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Warship Wednesday Sept 10. 2014, Australia’s Most Silent Sub

Posted on September 10, 2014 by laststandonzombieisland 3 comments

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, Sept 10. 2014, Australia’s Most Silent Sub

Here we see the E-Class submarine AE2 of the Royal Australian Navy Presenting the Submarine Threat in the Sea of Marmara, April 1915 by Charles Bryant. The ship, just 181-feet long, sailed into history and proved her mettle.

One of the 58 British-built E-class submersibles constructed between 1912-1916, these ships were considered the first really successful Royal Navy submarines. Built from experience with earlier D-class boats, these 780-ton (submerged) ships could make a decent 15-knots on their twin 800hp Vickers diesels when surfaced on an attack run, or a more sedate 10-knots while submerged and on a set of 313kW electric motors. Although very small and cramped ships, they had a respectable 3,000-nm range and were capable of spending two weeks or more at sea before hiding places for food to stoke their 30-man crew ran out. Four 18-inch tubes (arranged bow, stern, port, and starboard– talk about variety!) and four torpedo racks allowed the boats to carry as many as eight war shots with a fish in every spot. Cheap (about 100,000-pounds) and able to both conduct ops in blue and brown water due to their shallow 12-foot draft, they were the perfect steel shark for the Royal Navy.

Therefore, the infant Royal Australian Navy ordered up two of their own designated HMAS AE1 and HMAS AE2 from Vickers Armstrong at Barrow-in-Furness, England, in 1912. Commissioned in the spring of 1914, they were the first subs to carry the Australian flag. Therefore, to spin up the Aussie crew, they carried a mixed complement of RN/RNAS personnel. For instance, it is known that of the 37 crewmembers who served on the ship in 1915 only 14 were born in Australia. Twenty-one crew members were born in Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland), one in New Zealand, and another in Brazil.

Sailing for the Pacific, these ships covered an epic 13,000-nm route in 83 days, impressive for the time.

HMAS AE2 passing through Suez Canal

When the war broke out, the subs, a rarity on the West Pac, were dispatched as part of the Australian force to capture the German colony of Rabal, Deutsch-Neuguinea (Kaiserwilhelmsland).

An Australian soldier of the AN&MEF and his mother in Sydney, 1914, prior to departing for Rabaul

With no German ships to oppose the landing of some 2000 Australians, a force of about a tenth that size of German reservists and local police lost the sharp but bloody Battle of Bita Paka. However, HMAS AE1 vanished while on patrol during the operation, never to be seen again. This was Australia’s first major loss of World War I.

With the German colony’s surrender, and the destruction of Adm. Von Spee’s Asiatic Squadron leaving the Pacific free of the Hun, AE2, Australia’s only remaining sub, left for Europe where she could be put to good use. Leaving in December 1914, she was the sole escort for a convoy of 17 ships carrying Australian troops to Africa, being towed most of the way to be able to keep up. Since AE2 had no deck guns, her value as an escort was questionable at best, but nonetheless, her charges arrived at the Suez Canal at the end of Jan. 1915 without a scratch on them.

On route to take part in the Dardanelles campaign, the AE2 is making her own way into Aden after being towed across the Indian Ocean by the transport HMAS Berrima (background). Australian War archive P02029.027

Once in the Med, the Royal Navy soon detailed the Australian sub to penetrate the Dardanelles, work its way through thick Turkish minefields that had foiled the combined fleets of Great Britain and France, and then run amok in the Sea of Marma. With traditional pluck, the ship set off and did just that on April 25, 1915.

From the Australian Navy’s website of the event as told from the report of Lieutenant Commander H H G D Stoker, commander:

‘Having proceeded from the anchorage off Tenedos, I lay at the entrance off the Dardanelles until moonset and at about 2:30 am on 25th April entered the straits at 8 knots. Weather calm and clear. As the order to run amok in the Narrows precluded all possibility of passing through unseen, I decided to travel on the surface as far as possible.’

Searchlights continually swept the Strait but AE2 continued unmolested until 4:30 am when batteries opened fire from the northern shore. The submarine dived and began her passage through the minefield. Wires, from which the mines were moored, continually scraped AE2’s sides for the next half hour. Twice she surfaced in the minefield to make observations. At 6:00 am she was within two miles of the Narrows submerged at periscope depth. The sea was flat calm. Forts on both sides of the Narrows sighted her and immediately opened heavy fire. Stoker, watching through his periscope, observed a number of ships and decided to attack a small cruiser of the PEIK-E-SHETHEK type. His report continued:

‘At a range of three hundred yards I fired the bow tube at her. One of the destroyers was now very close, attempting to ram us on the port side, so at the moment of firing I ordered 70 feet. A last glance, as the periscope dipped, showed the destroyer apparently right on top of us, and then, amidst the noise of her propeller whizzing overhead, was heard the big explosion as the torpedo struck’.

After a brief interval underwater Stoker decided to risk a look around.

‘As the vessel was rising, she hit bottom and slid up on to the bank to a depth of ten feet, at which depth a considerable portion of the conning tower was above water. Through the periscope I saw that the position was immediately under Fort Anatoli Medjidieh.’

The fort opened fire and for some minutes shells fell on all sides until efforts to refloat her succeeded. AE2 then slid into the safety of deep water. The relief on board the submarine proved brief and it was not long before AE2 was again stranded.

‘Through the periscope I judged the position to be immediately under Serina Burnu, and I further observed two destroyers, a gunboat, and several small craft standing close off in the Straits firing heavily and a cluster of small boats which I judged to be picking up survivors of the cruiser.’

‘As my vessel was lying with inclination down by the bows I went full speed ahead. Shortly afterwards she began to move down the bank, bumped, gathered way and then bumped very heavily. She, however, continued to descend and at 80 feet I dived off the bank. The last bump was calculated to considerably injure the vessel, but as I considered my chief duty was to prove the passage through the Straits possible, I decided to continue.’

Shortly afterwards AE2 again rose to periscope depth. She was seen to be approaching Nagara Point. On all sides she was surrounded by pursuit craft. Each time she showed her periscope the destroyers tried to ram her and each time she eluded them. At last in an attempt to shake the enemy off Stoker decided to lie on the bottom on the Asiatic shore to await developments.

All day, 25 April, AE2 lay in 80 feet of water while the searching enemy ships passed and repassed overhead. Once she was hit by a heavy object being trailed along the bottom. At 9:00 pm she rose to the surface to charge batteries. All signs of shipping had vanished.

At 4:00 pm on 26 April, AE2 proceeded on the surface up the Straits. Stoker commented:

‘As soon as light permitted, I observed through periscope, two ships approaching – both men-o-war. Sea was glassy calm and I approached with periscope down. On hoisting periscope I observed ship on line of sight of port tube. I immediately fired but ship altered course and the torpedo missed. I discovered I had fired at the leading ship and found it impossible to bring another tube to bear on second ship (a battleship Barbarossa class) with any chance of success. I therefore did not fire.’

‘I continued on course through the Straits, examined the Gallipoli anchorage, found no ship worthy of attack and so proceeded in the Sea of Marmora, which was entered about 9:00 am.’

About 9:30 am AE2 sighted several ships, but since only six of her eight torpedoes remained Stoker decided not to fire until he was certain his target was a troop transport.

‘With this intention I dived close to the foremost ship – a tramp of about 2,000 tons. Passing about 200 yards abeam of her I could see no sign of troops; but as I passed under her stern she ran up colours and opened rifle fire at the periscope. I dived over to the next ship and attacked at 400 yards with starboard beam torpedo. The torpedo failed to hit.’

Half an hour later AE2 surfaced and spent the rest of the day on the surface, charging batteries and making good defects. Shortly after dark she was attacked by a small anti-submarine vessel and throughout the night of 26/27 April she was attacked on several occasions shortly after surfacing.

At dawn on 27 April she sighted a ship escorted by two destroyers. Evading the escort, she manoeuvred into position at 300 yards but this time the torpedo refused to leave the tube. A destroyer tried to ram, forcing a hurried dive. Nothing else was sighted that day. The following night Stoker rested his crew on the bottom of Artaki Bay. Twice on 28 April she made attacks only to see the torpedoes narrowly miss the target.

‘At dawn on 29 April I dived towards Gallipoli and observed a gunboat patrolling ahead of Strait off Eski Farnar Point. Dived under gunboat down Strait, and returned up Strait showing periscope to give the impression that another submarine had come through. Destroyers and torpedo boats came out in pursuit; having led them all up towards Sea of Marmora, I dived back and examined Gallipoli anchorage but found nothing to attack.’

AE2 then proceeded out into the Sea of Marmora pursued by anti-submarine units. She surfaced half an hour later, spotted the gunboat, fired and missed by one yard.

On the same day, off Kara Burnu Point, she met HMS E14, the second British submarine to successfully pass through the Dardanelles. A new rendezvous was arranged for 10:00 am the following day.

On the night of 29/30 April, AE2 lay on the bottom north of Marmora Island. Arriving at the rendezvous at 10:00 am she sighted a torpedo boat approaching at high speed. Stoker commented on subsequent events:

‘Dived to avoid torpedo boat; whilst diving sighted smoke in Artaki Bay, so steered south to investigate. About 10:30 the boat’s nose suddenly rose and she broke surface about a mile from the torpedo boat. Blew water forward but boat would not dive. Torpedo boat firing very close and ship from Artaki bay, a gunboat was also firing; flooded a forward tank and boat suddenly assumed big inclination down by the bows and dived very rapidly. AE2 was only fitted with 100 foot depth gauges. This depth was quickly reached and passed. After a considerable descent the boat rose rapidly, passed the 100 foot mark and in spite of efforts to check her broke the surface stern first. Within seconds the engine room was hit and holed in three places. Owing to the inclination down by the bow, it was impossible to see torpedo boat through the periscope and I considered any attempt to ram would be useless. I therefore blew main ballast and ordered all hands on deck. Assisted by LEUT Haggard, I then opened all tanks to flood the sub and went on deck. The boat sank in a few minutes in about 55 fathoms, in approximate position 4 degrees north of Kara Burnu Point at 10:45 am. All hands were picked up by the torpedo boat and no lives lost.’

Stoker and his crew, although saved, spent the next four years in a series of Turkish prisons, only freed by the end of the war.

The AE2 herself lay forgotten for 83 years until a joint Turkish-Australian effort found the stricken sub in some 236-feet of seawater. She is not set to be salvaged but instead saved as a war wreck, marked and protected. In 2010 the RAN awarded the sub the two official honors, “Rabaul 1914” and “Dardanelles 1915”.

A very active society is in place to celebrate the legacy of Australia’s sacred submarine.

Specs:

Click to embiggen

Cost:    £115,000
Built:   Vickers at Barrow-in-Furness, Lancashire, England
Launched:       18 June 1913
Commissioned: 28 February 1914
Complement: 35
Length:            181 feet [55.17m]
Beam: 22 feet 6 inches [6.86m]
Draught:          12 feet, 6 inches [3.81m]
Displacement: 660 tonnes surfaced, 800 tonnes submerged
Speed:             15 knots surfaced, 10 knots submerged
Armaments: Four 18-inch Whitehead torpedo tubes – single bow tube: two tubes in the beam port and starboard, stern tube. AE2 carried 8 torpedoes: two at each of the 4 firing positions
Periscopes: Two: the main a fixed lens and another with moveable optics to view the sky
Crew: 32 (three officers and 29 seamen)

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

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

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Warship Wednesday Sept 3: Four Italian sisters in Argentine service

Posted on September 3, 2014 by laststandonzombieisland One comment

– Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday Sept 3: Four Italian sisters in Argentine service.

click to bigup

Here we see the Giuseppe Garibaldi-class armored cruiser Armada de la República Argentina (ARA) General Giuseppe Garibaldi of the Argentine Navy as she appeared around the turn of the century in her gleaming white and buff scheme. She was a ship representative of her time, and her class outlived most of their contemporaries.

Ordered from Gio. Ansaldo & C shipbuilders, Genoa, Italy, in 1894 the General Giuseppe Garibaldi was designed by Italian naval architect Edoardo Masdea to provide a ship, smaller than a 1st-rate battleship, yet larger and stronger than any cruiser that could oppose it.

One large 10-inch gun fore and another aft gave these ships some punch.

The concept predated battle cruisers by a decade or two and had its apex at the Battle of Tsushima, where so-called ‘armored cruisers’ gave a poor showing of themselves. The final nail in the coffin of the armored cruiser design was the Battle of the Falklands in 1914 in which a German force of armored and light cruisers under Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee was annihilated by a group of larger and faster RN battle cruisers of Vice-Admiral Doveton Sturdee.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves…

The Garibaldi class was innovative for 1894, with a 344-foot long, 7200-ton hull capable of making 20-knots and sustaining a range of more than 7,000 nm at 12. Although made in Italy, she was almost all-British from her Armstrong batteries to her Bellville boilers to her Whitehead torpedoes and Harvey armor.

Armored with a belt that ran up-to 5.9-inches thick, she could take hits from faster cruisers and gunboats while being able to dish out punishment from a pair of Armstrong 10-inch guns that no ship smaller than her could absorb. Capable of outrunning larger ships, she also had a quartet of torpedo tubes and extensive rapid fire secondary batteries to make life hard on the enemy’s small ships and merchantmen.

She was designed for power projection on a budget and the Argentine Navy, facing a quiet arms race between Brazil and Chile on each side, needed modern ships.

They therefore scooped up not only the Garibaldi (commissioned in 1895) but also the follow-on sister-ships General Belgrano and General San Martín ( built by Orlando of Livorno in 1896) and Genoa-made Pueyrredón (1898) to make a quartet of powerful cruisers. These ships, coupled with the Rivadavia-class battleships ordered later in the U.S., helped make the Argentine navy for a period of about two decades the eighth most powerful in the world (after the big five European powers, Japan, and the United States), and the largest in Latin America.

Belgrao making steam with a bone in her mouth. These chunky cruisers could make 20-knots, which was fast for 1894 when they were designed

Belgrano making steam with a bone in her mouth. These chunky cruisers could make 20-knots, which was fast for 1894 when they were designed

The gunboat diplomacy of these ships soon paid off, with Belgrano being used as the signing platform for the 1899 peace treaty between Argentina and Chile to settle the Puna de Atacama dispute.

These ships proved so popular when built, in fact, that Spain quickly ordered a pair (one of which, Cristóbal Colón, was soon sunk in the Spanish-American War), Italy picked up three more (including confusingly enough, one also named Giuseppe Garibaldi-– he was an Italian hero after all!) and Japan acquired two of their own in the 1900s.

ARA Pueyrredon. Note deck awnings in use and extensive view of broadside secondary casemated guns

The four Argentine ships long outlived their foreign sisters.

Although the country had built a huge naval armada, they remained on the sidelines during a number of crisis in their time. The country remained more or less (some would contend less) neutral in both World Wars as well as in regional conflicts. They did, however, often sail the world and show the flag. Garibaldi for instance, was often seen in Caribbean ports while Belgrano made an extensive European tour in 1927, spending most of that year overseas.

Argentine Garibaldi class cruiser San Martin

One of the more popular assignments for theses ships over their lifetimes were yearly midshipmen cruises. Typically from August to December, they would alternate between circumnavigating the continent to trips to Europe and Africa.

For example, in 1941, with the world at war, ARA Pueyrredon still had time to travel some 14,964 miles from Puerto Belgrano to New Orleans and back, stopping for lengthy port stays at such popular destinations as Havana, Rio, and Aruba.

San Martin warping into harbor. Photo by City of Art

By 1920 Garibaldi— the Argentine one– was in poor condition and relegated to duty as a training ship while her three sisters were modernized, disarmed a good bit, and overhauled. By 20 March 1934, with the world in a global recession, Garibaldi was stricken, cannibalized so that her classmates could live longer lives, and sold for scrap at the end of 1936.

ARA San Martin was stricken 8 December 1935 but retained for twelve years as a dockside depot ship and scrapped in 1947.

El ARA San Martín, fue un crucero acorazado perteneciente a la Clase italiana Giuseppe Garibaldi, via Postales Navales

ARA Gen. Belgrano, who was used after 1933 as a submarine tender, was stricken May 8, 1947 and sold in 1953.

ARA Pueyrredon in Dublin in 1951. At this point this pre-SpanAm War vet was pushing her sixth decade at sea. Her white and buff scheme long since replaced by haze gray with black caps. Note, she still has her 10-inch Armstrong guns, although by the 1950s 254mm blackpowder bagged naval shells were very out of style to say the least. Photo by Historymar

Finally, ARA Pueyrredon, as far as I can tell, was the last ‘operational’ armored cruiser in naval service in the world. As late as 1951 the veteran was making cruises to Europe to show the blue and white banner of the Argentine navy while training naval officers. That summer she moved more than 20,000 miles underway on a round trip from Buenos Aires, Pernambuco, Liverpool, Dublin, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Le Havre, Naples, Genoa, Villefranche, Barcelona, Casa-blanca, Dakar, Santos, back to Buenos Aires.

She was stricken on 2 August 1954 after nearly six decades in commission, spending half of that as a training ship assigned to the Naval Academy, and towed in 1954 to Japan to be scrapped.

ex-Pueyrredon being towed, 1954. Photo by Historymar

Thus she outlived by two years what is considered by many to be the last armored cruiser afloat, the Greek Navy’s Georgios Averof (c.1911) which was decommissioned in 1952.

Sadly, the only monument to these beautiful and hard-serving Argentine ships is the bow coat of arms from ARA Pueyrredon, preserved on the grounds of Argentine Naval Academy.

The Argentine Sun of May (Spanish: Sol de Mayo) national emblem on the bowcrest of ARA Pueyrredon

Specs:

Displacement: 7,069 long tons (7,182 t)
Length:    344 ft 2 in (104.9 m)
Beam:    50 ft 8 in (15.4 m)
Draught:    23 ft 4 in (7.1 m)
Installed power:    13,000 ihp (9,700 kW)
Propulsion:    2 shafts, vertical triple-expansion steam engines
8 cylindrical Bellville boilers (replaced 1920s)
Speed:    20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph) as designed. Later 15-knots after 1925.
Range: 7000 nm at 12 knots on 1,000 tons coal. Later 4200 nm at 9kts after 1925 refits.
Complement: 520 as designed (typical Argentine service, 25 officers, 300 crew or 28 officers; 60-95 cadets; 275 crew)

Armament: (As commissioned, greatly reduced after 1925)
2×1 – Armstrong 10-inch (254 mm) guns
10×1 – 152mm Armstrong rapid fire (120mm in Garibaldi)
10×1 – 57mm 6-pounder Nordenfeldt guns
8×1 37mm Hotchkiss guns
2×1 8mm Maxim water cooled machine guns
4×1 – 18-inch (457 mm) torpedo tubes with Whitehead fish (Five tubes in ARA Pueyrredon)
+ 2×1 – 3-inch (75 mm) guns landing guns (cañones de desembarcode)

Armour: (All Harvey-type armor)
Belt: 3.1–5.9 in (79–150 mm)
Barbettes: 5.9 in (150 mm)
Gun turrets: 5.9 in (150 mm)
Conning tower: 5.9 in (150 mm)

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

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

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday August 27, the plucky Perch, hardy frogman steed

Posted on August 27, 2014 by laststandonzombieisland 16 comments

Here at LSOZI, we will take off every Wednesday to look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, August 27, the plucky Perch

Here we see the Balao-class submarine USS Perch (SS-313) as she appeared in the late 1960s off Pearl Harbor with her crew in summer whites. This hardy vessel made seven war patrols during WWII then remained one of the last operational smoke boats in the U.S. Navy, seeing hot service in both Korea and Vietnam.

The 128-ship Balao class were classic 311-foot, 2500-ton ‘fleet boats’ designed to roam the Pacific on patrols that could last some 75 days due to their 11,000-nm range. Capable of making over 20-knots in a surface attack, they carried a staggering 10 torpedo tubes for which they stocked two dozen steel fish, as well as a reasonably well-armed battery of deck and AAA guns to sink smaller vessels like sampans and defend themselves against aircraft. We have covered ships of this class in the past here at LSOZI but don’t complain, they have lots of great stories.

Laid down on 5 January 1943 at Electric Boat in Groton, she was commissioned 367 days later and departed for Key West for training. Needed for service in the Pacific, she arrived in Pearl Harbor at the beginning of April 1944. Just three weeks later she left on her first war patrol. For the next year, she conducted a total of 7 patrols in enemy waters, often working as part of a small U.S. submarine wolf-pack, chasing down the few Japanese merchant and warships that remained afloat. She lurked in the South China sea, trading an attack on an oilier for a counter-attack by a Japanese sub buster. Perch managed to send a few small trawlers and coasters to the bottom in surface gunfire actions while plucking Navy Corsair pilots and USAAF B-29 crews from the Pacific.

In a sign of things to come, she was used to land a 12-man Australian commando force of the famous Z Special Unit on a reconnaissance mission to Balikpapan Bay, Borneo, Indonesia (then in the Japanese-occupied Dutch East Indies). The ill-fated force under the renowned Aussie commando leader Major John Stott was lost through no fault of the Perch.

Ending the war off the coast of Imperial Japan, Perch was decommed and placed in reserve in 1947. However, unlike many of her class, she was soon dusted off and in May 1948 she was converted to a Submarine, Transport (SSP-313, later ASSP-313, then APSS-313, then LPSS–313, all with basically the same meaning) then recommissioned.

Aft view of the Perch (SS-313) off Mare Island after completion of conversion to a troop transport. Note the large dry deck shelter for equipment and small boats. US Navy photo

Aft view of the Perch (SS-313) off Mare Island after completion of conversion to a troop transport. Note the sizeable dry deck shelter for equipment and small boats. US Navy photo

Soon after the balloon went up on the Korean peninsula, Perch was used for landing British Commandos on raids behind North Korean lines. These were so successful not to mention hazardous, that Perch’s CO was made the recipient of a Bronze Star, the only such sub commander to win one in action during the Korean conflict. The sub added a fifth battle star to her record to go with the four she earned during WWII.

Broadside view of Perch (ASSP-313) off Mare Island on 6 May 1954. She was undergoing repairs at Mare Island from 8 December 1953 to 13 May 1954. US Navy photo # 21035-5-54, courtesy of Darryl L. Baker.

Except for 20 months when she was laid up (1960-61), Perch spent the next 15 years shuttling around the Pacific from the Aleutians to the Gulf of Siam landing groups of Navy UDT teams, Army Green Berets, and Allied troops up to company-sized on exercise beaches under all conditions. While the equipment was stored in an external dry deck shelter bolted to the outside of the hull aft of the conning tower, the embarked commandos had to hot bunk with the crew. Since there were some 70 enlisted berths, this meant an additional 70 foot soldiers could be taken aboard, if uncomfortably.

Perch (ASSP-313), during exercises with reconnaissance troops from the 1st Marine Division off the coast of California. In addition to many internal changes, the Perch’s conning tower structure had been extended and additional masts and shears were added by January 1957, when this photo was taken.USN photo and text from The American Submarine by Norman Polmar, courtesy of Robert Hurst via Navsource

Yes, this IS a submarine with an Amtrac aboard. Perch (ASSP-313) preparing to launch an LVT amphibious tractor during a 1949 exercise. The vehicle could be carried in the cargo hangar and launched by flooding down the submarine. USN photo and text from The American Submarine by Norman Polmar, courtesy of Robert Hurst.

While many of her class had been upgraded or decommissioned, Perch remained largely in her WWII configuration, even retaining some of her deck guns in an era when most submarines in the fleet had removed theirs.

Then came Vietnam. From August 1965-October 1966 she landed UDT troops as well as South Vietnamese commandos up and down the coastline, performing classified “Deck House” beach reconnaissance missions and “Dagger Thrust” amphibious landings. You see these old smokers could come much closer to shore than many other warships, capable of floating in 17 feet of seawater when surfaced. This made them popular for these littoral missions conducted in the dark of night, especially in areas without much enemy ASW capability.

Perch was more or less a dedicated frogman ride from 1948-1967.

Sailors from the USS Perch (APSS 313) help prepare South Vietnamese marines for special operations ashore, circa 1966. U.S. Navy Museum

It was during this Indochina service that Perch became the last U.S. submarine to conduct a surface gunfire action while engaged in Operation Deckhouse III.

The last gun-armed US Submarine in commission was USS Perch APSS-313. She was armed with a wet mount 40MM cannon on a sponson forward of the bridge and a 40MM cannon on the cigarette deck. Her last battle stations gun-action took place on August 20, 21, 1966 near Qui Nhon viet Nam. Perch opened fire with both 40MM’s and .50 Cal machine guns to assist extraction of a UDT team that was receiving Viet Cong fire from the beach. On the night of August 21, 1966 lying to on the surface 500 yards from shore she again opened fire with her deck guns and machine guns on enemy troops moving into position around a small ARVN force on the beach. Several secondary explosions of VC ordnance was observed. The ARVN force was extracted. USS Perch was relieved by USS Tunny APSS-282 the following month. Perch returned stateside for decommissioning. Tunny had several members of her crew trained for rigging topside to allow UDT teams to concentrate on the mission, and a portion of the crew trained as a “reaction force” to assist UDT extraction, or repel an enemy vessel. Tunny carried .50 Cal Machine Guns as did many smoke boats that operated in that area. Source–SEALS, UDT/SEAL Ops in Viet Nam, T.L. Bosiljevac, Ivy books New York, 1990.

USS Perch (SS-313) Balao class submarine in 1965 as transport submarine APSS-313, note the 40mm Bofors, forward.

Her third war over, Perch was sent back home and used as a training and auxiliary vessel, rarely getting underway after 1968. On 1 December 1971, she was decommissioned and, at age 27, stricken. She was sold for scrap in 1973.

The Homecoming, original painting of a Balao class sub by artist John Meeks

The Homecomingan , original painting of a Balao class sub by artist John Meeks

While Perch no longer exists, of her 121 other Balao-class sisters, one (Tusk) is still in some sort of service with the Taiwanese Navy while at least eight are preserved in the U.S.

Please visit one near you if you can and remember the old Perch.

USS Batfish (SS-310) at War Memorial Park in Muskogee, Oklahoma.
USS Becuna (SS-319) at Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
USS Bowfin (SS-287) at USS Bowfin Submarine Museum & Park in Honolulu, Hawaii
USS Clamagore (SS-343) at Patriot’s Point in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.
USS Ling (SS-297) at New Jersey Naval Museum in Hackensack, New Jersey.
USS Lionfish (SS-298) at Battleship Cove in Fall River, Massachusetts.
USS Pampanito (SS-383) at San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park.
USS Razorback (SS-394) at Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum in North Little Rock, Arkansas.

Specs:

(As-built)
Displacement: 1,526 tons (1,550 t) surfaced
2,424 tons (2,463 t) submerged
Length:    311 ft 9 in (95.02 m)
Beam:    27 ft 3 in (8.31 m)
Draft:    16 ft 10 in (5.13 m) maximum
Propulsion:
4 × General Motors Model 16-278A V16 diesel engines driving electrical generators
2 × 126-cell Sargo batteries
4 × high-speed General Electric electric motors with reduction gears
two propellers
5,400 shp (4.0 MW) surfaced
2,740 shp (2.0 MW) submerged
Speed:    20.25 knots (38 km/h) surfaced
8.75 knots (16 km/h) submerged
Range:    11,000 nautical miles (20,000 km) surfaced at 10 knots (19 km/h)
Endurance:    48 hours at 2 knots (3.7 km/h) submerged
75 days on patrol
Test depth:    400 ft (120 m)
Complement: 10 officers, 70–71 enlisted. After 1948, 75 commandos for short periods.
Armament:    10 × 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes
(six forward, four aft) 24 torpedoes
1 × 5-inch (127 mm) / 25 caliber deck gun, Oerlikon 20 mm cannon (Removed 1948)
Bofors 40 mm

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Warship Wednesday August 20: The Impressive Italian 17-inch Heroes

Posted on August 20, 2014 by laststandonzombieisland One comment

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week.

– Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday August 20 The Impressive Italian 17-inch Heroes

Here we see the giant and remarkable for the time Italia-class battlewagon Lepanto. Designed by the famous Benedetto Brin in the 1870s to bring peace and tranquility to the Med– under the Italian tri-color– the two-ship Italia-class was the pride and joy of the Regia Marina.

Tipping the scales at over 15,000-tons, these 409-foot steel-hulled brawlers could make an impressive 18.4-knots on their 15,797 shp plant. What is truly remarkable about these ships is that they had a brace of four 17-inch (432mm) naval guns. That’s not a misprint– we are talking about 17-inch rifled cannon in 1876. Of course they were black powder and only some 26-calibers long, but you have to admit that is impressive.

Due to their length and weight, these guns were set up en echelon amidships in a single, large, diagonal, oval barbette, with one pair of guns on a turntable to port and the other to starboard.

Notice how deep the hull is. You have to put 10,000 troops somewhere!

Italia was laid down in 1876 at Castellammare Naval Shipyard while Lepanto began construction at Orlando in Livorno at the same time. However, these ships were so new for the time, I mean think about it, the U.S. Civil War had just ended a decade before, that they languished on the builders ways until after 1885, nearly a decade later when they were commissioned.

These were huge, deep ships for the time. Besides the massive main armament and a dozen secondary 6-inch and 4.7-inch guns, each could carry a full 10,000-man infantry division in a pinch. Now that is power projection.

These gentle giants, with their distinctive six-funnel profile (Lepanto always just had four though), cruised the Med for a generation but saw little active use. By 1902 Lepanto was placed in reduced service as a gunnery training ship and then a non-functional depot vessel within the decade.

Sistership Italia lasted a bit longer, earning a refit in 1905 then serving as a torpedo training ship and floating harbor defense craft in World War One. While Lepanto was sold for scrapping on 27 March 1915, Italia suffered an even worse fate. Disarmed after the war, she was used to carry grain to Italian troops in North Africa until being finally stricken 16 November 1921 and subsequently scrapped.

No known memorial exists to these interesting 17-inch Roman battlewagons.

Specs:

Displacement: 13,336 long tons (13,550 t) normal
15,649 long tons (15,900 t) full load
Length:    400 ft 3 in (122.0 m) between perpendiculars
409 ft 1 in (124.7 m) length overall
Beam:    73 ft 4 in (22.4 m)
Draft:    30 ft 9 in (9.4 m)
Installed power: 15,797 ihp (11,780 kW)
Propulsion:    4 shafts, vertical compound engines, 8 oval and 16 cylindrical boilers
Speed:    18.4 knots (21.2 mph; 34.1 km/h)
Range:    ca. 5,000 nautical miles (9,260 km) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Troops:    Up to 10,000
Complement: 669, later 701
Armament:    As built:
*4 × 17-inch (432 mm)/26 guns
*8 × 6-inch (152 mm)/32 guns
*4 × 4.7-inch (119 mm)/32 guns
*4 × 14-inch (356 mm) torpedo tubes
Added later:
*2 × 75mm guns
*12 × 57mm quick-firing guns
*12 × 37mm revolvers
*2 × machine guns
From 1902:
*4 × 17-inch (432 mm)/26 guns
*4 × 4.7-inch (119 mm)/32 guns
9 × 57mm guns
6 × 37mm/25 revolvers
2 × machine guns
Torpedo tubes removed after 1902
Armor:    Steel armor
Belt and side: None
Deck: 4 in (101.6 mm)
Citadel: 19 in (483 mm)
Funnel base: 16 in (406 mm)
Conning tower: 4 in (102 mm)

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

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Warship Wednesday Aug 13, 2014 A Sad Story of Fish, Genius, Sightseeing and Neglect

Posted on August 13, 2014 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

– Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday Aug 13, 2014 A Sad Story of Fish, Genius, Sightseeing and Neglect

Here we see the majestic yacht Celt. Built by Pusey and Jones Co., Wilmington, Delaware (hull number 306), the 170-foot long steel hulled vessel with fine lines was built to the specs of one Mr. J. Rogers Maxwell, a long-time member of the Atlantic Yacht Club who had owned a number of famous racing yachts including the Peerless, Emerald and Yankee. Designed by Mr. Wintringham, Celt was 138-feet at the waterline and 170 oal. Intended for New York Bay and Long Island Sound, she was to be a tender and flagship to Maxwell’s racing fleet. Outfitted with a number of mahogany adorned cabins on two berthing decks, she was a a magnificent vessel. Two Almy boilers fed by some 42 tons of bunkered coal pushed a four-cylinder triple expansion Sullivan that generated 1200 shp. Completed in 1902, she was the toast of the New York coastline for a decade.

Maxwell’s racing team won the King’s Cup in 1907 in the Queen, but by 1914, the whole trans-Atlantic sprint had fallen into a slump due to the start of World War One. With this, Celt was laid up and at sometime during this time was renamed Sachem upon her sale to one Manton B. Metcalf. When the U.S. entered the war in April 1917, Metcalf offered the craft up for use by the Navy. As such, in July 1917 she rightfully became the USS Sachem (SP-192), an anti-submarine patrol craft. Her armament was an unimpressive 6-pounder 57mm deck gun, a pair of 3-pounder 37mm guns, and two Colt potato digger light machine-guns.

Then something odd happened.

According to Thomas A. Edison: Unorthodox Submarine Hunter by E. David Cronon archived over at the WWI.com website, Thomas Edison had a queer fascination with producing any number of novel ideas to sink the Kaiser’s U-boats. But he needed a ship as a floating laboratory. Keep reading:

“Edison would not rest, however, until he had acquired a boat for his anti-submarine experiments. In the spring of 1917 he obtained Secretary Daniels’ permission to charter a yacht for this purpose, but had great difficulty finding a suitable one at a cost he thought reasonable. He suspected this was because the owners hoped the government would commandeer their boats so they would “then get a good price for them.” “Many of them are old and the engines defective, approaching the character of junk,” he cautioned Daniels. “I think Roosevelt should be warned not to fall into this trap and be saddled with a lot of junk.”(31). This last was a reference to F.D.R.’s well-publicized enthusiasm for solving the U-boat problem with a fleet of small anti-submarine boats. After a number of false starts, Daniels finally arranged for Edison to have use of a Navy submarine patrol boat, the S.P. 192, and the Edisons moved to New London, Connecticut, to conduct experiments on Long Island Sound. Always protective, Mrs. Edison insisted on sharing the small cabin aboard ship with the inventor, much to the dismay of the Navy crew. “I detest it on the boat and long to be home, ” she wrote one of their sons. “I wish I knew just how much and what Papa wants me out here for. . . . The more cluttered the place the better contented father seems to be. I could kill Hutchinson for ever getting him into this mess.”(32). Mrs. Edison worried about her husband’s susceptibility to seasickness and his unwillingness to conclude his experiments or ever concede defeat. “It looks like a winter’s job as far as father is concerned, as you know father,” she lamented in another letter. “He constantly gets new ideas that leads [sic] to more experimenting and halfway never counts with him.”(33).

The use of a suitable Navy boat enabled Edison to conduct experiments on a number of projects requiring tests simulating conditions at sea. One of these was a water brake or sea anchor, which he called a “kite rudder,” and which when used in conjunction with a ship’s engines and regular rudder might enable it to turn quickly enough to avoid an oncoming torpedo. “On a merchant ship I propose to use 2 or 3 fastened to rail of ship.” Edison reported. “On signal, they are dropped and instantly act to turn the ship.”(34). In one experiment, a fully loaded cargo ship was able to turn 90 degrees in only 200 feet using four sea anchors, whereas it advanced 1,000 feet while executing the same turn with no sea anchors in use (35).

Two of the inventor’s other schemes might have come from Rube Goldberg. Noting that 75% of torpedoed ships took more than fifteen minutes to sink, Edison experimented with what he called “collision mats” rolled up at the rail on both sides of a ship for its full length. When torpedoed, these-large mats would be released to cover the hole, and water pressure would hold them against the cargo, slowing the influx of water. “I think 50% of all the torpedoed boats can be saved and got to port,” Edison reported to Daniels in a handwritten note from Key West; “officers here think so.”(36). An even more fantastic Edison contraption was a 25-foot long tube of rolled up wire mesh made of quarter-inch cable. “It resembles a large window curtain,” he explained, which would be fired from the ship in the path of an oncoming torpedo.

In add Edison worked on some 45 inventions to fight submarines during the war, and none were put into production

The hardy Sachem never saw active combat and was returned to Mr. Metcalf in Feb. 1919 who sold it to a Philadelphia banker for use as a yacht (and rumored as a rum runner mother-ship during Prohibition) before selling it again to Sheepshead Bay New York charter fisherman Jake Martin in 1932. Martin soon put the now-30 year old craft into use each summer as a junket ship for tourists along the Jersey and New York coast.

Martin had the old steam engines replaced with a more modern 7-cylinder Fairbanks-Morse 805hp diesel during the winter of 1935-36 and continued her in service chasing tuna and sharks for day passengers. Then came another war.

On on 17 February 1942, just ten weeks after Pearl Harbor, the Navy bought the now-40 year old ex-yacht turned fishing boat for $65,000. Giving her a haze gray paint scheme, an obsolete 3″/23 cal gun recycled from a Coast Guard cutter who had traded it in for something bigger, four M2 water-cooled Brownings and some depth charge racks, she was commissioned USS Phenakite (PYc-25), 1 July 1942.

During the war the old girl plied the Eastern seaboard from Key West to New York doing patrol work but, like in her first war service, found no combat. By November 1944 she was laid up again and a year later Martin reclaimed her. He promptly sold her in poor shape to the Circle Line group of tour boats in New York City who spiffed her up and renamed her Sightseeker.

Moored at the popular Pier 83, the craft was very distinctive with its sleek turn of the century clipper lines (and welded over deck gun mounts). Even when the Circle Line divested themselves of most of their oldest vessels in the 1950s, they kept the Sightseer around as she was a crowd favorite. Captained by an experienced Norwegian master by the name of Harold Log, she was the flagship of the line well into the 1970s (being renamed the apt Circle Line V) until the Circle Line finally sold her for her value in scrap metal. Apparently, while derelict in New York harbor, she made it into Madonna’s “Papa Dont Preach” video.

The rest of her life is a mystery until she was picked up by one Robert Miller in 1986, nearly a decade after she was sold for scrap. Miller repaired her a bit, crewed her and sailed her to his property near Lawrenceburg, Indiana on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River

Unfortunately, she is still there as a ghost ship along the river frequented by kayakers and would-be treasure hunters searching for reasons to get a tetanus shot.

Now, some 112 years old, she rests in the mud.

Specs:
Displacement 317 t.
1942 – 360 t.
Length 186′ 3″
1942 – 183′
Beam 22′ 6″
Draft 8′
1942 – 9′ 7″
Speed 15 kts.
1942 – 13.5 kts.
Complement 49 (1917)
1942 – 40
Armament: One 6-pounder, two 3-pounders and two machine guns (1917)
1942 – One 3″/23 mount, four .50 cal. machine guns and two depth charge tracks
Propulsion: One 1,200ihp vertical triple-expansion steam engine, one shaft
1936 – One 805hp 7-cylinder Fairbanks-Morse 37D 14 diesel engine.

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

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Share a coke with…the Spanish Navy

Posted on August 12, 2014 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

It seems like a group of Colombian Narcotraficantes got smart and ruthless with some Spanish Armada members on shore leave in that country recently.

They likely offered the bluejackets a choice between plata o plomo which led the sailors to try to smuggle some 150 keys of pure Colombian scarface in separate shipments to New York City, where its street value is mega high, and then back to Spain. In Europe, coke is the premium drug of choice by the jet setters and as such is highly valued there.

Unfortunately the would-be smugglers had their connection in NYC burned, where agents seized 20 keys, and then the Spanish Civil Guard found the other 127 keys still hiding in the reserve sail locker of their ship.

Wait, reserve sail locker?

Yup, the ship in question was the pride of the Spanish Armada, the naval training ship, Juan Sebastián Elcano. The handsome 3673-ton ship dates back to 1927 and at 113 meters (370 feet) long, she is the third-largest Tall Ship in the world.

More here

Warship Wednesday, Aug 6: Of a General, an Admiral, a cadet, Mother’s Day and Cinco de Mayo

Posted on August 6, 2014 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Warship Wednesday, Aug 6: Of a General, an Admiral, a cadet, Mother’s Day and Cinco de Mayo

Here we see the Cañonero corbeta-escuela “General Zaragoza” at anchor around the 1890s. She was the backbone of the Armada de México for more than three decades, one of the first modern warships of that navy, and as such the birthplace of that current military force.

Zaragoza, the General who brought us Cinco De Mayo

Named for the famous 33-year old General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín, the leader of the Mexican forces during the first part of the French Intervention in Mexico. The Secretary of War in the cabinet of Benito Juárez, Zaragoza resigned from his desk job and led a ragtag force of some 4500-men against 6000 hardened French regulars at the battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. This victory is still remembered by Mexicans at home and abroad in the regular Cinco de Mayo festivals in which everyone suddenly loves Corona, Dos Equis, and Modelo Negros.

In 1890 a modern 213-foot steel hulled corvette was ordered from the Société Nouvelle des Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée shipways at Le Havre, France. A steam-engined barque-rigged ship, she was capable of 13-knots with her boilers lit, slightly less with her canvas aloft and a good breeze, or slightly more with a following gale. The man-of-war was configured to be crewed by 21 officers and 98 enlisted, she had berthing for 20-40 midshipmen trainees in her intended role as the Navy’s first modern buqueescuela or school-ship in addition to her primary duties as a steel warship.

A nice view of the Zaragoza with her original rig. The “Chocolaterie d’aiguebelle (Drome)” label on this card is from the French Chocolat d’Aiguebelle company, a candy maker in the late 19th and early 20th century who included produced a series of naval vessel cards drawn typically from French and French-made vessels.

Being built in France, her armament consisted of a half-dozen Schneider-Canet made 140mm (5.5-inch) rapid-fire naval rifles as her main battery, two Nordenfelt 57mm guns, and a pair of 37mm (1.5-inch) Hotchkiss revolving guns for defense against small boats. The ship also carried enough small arms for a decent landing party and small, wheeled cannon for the same.

A force of officers and contract sailors commanded by Brigadier Gen/Vice Admiral Angel Ortiz Monasterio (at the time the Navy was part of the Army) collected the ship from France November 16, 1891, placing her in commission then. She then sailed in her maiden voyage to Veracruz at a slow rate in nine weeks, carrying the first national prototype kilogram of platinum-iridium to arrive in Mexico.

Angel Ortiz Monasterio, the Admiral

She re-crossed the Atlantic that fall to have her rig improved for faster sailing and some other technical modifications. As luck would have it, she was in Cadiz in time to attend the celebrations of the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America by Columbus, serving as an escort ship for the Queen Regent of Spain’s royal yacht, a duty that led to the ship, officers, and men being decorated by the regent. The fact that Monasterio had served in the Spanish Navy for 13 years and at one point was an ADC to the King probably helped ease that process.

With her improved rig

To display the new ship, it was decided to attempt the first Mexican circumnavigation of the globe in 1895-97. It was divided into two stages: the first was commanded by experienced Cape Horn master English merchant skipper Carey Brenton, who took command in Tampico, where he sailed on April 5 to tour Central, and South America and passed through the Strait of Magellan to reach Acapulco on July 29. The second stage was to be commanded again by Monasterio with a young captain by the name of Manuel Azueta as ship’s master, who brought his toddler son Jose along for the epic trip. Zaragoza had her hull inspected and cleaned in dry-dock in San Francisco in August at which point while on the circumnavigation that the corvette was boarded and observed by Americans in California.

One of whom left the following impression:

San Francisco Call, August 9, 1895

ON BOARD THE ZARAGUZA

The Mexican War Vessel the Scene of a Public Reception.

Yesterday afternoon a public reception was held on board of the Mexican war vessel Zaragoza, lying off the oil works, and a large party of visitors enjoyed the graceful and hearty hospitality of Captain Azueta and his brother officers. . . . To exhibit the seamanship of his crew Captain Azueta put them through the naval evolutions of sail drill and sending down the lighter yards. At the order, the little Mexican tars ran aloft arid in a short space of time the canvas dropped simultaneously from the yards. The sails were quickly furled and presently the topgallant and royal yards and topgallant masts all came down together on deck with a precision not always found even on crack American and English men-of-war. Prominent among the nimble sailors was the little live-year-old son of the commander . . . The Zaragoza is a French built steel corvette with an armament of six 14-centimeter, or about 5-inch guns, two Nordenfeldt quick-fire and two Hotchkiss guns. . . . Captain Manuel Azueta was born in Mexico 33 years ago, and was educated at the naval school in Spain, and has been in the service of the republic 18 years. He is a highly polished gentleman, a thorough sailor and an earnest patriot of the Mexican Republic. The Zaragoza has completed her repairs and will sail for Guaymas to-morrow.

From there the ship sailed to Honolulu, Yokohama, Nagasaki, Hong Kong, Ceylon, Adam, Port Said and up through the Suez, Toulon and back to Veracruz on July 3, 1897, after showing the Mexican tricolor throughout most of the seven seas in a 27-month cruise. During this trip, the hardy little ship’s name was repeated with pleasure and praise in the columns of the newspapers of those distant countries.

Once back in Mexico, the trio of Zaragoza, Captain Azueta and Vice Adm. Monasterio went about establishing the Republic’s first naval academy, the Escuela Naval Flotante/Escuela Naval Militar, at Veracruz. With just 26 students seconded from the Army, the installation for the Naval Academy consisted of a wooden house at the intersection of Landeros and Coss street consisting of two bodies or eaves of two floors, with an intermediate court where the offices of naval command were installed on the south side of market seafood port. After conditioning the building, it finally opened on July 1, 1897, with the Zaragoza serving as the floating classroom and school ship.

Peace and quiet, however, were not to be the Zaragoza‘s plight, however and by 1898 she sailed under Azueta’s orders to assist the government in the pacification of the Maya Indian rebels in southeastern Mexico. Zaragoza reached the coast of Yucatan with orders to seize the strongpoint at the El Castillo Tulum ruins, the ancient landmark of the Maya. Azueta landed on the beach there with a 150 man Army/Navy landing force and seized the castle after a siege. Over the next seven years, the ship remained in near constant combat against the rebels, transporting her landing force along the coast and seizing Progresso, Xcalax, Isla Mujeres, Puerto Morelos, Cozumel, Ascension Bay, and Rio Hondo, sometimes more than once. It was a bloody conflict that is not remembered well by the history books for good reason. During this time, Monasterio retired and Azueta moved up to command the Naval Academy, leaving the Zaragoza in the Yucatan.

It was while at Tampico the aging corvette served alongside the warships “Veracruz” and “El Bravo” during the siege by the Constitucionalistas from December 1913 to May 1914, where she operated as floating artillery for federal troops under General Ignacio Morelos Zaragoza. On March 14, 1914, then-Commodore Manuel Azueta hoisted his flag on the old girl and took command of the combined Gulf squadron (Flotilla del Golfo), then proceeded to bombard rebel troops along the coastline with shrapnel at close range. During this time the Tampico Incident, a poorly handled event from both the Mexican and American standpoints, occurred where an unannounced U.S. Navy landing party from the gunboat Dolphin bumped into Federal troops and, both parties being armed and unable to speak the other’s language, ended off in a quite literal Mexican standoff.

This led to an American response in the form of a reinforced squadron of battleships and torpedo boat destroyers landing several hundred sailors and marines at Veracruz April 21. To defend the vital port, local Federal troops gathered all the men they could find, including the 50 or so cadets of the Naval Academy to oppose the landings. One of these cadets, José Azueta Abad, the 19-year old son of Manuel Azueta– the same one who sailed the Zaragoza as a toddler around the world, found himself operating a Hotchkiss light machinegun outside the Academy’s walls. There, alone, the young Azueta held off the advancing column of bluejackets until BM2 JG Harner of the USS Florida ended the young man’s stand at a range of 300-yards, earning the MOH.

….The cadet who is remembered on Mothers Day in Mexico.

Azueta died on May 10 after lingering for nearly three weeks of his wounds, but became a hero in the process after he refused to meet U.S. Rear Adm Frank Friday Fletcher or accept care from American doctors that could have saved his life. His resulting funeral was attended by hundreds in opposition to Fletcher’s orders forbidding public assembly. The day of his death is remembered now as Mother’s Day in Mexico and the Naval Academy was renamed the “Heroica Escuela Naval Militar” to honor Azeuta and the other cadets who fought.

The Zaragoza did not take part in the combat at Veracruz, remaining at Tampico with the rest of the vastly outnumbered Mexican fleet. The elder Azueta retired after the Americans left Veracruz in November. The corvette was on its last legs and, in the resulting drain from the years of the cyclical purges, deaths, and defections during the Mexican Revolution, fell into disrepair.

Zaragoza in haze gray by 1914. She had seen a hard 25-years, crossing the Atlantic four times, the world once, and fighting rebels of all kinds for more than fifteen years.

However, she was still seaworthy enough to escort the remains of noted Mexican modern poet Amado Nervo (Juan Crisóstomo Ruiz de Nervo), who died while Mexico’s Ambassador in the Republic of Uruguay in 1919, back home.

Mexican training cruiser Zaragoza in dazzle camouflage, likely 1918

Immobile by the 1920s, Zaragoza was decommissioned 6 March 1926, stripped, and sunk in the Gulf of Mexico as a target ship.

Specs:

Displacement: 1,226 tons
Length:            213 ft. (65 m)
Propulsion:      Steam engine
Sail plan:          Barque
Speed: 13 knots (24 km/h; 15 mph)
Complement: 139 max
Armament:
6 × Schneider-Canet 140mm cannon
2 × 37 mm (1.5 in) Hotchkiss Revolving Cannon

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

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Warship Wednesday July 30th, 150th Anniversary of the Great Tennessee

Posted on July 30, 2014 by laststandonzombieisland One comment

– Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday July 30th, 150th Anniversary of the Great Tennessee

Battle of Mobile Bay by Louis Prang. CSS Tennessee at left

Here we see the great steam-powered casemate ironclad warship, CSS Tennessee, pride of the Confederate Navy sailing out to meet the Union fleet. Never fully operational, she met her fate and proved her metal 150 years ago this week at the Battle of Mobile Bay. Designed by John L. Dixon, she was the largest Confederate ironclad completed during the war.

Her 209-foot long hull constructed at the heart of the Confederate steel industry in Selma, Alabama, in 1862, she was shipped incomplete down the Mobile River system to Mobile herself for completion. One of the last southern ports, Mobile was vital to the South’s continued resistance in the last stages of the war. There, in the shallow mud flats, she was neared to completion under the direction of Joseph Pierce, Acting Naval Constructor in the area. She was fitted with some 5-6 inches of heavy steel armor plate, three sheets thick, made in Shelby, Alabama. She was equipped with a pair of hard-hitting 7-inch double banded Brooke guns and another four, slightly smaller, 6.4-inch guns, making her perhaps one of the most formidable vessels afloat in the hemisphere if not the world at the time.

The problem was she had a slow and inefficient steam plant salvaged from the old steamer Alonzo Child. With this plant operating at maximum capacity, it could push the 1200-ton battleship to just 5-knots if lucky. This made her ram bow almost a joke of a weapon as most ships could evade the slowly moving but heavily armored ironclad.

Watercolor by F. Muller, circa 1900. Courtesy of the U.S. Navy Art Collection, Washington, D.C.

Made the flagship of Confederate Admiral Buchanan, who had helmed the earlier CSS Manassass to her fitful clash with the USS Monitor just two years before, the nearly finished met the might of the Union Navy at the mouth of Mobile Bay on August 5, 1864. There, U.S. Rear Admiral David G. Farragut was leading an armada of eighteen ships, including four new monitors, past the two forts barring the entrance to the last sovereign Confederate watershed.

All Buchanan had at his disposal was the Tennessee and three sad little wooden gunboats armed with popguns. This placed the ironclad at the heart of the southern fleet’s answer to the invaders. Steaming into the fray, the ship closed with Farragut’s classic naval frigates Hartford and Brooklyn and exchanged cannon fire with these wooden ships at point-blank distance. This continued until the new USS Chickasaw, a Milwaukee-class river monitor, closed with the larger beast and raked her with fire, keeping her at bay. Over the course of the next several moments the fleet pounded Tennessee, taking away her steering chains and holing her in several places.

Tennessee broadside-to-broadside with the Oneida; monitor Chickasaw coming in on the Confederate from point-blank range at left, Winnebago in background; bowsprit-less gunboat USS Pequot at right rear. Painting by Tom Freeman

With no other alternative, and fighting a losing battle with a predetermined outcome, Tennessee surrendered.

Capture of Ram Tennessee Mobile Bay by Alfred R. Waud

Within days the Yankees had repaired the ship and placed it under the star-spangled banner as the USS Tennessee, using her, in the ultimate irony, against the Confederates at Fort Morgan. Following victory there she was sent to New Orleans for more extensive repairs and kept in service with the U.S. Navy’s Mississippi Squadron. In 1867 the ship was scrapped.

Port quarter view, probably taken off New Orleans, Louisiana, circa 1865. She was formerly CSS Tennessee (1864-1864).U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph.

Her guns are on display around the country including several of her Brookes at the Washington Navy Yard, Washington, D.C, another at Norfolk, and one at Selma, where it was cast.

If you are free and around Mobile this weekend, there is the 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Mobile Bay. Centered around Fort Morgan, they will have a mock-up of the Tennessee. You should check it out if in the area.

Specs:

Displacement: 1,273 long tons (1,293 t)
Length:    209 ft (63.7 m)
Beam:    48 ft (14.6 m)
Draft:    14 ft (4.3 m)
Installed power:    4 boilers
Propulsion:    2 Shafts, 2 Steam engines
Speed:    5 knots (9.3 km/h; 5.8 mph)
Complement: 133 officers and enlisted men
Armament:    2 × 7 in (178 mm) Double-banded Brooke rifles
4 × 6.4 in (163 mm) Double-banded Brooke rifles
ram
Armor:
Casemate: 5–6 in (127–152 mm)
Deck: 2 in (51 mm)

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

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

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I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday July 23, Jules Verne, Meet the U.S. Navy

Posted on July 23, 2014 by laststandonzombieisland 5 comments

Warship Wednesday, July 23, Jules Verne, Meet the U.S. Navy

Here we see the magnificent V-type submarine USS Nautilus (SS-168) in oil on board by the artist I.L. Lloyd depicting the submarine engaging a Japanese merchant ship at close quarters.

Between the two world wars, the U.S. Navy built a collection of nine more or less experimental “V-boat” submarines. These boats took lessons from British and German submarines learned after WWI and incorporated these into a more Yankee design. Each of these subs was very different as the design bureau experimented as they went. One of the ships, V-6, a very close pattern of V-5, which came before her, was built to a submarine-cruiser design.

This concept was a huge sub, meant to have very long legs, and capable of taking the war to the enemy wherever they may be. For this, they were fitted with large, cruiser-caliber guns, and an impressive torpedo battery. Laid down at Mare Island Naval Yard on 2 August 1927, this V-boat (designated V-6/SC-2) was commissioned in June 1930. Following sea trials, V-6 was renamed USS Nautilus (SS-168) on Feb 19, 1931.

Steaming into New York City, 1931. Photo credit: Navsource

The sub was fitted with a pair of massive 6-inch/53 guns in special Mark 17 wet mountings. This gun was designed as a secondary battery of the Lexington-class battle cruisers and South Dakota-class battleships but was only installed in Omaha-class cruisers. Capable of firing a 105-lb shell to a maximum range was 23,300 yd (21,310 m), at the maximum elevation of 25 degrees, they were a hoss of a battery for a boat meant to operate underwater. Except for near-sisters (and fellow V-boats) USS Argonaut (SM-1) and USS Narwhal (SS-167, ex-V-5), the guns carried by the Nautilus were the largest fitted to an American submarine.

To get a feel for how big these guns were, here we see the Nautilus (SS-168) photographed from her sister ship, the Narwhal (SS-167). Photo credit; Navsource.

Capable of traveling an amazing 25,000 nm as long as she kept it slow and filled her ballast tanks with fuel, Nautilus could cross the Atlantic six times without refueling if needed. However, she was meant to operate in the Pacific against a growing Japanese naval threat, and she soon found herself there as the flagship of SubDiv12 at Pearl Harbor. Although her near-sister Narwhal was present there on Dec. 7, 1941 (shooting down two torpedo bombers of the Japanese Combined Fleet), Nautilus was laid up undergoing maintenance back in California.

However, she soon got underway and conducted an amazing 14 war patrols. Nautilus found herself in the middle of the Japanese fleet at the Battle of Midway, firing 5 torpedoes at the battleship Kirishima and the carrier Kaga (with little success due to faulty torpedoes) while surviving 42 enemy depth charges. However, just a few weeks after the battle, she ran across the Japanese Shiratsuyu-class destroyer Yamakaze and sent that ship to Davy Jones approximately 60 nautical miles (110 km) southeast of Yokosuka on 30 June 1945. The photo taken of the Yamakaze sinking after being torpedoed became an instant hit and was used for war bond art.

Yamakaze sinking by Nautilus used in 1943 Electric Boat ad

In August 1942, along with the fellow V-Boat USS Argonaut, the two subs carried elements of the Marine Second Raider Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Evans F. Carlson to raid the isolated Japanese garrison at Makin Atoll.

Carrying 90 men of Bravo Company, the raid annihilated the small force on the atoll and was a huge propaganda victory for the nation at the time.

U.S. Marine Raiders exercise on the deck of USS Nautilus while en route to the raid on Makin Island on August 11, 1942. And yes, that’s what a 6″/53 Mk17 looks like up close.

Nautilus went back to her life as a fleet submarine but was also pressed back into duty carrying raiders behind enemy lines.

In 1943 she carried 109 Eskimo Scouts to land on the Japanese-occupied Aleutian island of Attu just before the main assault. Then at Tarawa, she put ashore a 77-man group of the 5th Amphibious Reconnaissance Company. Towards the end of the war, she helped carry supplies and recon teams around the Philippines, helping to resupply and tie in local guerrilla groups led since 1942 in many cases by stay-behind (left-behind?) U.S. military members to the effort to liberate the islands.

However, with the war winding down, so did the Navy’s interest in the old and reliable Nautilus. Decommed before the war even ended on 30 June 1945, she was stricken and sold for scrap that Fall after a very hard 15-year life. Her war patrol reports are public record.

Specs:

Displacement, Surfaced: 2,730 t., Submerged: 3,960 t.;
Length 371′ ;
Beam 33′ 3″;
Draft 15′ 9″;
Propulsion, diesel-electric, Maschinfabrik – Augusburg- Nurnburg, New York Navy Yard diesel engines, hp 3175,
Fuel Capacity, 182,778 gal., Westinghouse Electric Co., electric motors, hp 2500, Battery Cells 240, twin propellers.
Speed, Surfaced 17 kts, Submerged 8 kts;
Depth Limit 300′;
Complement 8 officers 80 enlisted;
Armament, four 21″ torpedo tubes forward, two 21″ torpedo tubes aft, four 21″ torpedo tubes topside, 24 torpedoes; two single 6″/53 deck gun, two 30 cal. mgs.;

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

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

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday July 16, Coast Guard Saladbar holder, The Mighty Spencer

Posted on July 16, 2014 by laststandonzombieisland 6 comments

– Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, July 16, Coast Guard Salad-bar holder, The Mighty Spencer

(Courtesy USCGC Spencer Association)

Here we see the United States Coast Guard Treasury-class cutter USCGC Spencer (W36/WPG-36/WAGC-36/WHEC-36) as depicted in a painting by CWO3 William ‘Bill’ RaVell, USCG Ret. . CWO3 RaVell is an artist and member of the International Society of Marine Painters in addition to being a crew member on the USS Spencer between 1959 and 1961.

Officially known as the “Treasury” class due to the fact the 7 ships in the group were all named after former early secretaries of the U.S Treasury (the department that the Coast Guard reported to until 1972), they were better known simply as ‘327’ ships due to their overall length. Based on the Erie-class (PG-50) gunboats of the U.S Navy, a group of just two ships designed to patrol the far-flung Panama Canal Zone before WWII, these coast guard cutters were the largest and most heavily armed ships in the Treasury fleet up until that time.

"Gunnery exercise."; circa 1940; Photo No. 2414; photo was provided through the courtesy of Merle Harbourt, USCG (Ret.), a Spencer crewman, who served on board her during the 1939-1940 period. USCG Photo

“Gunnery exercise.”; circa 1940; Photo No. 2414; the photo was provided through the courtesy of Merle Harbourt, USCG (Ret.), a Spencer crewman, who served on board her during the 1939-1940 period. USCG Photo

Capable of over 20-knots and with the capability to carry a seaplane (a JF-2 amphibian), these 327-foot long, 2400-ton cutters could roam across the ocean and back again with an impressive 12,300-nm range. A threesome of 5-inch/51-caliber guns augmented a few 6-pounder guns was impressive enough for a shallow water (can float in 13-feet of sea) gunboat and seen as more than adequate to stop smugglers and sink derelict vessels on the high seas. In a pinch, the armament could be increased in time of war, which the Navy was keenly aware of.

Grumman JF-2 Duck being deployed from a cutter. Two were carried experimentally on board the 327s Spencer and Taney during pre-war tests. The Coast Guard obtained 14 JF-2s prior to WWII designed specifically for the service and a number of J2Fs during WWII. Of the first batch, they were acquired in October of 1934 and carried Coast Guard numbers V-135 through V148.

Laid down in 1935 at the New York Navy Yard, Spencer was commissioned into the USCG on 1 March 1937 with a total building cost of $2,468,460. She was named after former Secretary of the Treasury John Canfield Spencer, who served in President Tyler’s administration. An earlier Civil War-era Revenue Cutter was also named after Spencer.

Sent to patrol the Alaskan fishing grounds, Spencer embarked meteorologists from the Weather Bureau (this is pre-NOAA) and performed weather station observations in both the Pacific and the Atlantic. Then in November 1941, with the threat of war looming, she reported for duty with the U.S. Navy Quickly, she was armed with an three 3-inch AAA DP guns, depth charge racks, and a “Y” gun depth charge projector as well as an increasingly advanced array of senors for finding enemy ships and submarines.

She was going to need them.

Spencer with her teeth in and her warpaint on.

By February 1942 she was escorting the first of no less than 18 huge trans-ocean convoys as part of Mid-Ocean Escort Force (MOEF)-A3. This force often tasked with protecting dozens of merchantmen carrying troops and vital supplies consisted of the destroyer Gleaves, Spencer, and Flower-class corvettes Bittersweet, Chilliwack, Shediac and Algoma.

Each MOEF escort Group worked in a 33-day cycle allowing nine and one-half days with a westbound ON convoy, six days in St. John’s, Newfoundland, nine and one-half days with an eastbound HX or SC convoy, and 8 days refit in Derry.

These runs were often terrifying. Convoy ON 67 in February 1942 lost 7 ships to wolf packs of multiple U-boats. During Convoy SC.100, a slow-ship run from Sydney, Cape Breton Island to Liverpool with 26 merchant ships, the escorts fought off attacks from two complete wolf-packs totaling 17 U-boats. SC-121 fought off attacks from 27 submarines. It was only the fact that the Spencer and her associates constantly rushed to every HF/DF, sonor, radar and lookout contact, dropping depth charges and curses that these convoys made it at all. During this time her armament was increased with the addition of a Hedgehog system, 6 “K” gun projectors, and a number of 20mm AAA guns.

U.S. Coast Guard Cutter SPENCER

On 17 April, while a part of convoy HX-233, no less than seven U-boats converged on the group of ships in the mid-Atlantic gap, the area of the ocean too far from land to be covered by either U.S. or European-based anti-submarine aircraft. Stopping to pick up survivors of the torpedoed freighter Fort Rampart, Spencer found the German Type VII-type submarine U-175 sitting at periscope depth just 5000-yards from the convoy, lining up her tubes on the Allied vessels.

USCGC Spencer hits the German submarine U-175, 4.17.43

11 depth charges later, U-175 was mortally wounded and Spencer‘s U-boat killers soon switched into rescue mode (it’s the Coast Guard!), pulling 19 survivors from the stricken vessel.

Official Caption: “NAZI SUBMARINE SUNK BY THE FAMED CUTTER SPENCER: Effect of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter SPENCER’S fire are visible in this closeup shot of the U-Boat, taken as the battle raged. The Nazi standing by the stanchion amidships disappeared a moment after this picture was taken by a Coast Guard photographer. The U-Boat had been trying to sneak into the center of the convoy.” Date: 17 April 1943 Photo No.: 1512 Photographer: Jack January? Description: The “Nazi” mentioned in the above caption was probably, in fact, a member of the Coast Guard boarding team–one of the first Americans to board an enemy man-of-war underway at sea since the War of 1812.

Official Caption: “OFF TO RESCUE THEIR BEATEN FOES: A pulling boat leaves the side of a Coast Guard combat cutter to rescue Nazi seamen struggling in the mid-Atlantic after their U-Boat had been blasted to the bottom by the cutter’s depth charges. Two Coast Guard cutters brought 41 German survivors to a Scottish port.” Date: 17 April 1943 Photo No.: 1516 Photographer: Jack January Description: The men in this pulling boat were, in fact, a trained boarding team led by LCDR John B. Oren (standing in the stern and wearing the OD helmet) and LT Ross Bullard (directly to Oren’s left). With the assistance of the Royal Navy they had practiced boarding a submarine at sea in order to capture an Enigma coding machine and related intelligence material.

In addition to this confirmed kill, Spencer has been credited by some sources as being credited off and on in the sinking of U-529 and U-225 as well as damaging several others.

Spencer was not the only 327 to make a kill. With a kill rate of .57 per ship, the Treasury-class were the most successful antisubmarine warships of World War Two. (US Navy Destroyer Escorts had a kill rate of .1 in comparison).

By early 1944 the submarine war in the Atlantic was all but decided and the 327s were reclassified as Communications Command Ships for Amphibious group leaders and Spencer was transferred as such to the Pacific with the 36th Signal Detachment Headquarters Company, U. S. Army stationed aboard.

Norfolk Sept 1944, a hard war already behind her, she is now headed to the Pacific.

There, re designated as WAGC-36, she arrived in the Philippines and participated in the landings at Palawan, Moro Gulf, Mindanao, Parang and Luzon where she had often had LTGEN R. L. Eichelberger, Commanding General, 8th Army, and MAJGEN Swing, commanding general, 11th Airborne Division on board during the landings. She then sortied south to assist in landings in Borneo. She ended the war shooting at floating naval mines off China and was ordered to sail back to the states 5 December 1945.

Her armament reduced, excess wartime equipment removed, and paint scheme returned to white, she was back in service off the Eastern seaboard with the Coast Guard by 1946, alternating home ports for the next thirty years between New York City (Governor’s Island) and Boston.

Back in white, with a new 5″/38 mount and almost everything else war-related stripped away.

In 1965 she was overhauled and redesigned WHEC-36 (High Endurance Cutter). Then in 1969, the 32-year old war veteran was sent to South Vietnam as part of CG Squadron Three as part of the Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club interdicting NV/Viet Cong junks along the coast. For nine months she tracked and boarded contacts, captured 52 enemy suspects, and answered 13 naval gunfire close support fire missions, bombarding NVA targets ashore.

Then, as after WWII, she returned home to other rounds of peacetime service. Finally, her hull aging and equipment worn out, she was docked in 1974 in semi-retirement, used as a floating Engineer Training School until 1980, when she was finally retired after 43 years of service.

Spencer’s salad bar of decorations.

During her wars, she accumulated a vast array of awards and has been described as the most decorated of all Coast Guard cutters. These include a Presidential Unit Citation, 10 campaign medals for ETO and Pacific Theater operations in WWII, 3 Vietnam Service Medals, 3 Philippine Liberation Ribbons and the Republic of Vietnam Meritorious Unit Citation with Gallantry Cross with Palm.

In 1981 she was sold for $27,000, her value as scrap, to a company in Delaware. However, two of her sister ships, Taney (currently a museum ship at the Baltimore Maritime Museum) Ingham (Key West Maritime Museum in Key West, Florida) are preserved for you to visit– so please do.

Spencer‘s memory is preserved in a Bear-class 270-foot WMEC as well as a very well-organized veterans association.

Specs:
(As per USCG History official website)

Displacement: 2,350 (1936)
Length: 327′ 0″
Beam: 41′ 0″
Draft: 12′ 6″ (max.)
Propulsion: 2 x Westinghouse double-reduction geared turbines; 2 x Babcock & Wilcox sectional express, air-encased, 400 psi, 200° superheat; 2 x 9′ three-bladed propellers.
SHP: 6,200 (1966)
Maximum Speed: 20.5 knots
Economical Cruising: 11.0 knots (8,000 nautical miles)
Fuel Oil Capacity: 135,180 gallons (547 tons)
Complement: 1937: 12 officers, 4 warrants, 107 enlisted;
1941: 16 officers, 5 warrants, 202 enlisted;
1966: 10 officers, 3 warrants, 134 enlisted.

Electronics:
HF/DF: (1942) DAR (converted British FH3)
Radar: (1945) SC-4, SGa; (1966) AN/SPS-29D, AN/SPA-52.
Fire Control Radar: (1945) Mk-26; (1966) Mk-26 MOD 4
Sonar: (1945) QC series; (by early 1950s?) AN/SQS-11
Armament:

1936: 3 x 5″/51 (single mount); 2 x 6-pounders.; 1 x 1-pounder.

1941: 3 x 5″/51 (single mount); 3 x 3″/50 (single mount); 4 x .50 caliber Browning MG; 2 x depth charge racks; 1 x “Y” gun depth charge projector.

1943: 2 x 5″/51 (single mount); 4 x 3″/50 (single mount); 2 x 20mm/80 (single mount); 1 x Hedgehog; 6 x “K” gun depth charge projectors; 2 x depth charge racks.

1945: 2 x 5″/38 (single mount); 3 x 40mm/60 (twin mount); 4 x 20mm/80 (single mount).

1946: 1 x 5″/38 (single mount); 1 x 40mm;/60 (twin mount); 2 x 20mm/80 (single mount); 1 x Hedgehog.

1966: 1 x 5″/38 MK30 Mod75 (single); MK 52 MOD 3 director; 1 x MK 10-1 Hedgehog; 2 (P&S) x Mk 32 MOD 5 TT, 4 x MK 44 MOD 1 torpedoes; 2 x .50 cal. MK-2 Browning MG, 2 x MK-13 high altitude parachute flare mortars.

Aircraft: Curtiss SOC-4, USCG No. V159 (1937)
Grumman JF-2, USCG No. V144 (1938)

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

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

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

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are
unique in their sweep and subject.

I’m a member, so should you be!

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Weapons, Wars, Preparation and Security from a recovering gun nut turned bad writer

Tag Archives: old warships

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