to patch and lift the wreck intact.

ex-Nashi broke the surface on 21 September 1954.

Note the lifting pontoons

As, on inspection, she was found to be in particularly good condition, it was decided to offer the wreck back to the government. The patriotic fishermen’s association waived its ownership and absorbed the financial loss, while the JMSDF agreed to reimburse Hokusei Senpaku’s expenses and purchased ex-Nashi on 12 May 1955.

Towed to Zosen’s Kure shipyard on 10 September, the ex-Nashi was in very rough shape indeed and spent the next nine months in a 900-million-yen restoration and reconstruction.

Her boilers and turbines were restored, and it was found that, besides being incredibly noisy (a decade in saltwater does that), they could still generate about 14,000shp, good enough for 24 knots.

Her superstructure was rebuilt, adding a western-style mainmast. Her wartime Japanese ordnance and sensors were removed. She received a forward twin Mk 33 3″/50 DP mount, a 24-spigot Hedgehog Mk 10 ASWRL, two depth charge racks, and two K-guns, along with SO-series radar. This configuration was similar to that of the Type B destroyer escorts that had been ordered at around the same time, but with a much better gun (the Type Bs had older 3″/50 DP singles).

Thus rebuilt, the JMSDF renamed the finished product Wakaba (“young leaf’), following in line with a circa 1905 Kamikaze-class destroyer scrapped in 1929 and a 1934 Hatsuharu-class destroyer that was sunk in Leyte Gulf in October 1944.

Wakaba, Japanese destroyer, circa 1934, ONI files. The Hatsuharu-class destroyer that was sunk in Leyte Gulf in October 1944. NH 73051

Our ex-Nashi/new-Wakaba recommissioned on 31 May 1956 and was assigned to the Yokosuka-based 11th Escort Division. Her pennant/hull number, issued the following September, was DE-216.

While it is often said in Western circles that Nashi/Wakaba was the only ship of the Imperial Japanese Navy that became a part of the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force, that is not the case, as shown above with the small subchasers and picket boats turned minesweepers. However, Nashi/Wakaba was the largest former IJN vessel, and, from what I can tell, the only steel-hulled warship of the old fleet to rejoin the new one.

In September 1957, Wakaba entered Uraga Dock in Yokosuka to be refitted as a radar picket, basically a DER, and was given a fit of SPS-5 and SPS-12 radars when she emerged on 26 March 1958.

Additional sensor fits followed, and, during annual yard periods, she later picked up an SQS-11A sonar in February 1959 and an SPS-8B high-angle radar in December 1960, with a second mast installed aft.

JDS Wakaba, 1960 Janes

As a radar picket. JMSDF Wakaba class escort (DE261) Wakaba (ex IJN Matsu Tachibana class destroyer Nashi) at Uraga ship yard,1 Apr. 1962

In August 1962, Wakaba was used to evacuate children from Miyakojima during a volcanic eruption on the island.

Increasingly, she was used as a trials ship. In July 1962, she had the domestic NEC/Hitachi Type 3 sonar prototype installed for two years of testing. The set later evolved into the Type 66 OQS-3, which was the JMSDF’s go-to destroyer-mounted sonar during the late 1960s-early 1980s and was installed on the Cold War Minegumo, Takatsuki, Haruna, Yamagumo, and Chikugo classes.

The next year saw an experimental twin 21-inch torpedo tube installation on Wakaba. By 1963, she was withdrawn from further use as an escort and became a dedicated radar trials ship, her crew reduced from 206 to 170. She was listed as such in Jane’s.

JDS Wakaba, 1965 Janes

JDS Wakaba June 11, 1965 Tokyo Bay by Koji Ishiwata

On 24 July 1970, Wakaba was damaged in a collision with the tanker Daisan Chowa Maru in the Uraga Strait. A follow-on inspection in dry dock found that the tin can, built in a rush under less-than-ideal conditions in 1944-45, then sunk for a decade and patched back up, wasn’t worth continued investment. She was disarmed that fall at Sumitomo’s yard in Uraga and decommissioned and stricken in March 1971, and was disposed of via sale to the Furusawa Steel Works at Etajima.

Her SPS-12 air search radar was installed on the 4,100-ton training ship Katori (TV-3501) and remained in use until 1998.

Epilogue

By twist of fate, Nashi’s Imperial Japanese Navy weapons were a historic time capsule. The vast majority of WWII ordnance left in the country post-war was immediately demilitarized and scrapped. When the JMSDF reformed in 1954, as shown above, it did so with surplus USN hardware. Nashi’s decade underwater got her a pass, and once raised and taken to Kure, was carefully removed for display ashore.

Today, her forward 5″/40 Type 99 mount and Type 92 quad Long Lance torpedo tubes are on display at the JMSDF’s First Technical School in Etajima.

As for Nashi’s wartime navigator, Naotoshi Sakon, who lost both his brother (killed on the destroyer Shimakaze in 1944) and father (hung by the British at Hong Kong’s Stanley Prison in 1948 over the Bihar Incident), he was involved in demilitarization work after the war before joining the MSA in 1952 and the JMSDF in 1954. Promoted to captain, he was skipper of the destroyer Hatushi, then military attaché at the Embassy of Japan in Indonesia, commander of the 4th Escort Group, commander of the Training Squadron, director of the Training Department at the National Defense Academy of Japan, secretary-general of the Joint Staff Council, and director of the Joint Staff College, before retiring as a rear admiral in November 1979, capping a 36 year career. Staying active post-retirement, he worked for the Institute for Peace and Security Studies until his death at age 88 in 2013.

Sadly, the JMSDF has reused neither the names Nashi nor Wakaba.

There are a number of Tachibana-class destroyer model kits out there, complete with Kaiten, such as this 1/700 scale example from Pit-Road.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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Warship Wednesday, July 16, 2025: Flat Iron Warrior

Posted on July 16, 2025 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Warship Wednesday, July 16, 2025: Flat Iron Warrior

Above we see the Norwegian Gor-class gunboat-turned-minelayer KNM Tyr, all 102 feet long with a 4.7″/40 EOC gun forward and mines stowed aft. Downright ancient when the Germans came in 1940, she nonetheless proved a serious thorn in their side.

Norwegian Rendels

Starting in the 1870s, the Norwegians embarked on a program of modern warship construction, including steam engines and iron/steel hulls. Constructed locally at Carl JohansVærns Værft, Horten, they ordered eight 2nd class gunboats (Kanonbåt 2. kl) running between 250 and 420 tons, three first class gunboats of between 720 and 1,280 tons, a 1,045-ton steam corvette, an armed 350-ton minelaying “crane vessel” (Kranfartøy), and 14 assorted (45 ton-to-107 ton) 2nd class torpedo boats by 1902. Meanwhile, four 4,000-ton coastal battleships (Panserskibe) with 8.2-inch guns and up to 8 inches of armor would be ordered from Armstrong in the 1890s.

The eight 2nd class gunboats were all of the “flat iron” or Rendel type, a common format introduced by Armstrong in 1867 and built under contract for or copied by over a dozen fleets around the globe, including Norway’s neighbors Denmark and Sweden. Short and stubby, typically about 100 feet long with a 30-foot beam, they were flat-bottomed and drew a fathom or less, even under a full load. This hull form and their anemic compound steam engines only allowed for a speed in the 8-10 knot region, leaving these as defensive vessels ideal for guarding strongpoints and key harbors.

Armament was typically a single large (8-to-15-inch!) gun that could be lowered and elevated inside a shielded battery but not traversed, with the gunboat coming about to aim the horizonal.

The Norwegian Rendels included KNM Vale and Uller (1874, 1876, 250t); Nor, Brage, and Vidar (1897-1882, 270t); Gor and Tyr (1884, 1887, 289-294t); and Æger (1893, 420t). The first five carried a single Armstrong 26.67 cm (10.5-inch) RML forward and two 1-pounder Hotchkiss guns amidships.

Kanonbåt 2 kl Brage’s crew with her Armstrong 26,7cm RML.

Æger toted a more modern 8.3-inch Armstrong breechloader and three small (one 10-pdr and two 4-pdrs).

Æger. This 109-foot 420-tonner was the pinnacle of Rendel development. A one-off design, she was decommissioned in 1932 and her name recycled for a new Sleipner-class destroyer. NSM.000460

Gor and Tyr each carried a single breechloading Krupp 26 cm (10.2 inch) L/30 gun (606-pound shell, 192-pound charge, m/v 1805 ft/secs), the same model gun used on the 3,700-ton Japanese Armstrong-built protected cruisers Naniwa and Takachiho, backed up, like most of the other Norwegian Rendels, by two 1-pounder Hotchkiss guns.

Kanonbåt 2. kl. Gor (b. 1884, Karljohansvern Verft, Horten), note the large Krupp gun forward. NSM.000459

Japanese officers of the protected cruiser Naniwa posing near one of her 26 cm (10.2″) Krupp guns, 1885

Meet Tyr

Constructed as Yard No. 67 at Horten, Tyr was named for the one-handed Norse god of war who sacrificed his other hand to trap the wolf Fenrir. Laid down in 1884, she launched on 16 March 1887 and, fitting out rapidly, joined the Norwegian fleet shortly after.

Norwegian gunboat KNM Tyr from 1887

After 1900, with the looming formal separation from Sweden on the horizon and the prospect of a possible fight on their hands, the Norwegians upped their torpedo boat numbers rapidly to nearly 30 boats as their four new bathtub battleships arrived on hand from Britain. With that, the Rendels transitioned to more static support roles around this time, such as minefield tenders at strategic coastal fortifications and depot ships.

Around this time, most landed their obsolete main gun in exchange for something more contemporary, with most picking up a trainable QF 4.7″/40 Elswick 20-pounder behind a shield. This allowed the removal of their armored bow bulwark. Gor and Tyr also picked up a high-angle 76mm mount, while some of the older boats received a 47mm mount.

Gor as minelegger with mines aft.

After Norway got into the submarine business in 1909 with the small (128-foot, kerosine-engined) German-built KNM Kobben, Tyr became her tender until 1914.

K/B 2 kl Tyr as tender with Norwegian submarine Kobben alongside. MMU.944062

Tyr plan 1913, slick-decked as tender.

With the mine warfare lessons reverberating around the globe after the Russo-Japanese War, it became obvious how easy these broad-beamed shallow-draft craft could be converted to minelayers. This typically meant installing twin port and starboard rail tracks on deck running about 65 feet to the stern for easy planting either via boom over rail drop. On the Gor and Tyr, this allowed for as many as 55 mines stowed on deck.

Tyr as mine planter with her 4″/40 forward and two 37mm 1-pounders on her amidships bridge deck. Model in the Horten Marinemuseet.

Same model, note the mine arrangement. The model omits her 6-pounder 76mm gun.

mines on converted Norwegian 2c gunboat, pre-1940

Same as above

1929 Jane’s abbreviated listing of seven of the old Rendel gunboats, including Tyr. Note that Gor is still listed with her old 10-inch Armstrong. The larger Aegir was listed separately and was disposed of in 1932.

War!

September 1939 brought an uneasy time to Scandinavia. The remaining seven Norwegian Rendals, all by this time working as minelayers, bided their time and clocked in on the country’s Nøytralitetsvakt (Neutrality Watch).

Tyr was placed under the command of Orlogskaptein (LCDR) Johan Friederich Andreas Thaulow “Fritz” Ulstrup and stationed at the outer ring Lerøy Fortress overlooking the narrow Lerøyosen south of Bergen. Ulstrup, 43, was a career naval officer who was minted in the Great War and, having studied in France from 1922 to 1924, was serving as an instructor at the Naval Academy in Bergen when the war started.

Ulstrup, who doubled as fortress commander at Lerøy, also had a flotilla of five small armed auxiliary guard boats– Haus (135grt), Lindaas (138grt), Alversund (178grt), Manger (153grt), and Oygar (128grt)– and an old (circa 1898) torpedo boat, Storm, under his control. However, the fort itself, slated in 1939 to receive a 120mm gun battery with four old L/40 French-built Schneider weapons from the decommissioned border forts of Vardasen and Gullbekkasen pointing toward Sweden, instead only had a couple of 65mm Cockerill guns and searchlights.

On the early morning of 9 April 1940, just after midnight, two cruisers appeared off Bergen and flashed that they were the RN’s HMS Cairo and Calcutta, when in fact they were the German Kriegmarine’s light cruiser sisters Koln and Konigsberg, each with nine 15 cm SK C/25 (5.9-inch) guns, as the Gruppe 3 invasion force under RADM Hubert Schmundt. The cruisers were followed by 600 troops of the Wehrmacht’s 69th Infantry Division on the 1,800-ton gunnery training ship (Artillerieschulschiff) Bremse with four 12.8 cm SK C/34s, the torpedo boats Wolf and Leopard, and the E-boat tender Carl Peters shepherding S19, S21, S22, S23, S24, and naval trawlers Schiff 9 and Schiff 18.

Tyr, loaded with live and armed mines picked up at Laksevåg, was at the ocean-front fishing village of Klokkarvik, directly in the path of the Germans.

Klokkarvik harbor during the neutrality watch in 1939/40. In the picture, you can see a mine-armed KNM Tyr at anchor with a Draug-class destroyer at the quay. Note the Royal Norwegian Navy’s Hover M.F.11 floatplane in the foreground. (Source: Naval Museum Horten)

When the Germans began to creep into the fjord and with word of other sets of foreign warships in the Oslofjord, Ulstrup, who had been arguing with Bergan’s overall commander, RADM Carsten Tank-Nielsen all day on the 8th to be able to sow his mines, finally obtained clearance at 0030 for Tyr to hurriedly drop eight mines between Sotra and Lerøy, closing Lerøyosen. However, the 10-14-hour time-delay safety features on the magnetic contacts of the mines meant they were still dormant when the German cruisers passed harmlessly over them. Storm, meanwhile, fired a torpedo at Carl Peters at 0220 but missed.

Ulstrup closed to shore so he could place a quick phone call to Tank-Nielsen to apprise him of the situation, then returned to his minelayer to beat feet toward Bjørnefjord, playing a cat and mouse game with German E-boats and reportedly landing a hit from her 4.7-inch gun on one, receiving several 20mm hits from the Schnellbooten in exchange.

Further up the fjord, batteries at the now-alerted Norwegian inner ring Forts Kvarven (3 x 210mm St. Chamond M.98s) and Sandviken (3 x 240mm St. Chamond L/13s) opened up on the passing Germans at 0358 and soon landed hits on both Konigsberg and Bremse in the darkness of pre-dawn, leaving the former adrift with flooded boiler rooms. While Tyr, Ulstrup, and company managed to withdraw further into the fjords– laying another 16 mines in the Vatlestraumen approaches north of Bergen– Bergen itself fell to the German seaborne force just hours later.

However, the crippled Konigsberg would be hammered by a strike of RNAS Sea Skuas out of Orkney once the sun came up and caught five 500-pound bombs, sinking her in the harbor on 10 April.

Meanwhile, Tyr’s mines near Vatlestraumen sank the packed German HSDG freighter Sao Paulo (4977grt) on the evening of the 9th, sending her to the bottom in 260 feet of water.

The 361-foot Hamburg-Südamerikanische Dampschiffahrts-Gesellschaft steamer Sao Paulo was lost to one of Tyr’s mines.

In trying to sweep the mines, the German naval auxiliary Schiff 9 (trawler Koblenz, 437grt), and the auxiliary patrol boat Vp.105 (trawler Cremon, 268grt), along with two launches from Carl Peters, were lost on the 11th. Some sources also credit the German steamer Johann Wessels (4601grt), damaged on 5 May, and the German-controlled Danish steamer Gerda (1151grt), sunk on 8 May, as falling to Tyr’s eggs.

Withdrawing down the 114-mile-long Hardangerfjord, Ulstrup was appointed the commander of this new sector on 17 April and, moving ashore to Uskedal, left Tyr to her XO, the 47-year-old Fenrik (ensign) Karl Sandnes. Ulstrup, stripping the 37mm guns from Tyr and two 65mm guns from auxiliary gunboats, mounted them on flatbed trucks as improvised mobile artillery.

A 1937 Chevy flatbed with a 65mm L35 Hotchkiss under Ulstrup’s dirt sailors, April 1940

The next two days saw a series of skirmishes around Uskedal, in which Tyr closed to shore to use her 4.7-inch gun against German positions in improvised NGFS, coming close enough to get riddled by German 8mm rifle fire in return.

A naval clash on the 20th involving the advancing Germans in the Hardangerfjord saw Tyr, under the command of Sandnes, shell the German auxiliary Schiff 18, which beached at Uskedal to avoid sinking. The same battle saw the Norwegian Trygg-class torpedo boat Stegg sunk by Schiff 221 while the Norwegian armed auxiliary Smart was sunk by Bremse. The German minesweeper M.1 went on to capture five Norwegian-flagged steamers that were hiding in the fjord.

With Ulstrup and his force ashore getting ready to displace inland under fire, and Tyr trapped in the fjord, Sandnes brought his command to the shallows and, attempting to camouflage her, hid the breechblock for her 4.7 and evacuated the old minelayer. By forced march, they made it to Matre, some 14 miles on the other side of the mountain, and soon rejoined Allied lines.

Meanwhile, Tyr was soon discovered by the Germans, who towed her back to Bergen and, along with her fellow Rendel gunboat-turned-minelayer cousin, Uller, were soon pressed into service with the Kriegsmarine.

On 30 April, Tyr and Uller left occupied Bergen with German crews on a mission to mine the entrance to Sognefjord, barring it to British ships. This service would be short-lived as a Royal Norwegian Navy Heinkel He 115 seaplane spotted the pair, now under new management, and bombed Uller seriously enough to have her crew beach on a reef and evacuate on Tyr. Uller later lifted off the reef and sank near Gulen, becoming a popular dive spot.

As for Tyr, she saw no further direct combat, although the Germans likely continued to use her in some form of coastal service for the rest of the war.

Post-war

Tyr was still afloat in 1945 when the Germans were run out, and was subsequently sold on the commercial market. Her old hull still in good shape, she was converted to an economical diesel plant and sailed for a time as a heavy lift steamship.

By 1951, she had been converted to the car ferry Bjorn West, a task she fulfilled for three decades. Further converted for service in a salmon farming operation.

Found in poor condition ten years ago, she recently passed to a consortium of Vestfold county municipality, the KNM Narvik Foundation in Horten, and the Bredalsholmen Shipyard and Preservation Centre, who, with Tyr safely in drydock in Kristiansand, plan on restoring her to her 1940 condition. At this point, she is believed to be the last Rendel-type gunboat.

They plan to make her sailable, which isn’t that far-fetched.

Epilogue

The Norwegian Navy has recycled our gunboat/minelayer’s name at least twice.

The first was an Auk-class minesweeper, ex-USS Sustain (AM-119), which was transferred in 1959 and served as KNM Tyr (N47). Three Auk-class sisters transferred with her (ex-USS Strive, Triumph, and Seer) were named Gor, Brage, and Uller, in a nod to the old Rendel boats that saw WWII service.

Ex-USS Sustain (AM-119) as KNM Tyr (N47). Commissioned 9 November 1942, she earned eight battle stars for her World War II service from North Africa to France to Okinawa, helping to sink at least one U-boat in the process. She served the Norwegians from 1959 to 1984.

The third KNM Tyr in Norwegian service, N50, was bought commercially in 1995 and spent two decades mapping and filming dozens of historic wrecks in the country’s waters with her ROVs, including Scharnhorst and HMS Hunter (H35).

The intrepid LCDR Ulstrup continued to resist the Germans after leaving Tyr in April 1940. He crafted a makeshift shoreside torpedo battery, the only torpedo available being salvaged from the wreck of an old torpedo boat, and managed to caravan mines from a storage facility in Sogn to Ulvik to surprise the occupation forces. Once the Allies pulled out in mid-June, he was left to his own devices with a resistance group that became known, logically, as the Ulstrup Organisasjon.

With the heat getting too close for comfort, Ulstrup and a dozen other patriots crowded on the sailing trawler MK Måken (M 366 B) on 19 September 1940 and set out from Alesund for the Shetlands, arriving at Baltasound 11 days later. Welcomed as a hero in London, he was soon in command of the old four-piper HMS Mansfield (G76) (former USS Evans, DD-78), which in April 1941 carried commandos for a raid on Oksfjord, Norway, where the herring oil factory was destroyed.

“HNMS Mansfield, Norwegian Town-class destroyer. She is an ex-U.S. destroyer (USS Evans) and is manned entirely by the Norwegian Navy.” Circa 1941. Note her Norwegian flag. Photo by Harold William John Tomlin, IWM A2725

Once Mansfield was passed on to the Canadians in March 1942 after the Norwegians rode shotgun on 17 Atlantic, Ulstrup, promoted to Kommandørkaptein, was given command of the 11th Department in the Ministry of Defense in London, then subsequently placed in command of the Norwegian forces in Iceland, where he spent the rest of the war.

Returning to Norway with a War Cross with Swords, Ulstrup was promoted to rear admiral in August 1952. After escorting Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie on his tour of Norwegian naval bases, including the Horten shipyards in November 1954, he was made a Grand Officer of the Order of the Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II, rounding out his international awards.

Kontradmiral Johan Fredrik Andreas Thaulow Ulstrup, retired, passed in 1956, age 60, having wrapped up a 41-year career.

Tyr’s best-known “kill” of the war, the HSDG steamer Sao Paulo, packed with German military vehicles and stores that never made it to shore, is a favorite of wreck divers.

Meanwhile, in Klokkarvik, a memorial, complete with a mine and a seagull, was dedicated in 2021.

As noted in the town:

The seagull that takes off from the mine is a symbol of optimism. We should be aware of what war brings, but be most concerned with how we can secure peace. We should learn from history, – because it tends to repeat itself. The seagull draws our attention to the sea, the source of everything, our future.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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Warship Wednesday, July 9, 2025: Gravity Boat

Posted on July 9, 2025 by laststandonzombieisland 2 comments

Warship Wednesday, July 9, 2025: Gravity Boat

Koninklijke Marine image via the Netherlands Institute of Military History (NIMH) file no. 2173-223-109

Above we see the Dutch Navy’s fully-dressed K XIV-class colonial submarine Hr.Ms. K XVIII arriving in Surabaya, Java in what was then the Dutch East Indies, some 90 years ago this week, on 11 July 1935, to a welcome from several Dutch warships, including the destroyer Hr.Ms. Van Galen in the background. Our subject submarine had left Den Helder some eight months and 22,710 miles prior. For reference, the circumference of the Earth around the Equator is approximately 24,901 miles.

At the time, it was the longest unescorted journey by a submarine, just besting a 1926 cruise by another Dutch sub. Shipping aboard the boat was one Prof. Felix Andries Vening Meinesz– a Dutch geophysicist and geodesist known for his work in the field of gravimetry– packing his “Golden Calf,” which was beloved by the crew for reasons we will cover.

Don’t let her bookish origins fool you, K XVIII proved to have teeth when the war started in the Pacific just seven short years later.

The K XIV-class

Paid for by the oil-rich government of the Dutch East Indies in 1930 to serve as “colonial” submarines with the “K” for “Koloniën,” the five K XIV-class boats were designed by Dutch Navy engineer J. J. van der Struyff, who already had the smaller 0 9 and K XI-classes under his belt. A bit larger and more modern than previous Dutch classes, they leveraged input from across Europe. Using a pair of 1,600 hp German-made MAN diesel engines and two 430 kW domestically built Smit Slikkerveer electric motors lined up on two shafts, these 1,045-ton vessels could push their 241-foot welded steel hulls at speeds approaching 17 knots on the surface (they made 19 on trials) and nine while submerged. The plant enabled them to cruise at an impressive 10,000nm at 12 knots, ideal for West Pacific patrols.

Using double hulls with a test depth of 250 feet, they carried both search and attack periscopes provided by Stroud and a periscopic radio antenna that could be used while submerged. Ideally, for their intended use around the 18,000-island East Indies archipelago, they could float in just 13 feet of water and submerge in anything over 50.

When it came to armament, they were outfitted with help from the British, including tubes for a batch of 200 Weymouth-built dialed-down Mark VIII torpedoes (dubbed II53 in Dutch service) that could hit 42 knots and carry a 660-pound warhead– not bad performance for the era.

A British-made II53 torpedo on board the destroyer Hr.Ms. Evertsen in 1929. The Dutch used these on both surface ships and subs. NIMH 2173-224-077

The torpedo tube layout in the class was interesting and not repeated in another Dutch class. They mounted eight 21-inch torpedo tubes–four bows (two on each side of the hull), two in the stern, and a twin external trainable mount forward of the conning tower– with room for 14 fish.

Hr.Ms. K XIV, seen in a Colombo drydock in December 1942, shows a good view of her bow tubes and the inset cavity forward of the fairwater for her trainable twin tubes.

A good view of the twin tubes mounted outside of the hull under the deck, prior to installation in 1931.

Besides their torpedoes, they were armed with a Swedish 88mm/42cal Bofors No.2 deck gun and two British Vickers 2-pdr QF Mark II (40mm/39cal) large-bore AAA machine guns, the latter contained in neat disappearing installations, a novel idea for guns that weighed over 500-pounds including a water-cooled jacket.

The crew of the Dutch submarine Hr.Ms. K XV with her 40mm Vickers “ack-ack” machine gun in position and 88mm Bofors gun pointing over the bow. Note the mixed crew, common for boats in the colonies. Circa late 1930s. NIMH 2158_005757

The first three boats– K XIV, K XV, and K XVI— were ordered from Rotterdamsche Droogdok Maatschappij on the same day in 1930 as Yard Nos. 167-169. The final two– K XVII and K XVIII— were ordered in 1931 as Yard Nos. 322 and 322 from neighboring Wilton-Fijenoord, Schiedam. All five were complete and ready to deploy by early 1934.

Dutch submarine Hr.Ms. K XV central control 1935 NIMH 2158_005759

Dutch submarine K XV at Rotterdamsche Droogdok Maatschappij Jan 1931 NIMH 2158_008934

Dutch submarine K XV at Rotterdamsche Droogdok Maatschappij Feb 22 1934 NIMH 2158_008935

With the class complete, they typically self-deployed some 9,000 miles to the East Indies, stopping along the way at Lisbon, Cadiz, Palermo, Port Said, Suez, Aden, and Colombo. In theory, they could have done this on one tank of diesel oil without having to refuel.

The departure of the submarine Hr.Ms. K XIV and sister Hr.Ms. K XV from Den Helder, Holland, for the Dutch East Indies, 7 February 1934. In the background can be seen sisters K XVI and K XVII, waiting offshore. NIMH 2158_008920

Dutch submarine K XV on the Tagus River, Lisbon, likely on her way to East Asia. Photo via the Direcção-Geral de Arquivos of Portugal.

The arrival of Hr.Ms. K XV in Surabaya, April 1934. In the background is the destroyer Hr.Ms. Van Nes, which would be lost in February 1942, was sunk by Japanese aircraft. The white ship in the distance is Hr.Ms. Koning der Nederlanden, a 70-year-old 5,300-ton ramtorenschip ironclad that had been disarmed and turned into a barracks ship in 1920. NIMH 2173-223-089.

DOZ 3 (Divisie Onderzeeboten), consisting at this time of the colonial submarines Hr.Ms. K-XIV, Hr.Ms. K-XV and Hr.Ms. K-XVI, seen here in anti-aircraft exercises ca 1938. Note, you can see both Vickers 40mm being extended from the sail. You have a good view of the trainable twin external torpedo mounts via the opening just under the deck forward of the 88mm gun and the large escape hatches (drägervests) near the bow and aft of the sail. NIMH 2158_019998

Dutch submarines, including sisters K XVI, K XIV, K XII, and K XV (1933-1946,) along with the older (circa 1925) and smaller (216-feet/688 tons) Hr.Ms. K XI, alongside the supply ship Hr.Ms. Zuiderkruis, circa 1936. Of note, the obsolete little K XI, armed with more primitive Italian-made I53 torpedoes, would complete seven war patrols in WWII. Meanwhile, the 2,600-ton Zuiderkruis would escape from Java in February 1942 and spend the rest of WWII in Ceylon, operating as a depot ship and transport for the British Eastern Fleet. She would return home in 1945 and go on in 1950 after Indonesia’s independence to become the flagship of the Indonesian Navy (as Bimasakti) and President Soekarno’s yacht. NIMH 2158_019986

Circa 1931 scale model of Hr.Ms. K XVIII, a K XIV-class submarine. Note her main deck gun before the fairwater with her AAA gun atop, hull mounted diving planes, net cutters on the bow, extensive running lines, forward trunk, upside down ship’s dingy aft near its crane, and twin screws on either side of a centerline rudder. 2158_054141

A similar model endures today in the collection of the Dutch Marine Elektronisch en Optisch Bedrijf. Note the arrangement of the four periscopes and aerials, but no AAA mount and a torpedo on deck over her external tubes. 0075_15_N0007294-01

A cutaway model gives a better look at her twin stowed AAA guns on either side of the conning tower, and her external tubes are shown forward between two trunks, placed between the deck and pressure hull. NIMH_2024-033_0003

K XVIII’s forward four-pack of torpedo tubes before installation in 1932. 2158_009163

Meet K XVIII

Ordered at the Wilton-Fijenoord shipyard in Rotterdam, the future K XVIII was laid down on 10 June 1931.

Construction of the K XVIII at the NV Dock and Yard Company Wilton-Fijenoord. 2158_009140

Launched 27 September 1932, by the next July, she had completed fitting out and was conducting her first of two months of trials.

K XVIII’s Langroom. Note the ornate brass fan on the bulkhead and wooden cabinetry. 2158_009184

The officers’ quarters. Note the rugs. 2158_009181

The non-commissioned officers’ quarters are seen forward, complete with padlocked lockers, with the firing installation of the deck tubes and one of the four periscopes, probably the antenna array, in the middle. 2158_009186

Construction of the K XVIII at the NV Dok en Werf Maatschappij Wilton-Fijenoord, July-August 1933. The K XVIII is undergoing a sea trial on the Nieuwe Maas. Note her telescoping radio mast and DF gear. 2158_012445

23 March 1933. Her plankowners assembled on deck in winter dress uniforms. Note the main deck gun is not fitted yet, but the forward submergible AAA is stowed with its hatch closed and the wheel on the flying bridge. 2158_009187

Construction of the K XVIII at the NV Dok en Werf Maatschappij Wilton-Fijenoord, July-August 1933. The K XVIII is undergoing a sea trial on the Nieuwe Maas. Note that her main gun has not been fitted. 2158_012442

Having been accepted and delivered, she was commissioned into service on 23 March 1934.

Hr.Ms. Submarine K XVIII, cruising in the North Sea shortly after completion. 2158_005746

Beginning on 20 June 1934, she underwent a six-week summer voyage with a squadron from Nieuwediep through the Baltic and back. The squadron included her sistership, Hr.Ms. K XVII, the old coastal battleship (pantserschip) Hertog Hendrik, and the destroyers Evertsen and Z 5. They called at several ports including Danzig, Konigsberg in East Prussia, Riga, and Copenhagen.

Crew of the submarine Hr.Ms. K XVIII at Königsberg during the squadron voyage to the Baltic Sea in 1934. The old (circa 1917) destroyer Hr.Ms. Z 5 is moored behind the K XVIII. 2158_012382

Arrival of submarine Hr.Ms. K XVIII in Danzig during the voyage to the Baltic Sea in the summer of 1934. Behind K XVIII, the destroyer Hr.Ms. Z 5. 2158_012405

20.000 Mijlen over Zee!

Returning home in the tail end of August 1934, our brand spanking new submarine was ordered to her intended duty station, with the fleet in the Dutch East Indies.

However, it was determined that this outbound sortie would be a bit more of a slow boat to (Indo)china so to speak, as she was tasked with a series of international port calls and put at the disposal of Prof. Vening Meinesz, who taught geodesy, cartography and geophysics part time at Utrecht University.

Why part-time?

Well, that’s because the good professor, under the auspices of the KNMI (Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute), had been tagging along on Dutch submarines for over a decade on a mission to measure the gravity field of the Earth. You see, it was in the subsurface dives that he could get the best readings, and almost every existing gravity reading up to that time had been done on dry land.

Before arriving on K XVIII, the professor had already shipped out several times on at least five other Dutch subs. The longest of these had been a six-month (27 May-13 December 1926) outward-bound cruise on the older K XI class boat Hr. Ms K XIII, when she deployed from Den Helder for the Dutch East Indies, via the Panama Canal and Hawaii.

Vening Meinesz’s primary instrument was one of his designs, a bronze-cased, wool-packed pendulum apparatus termed a gravimeter for obvious reasons. While the workings of his machine are beyond the scope of this post, the story goes that, to isolate its readings from the activities of working submariners, the best solution was to halt the work of said bluejackets, sending them to their racks, and halting the motors.

Rig for silence indeed.

As compensation for having to put up with the yo-yo work cycle when the professor was doing his thing, the Dutch admiralty authorized an extra guilder per man per dive when the gravimeter required them to secure stations. Thus, the machine became known to the submarine crews as Het Gouden Kalf (the Golden Calf).

The pendulum apparatus of Vening Meinesz, “Slingerapparaat van Vening Meinesz,” also known as “the Golden Calf. Positioned on the left side is the protective casing with the recording instrument on top. On the right side is the pendulum apparatus with the three pendulums at the back. Built in 1923, the instrument has been in the collection of the Delft University of Technology since 1966 and, in its time, had made over 500 submarine dives

The route from Holland to Java would be accomplished in 12 legs, the shortest just 1,200 miles, and the longest running 3,520 miles.

The end of each leg would be rewarded with a liberal port call (sometimes as long as three weeks) to show the flag, refresh supplies, and interact with the locals– with the side benefit of allowing the professor ashore to confer with regional scientific types and take gravimeter measurements in strange new places.

The port calls would include Funchal (Madeira), Saint Vincent (Cape Verde), Dakar, Pernambuco (Suriname), Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo/Buenos Aires/Mar del Plata, Tristan da Cunha, Cape Town (Kaapstad) and Durban in South Africa, Port Louis (Mauritius), and Fremantle in Western Australia before heading north to Surabaya.

NIMH_2024-033_0002

Under 43-year-old Luitenant ter zee 1e klasse (LCDR) Dirk Christiaan Marie Hetterschij, a career officer who joined the Dutch navy as a midshipman in 1910 and held his first seagoing command in 1922, K XVIII made ready for her epic voyage to East Asia. He knew the vessel well, having previously supervised the construction of the submarine.

With a wardroom of five junior officers led by 30-year-old Penang-born LTZ2 Max Samuel Wytema and Officer Marinestoomvaartdienst C. van der Linden (both of whom had sailed with Vening Meinesz previously on K XIII in 1926), a goat locker of eight petty officers, and 20 enlisted, the boat had an all-up complement of 34, skipper included.

The ship’s officers on the eve of leaving Den Helder, with Professor Vening Meinesz dutifully attired in white tropical mufti to match.

And with the whole crew. 2158_012351

13 November 1934. Submarine Hr.Ms. K XVIII before departure for the world voyage of 1934-35. Prof. Vening Meinesz foreground. 2158_012349

Submarine Hr.Ms. K XVIII leaves the port of Den Helder for her world voyage, 14 November 1934, before an assembled crowd of well-wishers. 2158_012347

The submarine Hr.Ms. K XVIII stands out, moored in the harbor of Funchal, Madeira, on 24 November 1934, some 1,680nm down on the initial leg of her 1934-35 cruise. 2158_012354

However, before leaving the Atlantic, she had a side quest.

The Snip

Dutch airline KLM in 1934 was the only operator of a precious group of five triple-engine Fokker F.XVIIIs. With an 80-foot wingspan and 9-ton maximum takeoff weight, they could carry a crew of three and a dozen passengers on convertible sleeping berths on long-range flights, able to span 950 miles in six hours before needing to refuel. They were put into service on epic 7,000-mile Amsterdam-to-Batavia (now Jakarta) runs, once making it in just 73 flying hours.

One of the five KLM Fokker XVIIIs, PH-AIS “Snip” 2161_026829

Named after birds, in December 1934, one of the five F.XVIIIs, PH-AIS “Snip” (Snipe), set out on a history-making flight, KLM’s first transatlantic service to colonial Suriname and the Antilles from Holland.

Unable to make the flight non-stop, it accomplished legs from Amsterdam to Marseille, Marseille to Alicante, Spain; Alicante to Casablanca, and Casablanca to Porto Praia in the Cape Verde Islands. Waiting for the weather to clear to hop the Atlantic and packed with extra fuel, Snip and her four-man crew set out for Paramaribo in Suriname from Praia on 19 December, making the South American strip 17 hours and 35 minutes later, by far the longest leg.

Refueling once again, it went on to Curacao, where it landed on 22 December before a crowd of thousands at Hato airport, covering the 6,516nm from Amsterdam in just under 56 flying hours. While the extra fuel tanks had taken up the normal passenger space, she had carried a cargo of 233 pounds of Christmas mail containing 26,521 airmail letters and at least one bottle of beer.

It was midway on its 2,236nm Atlantic crossing from Praia that K XVIII was waiting, surfaced, lit up, and broadcasting weather conditions and forecasts as a beacon to point Snip in the right direction and be the first on the search should she not make it. While the Dutch KNSM merchant steamships Stuyvesant and Van Rensselaer were nearby, K XVIII was the only naval vessel tasked with support, and her crew heard the plane cross over on the night of the 21st in thick cloud cover.

Snip’s 1934 flight

On December 12, 1934, the Fokker F.XVIII “Snip” departed for KLM’s first transatlantic flight to Suriname and the Antilles. The plane arrived in Curacao 10 days and 6,500 air miles later without an issue, spotted along the way by K XVIII. 2161_026836

K XVIII underway on the surface in rough seas of the Atlantic. Note the barrel of her deck gun. 2158_012391

Anyway, back to our trip

On the way to Dakar in West Africa, the crew and the professor celebrated a somber Christmas on board before a paper tree while three musically inclined crew members formed an ersatz jazz band with a couple of horns and an accordion. They would cross the Equator just after New Year’s 1935 and hold the traditional crossing the line ceremony, dubbed Neptunusfeest in Dutch parlance.

Groot Feest means “big party.” 2158_012387

At each port, K XVIII picked up staged mail and supplies, dropped off beforehand by Dutch merchant vessels. Note the “Por K XVIII, Dakar” stencil on these boxes.

Hr.Ms. K XVIII at Mar del Plata, Argentina, 22 February 1935, a port call that would last until 7 March. Note the newly delivered Argentine Italian-built S-class (Tarantino type) submarine alongside. 2158_012379

The shortest stop would be an overnight anchor on 22 March 1935 at the lonely island of Tristan da Cunha, a romantic harbor for Dutch mariners as it was where Pieter Groen from Katwijk had famously lived as an uncrowned king for years, becoming the paterfamilias of the largest family on the remote South Atlantic colony. Rarely visited, the crew passed on food and medical supplies to the colony.

Arriving in Cape Town (Kaapstad) on 2 April 1935. Note the deck awning and table forward, as well as the well-mixed uniforms of the crew, all veteran subjects of Neptune Rex (and almost blue noses), some 13,190 nm into her world cruise. 2158_012377

Twin stops in South Africa at Cape Town and Durban brought extensive interaction with the colony’s Dutch expatriates, and the ship’s officers made a pilgrimage to the statue of Jan van Riebeek to adorn it with a wreath. During her call, she was the first submarine to enter False Bay and the first to use the RN dry dock at Simon’s Town, where she was hurriedly scraped and repainted in five days, with her crew pitching in to meet the scheduled ship’s movement.

Then came the longest, 27-day stint across the Indian Ocean from Mauritius to Fremantle. Three dozen men in a 261-foot tin can for 3,520 nautical miles. Importantly, they would skirt a gravitational feature known today as the Indian Ocean Geoid Low (IOGL), a gravity “hole” that formed around 20 million years ago and is the deepest one known to man. Professor Vening Meinesz would only identify the IOGL in 1948 when looking at past data.

The home stretch arrival off Java coincided with the 339th anniversary celebration of the July 1596 arrival of Dutch merchant mariner Cornelis de Houtman in his VOC ship Mauritius after a 15-month voyage from Amsterdam, an expedition that began Dutch influence in the region.

Over the course of the voyage, Vening Meinesz had made 240 measurements while submerged.

Hr.Ms. Submarine K XVIII arriving in Surabaya after her “world voyage,” July 1935. She is being escorted in by a flight of three big Dornier Do J Wal seaplanes while her crew is assembled on deck. Do you have any idea how hard it would have been to keep those whites, white after eight months on a “pig boat?” 2158_005745

The Dutch Marineluchtvaartdienst, or Naval Aviation Service, bought five distinctive twin-engine push/pull Do J Wals from Dornier’s Italian factory in Marina di Pisa in 1926, then purchased a license to assemble a further 41 domestically at Aviolanda’s facility. Able to carry two machine guns and 2,200 pounds of bombs to 500nm, the “Whales” served in the Far East in rescue, reconnaissance, transport, and patrol roles for over a decade. They were replaced in MLD service by 1941 by 34 Dornier Do 24K flying boats and 25 Consolidated PBY Catalina flying boats.

Submarine Hr.Ms. K XVIII in the Dutch East Indies, decorated and on parade duty, 11 July 1935. 2158_012424

K XVIII settles into the sheltered submarine docks in Surabaya, Dutch East Indies, after arriving. The Dutch would operate over a dozen subs from the port in the 1930s and early 1940s. Sadly, these were not hardened pens. 2158_012434

Crew members of the submarine Hr.Ms. K XVIII gathered for a welcome speech during Alle Hens, after arriving in Surabaya, Dutch East Indies, 11 July 1935. The suited Professor Vening Meinesz stands out, literally, between grinning skipper LTZ1 Hetterschij and his XO, LTZ2 Wytema. Note the white gloves and (usually German-made) Model of 1882 swords of the Dutch officers. For those curious, Dutch ships carried a very functional Model of 1911 Klewang profile naval cutlass through the 1950s, for enlisted use. 2158_012429

All the crew were presented with a special silver medal (the Draagpenning van de Rijkscommissie voor graadmeting en waterpassing) for the occasion, with Wytema and engineering officer Van der Linden earning a second award as they had earned one previously in 1926 on K XIII.

Skipper Dirk Hetterschij also picked up the Gold De Ruyter medal and was knighted, made an Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau. He would similarly be made an Officer in the Belgian Ordre de Léopold II in 1936.

The chapels at the submarine barracks in both Surabaya and Den Helder received a stained-glass window with a tribute to the cruise of K XVIII. Painted by Willem Mengelberg in Zeist, it was paid for by the Stichting Algemeen Nederlandsch Comité “Onze Marine” association and includes a panel with Houtman’s circa 1596 VOC ship Mauritius. I believe they were both lost during WWII. 2158_012437

K XVIII’s XO during her 1934-35 cruise, LTZ2 Max Wytema, would go on to write two different submarine works, Klaar voor onderwater (“Clear for diving”) and, with Van der Linden, Met Hr. Ms. K XIII naar Nederlandsch-Indie (“With Hr. Ms. K XIII to the Dutch East Indies”) about their 1926 cruise. Wytema also shot several hours of amateur film footage during the cruise, which would later be edited by Brand D. Ochse, founder of Filmfabriek Polygoon, into an exotic 96-minute travel documentary, 20.000 mijlen over zee De wereldreis van onderzeeboot K XVIII (“20,000 Leagues of the Sea, The World Voyage of the Submarine K XVIII”).

Carrying a music arrangement by Max Tak, it showed many the first known moving images from such far-off locations as Tristan da Cunha, in addition to stirring sea shots of diving operations of a submarine underway, accompanied by dolphins.

Released in Dutch cinemas with the admiralty’s blessing and approval, the film was well-received and shown in several European countries, reportedly doing well for months in England and Spain.

I managed to find the first reel, which covers up to March 1935, leaving Argentina, in the NIMH, and have uploaded it, below.

Her film and book-worthy cruise behind her, K XVIII got to work as a normal Dutch fleet boat. She spent the next four years in a series of peacetime exercises and maneuvers, the highlight of which was the 23-ship September 1938 fleet review off Surabaya for (but not attended by) Queen Wilhelmina to celebrate her 40th anniversary.

War!

September 1939 brought an uneasy time to the Dutch East Indies. With Japan openly pressuring the colony, the local governor and his forces stepped up preparations to repel what was felt to be a looming invasion. Once metropolitan Holland was occupied in May 1940 by Germany, the DEI, still loyal to Queen Wilhelmina’s government in exile, sent its naval forces on patrol for Axis vessels in the region.

When the Pacific War with Japan kicked off in December 1941, K XVIII was in refit at Surabaya. One of 15 Dutch boats in the Pacific at the time (along with O-16, O-19, O-20, K-VII, K-VIII, K-IX, K-X, K-XI, K-XII, K-XIII, K-XIV, K-XV, K-XVI, and K-XVII), K-XVIII was soon back in the water, making war patrols and pumping torpedoes in the Emperor’s ships, one of the brighter moments in a campaign that was otherwise dark for the doomed ABDA Allies.

Her wartime skipper, LTZ1 Carel Adrianus Johannes van Well Groeneveld, had taken her sister, Hr. Ms K XIV, whose c/o was sick, on two short patrols while K XVIII was in refit in December. During which he torpedoed four Japanese steamers, sinking three for some 23,000 tons, a great start to the war!

With K XVIII back in the water in early January 1942, Van Well Groeneveld rejoined his command and departed Surabaya on his boat’s 1st war patrol on the 14th. After scuttling the evacuated Balikpapan light vessel Orion with gunfire so that it could not function as a beacon to the expected Japanese landing force, K XVIII spent the night of 22/23 January on a series of attacks on said force.

Narrowly missing the Japanese Sendai-class light cruiser Naka with four torpedoes, he sent the transport Tsuruga Maru (7289 GRT), carrying elements of the Sakaguchi Detachment (56th Regimental Group), to the bottom with a second load of four fish.

Tsuruga Maru was built down at Mitsubishi Shipyard as Yard No. 250, a 7,289-ton cargo ship for Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK), K.K. (Japan Mail Steamship Co.) in 1916. K XVIII sent her to the bottom in January 1942.

It was while avoiding depth charges from the responding Japanese submarine chaser Ch-12 that K XVIII bottomed and was extremely damaged, cutting her war patrol short. Returning to Surabaya by the 27th, she was still in repair when the Japanese neared the strategic port in March and was ordered scuttled along with 120 assorted Allied vessels in the area.

Before she was set ablaze, her deck gun was used to scuttle the unseaworthy Dutch Admiralen-class destroyer Hr. Ms Banckert.

K XVIII’s wartime boss, the budding sub ace Van Well Groeneveld, while in charge of the Torpedo Works at Surabaya in March 1942, went missing and was believed killed while inspecting faulty demolition charges with two other men during the destruction of the port, just shy of his 36th birthday. Besides a Dutch MWO.4, he earned the British DSO, although he was never able to receive it.

Ignoble service under the Setting Sun

With Surabaya under new management for the next five years, the Japanese had a chance to raise and repair several of the ships that were hastily scuttled there. One of these was K XVIII. Patched up to a degree, she was put into service as an unnamed and lightly armed air warning picket hulk in the shallows of the Madoera Strait in 1944. She was sent to the bottom a final time by HM Submarine Taciturn (P334) on 16 June 1945 alongside the Japanese auxiliary submarine chaser Cha 105 (130 tons). Taciturn described the action with the former pride of the Dutch submarine service as

“A K-16 class Dutch submarine covered with yellow lead and rust, she was very high in the water…Several hits were obtained and the hulk was seen listing shortly afterwards..” Before turning to sink Cha 160. Then, “target was now shifted to the rusty submarine hulk whose machine gun fire became annoying as the range closed. A considerable number of 4″ rounds were fired against her before she was seen to be sinking in position 06°52’S, 112°48’E. One of the hits was a direct hit on her gun.”

Of her four sisters, all gave hard service in East Asia in WWII, opposing the Japanese invasion of the Dutch East Indies. Two were lost during the conflict.

Hr.Ms. K XVI sank the Japanese Fubuki-class destroyer Sagiri on Christmas Eve 1941, then was, in turn, sunk by the Japanese submarine I-66 on Christmas Day, lost with all hands.

Hr.Ms. K XVII was believed lost in a newly laid Japanese minefield on or about 21 December 1941 in the Gulf of Siam and is still on patrol with 38 crewmembers. There are wild rumors she was lost in the “cover-up” in the Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge conspiracy theory, but they are, most assuredly, groundless.

Hr.Ms. K XV, commanded for the duration by the intrepid LTZ1 Carel Wessel Theodorus, Baron van Boetzelaer, made 13 cloak-and-dagger commando missions behind Japanese lines in as many war patrols, survived 67 depth charges, and sank three of the Emperor’s vessels.

Class leader Hr.Ms. K XIV (N 22), as we touched on above, was the most successful when it came to chalking up “kills,” is credited with three Japanese troopships — SS Katori Maru (9,848 tons), SS Ninchinan Maru (6,503 tons), and SS Hiyoshi Maru (4,943 tons)– sunk along with a fourth — MS Hokkai Maru (8,416 tons)– damaged in late December 1941 alone. Updated in America, she spent the rest of the war in Fremantle and would damage the 4,410-ton Japanese minelayer Tsugaru and bag numerous small vessels. She was retired in 1946, having completed nine war patrols. Also, like K XV, she languished in Soerabaja during the Dutch war against Soekarno, then was towed out and sunk in deep water following independence.

Hr.Ms. onderzeeboot K XIV (1933-1946) z.g.n. getrimd dieselen. NIMH 2158_005756

The K XIV class Bloedvlaggen, with K XVIII on the far right.

In all, wily “Free Dutch” submarines with nothing to lose accounted for at least 168,183 tons of enemy shipping and warships between May 1940 and August 1945, sinking no less than 69 ships– a figure that doesn’t count the myriad of small craft they also sent to the bottom. They also lost 16 boats, with seven still on eternal patrol.

In an ode to these old K boats, Indonesian rice (Indische rijsttafel) is a staple meal on Dutch submarines today, especially for service in the wardroom as a Blauwe hap (Blue Snack).

Epilogue

Little tangible remains of K XVIII. Her hulk was later raised (again) and scrapped in the 1950s after the Dutch had left. With so much war wreckage around Surabaya post-war, and with an active civil war going on in the islands until Indonesia’s independence in 1949, there was little appetite to set aside the relics of the once-famous submarine.

She is remembered in maritime art, such as on a recently released stamp from Tristan da Cunha.

Incidentally, when 20.000 mijlen over zee hit the theatres, it sparked a shoe drive in Holland for the island’s moccasin-wearing population, which ultimately received 760 assorted new pairs of wooden clogs for its 200 inhabitants. Unsuited for use in the rocky islands, the locals instead appreciated them as they kept the islanders in firewood for six months. K XVIII’s circa 1934-35 skipper, Dirk Hetterschij, after the legendary voyage to East Asia, became commander of the Dutch submarine service in Surabaya for two years, then returned home just in time for the German invasion. During WWII, he remained in the occupied Netherlands, where he played a key role in the Dutch resistance and was later arrested by the Germans for a time, but was released for health reasons. Placed in command of the Loodswezen, the Dutch Pilotage Service, post-war, he was made a rear admiral in 1947, but died in poor health the following year, just 57 years old.

RADM Dirk Hetterschij completed 38 years of honorable service to the Dutch Navy, most of it in submarines, with a dash of science and espionage behind enemy lines when needed. He is buried in Rhenen, with his wife joining him in 1974. As a side note, she had been the third wife of the swashbuckling late Dutch RADM Kaarel Doorman of Java Sea fame.

K XVIII’s multimedia talented XO during her 1934-35 cruise, LTZ2 Max Wytema, likewise continued to serve. The Dutch Naval Control Officer in San Francisco during WWII, he was recognized with a Legion of Merit by the U.S. Navy in 1942. While in California, he settled down and retired there, with his wife Annette passing in 1979. He joined her at age 78 in 1982.

In 2016, Dutch TV network VPRO released a digital version of 20.000 mijlen over zee in two parts. The website is kind of funky and takes a while to build, but it’s interesting to view once you get it going.

And finally, Professor Vening Meinesz, who became akin in his time to a Dutch Neil deGrasse Tyson after 20.000 mijlen over zee, continued his gravitational quest. He shipped out on four further Dutch subs in the late 1930s, including a three-month trip on Hr. Ms. O 16 in 1937. Teaching part-time both at the University of Utrecht and the Delft University of Technology, like his old pal Dirk Hetterschij, he rolled up his sleeves during the German occupation and helped organize the Resistance movement. Post-war, he took students and his instruments aboard a further six Dutch submarines, sailing as late as 1959.

Professor Vering Meinsez passed in 1966, aged 79. Utrecht University has the Vening Meinesz Research School for Geodynamics in his honor, while a crater on the moon also carries his name. Though he never wore a uniform, he earned his dolphins for sure.

His research trip on KXVIII, his longest, is seen today as the “Origin of Flexure Modelling.” Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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Warship Wednesday, July 2, 2025: Lost Bird of the Baltic

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Warship Wednesday, July 2, 2025: Lost Bird of the Baltic

Image via the Farenthold Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command NH 65783

Above we see the Nautilus-class minenkreuzer SMS Albatross in port, likely in Wilhelmshaven or Kiel, just prior to the Great War. A slight cruiser by any measure, she was perhaps better described as a heavily armed minelayer with a profile approaching that of an elegant turn-of-the-century steam yacht.

Put in an impossible situation some 110 years ago today, she was run aground in neutral waters– and that’s where the story really starts.

The Kaiser’s Mine Cruisers

The Albatross and her half-sister ship Nautilus sprang from the lessons learned during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, which saw the aggressive use of mine warfare in fleet operations. The two ships were the size (322 feet oal/2,345 tons displacement on Nautilus, 331 ft./2,500-ton Albatross) and speed (20.8 knots) of light cruisers.

They had two stacks to vent their quartet of marine boilers and a pair of 3-cylinder compound engines. Twin military masts with mounted searchlights could accommodate an auxiliary sail rig if needed, but they don’t seem to have ever carried any canvas. They had a 1:10 length-to-beam ratio and looked fast sitting still.

Nautilus, German cruiser minelayer, photographed by Renard of Kiel while passing under the Levensau Bridge of the Kiel Canal in 1907, soon after entering fleet service on 19 March 1907. Note the rakish clipper bow and bowsprit, which Albatross did not share. While 322 feet oal, the waterline length was just 296 feet at the waterline (316 on Albatross). NH 46829

While largely unarmored, they could duke it out against smaller vessels or serve as commerce raiders due to their all-up main battery of eight 8.8 cm/35 (3.46″) SK L/35 C/01 guns in single low-angle shielded mounts. Nautilus originally carried two guns in casemate and six on upper decks, but all were later consolidated on deck, while Albatross always had hers on deck, arranged two forward, two aft, and four amidships in broadside. Magazines held a total of 2,000 15-pound shells for these guns, which had a range of 9,600 yards.

However, rather than torpedoes and secondary batteries as found on other cruisers, these twins had weight and space to accommodate a serious deck cargo of sea mines on a rail system dropping over the stern, with Nautilus rigged for 391 such “eggs” while Albatross could stow 288. With a shallow draft of just 15 feet for both sisters, they could operate in the littorals of the North, Baltic, and Mediterranean Seas, sowing their enemy seaports and strategic roadsteads shut with their mines. Alternatively, they could drop fields quickly in the path of enemy squadrons during fleet actions, covering retreats, or isolating opponents.

The German Elektrische Minen A (EMA), with a charge of 330 pounds of wet gun cotton, was the standard contact (Hertz horn) mine of the Kaiserliche Marine headed into the Great War.

Besides their dual use as mine layers and scout cruisers, both ships were given reinforced bows for service as light icebreakers or “boom chargers” as needed. The simplification of mission between the efficient mine-laying system and the single battery meant these ships had comparatively small crews of just ten officers and 191 men.

Termed Minendampfschiffe A und B on contract, both ships were built at Aktien-Gesellschaft Weser in Bremen with Nautilus (Baunummer 152) and Albatross (No. 162), sandwiched between the future Jutland veteran Nassau class battleship SMS Westfalen and the elegant NDL Reichspostdampfer liner Lutzow. Both cruisers ran 2,879,000 marks each despite the moderate differences in design. While most naval journals consider these to be one class of ship, Jane’s at the time listed each separately.

Nautilus 1914 Janes

Albatross 1914 Janes, note the different hull form.

Meet Albatross

Ordered under the 1906 program, our subject was laid down in Bremen on 24 May 1907. She was at least the second SMS Albatross in the Kaiserliche Marine, following in the path of a Kaiserliche Werft Danzig-built steam gunboat that entered service in 1871 and roamed the world on a series of exotic cruises until she was decommissioned in 1898.

The first SMS Albatross, a 4-gun steamer with a three-masted barque rig, served as a gunboat and later as a station ship and survey vessel. Disposed of in 1899, she was wrecked in commercial service in 1906.

Our Albatross took to the water on 23 October 1907, began sea trials on 19 May 1908, and was accepted and commissioned shortly after. As such, she entered service just 14 months after Nautilus.

She spent her pre-war period in a sleepy series of fleet maneuvers, mine warfare training (as a Minenschulschiff), and the like, based at Cuxhaven. The most notable incident from this time was a minor collision in 1911 with the 5,448 GRT NDL steamer Wartburg (which was later seized in 1917 and used by the Navy in the Great War as the cargo ship USS Wabash on a series of round trips between the U.S. and Saint-Nazaire).

During her antebellum service, Albatross served as a stopover for bright young officers bound for flag rank. Her first three skippers– Korvettenkapitäns Titus Turk, Karl Wedding, and Wilhelm Adelung– all went on to become admirals.

War!

When the Great War kicked off in 1914, Albatross, accompanied by the light cruiser SMS Stuttgart and half a squadron of destroyers on 25/26 August, laid an offensive barrage of 200 mines in the Tyne Estuary, a 13-mile-long field that gave the British a good bit of heartburn.

The same sortie was accompanied by Nautilus, escorted by SMS Mainz and the other half squadron of destroyers, to lay her field of 200 off the Humber.

On the way back to Germany in the fog, according to Corbett, a total of 16 British fishing craft were deep sixed by the destroyers of the two mine laying groups (six by the Albatross group and 10 by the Nautilus group) after first taking the crews prisoner then landing them in Germany for the duration.

The Tyne field laid by Albatross soon claimed the Danish coaster Skeatti Sogeli and the fishing drifter Barley Rig, the latter with the loss of five of her nine crew. Two of the four Admiralty trawlers– HMT Crathie (No.106) and HMT Thomas W Irvin (No.61)— that went to sweep the mines on 27 August were also lost. Five ratings rode the ersatz minesweepers to the bottom. The remaining Admiralty trawlers under CDR R W Dalgety, RN, managed to gingerly clear the rest of the field.

Further tasked with mine operations in the North Sea and Baltic until they froze in the winter of 1914, Albatross went back to it after the thaw in the spring of 1915.

It was on one such mission under Kommodore Johannes August Karl Franz von Karpf, to sow an offensive minefield off the Russian-occupied Aland Islands between Finland and Sweden, saw Albatross screened by armored cruiser SMS Roon (10200t, 4×8.3″,10×5.9″ guns) along with the light cruisers SMS Augsburg (4800 t, 12x 10.5 cm L45s) and SMS Lubeck (3200t, 10×4.1″) and seven torpedo boats (S 126, S 131, G 135, G 141, S 142, G 147, and S 149) assigned in July 1915.

After laying 180 mines north of Bogskar on 1 July and turning back to Germany, Albatross and her screen on the next morning, at 0615, spied Russian RADM Mikhail Bakhirev’s cruiser squadron comprised of the massive British-built armored cruiser Rurik (15000t, 4×10″, 8×8″, 20×4.7″), the French-built armored cruiser sisters Admiral Makarov and Bayan (each 8400 t and carrying two 8″ and eight 6″) and the German-designed protected cruisers Bogatyr and Oleg (each 6700 t and carrying 12×6″). This put the Germans at just 42 guns, none larger than 8-inch, versus 76 Russian guns of comparable bore or larger.

Unknown to Von Karpf, his wireless communications were intercepted and decoded by the Russian admiralty, who cued Bakhirev, originally on a mission to bombard Memel, to intercept. (The Russians were able to listen in on these communications because they had obtained Signalbuch der Kaiserliche Marine nr 151 after the light cruiser SMS Magdeburg ran aground off Odensholm the previous August.)

The running battle ensued with Von Karpf’s dispersed squadron already split in two, with Roon and Lubeck headed toward Libau, while Augsburg, Albatross, and three torpedo boats were closer to Swedish waters. The Russian cruisers Bogatyr and Oleg caught up to the humble Albatross alone, and, with 24 6-inch guns against eight 88mm pieces, it was one-sided.

SMS Albatross is attacked by Russian cruisers in Swedish waters, 2 July 1915, by Wilhelm Malchin. Der Krieg 1914/19 in Wort und Bild, 39. Heft

Oil painting by J Hägg. “Albatross under fire” Swedish Marinmuseum B1397

In the end, it was only the decision of FKpt Georg West to run Albatross inland to the shallows near the Swedish island of Ostergarnsholm that saved his ship. Remember, Albatross only had a 14-foot draft, whereas the heavily armored Bogatyr and Oleg drew 21. Beached just 500 feet offshore, aflame, and riddled with Russian shrapnel, Albatross was left alone by 0830 as Bogatyr and Oleg withdrew to the east to catch up to Roon and Lubeck, with whom they engaged in an ineffective artillery duel, later joined by Rurik.

When the smoke cleared, with the other cruisers on both sides only suffering negligible damage, it was Albatross that was wrecked.

Not only that, but she was also in Swedish territorial waters.

Internment

Sweden was neutral from 1814 to 2024, but during the Great War was for sure more aligned to the Kaiser’s sphere of influence than that of any other.

A traditional enemy of Tsarist Russia, the Swedish and German general staff had met for several loose planning sessions on how best to fight the Russians before 1914, and, once the “lights went out across Europe” in August, exports to Germany, primarily of much-needed iron ore, jumped almost 800 percent. While thousands of Swedish expatriates wore the uniforms of the Allied armies, thousands more volunteered to serve under German flags, especially when it came to fighting Russia in the hope of liberating neighboring Finland– a land that had been part of Sweden for almost 700 years.

This sets the stage for the reception that the wounded FKpt West and his crew received.

Almost immediately after the Russian cruisers left over the horizon, locals began assisting the Albatross, shuttling wounded to shore.

A field hospital was established in the sugar mill at Romakloster for the 49 wounded German sailors. Soon, a detachment of the Gotland Infantry Regiment (I/27) arrived to stand quiet guard on the beach over a grim collection of 26 men who had been killed. One crew member had fallen overboard during the shelling and could not be found.

Recovered German sailors on the beach at Gotland, covered by the naval ensign of SMS Albatross. Note the blue-uniformed Swedish troops standing guard. The fallen sailors were later interred in a mass grave just east of Östergarn Church.

Two of the crew members who died during transportation to Roma were buried at Bjorke cemetery.

Crew of the German minelayer Albatross. Swedish Marinmuseum D 14988:1

Relieved of their ship, some ~210 assorted German internees from Albatross were left in the sugar mill at Romakloster for a period.

Then, with the mill needed for the upcoming beet harvest, they were shuffled about 20 miles away to the naval shooting range at Blahall on the Tofta coast of the Swedish island of Gotland.

Finally, the internees were moved to a military camp in Skillingaryd on the mainland in the autumn of 1917.

There, they were kept under loose guard but allowed to take local employment and generally enjoyed the rest of their war.

The crew crafted a large, tabletop-sized scale model of their lost cruiser and donated it to their captors.

It later found its way into the Swedish Marinmuseum. MM11315

Grey painted model of the German warship Albatross, mounted on an oak board, and in addition, a glass stand. On the stand, a nickel silver plate engraved: “To my friend Ivar Uggla from his albatross friends Christmas 1918”.

As for Albatross, the ship was righted by the Swedish Navy and towed by the Neptunbolaget salvage company, first to the island of Faro on 23 July, then to Karlskrona. Stockholm rebuffed numerous and regular requests from the Russian government to turn her over as an earned war trophy. The Swedish government just as often cited their note of protest over the fact that the battle was largely conducted in their neutral waters.

Albatross being salvaged with Swedish torpedo boats alongside. This image was made into a popular postcard. Swedish Marinmuseum MM10668

Albatross salvaged and afloat in Gotland. She was escorted in by the Swedish destroyers HSwMS Wale and Magne. Swedish Marinmuseum MM11394

As the war wore on, the relationship between Germany and Sweden became more strained. The country suffered more than 900 civilian mariners killed during the conflict, most at the hands of U-boats and German raiders, who sank at least 132 Swedish-flagged vessels at sea. Further, the Swedish navy had lost men and ships while sweeping German mines (the gunboat Gunhild was lost to a mine in the Skagerrak with a loss of 19 lives) while the Swedish submarine Hvalen was shot up by a German armed trawler who thought she was British, leading to the death of yet another sailor.

Still, the Swedish and German military cooperated in the joint occupation of the Åland Islands off Finland in 1918 (including landing a battalion of the famed Göta Life Guards, I/2, ashore), teaming up to fight the local Reds and disarm miserable Russian garrisons on the archipelago.

Post-war, the disarmed Albatross was sailed to Danzig on her own power, arriving on 31 December 1918, and was returned to German custody. Following the Versailles Treaty and the resulting limitations placed on the then-Weimar Republic’s Reichsmarine, Albatross was deemed surplus and sold for 900,000 marks to a firm in Hamburg to be broken up for scrap in 1921.

While I cannot find out what became of the good FKpt West, the leader of the squadron when she was lost, Johannes von Karpf, went on to fight another day. Commanding the battlecruiser SMS Moltke at Jutland and later the BCs SMS Lutzow and Hindenburg, he ended the Great War as a rear admiral and retired from the Reichsmarine on 5 November 1919. He passed in Hamburg in 1941 after serving on the board of several shipping companies in that port city. The Russian squadron commander, RADM Bachirev, was shot by the Reds in 1920.

Von Karpf, seen left as the last skipper of the Kaiser’s yacht, Hohenzollern.

As for the sister of Albatross, Nautilus continued to see service in the Baltic in the latter part of the war, meeting the Russians on several occasions– including fighting with field guns, mortars, and flamethrowers while supporting German landings in Moon Sound (it pays to be able to float in 15 feet of water!). Still steaming in 1918, she was disarmed and hulked.

Retained for another decade, she was sold to a Danish firm for 180,000 marks and scrapped in 1928.

Epilogue

Albatross forever changed a piece of Sweden’s coast, where July 2 is remembered annually as “Albatrossdagen” or Albatross Day. A small museum was constructed in 1977 near where she grounded, and today it holds more than 700 images, the cruiser’s ensign, two models, uniform items, and numerous relics.

A monument is maintained on the beach near where she grounded back in 1915.

Östergarn cemetery still holds her war dead in a place of honor, complete with a memorial.

It is often visited on Albatrossdagen by the German military attaché from Stockholm. This year, German Defense Attaché Markur Bruggemeier will lay a wreath from Germany at the sailor’s grave.

A detailed 1:100 model crafted by Heinz Zimmermann of Albatross in her wartime livery is in the Marinemuseum in Wilhelmshaven

Modell (von Heinz Zimmermann) im Maßstab 1:100 des Minenkreuzers SMS Albatross im deutschen Marinemuseum in Wilhelmshaven. (Wiki Commons)

Speaking of models, Combrig markets a 1:700 scale kit.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

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I’m a member, so should you be!

Echoes of OBOE 2 at 80

Posted on July 1, 2025 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

This week marks the 80th Anniversary of the landing at Balikpapan, Borneo. The “Ploesti of the Pacific” was finally being liberated after weeks of systematic attack by the “Jungle Air Force” of the “Fighting” 13th AAF’s bombers and fighters operating out of New Guinea and the Solomons.

As we have covered in the past, it was the peak of the U.S. Navy’s WWII UDT operations.

Official period caption: “On July 1, 1945, Americans and Australians island-hopped right into the center of the rich, Japanese-held oil fields of Balikpapan, Borneo. Units of the Navy’s Seventh Fleet paved the way for the Australian landing. In the bombardment that preceded the landings at Balikpapan, Seventh Fleet units fired over 10,000 rockets. LCI(B) 338 opens up in the first of two rocket runs made by these craft on the beach. Rockets have proven to be very effective “persuaders” in the Navy’s amphibious landings. National Archives Identifier 153724649

Underwater demolition swimmer, SF1c John Regan gets a drink and smoke after setting charges off Balikpapan, circa early July 1945. Note his sheath knife 80-G-274698

Going further, Operation OBOE 2 comprised the Australian 7th Division, composed of the 18th, 21st, and 25th Infantry Brigades and the 1st Armoured Regiment AIF (RNSWL) ‘A’ and B’ Sqns, complete with their 50 or so Matilda II tanks.

Barring Gallipoli, this was the largest amphibious landing in Australia’s history.

USCG-manned USS LST 66 headed for a hot beach at Balikpapan. Note the oil tanks ashore. Commissioned on 12 April 1943, LST-66 was on her 12th series of landings after hitting the beach with Marines and soldiers at Cape Gloucester, Saidor, Hollandia, Toem-Wakde-Sarmi, Biak, Noemfoor, Cape Sansapor, Morotai, Leyte, Lingayen, and Mindanao, earning eight battle stars. NARA 26-G-4741

Australian landing craft reach the beach at Balikpapan to launch the invasion of Borneo’s greatest oil refining district. Beach installations and anti-aircraft positions inland still smoke from a pre-invasion pounding by bombers and fighters of the (U.S. Air Force Number 58861AC)

Original caption: This is the Balikpapan Invasion scene snapped by Coast Guard Combat Photographer James L. Lonergan as his own picture was taken by a fellow Coast Guard Photographer, Gerald C. Anker, from an adjoining LCVP. Note the identical posters in each photo of the Aussie wading ashore, the group behind the tractor, and the Coast Guardsmen bending over the bow of the vessel. A few moments later both photographers narrowly escaped death from Jap snipers when they sought a vantage point from which to “shoot” the entire invasion beach. NARA 26-G-4721

Patrols of 29 Bn, 18th Brigade (Australian) move cautiously into the village area of Penadjam, Balikpapan, Borneo, under sniper fire. 5 July, 1945. SC 374826 Photographer: Lt. Novak. U.S. National Archives. Digitized by Signal Corps Archive.

The 25-ton Matilda II carried a 40 mm QF 2-pounder main gun, a hull-mounted GPMG, and, while slow at 15 mph on its twin Leylan engines, may have been dead meat on a European battlefield in 1945 but was aces in the Pacific.

Balikpapan, Borneo, 30 July 1945. Matilda tanks of A squadron, 1st Armoured Regiment AIF (RNSWL), being overhauled in the unit’s open-air workshop. AWM 112525

Australian 1st Armoured Regt AIF (RNSW Lancers) Matilda II in action at Balikpapan, July 1945, shown clearing a former Japanese-held Royal Dutch Shell oil refinery complex.

Oil Refinery Balikpapan OBOE 2 Australian Matilda tank ‘B Sqn 1st Armoured Regiment AWM 110916

One of the Balikpapan Matildas, “Ace,” is preserved at the NSW Lancers Memorial Museum in Parramatta.

The Museum will be holding a display on Sunday, 6th July, in Lancer Barracks to commemorate the Balikpapan anniversary. All are welcome. If you are in the area…

Warship Wednesday, June 25, 2025: Rozhestvensky’s Pirates

Posted on June 25, 2025 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Warship Wednesday, June 25, 2025: Rozhestvensky’s Pirates

Above we see the Imperial Russian Navy’s auxiliary cruiser (vspomogatel’nyy kreyser) Terek, formerly the Royal Spanish Navy’s cruiser Rapido, formerly the Hamburg America Line steamer SS Columbia,

Terek just narrowly avoided combat in 1898 under the yellow and red Pabellon de la Armada, but some 120 years ago this week, she would land the final Tsarist Russian blows against the Empire of Japan at sea.

Kinda

The Tsar’s auxiliary cruisers

When war broke out with Japan in February 1904, the Russian admiralty activated its long-standing plans to cough up a series of armed merchant cruisers. Originally intended in the 1880s and 1890s to chase down British merchantmen should the “Great Game” turn hot, the Russians were able to activate nine large rakish steamers, all capable of making over 18.5 knots. Almost all (six of nine) were three-funnel liners, and all had been built as fine 1st class ships in the best German and British yards. In peacetime, they were operated by Dobroflot, the Russian state-controlled “Volunteer Fleet,” then switched to Navy crews during war.

These nine AMCs activated were generally named after rivers or Cossack hosts that lived along their banks, including: Angara (12,050 tons), Lena (10,675 t), Kuban (12,000 t), Don (10,500 t), Ural (10,500 t), Dnepr (9,500 t), Rion (14,614 t), Rus (8,600 t) and our Terek (10,000 t).

The main batteries typically consisted of a few 120mm/45 (4.7″) Pattern 1892 Canet guns augmented by a secondary of 75mm/50 (2.9″) Pattern 1892 Canet guns and a tertiary of 57mm/6-pdr, 47mm/3-pdr, or 37mm/1-pdr Hotchkiss counter-boat guns. Dedicated magazine space was set aside and rigged for emergency flooding if needed. As their promenade decks didn’t lend well to gun emplacements, most were arranged on the fore and aft well decks, with smaller guns on the poop and forecastle.

4.7-inch guns on auxiliary cruiser Lena

As the cruisers had at least two military masts complete with lookout tops, they would typically carry at least a 1-pounder in each. Two to four large searchlights were fitted as well.

The Illustrated London News on October 8, 1904, details the “Russian Menace to Neutral Shipping” during the Russo-Japanese War, focusing on converted cruisers in neutral waters, including Lena (Kherson), Terek, Peterburg (Dnepr), and Smolensk (Rion).

The presence of these Russian cruisers in neutral ports, particularly the well-armed Lena (35 guns in four diverse batteries), which called at San Francisco in late 1904, caused a huge surge in war risk insurances for vessels of all flags bound for Japan, threatening a general halt in shipments.

Fresno Bee, Sept 14, 1904

Russian auxiliary cruiser Lena in San Francisco, November 1904. Built in 1896 by Hawthorn Leslie, Newcastle– at the time the largest ship built on the Tyne– she sailed with the Volunteer Fleet in peacetime as Kherson. Activated in late 1903 as tensions with Japan grew, she operated out of Vladivostok until she arrived at San Francisco for repairs in September 1904 and was eventually interned for the rest of the war. She later served as Naval Transport N73 in the Black Sea Fleet, then, evacuating Russia with Wrangel’s White navy in 1920, had a short career with the London Steamship & Trading Co, then was broken up in Venice in 1925.

Besides acting as scouts and raiders, a role well-suited to the force due to their large ocean-crossing coal bunkers, they also had lots of spare room in their peacetime passenger cabins to accommodate troops for use as a fast transport, or captured enemy mariners. One, Rus, was used as a balloon aircraft carrier, toting nine Parseval-Sigsfeld kite balloons and making 186 controlled ascents from her deck.

Sailing as a scouting unit with Russian ADM Rozhestvensky’s 2nd Pacific Squadron on its way to its destiny at Tsushima, several also bagged some prizes.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves here. Let’s turn this story back a bit.

Meet Columbia

Ordered in 1888, an express steamer of the Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (HAPAG) line, the Doppelschrauben-Schnelldampfer Columbia was intended to compete with the fastest liners of the British shipping companies. Built to the same plans as her AG Vulcan-built sister, SS Augusta Victoria, who claimed the fastest maiden voyage across the Atlantic in an east-west direction in May 1889, Columbia was fast.

Some 480 feet overall with a narrow 55-foot beam and knife-like bow, she was HAPAG’s second twin-screw express steamer on the North Atlantic. Equipped with twin VTR engines fed by nine boilers good for 13,300 shp, she made 20.5 knots on trials.

From The Engineer, 8 Nov 1889:

Some 7,300 GRT, she had accommodations for 1,100 passengers (400 first-class, 120 second-class, and 580 third-class).

German maritime artist Alexander Kircher penned several illustrations aboard the Columbia for the publication Die Rudermaschine in 1890.

A series of interior and exterior views upon delivery is in the collection of the DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University.

However, she and her sister were ready for war if needed. Following the government subsidy provided by the Imperial Postal Steamer agreement (Reichspostdampfervertrages), the Reich could use these steamers in the event of mobilization, and ships built for the service had to pass a Kaiserliche Marine inspection, including weight and space for deck guns and magazines. We saw how this played out with a host of German auxiliary cruisers in 1914 in past Warship Wednesdays.

Columbia was delivered to HAPAG in June 1889 and began her maiden voyage from Hamburg via Southampton to New York on 18 July. Importantly, in July 1895, Columbia and Augusta Victoria transported the guests of honor at the opening of the Kiel Canal.

Besides the American runs, the sisters would cruise in winter to the Mediterranean, in midsummer north to Spitsbergen, and from 1896 also to the West Indies.

It was postcard and poster worthy.

War! (under a Spanish banner)

With Madrid in dire need of modern ships for their looming clash with the U.S., three weeks before war was declared, on 8 April 1898, HAPAG sold the proud Columbia and the slightly larger Normannia to Spain. Normannia became the Spanish auxiliary cruiser Patriota, armed with four 12 cm/L40 Skoda rapid-firing guns and ten 47 mm/L44 QF guns, while the speedy Columbia would enter Spanish service as the auxiliary cruiser Rapido. Her skipper was Capt. Federico Campaño y Rosset.

In Spanish service, Columbia/Rapido would carry four 16.2cm/35s, two 14cm/35s, and six 47 mm/L44s. The conversion, no doubt easy due to the weight and space reserved for guns and shells in her design, only took 12 days.

Originally part of Gruppo E of the Reserve Squadron, intended for action against American lines of communication along the Atlantic coast, both Columbia/Rapido and Normannia/Patriota were reassigned to RADM Manuel de la Camara’s relief squadron for the Philippines six weeks after Dewey had destroyed RADM Patricio Montojo’s Spanish Pacific Squadron.

Sailing in line with the strongest Spanish ship in the fleet, the 11,000-ton 12-inch gunned battlewagon Pelayo; the armored cruiser Emperador Carlos V, destroyers Audaz, Osado, and Proserpina; and the troop-packed transports Buenos Aires and Panay, the force left Cadiz on 16 June 1898 and made Egypt ten days later, only to fight for coal with the English there for a week.

RADM Manuel de la Camara’s fleet under steam. Columbia/Rapido, with three masts and three stacks, is to the far left with Normannia/Patriota ahead of her. Original Location: Stanley Cohen, Images of the Spanish-American War (Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories Pub. Co., 1997). Via NHHC.

Rapido, Spanish auxiliary cruiser, at Port Said, Egypt, 26 June – 4 July 1898, while serving with Rear Admiral Manuel de la Camara’s squadron, which had been sent to relieve the Philippines. Copied from the Office of Naval Intelligence Album of Foreign Warships. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 88730

Camara’s squadron in the Suez Canal in 1898. Pelayo is in the foreground, with the rest of his fleet, Columbia/Rapido (visible between Pelayo’s masts) and Normannia/Patriota included. NHHC WHI.2014.36x

However, with Spanish VADM Pascual Cervera’s squadron’s defeat at the Battle of Santiago de Cuba on 3 July, and the fear that metropolitan Spain was left defenseless, Camara’s squadron was recalled home just as it made the Red Sea. Spending the rest of the war in European waters, Columbia/Rapido and Normannia/Patriota were later used as troop transport to help bring the defeated Spanish forces home from the lost colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico, shepherding (often towing) eight smaller, often derelict, vessels behind them back to Cadiz with stops in Martinique and the Canary Islands.

The Spanish admiralty having no further use for Columbia/Rapido, she was disarmed and sold back to HAPAG on 6 July 1899 for a nominal fee. Her career in Spanish service spanned just under 15 months and, as far as I can tell, she never fired a shot in anger during this period.

Meanwhile, Normannia/Patriota was given to the French government to resolve war debts. Renamed L’ Aquitaine, the former Normannia entered service with the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique (CGT) line in December 1899, and, in poor condition, was scrapped in 1906.

Under a Russian flag

Following a refit and a fresh coat of paint, Columbia spent the next four years in a shuffle of commercial runs from Hamburg via Southampton and Cherbourg to New York.

It was while on a run to the Big Apple in May 1904 that HAPAG unceremoniously sold Columbia, along with her sister Auguste Victoria and the liner Furst Bismarck, for 7.5 million rubles to the Russian Navy, in need of hulls to take the fight to the Japanese. At the same time, NDL sold the Russians the fast little (6963 BRT) liner Kaiserin Maria Theresia.

Auguste Victoria became the Russian auxiliary cruiser Kuban, Furst Bismarck became the cruiser Don, and Kaiserin Maria Theresia the cruiser Ural.

Columbia departed New York after discharging her passengers for the Russian naval base at Libau (now Liepaja, Latvia) in the Baltic, joining Auguste Victoria, Furst Bismarck, and Kaiserin Maria Theresia, who had arrived earlier.

Terek in Libau 1904. Note that the other auxiliary cruisers are in dark military livery

At Libau, Columbia’s German civil crew took trains for the frontier while dock workers began the conversion process. Her deck was additionally reinforced, magazines for ammunition and devices for feeding shells to the upper deck were equipped. Some of the rooms in the emigrant class cabins were adapted to accommodate additional supplies of coal, fresh water, and food. Hatches were cut out for coaling at sea, a task rarely performed by ocean liners. To protect the engines and boilers from enemy shells, additional steel sheets were installed. Columbia was also equipped with additional equipment: two combat searchlights, a powerful wireless telegraph station, etc.

Columbia’s armament was lighter than in Spanish service, consisting of just two 12 cm L/45s, four 7.5 cm L/50s, eight 5.7 cm Hotchkiss guns, and two Maxim machine guns. The Russian naval staff had initially intended for each of the three new-to-them German-made auxiliary cruisers to carry fourteen 6-inch guns, but the ordnance just wasn’t available.

Our subject was named Terek after the fierce Cossack host on the river of the same name in the Caucasus region.

Terek Cossacks

Terek’s inaugural Russian skipper was Capt. (2nd rank) Konstantin Aleksandrovich Panferov, a 44-year-old career officer who had joined the fleet as a 14-year-old midshipman and had earned sea legs on everything from schooners to armored cruisers. His father, Aleksandr Konstantinovich, was friends with Nakhimov, took part in the Siege of Sevastopol as a battery commander, and retired as a rear admiral.

The rest of the wardroom was light, just four lieutenants and a dozen or so warrant officers and midshipmen rushed into service. Her sole surgeon was seconded from a teaching position at a Petersburg university. The new (again) cruiser’s crew of just over 400 was drawn from depots all over Russia.

As described by a Russian Tsushima veteran, Capt. Vladimir Ivanovich Semenov, of this force, “The naivety is almost touching…”

While Auguste Victoria/Kuban and Furst Bismarck/Don were repainted from their commercial livery to a heavy grey/green scheme, there wasn’t either enough time or paint left to do the same for Terek, and she sailed as-is.

War (against Japan, kinda)

Sent out from Libau on 12 August 1904 to hunt for Japanese merchant ships (or those of other flags carrying Japan-related contraband), Terek sortied out into the Atlantic before making Las Palmas, Vigo, and Lisbon for resupply then haunted the approaches to Gibraltar before she arrived back in the Baltic on 8 October, covering 9,190nm and inspecting 15 suspect vessels with no prizes. She earned enough attention from harassing ships with Red Dusters to be shadowed by the British cruisers HMS St. George and Brilliant.

Terek overhauling the British merchant ship Derwen off Cape St. Vincent (Cabo de San Vicente) off southern Portugal, August 1904.

As noted by Patrick J. Rollins in the 1994 Naval War College Review: “In August 1904, the three largest shipping firms in England, including the great P&O Line, suspended service to Japan. By the end of August, insurance rates on British ships bound for the Far East stood at 20 shillings per hundred, or four times the rate charged to the French and Germans.”

Terek was selected, along with her sister Auguste Victoria/Kuban and the auxiliary cruiser Kaiserin Maria Theresia/Ural, to join VADM Zinoy Rozhestvensky’s “2nd” Pacific Squadron, which was just the Russian Baltic Fleet, on its ill-fated mission to relieve besieged Port Arthur in the Pacific.

However, due to the nature of Rozhestvensky’s straggling fleet, Terek was not released to join the squadron until 18 November, following Ural, which had left four days earlier, and Kuban, which had sailed a full three weeks prior. Sailing around the Cape of Good Hope via Dakar, Terek only managed to link up with Kuban and Ural off Madagascar in January 1905. Dnepr (ex-Petersburg) and Rion (ex-Smolensk), who had spent the summer harassing British shipping off the East Coast of Africa, joined them. The five ersatz cruisers formed the fleet’s Reconnaissance Detachment.

By that time, Port Arthur had fallen and, much like Camara’s squadron in 1898, you would expect Rozhestvensky to be recalled back home. However, this was not to be, and the force, after weeks in Madagascar, was ordered to attempt to run past the Japanese to Vladivostok.

Another of the nine Russian auxiliary cruisers, Angara, was lost in the fall of Port Arthur, pounded into the mud by Japanese heavy artillery.

Once in the Pacific, Rion and Dnepr were detailed to escort a group of transports to Shanghai, then break off for commerce raiding along Japan’s sea lanes in the southern part of the Yellow Sea.

Ural would accompany the main force and would soon end up on the bottom.

According to Rozhestvensky’s order No. 380 of 21 May, the Kuban and Terek were to sail ahead and feint around the east of Japan and work in the area between the island of Shikoku and Yokohama. The cruisers were ordered to “without hesitation sink” all steamships on which military contraband would be noticed, a plan surely designed to draw Japanese Admiral Togo’s forces away from the Tsushima straits.

As noted by Semenov at the time back with the main fleet on 22 May, five days before the run through Tsushima, “Yesterday, the Kuban, and today the Terek, separated from the squadron to cruise off the eastern shores of Japan. May God grant them more noise.”

Kuban spent three weeks off Japan, in terrible weather, and only managed to close with two freighters, the German steamer Surabaya, carrying a cargo of flour from Hamburg to Vladivostok of all places, and the unladen Austrian freighter Ladroma. Down to her last 1,800 tons of coal, and finding out about the destruction of the 2nd Pacific Squadron from the latest issue of the Singapore Free Press newspaper aboard Ladroma, Kuban’s skipper called it quits and sailed for Saigon for coal, then made it back to Libau alone on 3 August.

Rion was able to break a few eggs, so to speak, after the battle. On 30 May, some 60 miles from Cape Shantung, she detained the German steamship Tetartos (2409 GRT), heading from Otaru to Tianjin with railway sleepers and fish, and sank it the next morning. Four days later, while 80 miles from Wusung, she stopped the English steamship Cilurnum (2123 GRT), heading from Shanghai to Moji. The steamship was released after its cargo of beans and cotton was thrown over the side. Her war over, Rion sailed for home, arriving in Kronstadt on 30 July.

Dnepr came across the British steamer St Kilda (3519 GRT) off Hong Kong on 5 June with a cargo that included rice, sugar, and gunnies bound for Yokohama. She then sent said steamer to Davy Jones and landed the crew back in Hong Kong before heading back home.

This left our Terek to strike the last blows. She did so against the British-flagged Ikhona (5252 GRT) of the Indian Steam Navigation Company on 5 June while north of Hong Kong in the Philippine Sea, during the latter’s voyage from Rangoon to Yokohama with a cargo of rice and mail. Taking off the crew, the shipwrecked mariners were transferred to the passing Dutch steamer Periak at sea two weeks later and eventually landed at Singapore. The ship’s skipper, one Capt. Stone reported that the capture and sinking had taken six long hours, with dynamite charges failing to scuttle the steamer before Terek opened up with “quick-firers.”

Ikhona was the fourth British ship lost to the Russians during the conflict after SS Knight Commander, St. Kilda, and the schooner Hip Sang. His majesty’s government later pursued a claim of £250,000 against Russia for the value of the ships and their cargoes, with Ikhona being the most expensive at £100,000.

Continuing in the South China Sea, on 22 June 1905, Terek came across the unlikely victim that was the Kiel-built Danish East Asiatic Company steamer Prinsesse Marie (5416 tons), bound with cargo for Japan, and sank the same. Another bloodless kill by old school “cruiser rules,” her crew was taken off and brought to Batavia in the Dutch East Indies a week later. With the Dutch refusing Terek coal, the Russian cruiser ended her sortie there and was interned for three months until the Treaty of Portsmouth ended the war. Capt. Panferov dutifully offered his flag and sword to the local Dutch naval commander, who refused them.

Det Østasiatiske Kompagni Prinsesse Marie

Ironically, the Danish EAC protested the sinking of Prinsesse Marie under the pretext that, while her cargo was bound for a Japanese port, it was manifested to go to a European concern. It’s possible the Tsar, his mother being a Danish princess, made that one right in the end.

Returning home to Russia, on 10 December 1905, an order was received to Kuban, Terek, and Don of “all weapons and things related to naval affairs,” and investigate the possibility of selling the ships.

On 18 November 1906, by order of the fleet and the Naval Department No. 300, the Terek and her sister Kuban were excluded from the naval lists and were handed over to the port of Libau pending auction. The following February, Vosidlo and Co. paid 442,150 rubles for both vessels and sent them to Stettin to be cut up for scrap metal.

Epilogue

Terek could arguably be listed as one of the most successful ships on the Tsarist side of the Russo-Japanese War. A huge 1:48 scale model of the ship was crafted for the Russian Naval Museum in St. Petersburg following the campaign. Although damaged by fire during German bombs in WWII, it remains on display.

Terek’s only wartime Russian skipper, Panferov, earned both the Order of St. Anne, 2nd degree, and the Order of St. Vladimir, 4th degree for his service on the cruiser. Promoted to Capt. 1st Rank in 1908, then, switching to a shoreside non-line duty, by 1913, rose to the rank of major general. During the Great War, as chief quartermaster of Kronstadt, he earned the St. Anne 1st degree in 1916. One of the rare senior officers retained by the Red Navy post-revolution, he retired in 1919.

Russian Navy MG Konstantin Aleksandrovich Panferov. His son, Georgy Konstantinovich Panferov, went on to become a surgeon colonel during WWII and a professor at the Naval Medical Academy (VMMA). His grandson, Yuri Georgievich Panferov, followed in his footsteps and became an officer in the Red Banner fleet.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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