“The Constant Reminder,” Painting, Acrylic on Illustration Board; by Robert Adam Malin; 1998; Framed Dimensions 22H X 32W, NHC Accession #: 98-110-E
The subject depicts a modern attack submarine leaving Pearl Harbor with the topside watch noting Battleship Row in the distance with the USS Arizona Memorial gleaming in the sunlight.
Remember to thank and to think of a veteran today.
Too often we forget that the biggest part of the battle at Pearl Harbor came after the Japanese were sailing away.
By 0915 on 7 December, Navy divers and salvage teams were hard at work.
Throughout 1942 and part of 1943, Navy divers worked on salvaging destroyers, supply ships, and other badly damaged vessels. The divers faced extraordinary dangers: poisonous gas, unexploded ordnance, as well as the unknown of the destruction that awaited them below. Through the course of the Pearl Harbor effort, Navy divers spent approximately 16,000 hours underwater, during 4,000 dives.
It appears that possibly the last of these iron men has stepped up for his last dive. U.S. Navy salvage diver Ken Hartle passed away at age 103 last week.
In this photo taken during World War II, Navy salvage diver Ken Hartle is seen getting into his deep see dress diving outfit, which weighed more than 216 pounds with the spun copper helmet. (Credit: Hartle family via San Diego Trib)
As reported by the San Diego Tribune:
David Ball, an officer with the national Navy Divers Association, said he’s pretty certain that Hartle was the oldest Navy diver from the Pearl Harbor salvage era. The World War II salvage divers held regular reunions for many years, but as more and more passed away, the gatherings stopped. At this point, the oldest divers in the association are in their 90s, said Ball, a San Diego resident.
Hartle passed away Tuesday afternoon at the Vista Del Lago memory care center in Escondido.
More on this incredible man’s story, here
At the Pentagon on December 7, 2016, the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, an old warrior was wheeled in to the auditorium, and honored for the first time since the 1950s.
The 14,000-ton Naval Auxiliary Service collier Vestal was christened in 1908 and later was redisignated a repair ship in the Navy proper becoming USS Vestal (AR-4).
Vestal deployed “Over There” in 1918, serving in Queenstown, Ireland with the U.S. fleet during World War I then made her way to the Pacific where she was moored at berth F 7, off Ford Island, to provide services to USS Arizona during the battlewagon’s scheduled period of tender upkeep when the Japanese planes came buzzing into the harbor on that infamous Sunday morning.
Hit by two Japanese bombs of her own, Vestal was nearly pulverized by Arizona‘s magazine explosion. Listing, ablaze and heavily damaged, the old repair ship saved herself and her skipper, Commander Cassin Young, later came away with the MOH for his actions.
Her mooring quay is still a place of honor at Pearl to this day.
Remarkably, Vestal survived and went on to conduct forward repairs in the war zones of the South Pacific, keeping the battleships South Dakota and Washington; carriers Saratoga and Enterprise; cruisers Minneapolis, St. Louis, HMNZS Achilles, HMAS Hobart, San Francisco, and Pensacola among others in the fight and afloat at desperate times when their loss would have been a great blow to the war effort.
Decommissioned and stricken, she was sold to breakers and disappeared in 1950.
The Navy recently reacquired the bell and gave it a well-needed makeover before it’s big day this week.
“Tenacious accretions had accumulated on the bell’s exterior, along with dust, dirt, and environmental pollution,” said David Krop, conservation branch head at NHHC’s Collection Management Facility in Richmond, Virginia. “Additionally, we detected lead paint on the bell’s clapper assembly and old polish residue clinging to the bell’s lettering.”
Using a variety of mechanical and chemical methods, Krop’s team was able to get the bell to a stable and presentable condition after about two weeks, in time for the ceremony.
“As we cleaned and conserved the bell,” said Karl Knauer, a conservator on Krop’s team, “its past reflected back to us through its marred surface. It was truly an honor to work on such an important touchstone to the Navy’s history.”
Vestal, arriving:
161206-N-ES994-001 WASHINGTON (Dec. 6, 2016) Naval History and heritage Command (NHHC) provided the bell from USS Vestal for display during a commemoration for the 75th Anniversary of the Pearl Harbor Attack, hosted by the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV) and held in the Pentagon’s auditorium. Vestal was among the ship’s damaged during the Pearl Harbor attack. (U.S. Navy photo by Chief Petty Officer Elliott Fabrizio/Released)
Too often we forget that the biggest part of the battle at Pearl Harbor came after the Japanese were sailing away.
By 0915 on 7 December, Navy divers and salvage teams were hard at work.
Throughout 1942 and part of 1943, Navy divers worked on salvaging destroyers, supply ships, and other badly damaged vessels.
An oil covered US Navy diver after working on one of the sunken ships, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, 7th December 1941.
The divers faced extraordinary dangers: poisonous gas, unexploded ordnance, as well as the unknown of the destruction that awaited them below. Through the course of the Pearl Harbor effort, Navy divers spent approximately 16,000 hours underwater, during 4,000 dives.
Contract civilian divers contributed another 4,000 diving hours.
In this video, Navy diver, Petty Officer Melissa Nguyen-Alarcon, of Winthrop, Maine, shares how their toughness, accountability, integrity and initiative has influenced her.
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 Dec. 7, 2016: The eclipsing old bird of Battleship Row
Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-32445
Here we see the Lapwing (“old bird”)-class minesweeper-turned-seaplane tender USS Avocet (AVP-4) from atop a building at Naval Air Station Ford Island, looking toward the Navy Yard. USS Nevada (BB-36) is at right, with her bow afire. Beyond her is the burning USS Shaw (DD-373). Smoke at left comes from the destroyers Cassin (DD-372) and Downes (DD-375), ablaze in Drydock Number One. The day, of course, is December 7, 1941 and you can see the gunners aboard Avocet looking for more Japanese planes (they had already smoked one) at about the time the air raid ended.
Inspired by large seagoing New England fishing trawlers, the Lapwings were 187-foot long ships that were large enough, at 965-tons full, to carry a pair of economical reciprocating diesel engines (or two boilers and one VTE engine) with a decent enough range to make it across the Atlantic on their own (though with a blisteringly slow speed of just 14 knots when wide open on trials.)
Not intended to do much more than clear mines, they were given a couple 3″/23 pop guns to discourage small enemy surface combatants intent to keep minesweepers from clearing said mines. The class leader, Lapwing, designated Auxiliary Minesweeper #1 (AM-1), was laid down at Todd in New York in October 1917 and another 53 soon followed. While five were canceled in November 1918, the other 48 were eventually finished– even if they came to the war a little late.
Which leads us to the hero of our tale, USS Avocet, named after a long-legged, web-footed shore bird found in western and southern states– the first such naval vessel to carry the moniker. Laid down as Minesweeper No. 19 on 13 September 1917 at Baltimore, Maryland by the Baltimore Drydock & Shipbuilding Co, she was commissioned just over a year later on 17 September 1918– some seven weeks before the end of the Great War.
USS AVOCET (AM-19) at Baltimore, Maryland, 28 September 1918. Catalog #: NH 57468. Note the large searchlight on her fwd mast.
After spending eight months assigned to the Fifth Naval District, where she drug for possible German mines up and down the Eastern seaboard, she landed her 3-inchers and prepared to ship for the North Sea where she would pitch in to clear the great barrage of mines sown there to shut off the Kaiser’s U-boats from the Atlantic. Setting out with sisterships Quail (Minesweeper No. 15) and Lark (Minesweeper No. 21), the three sweeps made it to the Orkney Islands by 14 July 1919 where they joined Whippoorwill (Minesweeper No. 35) and Avocet was made flag of the four-ship division.
Spending the summer sweeping (and almost being blown sky high by a British contact mine that bumped up against her hull) Avocet sailed back home in October, rescuing the crew of the sinking Spanish schooner Marie Geresee on the way.
It would not be her last rescue.
After being welcomed by the SECNAV and inspected at Hampton Roads, Avocet would transfer to the Pacific for the rest of her career. Assigned to the Asiatic Fleet’s Minesweeping Detachment in 1921, she would become a familiar sight at Cavite in the Philippines where she was decommissioned 3 April 1922 and laid up.
Reactivated in 1925, she was converted to an auxiliary aircraft tender taking care of the seaplanes of VT-20 and VT-5A (with men from that squadron living on board a former coal barge, YC-147, moored alongside) as well as visiting British flying boats and Army amphibian aircraft at Bolinao Harbor while putting to sea on occasion to tow battle raft targets for fleet gunnery practice.
Tending the flock: Avocet with two T4M floatplanes of VT-5 in Manila Bay circa early 1932. One aircraft is afloat under the ship’s aircraft handling boom aft while the other is on a wooden Navy open lighter (YC-147) amidships. Men from the aircraft squadron also lived in the tents on the barge. Luxury, you are the Asiatic Fleet! The T4M, the ultimate evolution of the Martin SC-1 series, was a hearty torpedo bomber scout with a range pushing 700 nms. The Navy ordered 102 of the planes and they remained in service until the late 1930s. As for VT-5, they later flew carrier-based TBD Devastators from Yorktown (CV-5) and Saratoga until the type was retired in favor of the TBF-1 Avenger, at which point VT-5 was resurrected for the new Yorktown (CV-10)
In 1928, she got her teeth back when she was rearmed with a single more modern 3” /50 gun, and survived being grounded during a typhoon in Force 8 winds.
By 1932, Avocet was transferred to Hawaii to support Pearl Harbor-based flying boats. There, she was the first to support seaplanes at the remote French Frigate Shoals and outlying lagoons at Laysan and Nihoa as well as Midway.
Heavy cruiser USS Augusta (CA-31) steaming past the Fleet Air Base at Pearl Harbor, T.H., January 1933. USS AVOCET (AM-19), serving as an aircraft tender, is at the dock. Note cane fields being burned at upper right. Catalog #: 80-CF-21338-4
In 1934, the aging tender served as flagship for Rear Adm. Alfred W. Johnson and was used in expeditionary missions in Nicaragua, crossing into the Caribbean to Haiti, then back to the Pacific. Talk about diverse!
In August 1934, Avocet supported VP-7F and VP- 9F in Alaskan waters with early Douglas PD-1 floatplanes to test the ability of tenders to provide advance base support in cold weather conditions.
Image of Avocet as a seaplane tender likely in the late 1920s with what looks like a Martin T3M-2 torpedo bomber from the then-Pearl Harbor-based Torpedo Squadron 3 (VT-3) on her stern. The Navy ordered an even 100 of the planes in 1926 and they served in both torpedo patrol squadrons and carrier-based scouting squadrons (on Lexington and Saratoga) into the early 1930s. VT-3 itself, later flying TBD Devastators from the USS Yorktown, was annihilated at Midway.
As Trans-Pacific clippers came into their own, Avocet increasingly found herself in remote uninhabited tropical atolls, exploring their use for seaplane operations. This led her to bringing some 2-tons of high explosive to Johnson Atoll in 1936 to help blast away coral for a land base there.
On 6 May 1937, Avocet embarked the official 16-member National Geographic-U.S. Navy Eclipse Expedition under Capt. Julius F. Hellweg, USN (Ret.), the superintendent of the Naval Observatory to observe the total solar eclipse set to occur on June 8, 1937 with its peak somewhere over Micronesia.
The expedition took aboard 150 cases of instruments, 10,000 ft. of lumber and 60 bags of cement, remaining at sea for 42 days. In the end, they would watch the eclipse from Canton Island in the Phoenix chain, midway between British Fiji and Hawaii.
According to DANFS, the event went down like this:
While returning to Enderbury to land observers on 24 May, the ship remained at Canton for the eclipse expedition through 8 June. Joined by the British sloop HMS Wellington on 26 May, with men from a New Zealand expedition embarked, Avocet observed the total eclipse of the sun at 0836 on 8 June 1937. Sailing for Pearl Harbor on the afternoon of 9 June, the ship arrived at her destination on the 16th, disembarking her distinguished passengers upon arrival.
According to others, when HMS Wellington arrived at Canton Island– whose ownership was disputed at the time between the U.S. and HMs government– she fired a shot over Avocet‘s bow when the latter refused to cede the choicest anchorage spot to the British vessel after which both captains agreed to “cease fire” until instructions could be received from their respective governments.
The Grimsby-class sloop HMS Wellington (U65), some 1,500-tons with a battery of 4.7-inch Mk IX guns was more than a match for the humble Avocet.
While this may or may not have happened, what is for sure is there was an exchange of official diplomatic cables about the interaction on Canton that in the end led to a British reoccupation of the island in August 1937.
Where was Avocet by then? She was supporting the huge flattop USS Lexington (CV-2) by transferring avgas to her at Lahaina Roads for her aviators to use in searching the Pacific for the lost aviatrix Amelia Earhart, that’s where.
Then came more seaplane operations, supporting in turn the early Douglas T2D twin-engine torpedo bombers, Consolodated P2Y, and Martin PM2s of VP-4F, 6, 8 and 10 at varying times as well as the smaller single-engined T3/T4Ms of several VT squadrons while searching for lost flying boats including the famed Pan American Airways’ Sikorsky S-42B “Samoan Clipper.”
Avocet was in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 moored port side to the NAS dock where she had a view of Battleship Row.
From DANFS:
At about 0745 on Sunday, 7 December 1941, Avocet‘s security watch reported Japanese planes bombing the seaplane hangars at the south end of Ford Island, and sounded general quarters. Her crew promptly brought up ammunition to her guns, and the ship opened fire soon thereafter. The first shot from Avocet‘s starboard 3-inch gun scored a direct hit on a Nakajima B5N2 carrier attack plane that had just scored a torpedo hit on the battleship California (BB-44), moored nearby. The Nakajima, from the aircraft carrier Kaga‘s air group, caught fire, slanted down from the sky, and crashed on the grounds of the naval hospital, one of five such planes lost by Kaga that morning.
Initially firing at torpedo planes, Avocet‘s gunners shifted their fire to dive bombers attacking ships in the drydock area at the start of the forenoon watch. Then, sighting high altitude bombers overhead, they shifted their fire again. Soon thereafter, five bombs splashed in a nearby berth, but none exploded.
USS Avocet (AVP-4) at Berth Fox-1A, at Ford Island, prior to 1045 hrs. on 7 December, when she moved to avoid oil fires drifting southward along the shore of Ford Island. She is wearing Measure 1 camouflage (dark gray/light gray). Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-32669
From her veritable ringside seat, Avocet then witnessed the inspiring sortie of the battleship Nevada (BB-36), the only ship of her type to get underway during the attack. Seeing the dreadnought underway, after clearing her berth astern of the burning battleship Arizona (BB-39), dive-bomber pilots from Kaga singled her out for destruction, 21 planes attacking her from all points of the compass. Avocet‘s captain, Lt. William C. Jonson, Jr., marveled at the Japanese precision, writing later that he had never seen “a more perfectly executed attack.” Avocet‘s gunners added to the barrage to cover the gallant battleship’s passage down the harbor.
USS Nevada (BB-36) headed down channel past the Navy Yard’s 1010 Dock, under Japanese air attack during her sortie from Battleship Row. A camouflage Measure 5 false bow wave is faintly visible painted on the battleship’s forward hull. Photographed from Ford Island. Small ship in the lower right is USS Avocet (AVP-4). Note fuel tank farm in the left center distance, beyond the Submarine Base. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval History and Heritage Command. Catalog #: NH 97397
Although the ship ceased fire at 1000, much work remained to be done in the wake of the devastating surprise attack. She had expended 144 rounds of 3-inch and 1,750 of .30 caliber [that’s a lot of 47-round Lewis machine gun drums!] in the battle against the attacking planes, and had suffered only two casualties: a box of ammunition coming up from the magazines had fallen on the foot of one man, and a piece of flying shrapnel had wounded another. Also during the course of the action, a sailor from the small seaplane tender Swan (AVP-7), unable to return to his own ship, had reported on board for duty, and was immediately assigned a station on a .30-caliber machine gun.
Fires on those ships had set oil from ruptured battleship fuel tanks afire, and the wind, from the northeast, was slowly pushing it toward Avocet‘s berth. Accordingly, the seaplane tender got underway at 1045, and moored temporarily to the magazine island dock at 1110, awaiting further orders, which were not long in coming. At 1115, she was ordered to help quell the fires still blazing on board California. Underway soon thereafter, she spent 20 minutes in company with the submarine rescue ship Widgeon (ASR-1) in fighting fires on board the battleship before Avocet was directed to proceed elsewhere.
Underway from alongside California at 1215, she reached the side of the gallant Nevada 25 minutes later, ordered to assist in beaching the battleship and fighting her fires. Mooring to Nevada‘s port bow at 1240, Avocet went slowly ahead, pushing her aground at channel buoy no. 19, with fire hoses led out to her forward spaces and her signal bridge. For two hours, Avocet fought Nevada‘s fires, and succeeded in quelling them.
USS Nevada (BB-36) aground and burning off Waipio Point, after the end of the Japanese air raid. Ships assisting her, at right, are the harbor tug Hoga (YT-146) and USS Avocet (AVP-4). Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-33020
No sooner had she completed that task than more work awaited her. At 1445, she got underway and steamed to the assistance of the light cruiser Raleigh (CL-7), which had been torpedoed alongside Ford Island early in the attack and was fighting doggedly to remain on an even keel. Avocet reached the stricken cruiser’s side at 1547, and remained there throughout the night, providing steam and electricity.
That night, at 2105, Avocet again went to general quarters as jittery gunners throughout the area fired on aircraft overhead. Tragically, these proved to be American, a flight of six fighters from the aircraft carrier Enterprise (CV-6). Four were shot down; three pilots died.
Avocet was awarded one battlestar for her actions at Pearl Harbor.
However, her war was not over.
Augmented with 20mm guns, she was assigned to support the PBY flying boats of Fleet Air Wing 4, she arrived in Alaskan waters in July 1942. Despite the often bad flying weather, the Catalina-equipped squadrons tended by Avocet carried out extensive patrols, as well as bombing and photo missions over Japanese-held Attu and Kiska, in the Aleutians.
USS Avocet (AVP-4) In Elliott Bay, Seattle, Wash., on 1 March 1944. Her single 3″/50 (circled) gun is mounted in the original large tub that previously held two of 3″/23s when she was commissioned for the First World War. Also note her original foremast is gone, replaced by a lighter aerial between the wheelhouse and stack. Photo No. 19-N-63708 Source: U.S. National Archives, RG-19-LCM
She came to the rescue of the torpedoed USS Casco (AVP-12), landed Navy Seebees and Army combat engineers on barren Alaska coastline, and served as a guard and rescue ship station throughout the Aleutians Campaign where she helped feed and care for Patrol Squadrons VP-41, 43, 51, and 62 (totaling some 11 PBY and 20 PBY-5A amphibious flying boats) which provided support for the cruisers and destroyers of Task Force Tare.
Avocet would meet the Japanese in combat at least one more time when on 19 May 1944, she sighted what she identified as a twin-engine Mitsubishi G4M Type 1 “Betty” land attack plane west of Attu. The plane strafed the tiny ship and Avocet opened up with all she had, but both sides managed to retire from the field of battle without casualties.
She only left Alaskan waters in October, a month after the end of hostilities. When inspected on 20 November 1945 she was found beyond repair and soon decommissioned and struck from the Navy List.
Avocet was sold to a shipping company who used her as a hulk until at least 1950, and she is presumed scrapped sometime after.
As for the rest of her class, others also served heroically in the war with one, USS Vireo, picking up seven battle stars for her service as a fleet tug from Pearl Harbor to Midway to Guadalcanal and Okinawa. The Germans sank USS Partridge at Normandy and both Gannet and Redwing via torpedoes in the Atlantic. Most of the old birds remaining in U.S. service were scrapped in 1946-48 with the last on Uncle Sam’s list, Flamingo, sold for scrap in July 1953.
Some lived on as trawlers and one, USS Auk (AM-38)/USC&GS Discoverer was sold to Venezuela in 1948, where she lasted until 1962 as the gunboat Felipe Larrazabal. After her decommissioning she was not immediately scrapped, and was reported afloat in a backwater channel as late as 1968. Her fate after that is not recorded but she was likely the last of the Lapwings. (Update, she is still apparently in the channel, in pretty bad shape)
As for Avocet‘s name, it was given in 1953 to the converted USS LCI(L)-653, which was pressed into service as a minehunter and sonar training ship for the Naval Electronics Laboratory out of San Fran. She was disposed of in 1960 and there has not been an “Avocet” on the Navy List since.
About the only tangible reminder of Avocet is the series of postal cancellations issued aboard her during the 1934 flying boat inaugural in Hawaii and the 1937 solar eclipse at Canton Island.
This 1934 cancellation, for which Avocet served as plane guard, was for 6 P2Y-1 aircraft of VP-10F (pictured), Lieutenant Commander Knefler McGinnis commanding, that made a historic nonstop formation flight from San Francisco, California, to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in 24 hours 35 minutes. The flight bettered the best previous time for the crossing; exceeded the best distance of previous mass flights; and broke a nine-day-old world record for distance in a straight line for Class C seaplanes with a new mark of 2,399 miles (3,861 km).
For the “Battle of Canton Island”
Ditto
Her old “foe” at Canton, HMS Wellington, survived WWII and since 1947 has been preserved as the floating headquarters ship on the River Thames in London for the Honourable Company of Master Mariners.
Still, we can remember Avocet when we see the sun, or when the calendar hits December 7 each year, as the little unsung tender likely saved the lives of many grateful bluejackets and Marines in the inferno that was Pearl Harbor, 75 years ago today.
Her dock at Ford Island, as seen today. U.S. Navy photo illustration by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Diana Quinlan
Specs:
Displacement: 950 tons FL (1918) 1,350 tons (1936)
Length: 187 feet 10 inches
Beam: 35 feet 6 inches
Draft: 9 feet 9 in
Propulsion: Two Babcock and Wilcox header boilers, one 1,400shp Harlan and Hollingsworth, vertical triple-expansion steam engine, one shaft.
Speed: 14 knots (26 km/h; 16 mph); 12~ by 1936.
Complement: 78 Officers and Enlisted as completed; Upton 85 by 1936
Armament: 2 × 3-inch/23 single mounts as commissioned
(1928)
1 x 3″/50 DP single
4 Lewis guns
(1944)
1 x 3″/50 DP single
Several 20mm Oerlikons and M2 12.7mm mounts
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Navy Seaman Raymond Chavez is now 104 years old but he remembers one of the first sightings of a Japanese midget submarine hours before the attack and racing back to his ship once the fight was on.
Chavez was one of just 13 men on the crew of the 85-foot long converted wooden-hulled purse seiner USS Condor, pressed into service as a Coast Guard-manned coastal minesweeper (AMc-14).
USS Condor (AMc-14) Photographed in 1941, probably off San Diego, California. Bureau of Ships Collection in the U.S. National Archives – http://www.history.navy.mil Photo #: 19-N-24615
While conducting routine sweeps outside the harbor, the crew spotted what is is thought to have been the first enemy contact at 0350– more than four hours before the air attack began– when they saw what they felt to be an enemy submarine.
“He said, Mr.McCoy, we got company,” recalled Chavez, who was at the minesweeper’s helm, remembering the lookout saying to the officer of the deck.
The contact was handed over to the crew of the destroyer USS Ward, who would later fire the first American shot of the Pacific War on the submarine around 0630, while Chavez’s ship was ordered to return to Pearl.
He had only just returned home and gotten asleep when his wife awoke him to the news of the air attack.
“You could see the black smoke from one end to the other,” said Chavez. “The ships were on fire, and burning their oil.”
Rushing back to his ship, he spent the next 10 days underway, first fighting the Japanese, then helping with the recovery.
“I started crying,” said Chavez. “I’m not ashamed to admit it…all the Sailors who were trying to save themselves, and all the dead bodies, and the oil.
As reported by the San Diego Tribune, Chavez is working out regularly and has flown back to Pearl Harbor for the 75th anniversary of the attack on Wednesday.
Photo Credit Aengus Anderson
A new memorial to the sunken battleship the USS Arizona was unveiled on Sunday, three days before the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor that propelled the United States into World War II.
Installed on the grassy mall in the center of the University of Arizona campus, the USS Arizona Mall Memorial consists of a full-scale outline of the famous ship’s deck and a brick plaza with 1,177 bronze medallions inscribed with the name, rank and home state of each of the soldiers and Marines who died aboard the ship on Dec. 7, 1941.
“This memorial is a fitting contribution to the UA’s tradition of remembering the USS Arizona and is a wonderful addition to the UA Mall and the life of our campus,” UA President Ann Weaver Hart said to an overflow crowd at the dedication ceremony. “The installation will help all of us to remember the sacrifice of the Arizona’s crew, and our hope is that it inspires gratitude and reminds us of the sacrifice others have made in defense of our freedoms.”
The event included a flyover by the A-10s of the 47th Fighter Squadron from nearby Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, and a presentation of colors by the UA’s NROTC Color Guard, followed by a performance of the national anthem by Dolce Voces, an all-female a cappella group at the University.
The USS Arizona Mall Memorial illustrates the size of the ship’s massive deck, which was 597 feet long — the length of two football fields — and 97 feet wide. The installation extends lengthwise, west to east, stern to bow, from the first and oldest building on the UA campus, Old Main, to a cactus display, the Krutch Garden. The outline of the ship is created by a narrow strip of rubberized track material in the grass of the mall. UA alumnus Yasser Malaika created the 3-D modeling of the memorial used in its construction.
Photo Credit Aengus Anderson
The memorial includes a brick walkway with curved walls containing the medallions, and it includes a flagpole that lines up directly with the Student Union Memorial Center tower that enshrines one of two bells once housed on the USS Arizona.
U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Stephen C. Evans, commander of the Naval Service Training Command, and U.S. Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., a retired Air Force colonel, also spoke at the dedication.
“The University of Arizona has a unique bond and relationship with Pearl Harbor, as the famed battleship the USS Arizona and its salvaged remains now act as a memorial for many of the sailors our nation lost (on Dec. 7, 1941),” Evans said.
“We’ve got to continue on with their legacy and honoring them,” McSally said of those who perished aboard the Arizona. “May we remember and not forget.”
Three Tucsonans were responsible for bringing the idea for the memorial to Bob Smith, UA vice president for University Planning, Design and Operations.
Bill Westcott, David Carter and Chuck Albanese, retired dean and professor of the UA College of Architecture, raised $160,000 in private donations to fund the project. Carter and Albanese previously had worked together on preservation projects, and Westcott lost his namesake uncle, Seaman 1st Class William P. Westcott Jr., on the USS Arizona.
“You need to be drawn in (by a memorial),” Westcott said, “and this does it.”
“We designed this memorial to honor all veterans with the intent that they would visit the site for many, many years to come,” Albanese said.
The UA is a repository for many artifacts from the USS Arizona, with University Libraries’ Special Collections managing one of the world’s largest archives of memorabilia from the ship. An exhibit curated by Special Collections, “The Life and Legacy of the USS Arizona,” continues through Dec. 23.
The UA’s Student Union Memorial Center is a multilevel cylindrical drum designed to represent the shape of the USS Arizona‘s superstructure. Many artifacts are displayed permanently in a USS Arizona room in the Student Union.
USS Arizona steams into New York past the Statue of Liberty, from the University Libraries’ Special Collections
Via Battleship Missouri Memorial
The four fire rooms aboard the Iowa-class fast battleship USS Missouri (BB-63) contain eight Babcock & Wilcox M-Type water tube boilers that operated at 600 pounds per square inch with a maximum super-heater outlet temperature of 875 °F. Steam was normally transmitted to four engine rooms numbered 1 to 4.
Each engine room was aft of its associated fire room. At normal cruising speed, steam was transmitted to the four engine rooms using four boilers–sufficient to power the ships at speeds up to 27 knots. For higher speeds, extra snipes poured in and all eight boilers were lit– allowing her to touch 32 knots at full load and broach 35.2 on a light one. Not bad for a ship with a standard displacement of 45,000-tons.
The propulsion plant on Iowa and Missouri consisted of four General Electric cross-compound steam turbine engines, each driving a single shaft and generating a total of 212,000 shp. (Turbines for New Jersey and Wisconsin was provided by Westinghouse).
Although on the Navy List from 29 January 1944 to 12 January 1995, she was in commission for only 16 years– high mileage for her class– though she did earn 16 battle/service stars, dropped steel rain on the heads of Japanese, North Koreans and Iraqis alike, and hosted the surrender ceremony that ended WWII.
Since 1998, she has been moored overlooking USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor, the Omega to her Alpha. On eternal watch over Battleship Row.
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. 30, 2015: The Deseret Battlewagon
Utah as she appeared in World War One (click image to big up). At the time she was the flag of the 6th Battleship Division and carried a unique camo pattern that included the white triangular veins shown here Photo colorized by irootoko_jr
Here we see the Florida-class dreadnought USS Utah (BB-31/AG-16) as she appeared during World War I. While she went “Over There” and was ready to fight the Germans yet never fired a shot, her follow-on experience in the next world war would be much different.
The period of U.S. battleship development from the USS Indiana (Battleship No. 1) in 1890, until Florida was ordered in 1908 saw a staggering 29 huge capital ships built in under two decades. While the majority of those vessels were pre-dreadnought Monopoly battleships (for instance, Indiana was 10,500-tons and carried 2 × twin 13″/35 guns), the U.S. had gotten in the dreadnought business with the two smallish 16,000-ton, 8×12 inch/45 caliber gunned South Carolina-class ships ordered in 1905, followed by a pair of larger 22,400-ton, 10×12 inch/45 gunned Delaware-class battleships in 1907.
The pair of Florida-class ships were better than the U.S. battleships before them but rapidly eclipsed by the 33 that came after and developmentally were sandwiched between the old and new era. Dimensionally, they were more than twice as heavy as the country’s first battleships and only half as heavy as the last commissioned in 1944.
At 25,000 tons, they carried roughly the same battery of 12 inchers (10x12″/45 caliber Mark 5 guns) in six twin turrets as the Delawares, which were equivalent to the period Royal Navy’s BL 12 inch Mk X naval gun and the Japanese Type 41 12-inch (305 mm) /45 caliber naval gun. Utah was the last battleship mounted with this particular model gun.
The crew of Turret I on USS Utah B-31 in 1913 U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph # NH 103835 via Navweaps
Their belt, an almost homogenous 11-inches everywhere, was thick for the time and they could make 21-knots on a quartet of Parsons steam turbines powered by a full dozen Babcock & Wilcox coal-fired boilers.
Laid down 9 March 1909 at New York Shipbuilding Corporation, Utah was the first (and, until this week, only) ship named after the former State of Deseret.
Commissioned 31 August 1911, her early career was a series of training and goodwill cruises. Then the gloves came off.
In April 1914, Utah was heavily involved in Mr. Wilson’s intervention in the affairs of Mexico, ordered to seize the German-flagged steamer SS Ypiranga, and loaded with good Krupp and Mauser guns for old man Huerta.
This led to the battle for and subsequent occupation of Veracruz where Utah and her sistership Florida landed two provisional battalions consisting of 502 Marines and 669 bluejackets (many of whose white uniforms were dyed brown with coffee grounds) to fight their way to the Veracruz Naval Academy. Utah‘s 384 sailors gave hard service, pushing street by street and tackling the Mexican barricades. The fleet suffered ~100 casualties in the fighting while the Mexicans took nearly five times that number.
Formal raising of the first flag of U.S. Veracruz 2 P.M. April 27, 1914, by sailors and Marines of the Utah and Florida
As the crisis abated, Utah sailed away two months later for the first of her many refits.
When the U.S. entered WWI in 1917, Utah spent most of the conflict as an engineering school training ship in Chesapeake Bay. then in August 1918 sailed for Ireland where she was stationed in Bantry Bay to keep an eye peeled for German surface raiders.
After her fairly pedestrian war service, she and Florida had their dozen coal eaters replaced with a quartet of more efficient White-Forster oil-fired boilers, which allowed one funnel to be removed. Their AAA suite was likewise increased.
Battleship Number 31, USS Utah, at rest in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, January 1920.
One bluejacket who served aboard her in 1922 Petty Officer 3rd Class (Machinery Repairman) John Dillinger, but he deserted after a few months when Utah was docked in Boston and was eventually dishonorably discharged before becoming Public Enemy No. 1.
Despite the cranky Mr. Dillinger, Utah was a happy ship in the 1920s, completing several goodwill cruises to South America and Europe including a trip in 1928 with President-Elect Herbert Hoover aboard.
While the ships survived the cuts of the Washington Naval Treaty, the ax of the follow-on London Naval Treaty fell, and when compared to the newer hulls in the battleship fleet, Utah and Florida were found lacking although they were only 15~ years old and recently modernized.
As such, class leader Florida was decommissioned in February 1931 and towed to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, where she was broken up for scrap.
As for Utah, she was decommissioned, pulled from the battle fleet, disarmed, and converted to a radio-controlled target ship, designated AG-16 on 1 July 1931. She was capable of being operated completely by remote control with a skeleton crew.
Her electric motors, operated by signals from the controlling ship, opened and closed throttle valves, moved her steering gear, and regulated the supply of oil to her boilers. In addition, a Sperry gyro pilot kept the ship on course.
Able to operate with her much-reduced crew buttoned up inside her protective armor with every hatch dogged, her decks were reinforced with a double layer of 6″x12″ plank timbers to keep inert practice bombs from damaging the ship. Her funnel likewise was given a steel cap. Sandbags and cement patches covered hard-to-plank areas.
Photographed by George Winstead, probably immediately after her recommissioning on 1 April 1932, when Utah (AG-16) departed Norfolk on to train her engineers in using the new installations and for trials of her radio gear by which the ship could be controlled at varying rates of speed and changes of course maneuvers that a ship would conduct in battle. USN photo courtesy of Robert M. Cieri. Text courtesy of DANFS. Via Navsource
No longer considered a capital ship befitting flag officers, her 102-piece silver service, purchased by a donation from 30,000 schoolchildren of Utah (and each piece with an image of Brigham Young on it), was sent back to the state for safekeeping.
While her main and secondary armament was landed, she was equipped with a battery of 1.1-inch quads and later some 5″/38 cal DP, 5″/25, 20mm, and .50 cal mounts to help train anti-aircraft gunners. To keep said small guns from being whacked away by falling practice bombs, they had to be dismantled and stored below decks when not in use or covered with timber “doghouses.”
Utah as target ship entering pearl harbor in 1939
This armament constantly shifted with the needs of the Navy. In August 1941 she was considerably re-armed for her work as a AAA training vessel.
She carried two 5in/25 mounts forward atop No.1 and No.2 turrets respectively. Two 5in/38 mounts to port atop the port aircastle with two 5in/25s in the same position on the starboard aircastle. (The `aircastles’ are the projecting casemates abreast the bridge area for the former secondary battery). On the 01 level abeam the bridge, a quad 1.1 inch gun was carried on both sides of the ship. Aft, came two more 5in/38s atop No.4 and No.5 turrets, this time enclosed with gun shields. Finally, four Oerlikon 20mm (later scheduled to be replaced by 40mm Bofors) and eight 0.50-calibre guns completed the ensemble. An advanced gun director and stereoscopic range-finder was mounted on the top of No.3 turret and anti-aircraft and 5-inch directors fitted on the foremast area
Note her missing guns, funnel cap, and extensive extra decking
She was in roughly this configuration on the Day that will live in Infamy. Note the 5/38s rear and 5/25s forward. These were covered with heavy wooden ‘dog houses’ on Dec. 7th
Used in fleet maneuvers in the Pacific for a decade, she was resting near Battleship Row on Dec. 7, 1941.
Ironically, she was scheduled to leave Hawaii for the West Coast on Dec. 8th.
The attacking Japanese pilots in the Pearl Harbor attack had been ordered not to waste their bombs and torpedoes on the old target ship, but it has been theorized some excited aviators mistook the gleaming wooden planks on her decking to be that of an American flattop. Further, she was berthed on the Northwest side of Ford Island where visiting aircraft carriers were usually tied up on the weekends.
Utah received two (perhaps three) Japanese torpedoes in the first wave of the attack.
Painting by the artist Wayne Scarpaci showing Utah (AG-16) being torpedoed
Not retrofitted with torpedo bilges as other WWI-era U.S. battleships were, the Emperor’s fish penetrated her hull and she soon capsized, taking 64 of her sailors with her– 54 of which were trapped inside her hull and to this day never recovered.
It went quick for the old battleship. The attack began at 7:55 a.m. and by 8:11 Utah was reported to have turned turtle, her masts embedded in the harbor bottom.
One of those 64 was Chief Watertender Peter Tomich, a Bosnian immigrant who served in the U.S. Army in WWI before enlisting for a career in the Navy. Tomich saved lives that day.
CPO Peter Tomich, MOH
From his MOH citation:
Although realizing that the ship was capsizing, as a result of enemy bombing and torpedoing, Chief Watertender Tomich remained at his post in the engineering plant of the U.S.S. UTAH (AG-16), until he saw that all boilers were secured and all fireroom personnel had left their stations, and by so doing lost his own life.
Navy hardhat salvage divers made 437 dives on the stricken ship during her attempted re-righting in 1944, involving 2,227 man-hours under pressure. However, she was never fully salvaged. She was stricken from the Naval List on 13 November 1944 and is currently preserved as a war grave. A further move to salvage her in the 1950s was stillborn.
Utah‘s ships bell is located on the University of Utah campus and is maintained by the campus NROTC unit.
Her silver service is maintained along with other artifacts in Salt Lake City at the Governor’s Mansion.
Utah persists to this day at her berth along Ford Island leaking oil into Pearl Harbor.
She is preserved as the USS Utah Memorial and the National Park Service, U.S. Navy and other stakeholders take her remains very seriously, mounting a color guard daily.
Underwater Photographer Captures Images of USS Utah Memorial. Shaan Hurley, a technologist from Autodesk, takes photographs of the USS Utah Memorial during a data-collecting evolution in Pearl Harbor, October 23, 2014. In a process called “photogrammetry”, the underwater photos will be inputted into computer software that will create 3D data models of the photographed areas. The National Park Service is working with several companies and agencies to gather data points to create an accurate 3D model of the ship. U.S. Navy video by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Brett Cote / RELEASED
Today she is remembered by a veteran’s group and survivors association of which there are only seven known remaining survivors. A number of those who have passed have been cremated and had their ashes interred in the wreck.
Members of the Navy Region Hawaii Ceremonial Guard march in formation after a ceremony in honor of Pearl Harbor survivor Lt. Wayne Maxwell at the USS Utah Memorial on historic Ford Island. Maxwell was a 30-year Navy veteran and former crew member of the Farragut-class destroyer USS Aylwin during the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. He was 93.
As for Chief Tomich, he was something of an orphan and his award is the only Medal of Honor since the Indian Campaigns in the late 1800s that has never been awarded either to a living recipient, or surviving family member. The state of Utah, who pronounced him a resident posthumously, long had custody of his award.
USS Tomich (DE-242), an Edsall-class destroyer escort, was named in his honor in 1942 and remained on the Naval List until 1972.
In 1989, the U.S. Navy built the Senior Enlisted Academy in Newport, R.I., and named the building Tomich Hall. Chief Tomich’s Medal of Honor is on display on the quarterdeck there.
Finally, this week, SECNAV Ray Mabus announced in Salt Lake City that SSN-801, a Virginia-class submarine under construction, will be the second vessel to carry the name Utah.
Specs:
Plan, 1932 Via Navsource, notice one stack, no main guns
Displacement: Standard: 21,825 long tons (22,175 t), full load 25,000
Length: 521 ft. 8 in (159.00 m)
Beam: 88 ft. 3 in (26.90 m)
Draft: 28.3 ft. (8.6 m)
Installed power: 28,000 shp (21,000 kW)
Propulsion: Steam turbines, 4 screws. 12 Coal boilers were later replaced by 4 oil boilers in 1926.
Speed: 21 knots (39 km/h; 24 mph)
Range: 5,776 nmi (6,650 mi; 10,700 km) at 10 kn (12 mph, 19 km/h) and 2,760 nmi (3,180 mi; 5,110 km) at 20 kn (23 mph, 37 km/h)
Coal: 2,500 tons (2,268 tonnes)
Complement: 1,001 officers and men as designed, 575 after 1932
Armament:
(1931)
10 × 12 in (30 cm)/45 cal guns
16 × 5 in (127 mm)/51 cal guns
2 × 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes
(1941)
4×5″/38 DP in single mounts
4×5″/25 in single mounts
8×1.1″ AAA in two quad mounts
4x20mm/80 in singles
15x.50-cal singles, water-cooled
Armor:
Belt: 9–11 in (229–279 mm)
Lower casemate: 8–10 in (203–254 mm)
Upper casemate: 5 in (127 mm)
Barbettes: 4–10 in (102–254 mm)
Turret face: 12 in (305 mm)
Conning tower: 11.5 in (292 mm)
Decks: 1.5 in (38 mm), later reinforced with wooden planks, sandbags, and concrete.
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