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Warship Wednesday, July 17 Frigate tuned Superyacht

Posted on July 17, 2013 by laststandonzombieisland 3 comments

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, July 17

Here we see the HMCS Stormont (Pennant number K327) of the Royal Canadian Navy having fun in the North Atlantic during WWII. She was one of 151-River class frigates built during the war for the Royal Navy and her Commonwealth allies. These hearty little escort ships held the line across the Atlantic, dropping depth charges and hedgehogs on every periscope sighting they could find.

She escorted convoys on the Murmansk run to the Kola Inlet and to Gibraltar. She also served as one of 57 RCN vessels to support Operation Neptune, the amphibious invasion of Normandy, France that were part of D-Day

After the war, the Stormont was not needed and she was stricken from the fleet on 9 November 1945 and placed in reserve for ten years.

: What a difference a coat of paint makes!

Sold for just $34,000 she became a personal yacht to a Greek shipping magnate Ari Onassis who converted her into the mega luxury yacht Christina, named after his daughter. The ship was luxuriously equipped as such and included a mosaic swimming pool which drained and rose to deck level to create a dance floor.

Ari, and later wife Jackie Kennedy-Onassis spent their best years onboard the vessel. For a time, after Ari died in 1975, the yacht was used by the Greek government as the President Yacht with a naval crew under the name Argo. By the 1990s she was back in civilian livery renamed the Christina O with Panamanian registry. She is currently for sale for $32.4 mill if you are interested . “The yacht can accommodate 34 guests and has a library, sports lounge, spa room and beauty salon. Yacht broker Nicholas Edmiston to the Associated Press that he thinks there are about 10 people who might want to buy the Christina O — are you one of them?”

Jackie and Ari on the Christina

Of the 151 Rivers, just the Stormont/Christina remains at sea. No less than 17 of the class were destroyed in combat between WWII and the Suez while the survivors served in no less than 22 navies as late as the 1980s. Only one, HMAS Diamantina, formerly of the Royal Australian Navy, is preserved as a museum ship at the Queensland Maritime Museum in Brisbane, Australia.

Specs (until 1946)
Displacement:    1,445 long tons (1,468 t; 1,618 short tons)
2,110 long tons (2,140 t; 2,360 short tons) (deep load)
Length:    283 ft (86.26 m) p/p
301.25 ft (91.82 m)o/a
Beam:    36.5 ft (11.13 m)
Draught:    9 ft (2.74 m); 13 ft (3.96 m) (deep load)
Propulsion:    2 x Admiralty 3-drum boilers, 2 shafts, reciprocating vertical triple expansion, 5,500 ihp (4,100 kW)
Speed:    20 knots (37.0 km/h)
20.5 knots (38.0 km/h) (turbine ships)
Range:    646 long tons (656 t; 724 short tons) oil fuel; 7,500 nautical miles (13,890 km) at 15 knots (27.8 km/h)
Complement:    157
Armament:

2 x QF 4 in (102 mm) /45 Mk. XVI on twin mount HA/LA Mk.XIX
1 x QF 12 pdr (3 in / 76 mm) 12 cwt /50 Mk. V on mounting HA/LA Mk.IX (not all ships)
8 x 20 mm QF Oerlikon A/A on twin mounts Mk.V
1 x Hedgehog 24 spigot A/S projector
up to 150 depth charges

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

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval lore http://www.warship.org/naval.htm

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

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 10 Finding the Path

Posted on July 10, 2013 by laststandonzombieisland 4 comments

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, July 10.

Here we see USC&GSS Pathfinder, a classic ship from another age. Built on the lines of a clipper she lived through three naval wars and served the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey for forty years, mapping most of the Philippines and ending her life as a wreck in her waters. She was built 1897-98 by the Crescent Shipyard at Morris Heights, New Jersey. Her architect was Lewis Nixon, a household name among fast yacht builders at the turn of the century. She was a three deck steel ship of extra strength built for work in the Aleutian Archipelago where strong currents, distances from supply bases required a vessel of considerable power and coal capacity.

She had 15 water tight compartments with dimensions of 196′ 3″ over all, 33′ 6″ beam, 19′ 8″ “depth of hold” and equipped for sea draws 13′. She is brigantine-rigged with some 4,500 square feet of canvas and a single, 10′ diameter 13′ pitch, screw. Her vertical triple expansion steam engines with twenty-eight inch stroke developed 846 horsepower or 1,173 horsepower under forced draft with a speed of 10.5 to 13 knots. Her range was estimated at about 5,000 miles with a bunker capacity of 240 tons of coal. She was entirely steel with three decks.

Although built for the USC&GS, the Spanish-American War intervened in her birth. In June 1898 the Navy took near-possesion of her and sailed her with a crew of 65 bluejackets lead by USC&GS officers (what today would be NOAA Ocean Service officers) and sailed her to Hampton Roads. There it was envisioned she could be converted to an armed auxiliary cruiser. Before this was done, the war ended and she continued to the Pacific as the USC&GSS Pathfinder and not the USS Pathfinder in 1899. She spent a year doing coastal survey work along the California, Alaskan and Hawaiian coasts before being sent to the new US possession of the Philippines.

Survey work involved several ship's launches moving in a line along with ashore teams equiped with surveyors tools for making precise measurements. Some of the charts made from surveys done by Pathfinder are still in use today.

Survey work involved several ship’s launches moving in a line along with ashore teams equipped with surveyors tools for making precise measurements. Without the work put in by this ship on a 40-year mission, the retaking of the Philippines by the US Navy in WWII would have been much harder. Some of the charts made from surveys done by Pathfinder (above) are still in use today.

With no reliable charts of the huge archipelago, the Pathfinder, meant for use in Alaska, spent four decades in the PI, combing every inch of shoreline. By 1910 she had a ‘submarine sentry’– a device which warned the crew when she was shoaling by a series of kites, as well as a refrigeration system and wireless; making her one of the most modern ships afloat.As her original crew retired, they were at first augmented then replaced by local Filipinos. By 1920 the entire ship, save for a handful of USC&GS officers, were natives.

The PATHFINDER in drydock at Kowloon, 1906. NOAA Photo

Over the years she was sometimes pressed into transporting Philippine Constabulary troops and US soldiers to fight against the lengthy insurgency along the islands.

The crew at least twice had a run in with pirates, was beached in wild typhoons, dodged the German raider Emden in WWI, and watched nervously as Japanese planes flew dangerously close to her in the 1930s. When World War Two erupted in the Pacific, the 42-year-old converted yacht chopped over to the Navy’s control and she found herself the target of Japanese bombs at Corregidor. Damaged beyond wartime repair, she was beached in a sinking condition and burned so that the Japanese could not salvage her.

Within a year, the USS Pathfinder AGS-1, the first US Navy oceanographic survey ship, replaced her and assumed her proud name. She served until 1972.

Currently the US Navy still maintains a survey ship named Pathfinder, the USNS Pathfinder (TAGS-60), a 4,762-ton ship that has been in commission since 1994.

Specs
Length:    196.25 ft (59.82 m)
Beam:    33.5 ft (10.2 m)
Draft:    13 ft (4.0 m)
Depth of hold:    19.66 ft (5.99 m)
Decks:    Three
Installed power:    Triple expansion steam engines developing 846 horsepower or 1,173 horsepower under forced draft
Sail plan:    Brigantine-rigged, 4,500 square feet of canvas
Speed:    10.5 to 13 knots
Range:    5,000 miles
Notes:    Specifically built for Alaska service

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

(INRO)

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval lore http://www.warship.org/naval.htm

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 3 The Kobenhavn Mystery

Posted on July 3, 2013 by laststandonzombieisland 21 comments

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, July 3

Here we see one of the Danish school ship København, one of the largest sailing ships ever built. She is also one of the most enduring mysteries of the sea. While not a naval vessel per-sae, she was a training vessel (Skoleskibet) for the EAC, the Danish East Asiatic Company, and as such many of her crew were on the Royal Danish Navy’s reserve list, her students often went into naval service, and the ship itself was liable to be taken up from trade for war service.

Thats over 40-sails…

The East Asiatic Company (EAC) (Danish: Det Østasiatiske Kompagni or ØK) was in Copenhagen in 1897, and the København was the crown jewel of their fleet when she was built. The company’s bread and butter was both passenger and freight lines between the Danish capital, Bangkok and the far east.

The København was a five masted barque-rigged sailing ship. At 430-feet long and 4,000-tons, the size of an Oliver Hazard Perry class frigate of today, she was the world’s largest sailing ship at the time. She was laid down at Ramage & Fergusson, Leith, Scotland in 1913 as hull 242, but due to World War One, she was not finished until 1921. Between her five masts she carried 56,000 sq feet of canvas and had the figurehead of Danish Archbishop Absalon (Axel) gracing her bow.

She was an exemplary vessel, with her modern diesel 640 horsepower auxiliary engine conferring a distinct advantage over other barques that were purely sail-powered vessels. In the København’s eight-year history, it sailed nine voyages without incident, covering five continents. These voyages could last anything from 150 to 400 days each. She had sailed as much as 305 nautical miles under canvas in a single day– a speed under sail of over 12-knots. Her auxiliary diesel could plug the giant ship along at six knots.

sailors from Skoleskibet KØBENHAVN

While she could, and did carry cargo, her primary mission was to train merchant and naval cadets in a seagoing academy. As such youths from all walks of life walked her decks in nine successful long-term training cruises between 1921 and 1928, twice circling the globe.

Her final voyage carried 17 officers and 62 naval cadets. Its course was to be Denmark to Argentina to Australia and back. The first leg was successful, the ship leaving Buenos Ares on December 14, 1928. Eight days later, a final wireless message from her was received, stating that all was well.

On January 21, 1929 a British missionary school teacher, Philip Lindsay, assigned to the remote South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha saw a wrecked sailing ship. He described it as a ghostly ship, five-masted, a white band around painted around the black hull, and apparently unmanned. She was under single jib. foresail and lower topsails, her foremast broken.The vessel was three miles out past the breakers and adrift, heading for the reefs of Cave Point with her stern awash. He saw her grow within 400-yards offshore, then lost sight of her as she drifted to the east. A few days later the locals observed wreckage scattered on the reef including miscellaneous boxes and a 30-foot flat-bottomed boat that they were unable to salvage before it was carried back out to sea. No bodies were found. The island is the most remote inhabited archipelago in the world, lying 2,816 kilometers (1,750 mi) from the nearest land, South Africa, and 3,360 kilometers (2,088 mi) from South America.

For two years, at least two expeditions funded by the government and the EAC searched for the Kobenhavn across both the Southern Pacific and Southern Atlantic oceans, finding nothing. A smaller expedition, privately chartered by the families of the lost cadets aboard the Norwegian yacht Ho Ho continued the search until at least 1932– with the same results. It was theorized that the Tristan da Cunha sighting was incorrect, attributing it to a similar ship (the Fench four master Ponape) that passed the area that day. Popular speculation was that the big Dane had been victim of a fire at sea, rouge wave, or iceberg.

Sightings of darkened five-masted sailing ships were reported off Chile, Polynesia, and other Pacific islands for years.

In 1934 a Finnish ship captain stated firmly that he found wreckage of the Kobenhavn along the Blight of Australia, a story that, if proved, would have put the ship towards the end of her 9700 mile trip from Buenos Aires to Australia. The wreckage included a piece of stern bearing the name “København“.

The same year, a passing Norwegian fishing vessel stopped at Bouvet Island, an uninhabited glacier covered no-mans-land populated by penguins and found a diary, allegedly written by a trainee aboard the Kobenhavn, stating that the ship had been destroyed by icebergs.

In September 1935, a smashed lifeboat with seven bleached skeletons was found on a desolate beach about 400 miles north of Swakopmund South Africa. While it wasn’t definitive that the survivors were from the Kobenhaven, the skulls were ‘nordic’ and uniforms and boat wreckage were described as being of Scandinavian origin. As the marooned sailors who reached shore landed in an area with no source of clean water, they are presumed to have died of dehydration.

This, taken with the diary found on Bouvet, and the stern found in Australia, gave the Danish school ship the dubious distinction of having her wreckage ‘found’ on three different continents over 10,000 miles.

In 2012, the wreck of a large sailing ship was found by divers off Cave Point in of Tristan da Cunha, near where the Kobenhaven was reportedly seen in January 1929. While it hasn’t been proven to be the mysterious Danish school ship, there is hope her fate will be found, closing the book on one of the most captivating tales of the sea.

(Note we have updated this post with more pictures at this link)

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

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval lore http://www.warship.org/naval.htm

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, June 26th Hems Subchaser

Posted on June 26, 2013 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a 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, June 26th

Here we see the converted motor yacht Pilar as she appeared just before WWII. This boat had a very colorful history.

Bought by the great bearded man-card holder Ernest Miller Hemingway April 1934 from Wheeler Shipbuilding in Brooklyn, New York, for $7,495, the 38-foot two-engined Wheeler Playmate was delivered to Miami, Florida later that year. Pilar had a 70-hp Chrysler Crown gasoline engine reportedly capable of generating a cruise speed of 8 knots and a top speed of 16 knots. Coupled with six bunks, double rudders, and, with 300 gallons of water, 2,400 pounds of ice, and cruising range of 500 miles, it was a pretty capable boat. To this, Hemingway added a separate, straight-shaft Lycoming four-cylinder gasoline engine for trolling at 5 knots (with an economical fuel burn of 3 gph); flying bridge with steering/control station, bridge ladder, and bottle-stowage rack; and the set of outriggers and a fighting chair. In addition, there was a livewell with valves for filling and emptying; extra fuel-carrying capacity in four, 75-gallon galvanized tanks; two copper-lined fishboxes in the cockpit sole; and a long wooden roller mounted across a cut-down transom to facilitate hauling big fish aboard.
Old Hem used her to win just about every fishing rodeo across the Caribbean from 1935-41, only taking time off to go to the Spanish-Civil War. Named after his second wife, it was on the Pilar that Hemingway did the research into big game fishing that later came out in The Old Man and the Sea and other works.

It one incident in 1935, Hem took a Thompson submachine gun out and riddled a school of sharks who were eating on a 1000-pound marlin that he and painter Mike Strater were struggling to pull aboard. This only created an epic feeding frenzy that left the marlin ‘apple-cored’ with its entire back half eaten down to the spine.

Well when WWII rolled around, Hem, living in Finca Vigía in San Francisco de Paula, Cuba, at the time, sprang into action. He organised friends and acquaintances, some of the notorious nature, into an intelligence gathering organization in Cuba he dubbed the ‘Crook Factory’– with the US ambassador’s blessing. Not content with his ad hoc intel work, Hem cooked up another plot.

With the permission of the ambassador and the loan of some HF/DF radio equipment, Hem outfitted the trusty Pilar as a sub chaser. The idea was to float around offshore as an innocent fishing vessel, tracking German U-boat radio communications, until said Nazi sub was spotted.

Hem never did catch that Uboat….(image by Gina Sanders from a 1934 picture of Hem in the JFK collection)

Then, wait til the dastardly submersible came close enough to unleash tommy guns and grenades on her boarding party and deck crew. If he got close enough, a short fuze explosive charge thought capable of scuttling a sub was to be thrown down the hatch of the U-boat.

His crew included his sons Patrick and Gregory as well as other volunteers. While the government supplied some equipment, Hemingway was using his own boat, filled with his own gas, and risking the lives of both himself and his family to bring the war to the Germans.

From the summer of 1942 until the end of 1943, although the Pilar did actually set out on U-boat patrols, and possibly even spotted one of them, Hem never did catch one. He did, however, drop a grenade down the throat of a mako shark caught during one of the patrols. Failing at grabbing a German by the coat at close range, he left Cuba for the European Theater of Operations as a war correspondent, going ashore just after the Normandy Invasions.

The original Pilar has been landlocked in Cuba for the past fifty years

The Pilar remained Hem’s pride and joy until he left Cuba in 1960, leaving it to one of the boat’s local captains, Carlos Gutierrez, who promptly donated it to the Cuban government. Today she sits as a shrine to Hemingway in Cuba and is a popular tourist attraction. Another Wheeler Playmate dressed up to look like the Pilar is on display at the Bass Pro Shop in Key West.

a mock up of the Pilar is at the Bass Pro Shop in Key West, adrift on tshirts

In the end, Hemingway, after losing the love of his life (Pilar) tripped both barrels of his favorite Boss shotgun into his head just a year later. Gutierrez, the inheritor of the beautiful woman, lived to be 104.

Boats have a funny way of doing that.

Specs
Length:    38 ft (12 m)
Beam:    12 ft 0 in (3.7 m)
Height:    17.5 ft (5.3 m)
Draught:    3 ft 6 in (1.1 m)
Installed power:
Main Engine – 70 HP Chrysler
Trolling Engine – 4 Cylinder Lycoming
Speed:    16 knots (30 km/h; 18 mph)

Armament : At least one M1921 Thompson submachine gun, a Colt 22 Woodsman pistol and a cut-down .30 Krag rifle (all in the Pilar‘s regular small arms locker owned by Hemingway) . An unmounted .50 caliber Browning on loan, ‘a handful of grenades’, scuttling charges, and some sources state, ‘a bazooka’.

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

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval lore http://www.warship.org/naval.htm

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, June 19th Carriers Under the Sea

Posted on June 19, 2013 by laststandonzombieisland 3 comments

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, June 19th

Here we see the Sen Toku I-400-class (I-yonhyaku-gata Sensuikan) giant submarine aircraft carrier I-401 at sunset. It’s an appropriate picture as the submersible was at the time one of the last remaining units of the WWII Imperial Japanese Navy left afloat in the world. The IJN’s battle flag was the now-infamous Rising Sun, and this beautiful picture was taken of the I-401 at sunset, as a captured prize ship of the US Navy, sitting in Pearl Harbor in 1946.

In 1942, the war in the Pacific was still winnable for Japan, and Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto conceived of a class of huge submersible warships, 18 overall, that could carry an armada of 54 submarine-launched attack floatplanes to attack far off strategic US targets such as the Panama Canal, or fuel manufacture/storage facilities on the West Coast, or logistical hubs like American Samoa. Furthermore, the ships would be capable of circumnavigating the earth 1.5 times (37,000 miles!) on one full load of fuel, which would enable even targets on the US East Coast within the reach of the Japanese Navy.

To make such a capable submarine in 1942 under wartime conditions was a challenge. Nevertheless, you have to admire the audacious plan. Each of these I-400 boats had to be some 400-feet long with a very wide beam to be able to carry and launch up to three combat airplanes. This gave them a displacement of some 6700 tons and an immense crew of over 140, including air wing. When you compare this to the subs of the time, they are super-sized. Even looking at today’s HY-80 steel nuclear propelled boats, the I-400s are larger than many of the modern hunter-killer of the sea. For example, the backbone of the US Navy since 1976, the “688 Boats” of the Los Angeles class SSNs have a length of 362 feet and a surfaced displacement of 6.082-tons.

The Germans helped a lot with the design, giving the Japanese the plans for the aircraft catapult as well as supplying them with snorkels and periscopes. Unlike many subs of the day, the I-400s had both air and surface search radars as well as a primitive radar warning receiver and sonar absorbing anechoic tile.

The I-400s had a huge armament punch. Not only could they carry a trio of M6A1 Seiran (Mountain Haze) attack planes, each of which could carry a 1800-pound bomb or torpedo load out to 300-miles from the submarine and return, but the ship itself carried 8 21-inch torpedo tubes, with 24 Type 95 torpedos, a 140mm deck gun and a number of 25mm cannons for small surface ships and aircraft defense. The Type 95 is considered by many to be the best torpedo of WWII, being an advanced design of the famous Long Lance, it had a 51-knot speed and a 1200-pound warhead, a performance envelope that is still formidable today.

The Seirans were to be launched via a 85-foot long compressed-air catapult mounted on the forward deck. A well-trained crew of four men could roll a Seiran out of its hangar on a collapsible catapult carriage, attach the plane’s pontoons and have it readied for flight in approximately 7 minutes. Although to get all three airplanes off the boat took up to 30-minutes.

The Gatun Locks at the Panama canal were supposed to be the I401s first target

Well, all did not go as planned for the I-400s. After Yammoto was killed in 1943, the Japanese Navy saw little use for the program and started slowly canceling the ships. Just three I-400s were finished and only two, I-400 and I-401, ever went to sea. Their primary reason for being, the Seiran float-plane, had only 28 examples made.

Commissioned 8 January 1945, I-401 was a late comer to the war. Already the US Navy had recaptured the Philipines and was breathing hard on the Japanese home islands. By June the two boats and a crew of float plane pilots were practising on wooden mock-ups of the Panama canal locks in preparation for their first attack. At the last-minute, the plan was halted and the two I-400s were sent to attack Ulithu Atoll, the forward base of the US Navy’s fast carriers. At any given time the US Navy had up to a dozen carriers there on “Murders Row”, taking a break from the war. To give the six Seirans a fighting chance against up to 2000 US aircraft and thousands of anti-aircraft guns in the atoll, they were painted in US markings and refitted as kamikaze aircraft.

Murderers Row at Ulithi atoll was the target of two submarines and six floatplanes.

Murderers Row at Ulithi atoll was the target of two submarines and six Seiran floatplanes.

While at sea on the way to the atoll, the war ended and the I-400 and 401 surrendered to US forces. Both ships shot away their torpedoes, threw their artillery shells overboard, and shot their unmanned floatplanes off the deck into the deep ocean. I401 surrendered to the USS Segundo (SS-398), a Balao-class submarine less than half her size.

The floatplanes on the I400 and 401 were given US markings and looked almost like a P-51 with a set of floats.

Both the I400 and I401 were taken to Pearl Harbor by prize crews where they were inspected at length by the US Navy. Odds were they would have been kept for years, and one of them may have even still been around as a trophy ship had the Soviets not wanted to inspect them. To prevent the Russkis from getting to the amazing Japanese-German hybrid tech of the I400s, the Navy sunk them as targets off Hawaii in 1946.

The US navy had these ships for almost nine months, and they would probably be gracing a museum somewhere, had it not been for the Russians.

The US navy had these ships for almost nine months, and they would probably be gracing a museum somewhere today, had it not been for the Russians.

The I-401 was rediscovered in 2005 about a mile off Barber’s Point in 2600-feet of water. A few of her parts were saved prior to sinking, including the 140mm gun sight which is currently displayed at the Yokohama WWII Japanese Military Radio Museum.

The only remaining Seiran floatplane, captured intact at the Aichi Aircraft Factory following the end of the war in August 1945, is at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum on current display.

True to Yammaoto’s vision, at least one Seiran made it all the way to Washington DC, just not how he thought it would.

In a twist of fate, the USS Segundo (SS-398), captor of the I-401, was herself sunk as a target by the USS Salmon (SSR/SS/AGSS-573), a Sailfish-class submarine, in 1970, her usefulness past. It should go without saying that the Salmon likewise was sent to the bottom 5 June 1993, as a target by the US Navy. History is funny like that.

Specs

Displacement:    5,223 long tons (5,307 t) surfaced
6,560 long tons (6,665 t) submerged
Length:    122 m (400 ft)
Beam:    12 m (39 ft)
Draft:    7 m (23 ft)
Propulsion:    Diesel-electric
4 diesel engines, 7,700 hp (5,700 kW)
Electric motors, 2,400 hp (1,800 kW)
Speed:    18.75 knots (21.58 mph; 34.73 km/h) surfaced
6.5 kn (7.5 mph; 12.0 km/h) submerged
Range:    37,500 nmi (69,500 km) at 14 kn (16 mph; 26 km/h)
Test depth:    100 m (330 ft)
Complement:    144
Armament:    • 8 × 533 mm (21 in) forward torpedo tubes
• 20 × Type 95 torpedoes
• 1 × 14 cm/40 11th Year Type naval gun
• 3 × 25 mm (0.98 in) 3-barrel machine gun
• 1 × 25 mm machine gun
Aircraft carried:    3 × Aichi M6A1 Seiran sea-planes

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

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval lore http://www.warship.org/naval.htm

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, June 12 The Tsars Lost Eagle

Posted on June 12, 2013 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a 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, June 12, 2013

Here we see the Tsar’s mighty new battleship Orel (Russian for Eagle) in all of her black-painted brooding majesty as she sat at Krondstadt harbor in 1904. She looks like a ship in morning and for good reason, her country is at war with upstart Imperial Japan and she was soon to sail to the far-off Pacific to put things right.

Built at the Galerniy Island Shipyards, Saint Petersburg, she was brand new, only completed finally in October 1904. A Borodino-class battleship, she was the pinnacle of pre-dreadnought design. Weighing in at nearly 15,000 tons full load, she was armed with four 12-inch guns and a dozen six inchers besides a huge battery of smaller 75 and 47mm rifles to ward away torpedo boats. She could make 18-knots which was pretty fast for these types of ships. The thing is, to get this fast, she was comparatively lightly armored. It had long been a rule of thumb to armor battleships against the same size cannon they carried in inches (example, since she had 12-inch guns, her main belt should be 12-inches thick, with turrets and conning tower a little heavier). Instead, the Orel had a belt that ran 5-7 inches and her strongest armor was on her two main turrets of just 10-inches.

Oh well, you can’t have everything. At least it was good German Krupp armor and not that junk Harvey stuff. Trust me, where she was going, she was gonna need it.

The Orel's path was the long blue line. Sucks to be a Baltic battleship wih short legs on an 18,000 mile shakedown cruise

The Orel’s path was the long blue line. Sucks to be a Baltic battleship with short legs on an 18,000-mile shakedown cruise

Still, with her paint wet and her crew largely as new as the ship itself, her shakedown cruise was epic. She joined the 27 other Baltic fleet ships in the force designated as the 2nd Pacific Squadron (the first was trapped at Port Arthur by the Japanese) and set sail 18,000 miles to break the siege of that far off port. During the epic voyage, which predated that of the Great White Fleet by a half-decade, Orel was overloaded with coal at all times which made keeping sea hard and limited the vital underway training her crew needed to simply shovel coal.

Some 2000 tons overloaded with coal piled on deck, stacked in every compartment, and even piled around the shells in the magazines, this is how the Orel looked for most of her first and final voyage for the Tsar. Pretty safe freeboard!

Two months at sea and still more than 10,000 miles away, Port Arthur surrendered to the Japanese. Instead of logically turning back for the Baltic, the fleet under Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky pressed on, coaling at French ports around the world. By May 1905 the Russian fleet was trying to run the Straits of Tsushima between Japan and Korea. With a sneak attack preceded by seven months of foreshadowing, Japanese Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō met the 28 Russian ships with 89 of his own, a great tactical position, and all guns and tubes loaded.

The Orel had a pivotal part in the worst naval defeat in history.

The resulting battle, known as the ‘Battle of Tsushima’ in most of the world and ‘Holy Shit We Just Lost a Whole Fleet’ in Imperial Russia, was possibly the most one-sided naval engagement in history. Of the 8 Russian battleships in the line, 7 were sent to the bottom along with over 4300 brave Tsarist sailors. The Japanese lost a couple torpedo boats and 117 sailors.

But what about the 8th battleship?– well, that’s Orel‘s story.

She was itching to get into the fight and fired the first shots of the battle. She got her licks back from the Japanese. During the battle, Orel was hit by no less than five 12-inch, two 10-inch (254 mm), nine 8-inch (203 mm), 39 six-inch shells, and 21 smaller rounds or fragments. Although the ship had many large holes in the unarmored portions of her side, she was only moderately damaged as all of the four (one 12-inch and three 6-inch) shells that hit her side armor failed to penetrate.

The left gun of her forward 12-inch turret had been struck by an eight-inch sell that broke off its muzzle and another eight-inch shell struck the roof of the rear 12-inch turret and forced it down, which limited the maximum elevation of the left gun. Two six-inch gun turrets had been jammed by hits from eight-inch shells and one of them had been burnt out by an ammunition fire. Another turret had been damaged by a 12-inch shell that struck its supporting tube. Splinters from two 6-inch shells entered the conning tower and wounded Captian Nikolay Viktorovich Yung badly enough he was unconscious for the rest of the battle and later died of his wounds. Casualties totaled 43 crewmen killed and approximately 80 wounded.

Seven-month-old battleship…slightly used.

A battered wreck that had taken tremendous punishment, the remaining crew pulled down her flag to stop the fight. Captain Yung’s body was buried at sea with full military honors after the surrender. As far as I can tell, it was the last time in Naval history that a capital ship was captured at sea after a battle.

The Japanese took her into service as the battleship Iwami although she needed nearly two years in a shipyard before she could serve again under her new flag. Her British made Bellville boilers were replaced by Japanese-built Miyabara boilers as well as her whole above-deck superstructure rebuilt. As her secondary armament was French made by Canet, the Japanese replaced it as well.

She continued to be used as a coastal defense ship throughout World War One and then as the flagship of the 90,000 man Japanese Army force that landed in Vladivostok during the Russian Civil War (1917-21)– just to rub the Russians faces in it a little further.

Odds are the Japanese would have kept her around as a trophy till this day but the battered and rebuilt warship’s tonnage counted against her in the Washington Naval Agreement, and she was disarmed used as a target ship for aircraft (see December 1941 for how that worked out) and her remains scrapped in 1925. Ironically, her service with the Japanese Navy was for almost twenty years while her service with the Russians was only seven months, and she spent most of her time in Russian waters flying the banner of the Rising Sun.

Specs
Displacement:    14,151 long tons (14,378 t)
Length:    397 ft (121.0 m)
Beam:    76 ft 1 in (23.2 m)
Draft:    29 ft 2 in (8.9 m)
Installed power:    15,800 ihp (11,782 kW)
20 Belleville boilers
Propulsion:    2 shafts, 2 Triple-expansion steam engines
Speed:    18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph)
Range:    2,590 nmi (4,800 km; 2,980 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Complement:    28 officers, 826 enlisted men
Armament:    2 × 2 – 12 in (305 mm) guns
6 × 2 – 6 inches (152 mm) guns
20 × 1 – 75 mm (3 in) guns
20 × 1 – 47 mm (1.9 in) guns
4 × 1 – 15 in (381 mm) torpedo tubes
Armor:    Krupp armor
Belt: 7.64–5.7 inches (194–145 mm)
Deck: 1–2 inches (25–51 mm)
Turrets: 10 inches (254 mm)

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

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval lore http://www.warship.org/naval.htm .

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, June 5 The Graf

Posted on June 5, 2013 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a 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, June 5

Here we see the Panzerschiff Admiral Graf Spee as she looked at her finest at the Coronation Review for English King George VI at Spithead in May 1937. Just 17-months old in this picture, she would become one of the most hunted of all German ships in the beginning of World War Two just two years later– by the very fleet she steamed with on this day.

Laid down at Reichsmarinewerft, Wilhelmshaven on 1 October 1932, she was the first new German ‘battleship’ since the 1919 Treaty of Versailles to replace the 30-year old pre-dreadnought battleship SMS Braunschweig. Officially weighing just 10,000-tons (the treaty limit) and classified simply as a ‘Armored ship’ (Panzerschiff), she was portrayed as simply a really big cruiser.

However her full load displacement was nearly 17,000-tons (the same as an early WWI battle cruiser) and she carried a half-dozen 280mm (11-inch) SK C/28 naval guns, whereas most cruisers had nothing larger than 8-inches. Western media called her and her other two Deutschland class sisters ‘pocket battleships’ as they could effectively sink any warship but.

The ship’s hull was constructed with transverse steel frames; over 90 percent of the hull used welding instead of the then standard riveting, which saved 15 percent of her total hull weight. This savings allowed the armament and armor to be increased. The hull contained twelve watertight compartments and were fitted with a double bottom that extended for 92 percent of the length of the keel. Four sets of 9-cylinder, double-acting, two-stroke diesel engines further saved weight over huge oil-fired turbines while also giving the ship an amazing 10,000-mile range. This made her the perfect long range surface raider.

When the clouds of war started to form in 1939, Admiral Raeder sent the Graf Spee out to the Atlantic so that she would not be caught in the Baltic and bottled up by the Royal Navy. For the first four months of the war she ranged the South Atlantic, sinking nine Allied merchant ships as a surface raider. She was encountered by the three British cruisers: HMS Exeter (10,000-tons, 6×8-inch guns), HMNZS Achilles and HMS Ajax (9700-tons, 8×6-inch guns). In the resulting running Battle of the River Plate on 13 December 1939, the Spee gave better than she got. All three British smaller British cruisers were badly mauled, suffering over 100 casualties.

However one of Exeter‘s 8 inch shells had penetrated two decks before exploding in Graf Spee’s funnel area—destroying her raw fuel processing system and leaving her with just 16 hours fuel, insufficient to allow her to return home. With her legs cut off, her desalination plant wrecked, her kitchen burnt and 70% of her 11-inch shells expended, Spee made for Uruguay where she hoped to either make repairs or be interned. However the Uruguayans ordered her to sea in 72 hours into the waiting arms of the British fleet. British Intelligence deceived the Germans into believing that a much larger force lay just offshore, ready to destroy the battered Graf Spee when she emerged.

Rather than suffer outright defeat to a seemingly superior force, the ship’s captain, Hans Langsdorff ordered her evacuated and scuttled. After all, the ship herself was named after a German admiral who was killed at sea in defeat by a larger British force in the First World War. Landing most of his crew ashore, he sailed her to the edge of Montevideo harbor and blew her magazines.

More than 1000 of her crew were interned in Argentina during the war while Hans Langsdorff himself shot himself while wearing his dress uniform.

She has been slowly salvaged by various countries and teams since 1939 but most of the ship is still in Montevideo. Her 660-pound, nine foot wide eagle figurehead was recovered from the stern of the ship in 2006 by a team of divers who loosened 145 bolts to free the ornament.

Odds are, no one has seen the last of the Graf.

Specs
Displacement: Design:
14,890 t (14,650 long tons; 16,410 short tons)
Full load:
16,020 long tons (16,280 t)

Length:    186 m (610 ft 3 in)
Beam:    21.65 m (71 ft 0 in)
Draft:    7.34 m (24 ft 1 in)
Propulsion:

Eight MAN diesel engines
Two propellers
52,050 shp (38,810 kW)

Speed:    29.5 knots (55 km/h)
Range:    8,900 nautical miles (16,500 km; 10,200 mi) at 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph)
Complement:    As built:

33 officers
586 enlisted

After 1935:

30 officers
921–1,040 enlisted

Sensors and
processing systems: 1940:

FMG 39 G(gO)

1941:

FMG 40 G(gO)
FuMO 26

Armament: As built:

6 × 28 cm (11 in) in triple turrets
8 × 15 cm (5.9 in) in single turrets
8 × 53.3 cm (21.0 in) torpedo tubes

Armor:

main turrets: 140 mm (5.5 in)
belt: 80 mm (3.1 in)
deck: 45 mm (1.8 in)

Aircraft carried: Two Arado Ar 196 seaplanes
Aviation facilities: One catapult
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization

(INRO)

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval lore http://www.warship.org/naval.htm The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

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, May 29 First US Torpedo Boat

Posted on May 29, 2013 by laststandonzombieisland 2 comments

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, May 29

Here we see the first US torpedo boat, USS Cushing (TB-1). Torpedo boats were a daring new concept in the late 18th century. These small Davids were thought capable of using their amazingly fast speed (23knots!) to leap out of the narrows in a littoral and pumping a locomotive powered torpedo into the hull of a Goliath battleship, sending the ship of the line to the bottom for its troubles.

She originally carried a white paint scheme and was in 1898 changed to a dark green for camouflage. Note the framework for her canvas deck awning. The awning is shown installed in the picture below.

Cushing was the first of her type in US service and one of the first in the world. She was preceded by the HMS Lightning in 1876. The Lightning, a 87-foot long steamship that could do 18-knots didn’t look like much but she carried a pair of Whitehead torpedoes. This sent tremors across the seas and the USN’s answer to this was Cushing.

Authorized in August 1886, Cushing was completed and commissioned 22 April 1890, given the name of one of the most famous of all swashbuckling bluejackets of the Civil War. She spent most of her career at the Naval Torpedo Station in Newport where she raised a young crop of the US Navy’s first destroyer-men. Only 140-feet long, she could float in just 4-feet of water. Her two dozen officers and men were used to man the 2 6-pounder guns and fire her three above water torpedo tubes. From 1890 to 1897 she carried Howell Mk1 locomotive torpedoes (one of which was just found last week off the California coast) and after 1897 she carried the more effective Whitehead type.

Cushing at speed with her dark green paint scheme. Note how low she sat to the water. In February 1898 she lost Ensign John Cable Breckenridge overboard in heavy seas. These were not boats that you wanted to be above deck on in a good sea state.

When the Spanish-American War erupted in 1898, Cushing performed picket patrol in the Florida Straits and courier duty for the North Atlantic Fleet. She captured five small Cuban ships during the war and escorted them into harbor. She was decommissioned later that year after the peace had been declared.

Truth be told, this innovative ship was already made obsolete by ever faster TBs of bigger size and with larger armament. The entire torpedo boat concept itself was largely negated by 1905 when heavy gun-armed Torpedo Boat Destroyers could make mince meat of the smaller TBs before they could close on the battleships, spoiling their shots. Indeed in the world’s largest use of steam-powered torpedo boats, the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese war, some 300 torpedoes were launched by both sides yet only 21 hit their target.

From 1898 to 1920 this is how Cushing spent most of her time.

With all this in mind, Cushing was kept around as a second-string reserve ship. A partially dismantled dockside trainer for testing and evaluation purposes for two decades. Finally in 1920 she was towed out to sea and sunk, as a target.

Specs
Type:    Torpedo boat
Displacement:    116 long tons (118 t)
Length:    140 ft (43 m)
Beam:    15 ft 1 in (4.60 m)
Draft:    4 ft 10 in (1.47 m)
Installed power:    1,600 ihp (1,200 kW)
Propulsion:    2 × vertical quadruple-expansion reciprocating steam engines
2 × Thornycroft boilers
2 × screws
Speed:    23 kn (26 mph; 43 km/h)
Complement:    22 officers and enlisted
Armament:    2 × 6-pounder (57 mm (2.24 in)) guns
3 × 18 in (460 mm) torpedo tubes (3×1)

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO) They are possibly one of the best sources of naval lore http://www.warship.org/naval.htm
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

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, May 22 The Mighty Miss

Posted on May 22, 2013 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a 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, May 22

Mississippi as a brand new battleship in WWI complete with lattice masts and disruptive anti-U boat camouflage

Here we see the New Mexico class battleship USS Mississippi (BB-41) in about 1918. The Mighty Miss had a career much longer than most other WWI-era battleships and gave good service for over forty years.

Laid down just a few months after the start of WWI in Europe, she was commissioned 18 December 1917 some eight months after the entry of the US into the Great War. Built as a oil-fired ship (most other warships of the era were coal burners), her WWI career was spent largely in US waters, a fleet in being along the US East Coast should the High Seas Fleet of Kaiser Wilhelm ever make a sortie to New York. In 1931 she was overhauled and modernized, spending almost all of the time period from 1919-1941 in the Pacific.

(Notice the much lower masts and more streamlined look. She was one of the most modern battleships of WWI, but sadly was pushing obsolescence by 1940)

She would have been at Pearl Harbor more than likely alongside her sisters New Mexico and Idaho, but all three ships were sent to the Atlantic in June 1941 to help enforce the neutrality patrol against Nazi U-Boats. Once the Japanese struck in the Pacific however, Mississippi and her sisters were sent racing back to the Pacific. For the first several months of the war she protected convoys up and down the West Coast as California braced for invasion. In 1943 she helped protect the landings in the Aleutian Islands. After conducting shore bombardments in Peleiu, Makin Island, Kwajalein, and others, she found herself in the last Battleship vs Battleship action– the Battle of Suriago Strait. There, Mississippi herself fired the final salvo in history by a battleship against other warships– contributing to the sinking of Japanese battleship Yamashiro.

(Again with the camouflage. During WWII her armament of anti-aircraft guns steadily increased)

More shore bombardments in the Philippines and Okinawa took place before she witnessed the surrender of Japan in Tokyo Bay, winning a total of eight battle stars. In 1946, while most of the rest of the pre-1938 US battleships were laid up and/or scrapped, Mississippi was reclassified from BB-41 to AG-128 (auxiliary, gunnery training/guided missile ship) and spent the next decade as a platform for development of surface to air and surface to surface missiles. For this her rear turrets were removed to give a platform of missile launchers. Without her, the RIM-2 Terrier and Petrel missiles would never have been adopted.

Mississippi firing Terrier missiles in 1955. This hybrid missile/gun arrangement was a wet-dream for battleship advocates for the next fifty years. When the Iowa class were eventually recommissioned in the early 1980s, they were given 16 harpoon anti-ship missiles and 32 Tomahawk cruise missiles in place of a few of the 5-inch twin mounts, but never a large SAM complement as envisioned earlier.

Stricken in 1956, at the time she was the last pre-WWII battleship in active service with the US Navy. Of the 12 WWII era US dreadnoughts, only three of the Iowa class were on active duty when Mississippi was decommissioned. The other 9 much newer North Carolina, SoDak, Alaska, and Iowa-class battleships and battle cruisers all being laid up in red lead row as members of the mothball fleet. Within a few years all of these except the Iowas would be pulled from mothballs and sent either to live the rest of their lives as museum ships, or broken up.

Mississippi herself was scrapped without ceremony at the end of 1956, just shy of her 40th birthday. Today knick knacks of the ship sail beneath the sea with the modern Virgina-class submarine USS Mississippi, after being carried for a while by a large nuclear-powered guided missile cruiser of the same name while her bell and silver set are on display in her home state.
Specs
Displacement: 32,000 long tons (32,500 t)
Length:    624 ft (190 m)
Beam:    97.4 ft (29.7 m)
Draft:    30 ft (9.1 m)
Speed:    21 kn (24 mph; 39 km/h)
Complement: 55 officers, 1,026 enlisted
Armament:     (1917)
12 × 14 in (360 mm) guns,
14 × 5 in (130 mm)/51 cal guns
4 × 3 in (76 mm) guns, and
2 × 21 in (530 mm) torpedo tubes
Armor:
Belt: 8–13.5 in (203–343 mm)
Barbettes: 13 in (330 mm)
Turret face: 18 in (457 mm)
Turret sides: 9–10 in (229–254 mm)
Turret top: 5 in (127 mm)
Turret rear 9 in (229 mm)
Conning tower: 11.5 in (292 mm)
Decks: 3.5 in (89 mm)

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

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval lore http://www.warship.org/naval.htm

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, May 15 The First Night Carrier

Posted on May 15, 2013 by laststandonzombieisland 2 comments

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, May 15

Here we see the light carrier USS Independence (CV/CVL-22). Began as the light cruiser USS Amsterdam (CL-59) in 1940, she was converted while still at New York Shipbuilding Corp., Camden, N.J to help fill the urgent and pressing need for fast carriers after Pearl Harbor. A 30/30 ship, she could make 30+ knots and carry 30+ aircraft while having legs long enough to cross the Pacific and operate on her own for a few weeks before she needed to find an oiler. While she was much smaller than a regular fleet carrier such as the Enterprise that could carry 80-90 aircraft, she could still put a few squadrons in the air.

In effect, she was good-enough.

Above you see a scale model of the USS Duluth (CL-87) compared to the USS Belleau Wood (CVL-24) both are directly related to the Indy. The Duluth is a Cleavland-class cruiser and is what the Indy was originally ordered to be. The Belleau Wood underwent to same conversion that Indy did. Notice the similarity in the hull. Both ships only differed above the 01 deck.

When Independence was commissioned on January 14th 1943, the only other carriers in the fleet of the original 8 that started WWII were the Enterprise and Saratoga who were fighting for their lives off the Solomons, and the small USS Ranger which was up to her ass in U-Boats in the Atlantic. The new USS Essex had commissioned just a couple of weeks earlier and was in shakedown. The old carrier Langley, converted to a seaplane tender, had been lost early in the war, the huge Lexington was sent to the bottom at the Battle of the Coral Sea, Yorktown lost at Midway, Wasp and Hornet (stricken literally the day before Independence was commissioned from the Naval List) lost in the Solomons.

In short, the Indy came just in time and she was put to hard work fast. Before the year was out she was conducting raids off Marcus Island, Rabaul, and the Gilberts– tying down Japanese forces needed elsewhere. It was in these raids that the Indy picked up a torpedo (one of a half-dozen fired at her) in her starboard quarter. As this was repaired, she received a new air-group, an additional catapult, and a new mission– that of a night carrier.

The first full-time night Air Group was Air Group 41, established through the drive and persistence of Lt. Commander Turner F Caldwell. He commissioned VF(N)-79 in January 1944, training at NAAF Charlestown, Rhode Island. While at Charlestown Caldwell sold his idea of an ‘pure’ night air group to anyone who would listen. With the availability of the CVL Independence Caldwell got his wish. VF(N)-75 was dissolved and reformed as VF(N)-41, with an enlarged TBM contingent designated as VT(N)-41. Total size of the Air Group was 14 F6F-5N’s, 5 F6F-5’s and 12 TBM Avengers. Independence sailed for Eniwetok at the end of July 1944 to join Task Force 38. Air Group 41 finished it’s tour in January 1945. In that time it had claimed 46 kills, but lost ten of it’s 35 night fighter pilots in action, A further three were lost to operational causes – a tribute to the high training standards and skill of the group. The CVL Independence was the only light carrier to be completely equipped with a Night Air Group. Later in 1945 several large carriers and even a much smaller Jeep Carrier (CVE-108 Kula Gulf) went to Night Groups including Enterprise, Saratoga and Bon Homme Richard— but the Indy was the first.

By the end of the war she held 8 battlestars.

The Japanese couldn’t sink her, so the Navy decided to use her for testing. Since the USN had dozens of brand new fleet carriers of the Essex types, it didn’t need the old Indy anymore. Therefore, she was only 1/2 mile from ground zero on 1 July 1946 when the A-bomb went off in the Bikini Atoll tests. When she didn’t sink, they used her again for another A-bomb test three weeks later. Still afloat, she was only scuttled in 1951 off the coast of San Fransisco. Five of her remaining sisters pressed on and were used during the Cold War as transports, anti-submarine carriers, and as the first modern carriers that the French and Spanish navies had– one, the former USS Cabot, even tested the first Harriers at sea.

Indy is just to the right of the giant column of water that is much wider than she is long….

In the end you can say that the Indy had a hard life in her eight years above water to say the least.

Today, even after being under 3100-feet of seawater for 60 years, she is still on the job. You see ,she took down 70,000 sealed barrels of 1940s radioactive materiel with her which she is guarding in the forever night of the deep ocean and is forbidden to dive on using any means.

In a way, she is still a night carrier, with a very dangerous cargo.

Specs:
Displacement: 11,000 tons standard; 15,100 tons full load
Dimensions (wl): 600′ x 71′ 6″ x 26′ (max) / 182.9 x 21.8 x 7.9 (max) meters
Dimensions (max.): 622′ 6″ x 109′ 2″ / 189.7 x 33.3 meters
Armor: no side belt (2″ belt over fwd magazine); 2″ protective deck(s); 0.38″ bridge; 5″/3.75″ bhds; 5″ bhds, 2.25″ above, 0.75″ below steering gear
Power plant: 4 boilers (565 psi, 850°F); 4 geared turbines; 4 shafts; 100,000 shp (design)
Speed: 31.6 knots
Endurance (design): 12,500 nautical miles @ 15 knots
Armament: 2 single 5″/38 gun mounts (soon removed); 2 quad 40-mm/56-cal gun mounts (in place of 5″ mounts); 8 (soon 9) twin 40-mm/56-cal gun mounts; 16 single 20-mm/70-cal guns mounts
Aircraft: 30+
Aviation facilities: 2 centerline elevators; 1 hydraulic catapult
Crew: approx. 1,560

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

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval lore http://www.warship.org/naval.htm

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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laststandonzombieisland

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

Tag Archives: old warships

Warship Wednesday, July 17 Frigate tuned Superyacht

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Warship Wednesday, June 12 The Tsars Lost Eagle

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Warship Wednesday, June 5 The Graf

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Warship Wednesday, May 29 First US Torpedo Boat

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Warship Wednesday, May 22 The Mighty Miss

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Warship Wednesday, May 15 The First Night Carrier

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