Warship Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2017: Putting the ‘Marine’ back in the submarine
Yes, Dolphins on a Marine uniform…
On 17 August 1942, just nine months after Pearl Harbor, 211 Marines of the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion embarked aboard the submarines USS Argonaut and Nautilus crept ashore at Makin Island and did what the Raiders were meant to do– hit hard in the most unexpected area they could find and jack up a small Japanese garrison.
While that attack was the pinnacle of U.S. submarine commando ops in WWII, and the Raiders were disbanded by early 1944, the Marines did not forget the concept of amphibious scouts and small raiding forces carried by submarines when the war was over.
Scouts and Raiders Painting, Oil on Canvas; by Carlos Lopez; C. 1943; Framed Dimensions 29H X 44W Accession #: 88-159-HD as a Gift of Abbott Laboratories “Commandos of the Navy, they leave a transport, submarine, or invasion craft in their black rubber boats at night on reconnaissance, scout, or demolition missions against enemy-held shores. Their faces and hands painted black for night operations, and now called officially Amphibious Scouts by the Navy, they specialize in rugged finesse. Here they go up and over some rock jetties.”
In 1948, the Marines pushed to convert a dozen Balao-class fleet subs into auxiliary Submarine Troop Carriers (ASSPs) which would involve removing all the torpedo tubes (the Navy loved that idea) as well as two of the big main diesels and using the new-found space to install extra bunks, showers and a pressure-proof hangar mounted outside of the pressure hull on deck. These subs would be able to carry 120 troops including an LVT with a jeep and equipment stowed aboard and eight rubber raiding rafts.
Yes, this IS a submarine with an Amtrac aboard. Perch (ASSP-313) preparing to launch an LVT amphibious tractor during a 1949 exercise. The vehicle could be carried in the cargo hangar and launched by flooding down the submarine. USN photo and text from The American Submarine by Norman Polmar, courtesy of Robert Hurst.
In theory, these boats could lift an entire reinforced battalion landing team with four 75mm Pack Howitzers, six 57mm recoilless rifles, 12 jeeps, 12 LVTs, 48 boats, 220 tons of ammo and ordnance; and 158 tons of supplies– enough to operate for ashore for ten days.
The bad news for the USMC was that the Navy just converted two of the subs– USS Perch (SS-313) and USS Sealion (SS-315). While they were later used extensively to support the Navy’s own UDT operations through the Vietnamese conflict, they didn’t come close to realizing the Marine’s vision in 1948.
Nonetheless, the Marines continued to trial submarine operations with smaller teams of amphibious recon troops in the 1950s, as seen in these great images:
Marine Corps Amphibious Reconnaissance troops in LCR (landing craft, rubber) leave submarine to perform a landing operation during maneuvers. OFFICIAL U.S. MARINE CORPS PHOTO 313892
“A five-man amphibious reconnaissance team stands with nylon boat and equipment necessary for their mission, including aqualungs, depth gauges, wrist compasses, and exposure suits which enable swimmers to work in the extremely cold water. All members of the team are outstanding swimmers, capable of breasting high surf and rough waters.” OFFICIAL U.S. MARINE CORPS PHOTO A367275
“OPERATION SKI JUMP – Technical Sergeant B. J. Parrerson, left Company Gunny of Amphibious Reconnaissance and Private First Class Robert T. Kassanovoid, right, help Staff Sergeant Jimmie E. Howard gets rigged with aqua-lung equipment on the forward deck of the submarine PERCH.” January 17, 1957, J.W. Richardson. DEFENSE DEPT PHOTO (MARINE CORPS) A352423
“OPERATION SKI JUMP – Scout patrol of Amphibian Reconnaissance Company, leaving in rubber boats from the submarine PERCH.” January 17, 1957, J.W. Richardson DEFENSE DEPT PHOTO (MARINE CORPS) A352380
Reconnaissance scouts of the 1st Provisional Marine Air-Ground Task Force load into a rubber boat from a submarine of the Pacific fleet as they leave on a night mission against “enemy” installations on the island of Maui. The training afforded the Marines of the Task Force, which is based at the Marine Corps Air Station, Kaneohe Bay, Oahu, Territory of Hawaii, is the most versatile offered to Marines anywhere on October 7, 1954, Sgt D.E. Reyher DEFENSE DEPT PHOTO (MARINE CORPS) A290040. The classic WWII “duck hunter” camo had by 1954 been out of use for almost a decade except for special operations units.
The submarine above is USS Greenfish (SS-351). Greenfish was a Balao-class fleet sub commissioned 7 June 1946, too late for WWII. She did, however, perform duty during the Korean and Vietnam wars and, after she was decommissioned in 1973, was transferred to the Brazilian Navy as the submarine Amazonas (S-16), who kept her in service for another 20 years before she was ultimately scrapped in 2001. In U.S. service, Greenfish sank two submarines in her career, the captured U-234 in 1947 and her sister ship and former Warship Wednesday alumni USS Barbero (SS/SSA/SSG-317)off Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on 7 October 1964 after that ship was stricken.
“When the mission is a raid on “enemy-held” beaches, members of the Marine recon party move out on the double to their assigned targets.” DEFENSE DEPT PHOTO (MARINE CORPS) A31990
“Parachute scout, foreground, makes a sketch of enemy terrain and installations while another Marine Corps scout covers him with a “burp” gun. All Reconnaissance Leathernecks are experts in determining terrain factors and capabilities of roads and bridges.” December 2, 1957, MSgt J. W. Richardson DEFENSE DEPT PHOTO (MARINE CORPS) A367293. Note the M3 Grease Gun and the WWII M1 “duck hunter” camo helmet covers worn as caps.
“BUDDY SYSTEM – Before leaving the submarine on a mission, scout-swimmers assist each other with the bulky equipment. When the mission is a raid on “enemy-held” beaches, members of the Marine recon party move out on the double to their assigned targets.” December 2, 1957, MSgt J. W. Richardson DEFENSE DEPT PHOTO (MARINE CORPS) A367308
The tradition of the Raiders and their use from submarines continues in the modern-day Raiders, recon teams, and, of course, Navy SEAL units who utilize several dedicated boats including the Seawolf and modified Ohio-class SSGNs when they are feeling particularly froggy as well as the organic Combat Rubber Raiding Craft companies built into to each of the seven Marine Expeditionary Forces.
BUSAN, Republic of Korea (Oct. 13, 2017) The Ohio-class guided-missile submarine USS Michigan (SSGN 727) (Gold) pulls into Busan Naval Base for a routine port visit. Note the twin Dry Deck Shelters on her casing, each able to carry 4 rubber raiding craft or an SDV minisub. Michigan can carry as many as 60 expeditionary operators, be they Navy or Marines (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman William Carlisle/Released)
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.
Here we see the lead ship of the Armada Española’s Canarias-class heavy cruisers– the mighty Canarias herself– in her pre-1953 arrangement. The big cruiser, though laid down in the 1920s, survived the Spanish Civil War and, in the end, even Franco himself.
The Spanish Navy of the old days was a colonial power and was very good at it for several hundred years until the 19th Century saw her Latin American holdings disappear along with, after the Spanish-American War, the crown’s Pacific Empire. Said conflict with the U.S. saw most of the Armada’s cruisers destroyed or captured in uneven fleet actions in the Caribbean and Manila Bay.
Post-1898, after losing or condemning 19 of her cruisers 21, all that was left was the old Velasco-class protected cruiser Infanta Isabel and the 5,000-ton Lepanto, which finished just too late for the war. Three single-class new ships were quickly built using lessons learned in the conflict: Emperador Carlos V, Rio de la Plata, and Extremadura, followed by the three ships of the Princesa de Asturias-class and the Reina Regente, ordered in conjunction with the three 16,000-ton mini-battleships of the España-class in 1909. This is the fleet the Spanish carried into the Great War, where they were an armed neutral.
In the 1920s, with their turn-of-the-century, coal-fired cruisers and dreadnoughts increasingly obsolete, and colonial conflicts such as the Rif War in North Africa draining resources while still setting the need to show the flag in far-away ports, the Spanish ordered the one-off Reina Victoria Eugenia (6,500 tons), two similar 6,300-ton Blas de Lezo-class cruisers, three very modern Almirante Cervera-class cruisers (9,385-tons, based on the Royal Navy’s Emerald-class) and planned for three 13,700-ton Canarias-class ships, with the plan to put the older WWI-era fleet to pasture and phase out their increasingly marginalized battleships.
Note that the class was always considered to be a Washington Treaty warship by the Spanish
Based on the British Crown County-class ships of Sir Philip Watts’ design but switched up to a degree, these 636-foot heavy cruisers were handsomely equipped with eight 8″/50 (20.3 cm) BL Model 1924 Mark D Vickers-Armstrong-designed guns, each capable of sending a 256-pound AP shell out to 32,530 yards every 20-seconds.
Overall speed on Parsons geared steam turbines was 33 knots and the range was sufficient to sortie to the Spanish outposts in the Moroccan shores, Western Sahara and Equatorial Guinea.
Two vessels, class leader Canarias (Canary Islands) and sister Baleares (Balearic Islands) were laid down at Sociedad Española de Construcción Naval (SECN) in El Ferrol in 1928 and took more than eight years to construct, both still only semi-complete-by-1936–a pivotal year for Spain. The third ship of the class, Ferrol, was canceled due to tight budgets.
At Ferrol, colorised by Postales Navales
In July 1936, a pro-fascist military coup led by Gens. Goded and Franco in colonies outside of Metropolitan Spain quickly spread to all-out civil war with the Soviet-allied Republicans against the German-Italian-backed Nationalists.
Suffice it to say without chronicling the entire Civil War, the Spanish Navy took a beating in the three-year conflict.
On her trials, where she broke 33.8 knots at 99,000 shp. Note much of her equipment including her rangefinders and Turret C is yet to be fitted– and she never did get that seaplane rig
-Canarias‘ own sister ship, the Nationalist-controlled Baleares, was sunk in a battle with Republican destroyers at Cape Palos in March 1938.
Heavy cruiser Baleares sank after receiving several torpedo hits from republican destroyers during the Battle of Cape Palos in, early hours of 06 March 1938.
-While steaming off Santander on 30 April 1937, the Nationalist-controlled battleship Alfonso XIII struck a mine and sank.
-Spain’s last remaining battleship, Jaime I, was under the Republican flag and was struck by German bombers and eventually sunk by the Nationalists.
-The cruisers Miguel de Cervantes, Libertad, and Mendez Nuñez, part of the Republican Navy, escaped at the end of the war and were interned by the French at Bizerte only to be repatriated later in poor condition.
-Of the other ships in the Nationalist Navy, only the light cruiser Almirante Cervera escaped the war largely intact and was Canarias‘ partner in crime.
-The cruiser Reina Victoria Eugenia, renamed Republica by the Republicans and then Navarra by the Nationalists after they recaptured her, also survived though was less functional than either Cervera or Canarias.
The Civil War saw Canarias as the de facto flag of Franco’s fleet, especially after the loss of Alfonso XIII, their only battleship.
Note her 4.7-inch secondary guns amidships at elevation and that she has all four turrets for her main battery
A good picture of the cruiser Canarias in her original configuration.
The big cruiser plastered Republican positions near the coastline including bloody work along the Malaga-Almeria highway and in the bombardment of Barcelona, intercepted Soviet merchant ships headed to the Republicans with arms, and engaged Republican ships in naval actions– including vaporizing the Churruca-class destroyer Almirante Ferrándiz off Cape Spartel with three salvos of her big 8-inch guns.
In 1938, she almost captured the Republican destroyer Jose Luis Diez, who only narrowly made it to Gibraltar and internment carrying an 8-inch hit in her stern. During the war, she reportedly fired her guns in anger on at least 34 occasions.
crucero Canarias, via Postales Navales
In WWII, while Franco never officially entered the war despite being an ersatz Axis state, Canarias and Cervera were the Spanish Navy’s most effective units and the big cruiser put to sea in 1941 to help look for survivors of the German battleship Bismarck after the failed Operation Rheinübung. While she found no survivors after a three-day search of the fallen dreadnought’s debris field, they did recover some wreckage and five bodies.
During the war, she picked up 12 Rheinmetall 37mm AAA guns in a tertiary battery.
Post-VE-Day, she remained the most powerful naval unit under the Spanish flag and in 1952-53 underwent modernization at SECN that saw her wide Lexington-like funnel separated into two stacks as well as navigational and search radar fitted. Her torpedo tubes were landed.
View of the northeast section of basin #1, El Ferrol, looking northwest. Two graving docks appear, one partially hidden by shops in the right middle ground. In the left foreground is the cruiser CANARIAS with her new after stack in place but without her new forward stack. This refit occurred between October 1952 and February 1953. Some destroyers and smaller craft are also visible. Description: Catalog #: NH 93640
Post-1953, note her twin funnels
She helped support the Spanish Legion in the little-known Ifni War in 1957-58 which included some very muscular gunboat diplomacy against Morocco.
At Ceuta in 1960> Note, she is wearing her pennant number on her hull
Then came the hijacking of the Portuguese liner Santa Maria in 1961 which saw Canarias chase her across the Atlantic, cooperating with a U.S. Navy task force that also shadowed the cruise ship more than 20 years before the better remembered Achille Lauro hijacking. An important development considering Spain did not join NATO until 1982.
She also waved the flag, attended several European ceremonies, participated in goodwill trips to Latin America, exercises with Western navies, and visited overseas holdings.
Here she is in Africa in 1961:
In 1969, Canarias helped evacuate the Spanish from Equatorial Guinea as that Central African country gained independence from the ever-shrinking empire, a fitting final act for a colonial cruiser.
In Equatorial Guinea
She had outlasted all the other Spanish cruisers, with the three Almirante Cervera-class ships all striking by 1970, Mendez Nuñez retired in 1964, and Navarra paid off in 1955.
By that time, she was among the last all-big-gun cruisers left in the world. The British had broken up their last Crown Colony/Fiji-class near sister ships in 1968, though two, HMS Newfoundland and HMS Ceylon, continued to operate with the Peruvian Navy into the 1970s, and one, Nigeria, served the Indian Navy as INS Mysore (C60) until 1985.
Her last modernization came in 1969 when she was fitted with a modern CIC, new radars (Decca 12 navigation set, U.S. SG-6B surface search, Italian Marconi MLA-IB air search), and electronics, while 40/70 Bofors L70s replaced her WWII 37mm and 40mm suites.
CANARIAS Photographed in Barcelona, Spain, in about 1970. Note the large tower to the right for the gondola transport system going across the harbor. The 371-foot four-masted training barque Juan Sebastián Elcano is to her stern. Description: Catalog #: NH 90743
Spanish cruiser CANARIAS, Janes 1973
There was even a plan afoot to convert her to a light aircraft carrier. The old light carrier USS Cabot (CVL-28) was later purchased instead in 1972 after a five-year loan and was commissioned Delado.
The end game came for Franco in 1975, as the Green March wrested Spain’s hold in the Sahara and the overseas colonies shrank to the current lot that are the isolated cities of Ceuta, Melilla, and the Canary Islands. The old dictator himself marched off to the parade ground of lost souls that November.
Pushing 40 and considered obsolete for the last 30 of those years, Canarias was pulled from service and decommissioned on 17 December 1975, the end of an era. She had steamed 650,000 miles on 524 trips in her career.
While several cities sought to preserve her as a museum– including some she had bombarded in the Civil War– the money just wasn’t there and the old war wagon sailed to the breakers under her own steam in September 1977.
Her last cruise, Sept. 1977
Sailing past the Castillo de San Felipe at Ferrol
Parts of her were saved, however, including turret B and the entire admiral’s cabin interior at the Naval Academy at Marín, a 4.7-inch AAA at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria– the capital of the Canary Islands, a rangefinder at the Naval Museum at Ferrol, several anchors around Spain, and other items.
Canarias bell, wheel, and other items at Museo Naval de Ferrol
Displacement:
10,670 long tons (10,840 t) standard
13,500 long tons (13,700 t) full load
Length: 636 ft.
Beam: 64 ft. (20 m)
Draught: 21 ft. 5 in
Installed power: Yarrow-type boilers, 90,000 hp (67,000 kW)
Propulsion: 4 shafts, Parsons-type geared turbines
Speed: 33 knots (61 km/h)
Range: 8,000 nmi (15,000 km) at 15 kn (28 km/h)
Complement: 679
Armament:
(1936, designed)
8 × 8-inch (203 mm) guns in four twin turrets
8 × 4.7-inch (119 mm) guns
12 × 40 mm AA guns
3 × 20 mm AA guns
12 × 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes in triple mounts above water
(1969)
8 × 8-inch (203 mm) guns in four twin turrets
8 × 4.7-inch (119 mm) guns
8 40/70 Bofors
Armor:
Belt 2 in (51 mm)
Deck 1.5–1 in (38–25 mm)
Magazine 4 in (102 mm) box around
Turrets 1 in (25 mm), also splinter shields were added to 4.7″ mounts in 1940.
Conning tower 1 in (25 mm)
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.
Warship Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2017: I’d like to be back on my horse
USN photo courtesy of Scott Koen & ussnewyork.com via Navsource
Here we see the Balao-class diesel-electric fleet submarine USS Tilefish (SS-307) returning to San Diego on 5 December 1958 for inactivation. You may not recognize her in the photo, but she was always ready for her closeup.
A member of the 128-ship Balao class, she was one of the most mature U.S. Navy diesel designs of the World War Two era, constructed with knowledge gained from the earlier Gato class. U.S. subs, unlike those of many navies of the day, were ‘fleet’ boats, capable of unsupported operations in deep water far from home.
Able to range 11,000 nautical miles on their reliable diesel engines, they could undertake 75-day patrols that could span the immensity of the Pacific. Carrying 24 (often unreliable) Mk14 Torpedoes, these subs often sank anything short of a 5000-ton Maru or warship by surfacing and using their 4-inch/50 caliber and 40mm/20mm AAA. They also served as the firetrucks of the fleet, rescuing downed naval aviators from right under the noses of Japanese warships.
We have covered a number of this class before, such as Rocket Mail-slinging USS Barbero, the carrier-sinking USS Archerfish, the long-serving USS Catfish, and the frogman Cadillac USS Perch —but don’t complain, they have lots of great stories.
Laid down at Mare Island Navy Yard in Vallejo, California, on 10 Mar 1943, USS Tilefish was the first and only naval vessel named for homely reef fish found in the world’s oceans.
1916 USBOF sheet on the Tilefish, via NARA
Commissioned just nine months later on 28 Dec 1943, Tilefish completed her trials and shakedown off the California coast and made for the Western Pacific in early 1944.
Broadside view of the Tilefish (SS-307) off Mare Island on 2 March 1944. USN photos # 1434-44 through1436-44, courtesy of Darryl L. Baker. Via Navsource
Her first war patrol, off Honshu in Japanese home waters, was short and uneventful.
Her second, in the Luzon Strait, netted a torpedo hit on the 745-ton Japanese corvette Kaibokan 17 south of Formosa on 18 July.
Her third patrol, in the Sea of Okhotsk and off the Kuril Islands, resulted in the sinking a sampan in a surface action, as well as two small cargo ships, a larger cargo ship and the 108-ton Japanese guard boat Kyowa Maru No.2. Tilefish also picked up a Russian owl in these frigid waters, which was duly named Boris Hootski with the ship’s log noting, “He is now official ship’s mascot and stands battle stations on top of the tube blow and vent manifold.”
She closed the year with her fourth patrol in the Kurils and Japanese home waters by sinking the Japanese torpedo boat Chidorisome 90 miles WSW of Yokosuka.
Early 1945 saw her fifth patrol which sank a small Japanese coaster and effectively knocked the IJN minesweeper W 15 out of the war. She also plucked LT (JG) William J. Hooks from the USS Hancock (CV-19) of VF-80 out of the water after he had to ditch his F6F at sea off Amami Oshima in the Ryukyus.
After refit on the West Coast, Tilefish completed her sixth patrol on a lifeguard station off the Ryukyus where she ended the war, being ordered back to California on 7 September.
In all, Tilefish received five battle stars for World War II service. Her tally included 7 vessels for 10,700 claimed tons– though many were disallowed post-war by JANAC. Her six patrols averaged 48 days at sea.
While most of the U.S. submarine fleet was mothballed in the months immediately after WWII, Tilefish remained in service. She even managed a sinkex in August 1947 against the crippled Liberty tanker SS Schuyler Colfax, at 7,200 tons, Tilefish‘s largest prize.
Her war flag is represented as a patch from popularpatch.com. Note the 10 vessels claimed and the parachute for Lt. Hooks.
When the Korean War kicked off in 1950, Tilefish was made for the region.
“From 28 September 1950 through 24 March 1951, the submarine operated out of Japanese ports conducting patrols in Korean waters in support of the United Nations campaign in Korea. She made reconnaissance patrols of La Perouse Strait to inform the Commander, Naval Forces Far East, of Soviet seaborne activity in that area.”
Tilefish received one battle star for Korean service.
Hula dancers Kuulei Jesse, Gigi White and Dancette Poepoe (left to right) welcome the submarine, as she docks at the Pearl Harbor Submarine Base after a Korean War tour. Crewmen placing the flower lei around Tilefish’s bow are Engineman 3rd Class Donald E. Dunlevy, USN, (left – still wearing E-3 stripes) and Torpedoman’s Mate 1st Class Gordon F. Sudduth, USNR. This photograph was released by Submarine Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet, on 26 March 1951. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, from the All Hands collection at the Naval History and Heritage Command. Catalog #: NH 97068
The next nine years saw her conducting regular peacetime operations and exercises including a goodwill visit to Acapulco; a survey mission with four civilian geophysicists on board from the Hydrographic Office of Eniwetok, Wake, and Midway; and other ops.
USS TILEFISH (SS-307) Caption: Photographed during the 1950s. Description: Courtesy of Commander Donald J. Robinson, USN (MSC), 1974. Catalog #: NH 78988
These “other ops” included filming some scenes for the 1958 Glen Ford WWII submarine flick Torpedo Run, which was extensively augmented by scale models, and more extensive shoots for Up Periscope, a film in which James Garner, a Korean war Army vet and Hollywood cowboy, plays a frogman ordered to photograph a codebook at an isolated Japanese radio station.
The film was an adaption of LCDR Robb White’s book of the same name.
Garner was not impressed by the Tilefish.
James Garner as Lieutenant Kenneth M. Braden in Up Periscope
After her brief movie career and service in two wars, Tilefish was given a rebuild at the San Francisco Navy Yard and was decommissioned in May 1960.
Tilefish was then sold to Venezuela, which renamed her ARV Carite (S-11). As such, she was the first modern submarine in that force. She arrived in that country on 23 July 1960, setting the small navy up to be the fifth in Latin America with subs.
ARV S-11 Carite El 4 de mayo de 1960
As noted by El Snorkel (great name), a Latin American submarine resource, Tilefish/Carite was very active indeed, making 7,287 dives with the Venezuelan Navy over the next 17 years. She participated in the Argentine/Dominican Republic/Venezuelan -U.S. Quarantine Task Force 137 during the Cuban Missile Crisis and intercepted the Soviet tug Gromoboi in 1968.
In 1966, she was part of the Greater Underwater Propulsion Power Program (GUPPY) conversion program and (along with 20 other boats), was given the very basic Fleet Snorkel package which provided most of the bells and whistles found on the German late-WWII Type XXI U-boats– which would later prove ironic. This gave her expanded battery capacity, streamlined her sail conning tower fairwater into a so-called “Northern or North Atlantic sail”– a steel framework surrounded by thick fiberglass– added a snorkel, higher capacity air-conditioning system, and a more powerful electrical system, and increased her submerged speed to 15 knots while removing her auxiliary diesel. A small topside sonar dome appeared.
ex-Tilefish (SS-307), taken 12 Oct. 1966 after transfer to Venezuela as ARV Carite (S-11). Note the GUPPY series conversion, the so-called very basic “Fleet Snorkel” mod.
However, during this time, her most enduring exposure was in helping film Murphy’s War, in which a German U-boat (U-482) hides out in the Orinoco River in Venezuela after sinking British merchant steamer Mount Kyle, leaving Peter O’Toole as the lone survivor on a hunt to bag the German shark. The thing is, she looked too modern for the film after her recent conversion.
For her role, Carite was given a far-out grey-white-black dazzle camo scheme and, to make her more U-boat-ish, was fitted with a faux cigarette deck after her tower complete with a Boffin 40mm (!) and a twin Oerlikon mount (!!). Her bow was fitted with similarly faked submarine net cutting teeth.
Her “crew” was a mix of U.S. Peace Corps kids working in the area (to get the proper blonde Germanic look) with Venezuelan tars at the controls.
The movie, filmed in decadent Panavision color, shows lots of footage of the old Tilefish including a dramatic ramming sequence with a bone in her teeth and what could be the last and best images of a Balao-class submarine with her decks awash.
That bone!
Ballasting down– note the very un U-boat-like sonar dome. I believe that is a QHB-1 transducer dome to starboard with a BQR-3 hydrophone behind it on port
By the mid-1970s, Tilefish/Carite was showing her age. In 1972, the Venezuelans picked up two more advanced GUPPY II conversions, her Balao-class sister USS Cubera (SS-347), renaming her ARV Tiburon (S-12) and the Tench-class USS Grenadier (SS-525) which followed as ARV Picua (S-13) in 1973.
The Venezuelan submarine ARV Carite (S-11) demonstrates an emergency surfacing during the UNITAS XI exercise, in 1970. via All Hands magazine
Once the two “new” boats were integrated into the Venezuelan Navy, Tilefish/Carite was decommissioned on 28 January 1977 and slowly cannibalized for spare parts, enabling Cubera and Grenadier to remain in service until 1989 when they were replaced by new-built German Type 209-class SSKs, which still serve to one degree or another.
According to a Polish submarine page, some artifacts from Tilefish including a torpedo tube remain in Venezuela.
Although she is no longer afloat, eight Balao-class submarines are preserved (for now) as museum ships across the country.
Please visit one of these fine ships and keep the legacy alive:
-USS Batfish (SS-310) at War Memorial Park in Muskogee, Oklahoma.
–USS Becuna (SS-319) at Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
–USS Bowfin (SS-287) at USS Bowfin Submarine Museum & Park in Honolulu, Hawaii.
–USS Clamagore (SS-343) at Patriot’s Point in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. (Which may not be there much longer)
–USS Ling (SS-297) at New Jersey Naval Museum in Hackensack, New Jersey. (Which is also on borrowed time)
–USS Lionfish (SS-298) at Battleship Cove in Fall River, Massachusetts. -USS Pampanito (SS-383) at San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park in San Francisco, California, (which played the part of the fictional USS Stingray in the movie Down Periscope).
–USS Razorback (SS-394) at Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum in North Little Rock, Arkansas.
However, Tilefish will endure wherever submarine films are enjoyed.
Specs:
Displacement surfaced: 1,526 t., Submerged: 2,424 t.
Length 311′ 10″
Beam 27′ 3″
Draft 15′ 3″
Speed surfaced 20.25 kts, Submerged 8.75 kts
Cruising Range, 11,000 miles surfaced at 10kts; Submerged Endurance, 48 hours at 2kts
Operating Depth Limit, 400 ft.
Patrol Endurance 75 days
Propulsion: diesels-electric reduction gear with four Fairbanks-Morse main generator engines., 5,400 hp, four Elliot Motor Co., main motors with 2,740 hp, two 126-cell main storage batteries, two propellers.
Fuel Capacity: 94,400 gal.
Complement 6 Officers 60 Enlisted
Armament:
(As-built)
10 21″ torpedo tubes, six forward, four aft, 24 torpedoes,
one 4″/50 caliber deck gun,
one 40mm gun,
two .50 cal. machine guns
(By 1966)
10 21″ torpedo tubes, six forward, four aft, 24 torpedoes,
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.
Here we see the De Zeven Provinciën-class light cruiser Hr.Ms. De Ruyter (C801) of the Dutch Koninklijke Marine as she appeared in 1953 while in her prime. Decommissioned last week an amazing 78 years after her first steel was cut, she was the last of the big-gun armed cruisers afloat on active duty.
The class of ship between destroyers and battleships, fast gun-armed cruisers have long been a staple of naval modern warfare since all-steel navies took to the sea. However, their large batteries of powerful guns were antiquated by the second half of the 20th century.
Fast armored cruisers, a product of the late 19th century, were designed to serve as the eyes of the main battle fleet. Large enough to act independently, they sailed the world and showed their country’s flag in far-off ports in peace. During war, they were detailed to raid commerce and serve as fleet units. Over 60 years, more than 200 cruisers were placed in service and sailed in almost every fleet in the world. Fast enough to outrun battleships but not outfight them, they soon were obsolete after World War II and their days were numbered.
But the hero of our tale has a pass, as she was planned before WWII started.
HNLMS De Ruyter was laid down on 5 September 1939 at Wilton-Fijenoord, Schiedam, just 96-hours after Hitler invaded Poland. Part of the planned Eendracht-class of light cruisers which were to defend the far-flung Dutch East Indies from the Japanese, her original name was to be De Zeven Provinciën while her sister, laid down at the same time in a different yard, would be Eendracht.
The ships were to mount 10 5.9-inch Bofors but these guns were still in Sweden when the Germans rolled in in 1940 which led to their being confiscated by the Swedes and promptly recycled into their new Tre Kronor-class cruisers, stretched to accommodate the Swedish standard 6-inch shell.
Though the Germans tried to complete the two cruisers for use in their own Kriegsmarine, Dutch resistance hindered that effort and by the end of the war, they were still nowhere near complete.
After languishing in the builder’s yard for 14 years, De Zeven Provinciën was finished as De Ruyter and joined the Dutch Navy on 18 November 1953.
The name is an ode to the famous 17th-century Dutch Admiral Michiel Adriaenszoon de Ruyter, for which no less than five prior Dutch warships had been named since 1799. The most recent of which was used by Rear-Admiral Karel Doorman in his ride to Valhalla during the Battle of the Java Sea in 1942.
A Dutch propaganda poster, depicting Admiral Karel Doorman and his 1942 flagship light cruiser De Ruyter
Though considered light cruisers because of their armament of eight redesigned 15.2 cm/53 (6″) Model 1942 guns, these craft went well over 12,000-tons when full. The turrets, conning tower, and main engineering spaces were armored with up to five inches of steel plate, among the last non-carriers completed in the world to carry such protection. Designed originally for Parsons geared steam turbines and a half-dozen Yarrow boilers, they were instead completed with De Schelde-Parsons turbines and four Werkspoor-Yarrow boilers giving them a 32-knot speed and 7,000nm range.
Already cramped due to extensive AC-cycle electronics suites they were never planned to have (the 1939 design was DC), and built with the resulting need for a 900-man crew rather than the planned 700 souls in 1939, they never received their large AAA battery, seaplane catapults, and torpedo tubes, relying instead on a secondary armament of eight radar-controlled 57mm/60cal Bofors in four twin mounts.
De Ruyter‘s sistership Eendracht was instead completed as De Zeven Provinciën and they commissioned within weeks of each other just after the Korean War came to a shaky ceasefire.
The two ships served extensively with NATO forces and provided some insurance to Dutch interests during the tense standoff with Indonesia during the decade-long West New Guinea dispute — which could have seen the Indonesian Navy’s only cruiser, the Soviet-built KRI Irian, formerly Ordzhonikidze, face off with the Dutch in what would have been the world’s last cruiser-on-cruiser naval action.
De Ruyter with the Holland-class destroyer HNLMS Zeeland (D809) and Friesland-class destroyer HNLMS Drenthe (D816) sometime in the early 1970s. While Zeeland would be scrapped in 1979, Drenthe would go on to serve in the Peruvian Navy as BAP Guise in the 1980s. Speaking of which…
However, the age of navies running big gun warships was in the twilight.
The Soviets maintained as many as 13 of the huge 16,000-ton Sverdlov class cruisers, armed with a dozen 6-inch guns as late as 1994 when the last one (the famously wrecked Murmansk) was finally removed from their navy list.
The Russians beat the U.S. by more than a decade as the last all-gun armed cruiser on the Navy List was USS Newport News (CA–148), struck 31 July 1978. The last big gun cruiser in U.S. service was USS Albany (CA-123) which had been reworked to a hybrid missile boat (CG-10) to be decommissioned in 1980 and struck five years later. An 8-inch armed destroyer, USS Hull, removed her experimental Mk.71 mount in 1979. Since then, it’s been a world of 5-inchers for U.S. cruisers and destroyers.
As for the Royal Navy, losing their heavies in the 1950s and their few remaining WWII-era light cruisers soon after, they decommissioned their two Tiger-class cruisers in the 1970s, disposing of them in the 1980s.
The navies of South America were the last to operate big gun-armed cruisers. Which brings us to the story of De Zeven Provinciën and De Ruyter‘s second life.
Dutch cruiser De Ruyter (C-801) lit up at night, June 1968
Dutch cruisers HNLMS De Ruyter and HNLMS De Zeven Provinciën leading a Dutch squadron of frigates and submarines
Crossing the Equator
With the ABC powers (Argentina, Brazil, and Chile) all packing large former U.S. cruisers in their fleets, Peru went shopping in the early 1970s for some parity and bought the two Dutch cruisers for a song between 1972-75. De Ruyter was bought first and became fleet flagship BAP Almirante Grau (CLM-81) after the national naval hero, replacing the old Crown Colony-class light cruiser HMS Newfoundland which carried the same name. DZP was picked up later and became BAP Aguirre.
BAP Almirante Grau on arrival in May 1973 at her new home. Peru’s newest cruiser was the Ex Dutch De Ruyter. Photo via Archivo Historico Biblioteca Central de Marina b
BAP Almirante Grau on arrival in May 1973 at her new home. Peru’s newest cruiser was the Ex Dutch De Ruyter. Photo via Archivo Historico Biblioteca Central de Marina b
Cruiser Almirante Admiral Grau, the flagship of the war navy of Peru, during its incorporation in 1973.
For a decade, this gave the Peruvians a good bit of prestige, and as the ABC navies shed their older vessels (all WWII-era), the much newer Dutch ships continued to give good service.
Chile decommissioned the 12,242-ton O’Higgins (formerly the USS Brooklyn CL-40) finally in 1992.
Crucero O’Higgins de la Armada Chilena, formerly USS Brooklyn CL-40
Sistership to the O’Higgins was the ARA General Belgrano (ex-USS Phoenix CL-46) flagship of the Argentine navy for thirty years until she was deep-sixed by a British submarine in the 1982 Falkland Islands War. Brazil also had a pair of ex-Brooklyn class cruisers, which they operated until the 1970s.
To keep her sister alive, DZP/Aguirre was paid off in 2000, her parts used to keep De Ruyter/Grau in operation.
Ever since the battleship USS Missouri was struck on 12 January 1995, the eight Bofors 152/53 naval guns mounted on Almirante Grau were the most powerful afloat on any warship operated by any navy in the world. A record she went out with after holding for 22 years– a proud legacy of another generation and the end of an era.
Given an extensive refit in 1985 and other upgrades since then, she carried new Dutch electronics, updated armament including Otomat anti-ship missiles, and 40L70 Dardo rapid-fire guns, and in effect was the cruiser equivalent of the Reagan-era Iowa-class battleships.
Salinas, Peru (July 3, 2004) – The Peruvian cruiser Almirante Grau (CLM-81) fires one of its 15.2 cm caliber cannons as naval surface fire support during a Latin American amphibious assault exercise supporting UNITAS 45-04. U.S. Navy photo by Chief Journalist Dave Fliesen
The Dutch still revere the name De Ruyter with a Tromp-class guided-missile frigate commissioned as the 7th ship with the handle in 1975 and a new De Zeven Provinciën-class frigate, the 8th De Ruyter, placed in service in 2004.
Showing her age, and still requiring at least a crew of 600 even after modernization, the Peruvian cruiser with former Dutch and one-time German ownership papers was placed in reserve status in 2010, maintained from sinking but not much else. However, she still served a purpose as a pierside training and flagship.
In 2012, Royal Netherlands Army Brigadier Jost van Duurling and Peru’s Minister of Defense, Dr. Luis Alberto Otárola Peñaranda, signed a military cooperation agreement between the two countries on De Ruyter/Grau‘s deck.
She is also remembered in Dutch maritime art.
1959. J. Goedhart. De kruiser Hr. Ms. de Ruyter op zee via Scheepvaartmuseum
Hr.Ms. De Ruyter C801 – by Maarten Platje – 1984
Now, the end has come. She was decommissioned last week, though she is reportedly in poor condition and hasn’t been to sea in nearly a decade.
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.
Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives.80-G-1671
Here we see an excellent image of the Sims-class destroyer USS Mustin (DD-413) with a Curtiss SBC-3 scout bomber, of Scouting Squadron Six (VS-6) from USS Enterprise (CV-6) during exercises on 26 May 1940. The aviation-heavy image was fitting due to Mustin‘s namesake and of her class’ job in staying close to the flattops.
The Sims were handsome 1930s ships, a dozen 2,300-ton (fl), 348-foot tin cans sandwiched between the smaller Benham-class and the slightly heavier Benson-class which used largely the same hull but a different engineering suite. Speaking of engineering, the Sims-class used a trio of Babcock & Wilcox boilers to push Westinghouse geared turbines at 50,000 shp, capable of making 37-knots and were the last single-stack destroyers made for the Navy.
Designed around a dozen 21-inch torpedo tubes, they could carry 5 5″/38 DP mounts– though in actuality they completed with eight tubes and four main guns, augmented by increasingly heavy AAA and ASW suites.
Built in the tense immediate lead-up to the U.S. entry into WWII, the 12 ships were ordered from seven yards to speed up completion and half were commissioned in 1939, the other half in 1940.
Our ship is named for one Henry Croskey Mustin, USNA 1896, Navy Air Pilot #3, Naval Aviator #11, seen below posing for his pilot certificate as a 40-year-old LCDR with a cigarette in his hand.
U.S. Navy Air Pilot Certificate Issued to Lieutenant Commander Henry C. Mustin in January 1915, certifying that he had been designated as U.S. Navy Air Pilot No. 3, with a 1 June 1914 date of precedence. It includes a photograph of LCDR. Mustin, probably taken at Pensacola, Florida, in 1914, and is signed by Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels and Rear Admiral Victor Blue, Chief of the Bureau of Navigation. In January 1918, after the Naval Air Pilot designation was merged with the Naval Aviator designation, Mustin was officially listed as Naval Aviator No. 11. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 105934-KN
Mustin fought in the Spanish-American War, commanded the gunboat USS Samar on Asiatic Station, was court marshaled but pardoned by Teddy Roosevelt and became one of the Navy’s first pilots while serving as XO of the pocket battleship USS Mississippi in Pensacola. There, he went on to become one of the first to fly combat missions in 1914 and in 1915 the first to cat from a warship.
Pioneer naval aviators Godfrey deChevalier, Henry C. Mustin, and John H. Towers on a beach during service in Mexico in the aftermath of the Veracruz Insurrection. On April 20-21, 1914, naval aviation personnel and their aircraft deployed from the Naval Aeronautical Station at Pensacola, Florida, to Mexican waters, where they flew the first combat flights in the history of the United States armed forces.
Lieutenant Commander Henry C. Mustin performs the first catapult launch from a ship, launching from the armored cruiser USS North Carolina (ACR 12) in Pensacola Bay, 5 Nov. 1915 NNAM.2011.003.004.012
USS Mustin was laid down at Newport News in 1937, 14 years after Capt.Mustin’s untimely death, and commissioned 15 September 1939– just 14 days after Hitler invaded Poland.
The war was on, though the U.S. still on the sidelines officially for the next 28 months. As such, Mustin participated in the sometimes-hairy neutrality patrol along the Atlantic Coast and escorted convoys to Iceland, where U.S. troops took over from the British in June 1941.
Convoy to Iceland, September 1941. Caption: View of two of the screen of TF-15, C. 7 September 1941. These are two of the following ships: ANDERSON (DD-411), WALKE (DD-416), MORRIS (DD-417), MUSTIN (DD-413) or O’ BRIEN (DD-415). Description: Catalog #: NH 47006
On December 7, 1941, Mustin was in Boston and soon received orders to ship to the Pacific.
After cutting her teeth escorting convoys between Hawaii and San Francisco and Hawaii and Samoa, she sailed with TF 17, escorting the carrier USS Hornet to the great brawl off Guadalcanal. The class would earn something of a reputation for giving their last full measure in defense of their flattops.
USS Mustin (DD-413) At Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, 14 June 1942. Note she has just 3 5-inchers, due to increasing topside weight. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-10124
Surviving the Battle of Santa Cruz in October (where her crews shot down five Japanese aircraft), Mustin closed with the mortally wounded Hornet and rescued over 300 of the stricken ship’s crew, then dutifully attempted to sink the listing hulk along with sister ship USS Anderson (DD-411) with torpedoes and 5-inch fire.
Mustin went on to find herself in every part of the Pacific war. She fought off Savo Island, bombarded Japanese positions at Guadalcanal and on the frozen island of Kiska in the Aleutians, let her 5-inchers warm up off Makin Island, Wotje, Kwajalein, and Eniwetok.
“The continuing operations on and around New Guinea gave Mustin varied duty, on escort, patrol, bombardment, and as fighter-director, as one landing after another moved up the coast to wrest the huge island from the enemy. Noemfoor, Sansapor, Mios Woendi, Humboldt Bay, Biak, all were struck by forces in which Mustin served with vigor and gallantry,” notes DANFS.
Then came the PI campaign– including the great Battle of Leyte Gulf– and Okinawa. She splashed kamikazes, hunted for Japanese submarines, directed landings, and escorted convoys from secure anchorages to the front lines.
By May 1945, she was in poor material condition and, with the war expected to take a couple more years, Mustin was dispatched to San Pedro, California for an extensive refit which lasted until the end of August. She ditched her torpedo tubes as Japanese ships were increasingly few, exchanging them for more 40mm mounts.
Shown off San Pedro, California on August 14, 1945, after completing her final wartime refit. The Kamikaze threat was now fully realized as both banks of torpedo tubes were replaced by twin mounts of 40mm guns and their controlling directors. Ahead of #3 5″ mount, which was retained, she has twin 40mm mounts, and all of her 20mm guns, forward of the bridge, remain in place. Via Navsource
Ready for more service, she headed for the Japanese Home Islands in September for occupation duty, with the war finished. In all, she picked up an impressive 13 battle stars.
In all, she picked up an impressive 13 battle stars for her part in the conflict. While this figure is outstanding, and one of the highest in the fleet, she was surpassed by her sisters Russell (16 stars) and Morris (15), a testament to the wringer this class was put through.
The war was especially hard on her class, with Sims sunk at the Battle of the Coral Sea, Hammann sunk at Midway while trying to screen USS Yorktown, O’Brien ultimately sunk by a torpedo she picked up trying to screen the carrier USS Wasp off Guadalcanal, Walke lost in the same campaign, and Buck sunk by a German U-boat. Morris was damaged so bad off Okinawa that she was considered neither seaworthy nor habitable by VJ Day.
With the Navy flush with Fletcher and Gearing class destroyers– which were brand new in many cases and much more capable– the rest of the Sims were on the chopping block. Russell and Roe, undergoing lengthy refits like Mustin‘s when the war ended, never saw service again and were instead sold for scrap.
The four still-mobile Sims left in active service by early 1946: Mustin, Hughes, Anderson, and Wainwright joined 13 other tin cans from two other classes at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands to take part in the Operation Crossroads atomic tests.
Joint Task Force One press release chart depicting scrap costs of Operation Crossroads. (U.S. Naval Institute)
The ships were stripped of useful equipment as well as ceremonial items such as bells, nameplates, and commemorative plaques. At Bikini, without crews or ordnance but with a sampling of goats and chickens aboard, the fleet touched the sun.
Mustin was rather close to the Able Shot (number 30 on the above chart) where “Gilda” a Mk III style 23-kt bomb was dropped 2,130 feet away from the old battleship USS Nevada, the designated zero point. Sims-class sister Anderson (number 1 on the chart), who had helped to scuttle Hornet along with Mustin back in 1942, sank within hours
0900 1 July 1946 Through Protective Goggles on the USS Appalachian Painting, Watercolor on Illustration Board; by Grant Powers, USMC combat artist; 1946; Framed Dimensions 24H X 30W Accession #: 88-181-N USS Appalachian (AGC-1) was the press ship from which most of the observers watched the bombs of Test Able. Goggles were worn during the initial phase of the explosion–when the fireball was brighter than the sun–but then taken off later as the protective glass was too dark to view the rest of the bomb phenomena. Appalachian, class leader of a group of four purpose-built amphibious command ships, was 18 miles from the USS Nevada.
Still radioactive but afloat, Mustin was decommissioned August 1946 and sunk off Kwajalein, 18 April 1948 in deep water by gunfire.
The original destroyer, her namesake, and other famous members of the Mustin family, Vice Admirals Lloyd Montague Mustin and Henry “Hank” Mustin, along with Vietnam era LCDR Thomas M. Mustin, Officer in Charge of Patrol Boat River Section 511, are remembered in the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Mustin (DDG-89), built at Pascagoula and commissioned on 26 July 2003. I took part in her construction there while at Ingalls.
She still looks great 14 years later.
SHIMODA, Japan (May 19, 2017) The guided-missile destroyer USS Mustin (DDG 89) at anchor off the coast of Shimoda during the 78th Black Ship Festival. The Navy’s participation in the festival celebrates the heritage of U.S.-Japanese naval partnership first established by Commodore Matthew Perry’s 1853 port visit. (U.S. Navy photo by Daniel A. Taylor/Released)
Specs:
Displacement:
1,570 long tons (1,600 t) (std)
2,211 long tons (2,246 t) (full)
Length: 348 ft, 3¼ in, (106.15 m)
Beam: 36 ft, 1 in (11 m)
Draught: 13 ft, 4.5 in (4.07 m)
Propulsion: High-pressure super-heated boilers, geared turbines with twin screws, 50,000 horsepower
Speed: 35 knots
Range: 3,660 nautical miles at 20 kt (6,780 km at 37 km/h)
Complement: 192 (10 officers/182 enlisted)
Armament:
(as built)
5 × 5 inch/38, in single mounts
4 × .50 caliber/90, in single mounts
8 × 21-inch torpedo tubes in two quadruple mounts
2 × depth charge track, 10 depth charges
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.
Warship Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2017: The Potemkin’s little red brother
Here we see the modified Bogatyr-class 1st class protected cruiser Ochakov (Очаков) of the Tsarist Navy as she appeared when first commissioned. She went by several different names and flew a myriad of different ensigns in her time, including that of the first Red admiral and the last White Russian general.
Ordered as part of the Imperial Russian Navy’s 8-year building plan, the German yard of AG Vulcan Stettin won the contract to design and build a class of protected cruisers that, for the time of the Spanish-American War, were modern. The basic design was a 6,000-ton ship with a main battery of 152mm guns, a secondary battery of a dozen 75mm guns, six torpedo tubes (four on deck and two submerged), the capability to carry sea mines and make 23-knots. In short, the Tsar’s admiralty described these ships as “a partially armored cruiser, resembling a high-breasted battleship in appearance, and in fact is a linear, lightly armored ship.”
The cruisers of this type were rightly considered the best representatives of the class of medium armor deck cruisers of their day.
Only class-leader Bogatyr was built in Germany. Follow-on vessels Oleg and Vityaz were built in two Russian yards in St Petersburg, intended for the Baltic Fleet, while two others, Kagul (we’ll call her Kagul I, for reasons you will see later) and Ochakov were constructed in the Black Sea– the latter at the Lazarev Admiralty Yard in Sevastopol. As the five cruisers were built in five different yards spread across the continent, it should come as no surprise that they were all slightly different.
Laid down within 14 months of each other, they were envisioned to commission about the same time, however Vityaz was destroyed by fire on the builder’s ways in 1901 and scrapped, leaving the other four ships to enter service between August 1902 and October 1905, with the hero of our tale, Ochakov, named after a city in Mykolaiv region of Ukraine, joining the fleet on 2 October 1902 though, suffering from several defects in her electrical system and boilers, she was still in what could best be described as extended builder’s trails as late as November 1905.
OCHAKOV (Russian Protected Cruiser, 1902-1933). View made on the deck looking aft toward the ship’s twin 6-inch mount and the bridge. Courtesy of Mr. Boris V. Drashpil of Margate, Florida, 1986. Description: Catalog #: NH 101049
Trapped in the Black Sea due to Ottoman control of the Straits, Ochakov, and Kagul I did not participate in the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-1905 though sister Oleg fought at the Battle of Tsushima and managed to barely escape to be interned in the Philippines while Bogatyr sortied from Vladivostok for commerce raiding during the conflict.
Speaking of the Black Sea Fleet in 1905, something happened that you may have heard of:
Caught up in the anti-Tsarist backlash that resulted from defeat in the Pacific and loss of two out of three Russian fleets, the country was thrown into the what is described as the Russian Revolution of 1905. Some two months after the war ended, one of the darkest chapters of that unsuccessful episode was The Sevastopol Uprising.
There, one Lt. Pyotr Petrovitch Schmidt, from an Odessa-based naval family of German descent (his father fought at Sevastopol during its great siege in the Crimean War), was something of a rabble-rouser.
Schmidt
A graduate of the Naval Officers’ Corps in Saint Petersburg (53rd out of 307, class of 1886) he was soon dismissed to the reserves in 1889 after spending much of his time with the frozen Baltic Fleet on the sick list, but rejoined the warm Black Sea Fleet in 1892 only to transfer into the merchant shipping service in 1900, going on to command several steamers. Recalled to the colors for the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, he was given command of the coal transport Irtysh which was sailing for the Pacific to be sunk at Tsushima but before it left Russian waters he was thrown in the brig for insulting a fellow officer but later let out to rejoin his ship. However, by the time the fleet made it to Africa, he was back on the sick list and sent to the Black Sea Fleet to help hold it down for the duration of the war, nominally given command of Torpedo Boat No. 253.
Stripped of most effective officers and NCOs to man the other ill-fated Russian task forces and left with ships full of raw recruits and untalented leaders, the Black Sea Fleet in late 1905 was a powder keg of inefficiency that led to the famous mutiny of the battleship Potemkin in June, which was quickly put down and the ship recaptured, the 42 men considered to be in the thick of it thrown in the brig on the minelayer Prut.
Enter Schmidt, stage left.
He formed the “Union of Officers-Friends of the People in Sevastopol” and in October 1905 led a crowd to the Odessa city prison to protest the arrest of local revolutionaries and began distributing leaflets. This landed him in the jail alongside the other reds, but he was quickly released. He was cashiered at the rank of Captain 2nd Rank.
However, by 11 November, representative crew members from at least seven Black Sea Fleet warships were attending Schmidt’s group’s fiery meetings, with some calling for outright rebellion. The new sailors’ soviet elected him as their leader.
By 13 November, with an estimated 2,000 sailors and longshoremen in mutiny across Odessa, the officers of the Ochakov beat feet and left the mutineers in charge. The leaderless crew signaled that Schmidt should join them and he did, arriving at around 2 p.m. on 14 November with his 16-year-old son in tow and Imperial shoulder boards still on his uniform. Understrength– just 350 crew, with few senior NCOs and no officers, remained– the unfinished warship was clearing for an uncertain fight.
Then they went to get the Potemkin‘s locked up leaders:
Having thrown out the Admiral’s flag on Ochakov and gave the signal: “I command the fleet, Schmidt”, with the expectation of immediately attracting the whole squadron to this insurrection, he sent his cutter to the “Prut” in order to release the Potemkin people. There was no resistance. “Ochakov” received the sailors-convicts on board and went around with them the whole squadron. From all the courts, there was a welcome “Hurray.” Several of the ships, including the battleships Potemkin [which had been renamed St. Panteleimon, the patron saint of accidents and loneliness] and Rostislav, raised a red banner; at the latter, however, it only fluttered for a few minutes.
By the morning of the 15th, Schmidt fired off a telegram to Tsar Nicholas II:
“The glorious Black Sea Fleet, sacredly devoted to the people, demands Your Majesty to immediately call a meeting of the Constituent Assembly, and no longer obeys orders of Your ministers. Commander of the Fleet P. Schmidt.”
While he initially had seven other warships answering his signals, and his little red fleet was a sight that no doubt gave every Bolshevik a lump in their throat, they really had no chance.
Over the course of the day, one by one the ships took down their red flag, leaving only the cruiser and a destroyer as the only rebels. Gen. Meller-Zakomelsky, the Tsar’s commander ashore, trained every gun in the harbor– including some 12-inch pieces– on the Ochakov and the gunners were loyal. An ultimatum was issued. The battleship Rostislav, with her 254mm guns and Vice Admiral Alexander Krieger aboard, closed to within 900m of the cruiser.
At 1600, the shore batteries and Rostislav opened fire, riddling the cruiser with at least 2 254-mm and 16 152-mm shells. She was able to get six shots off in return, which missed. A fire soon broke out on Ochakov, and Schmidt stopped the fight, lowered the national ensign and red flag, then hoisted a white one. It was all over in 20 minutes. Schmidt and 35 of the sailors thought the key to the uprising were carted off in chains.
In March 1906, Schmidt and three men from Ochakov (sailors AI Gladkov, NG Antonenko, Quartermaster S. P. Priknik) were executed by a firing squad on windswept Berezan Island at the entrance of the Dnieper-Bug Estuary by the crew of the gunboat Terets.
Thrown into a shallow grave, it was unmarked until 1924 when the Soviets began erecting monuments to the people’s heroes of 1905. Of the other 300~ survivors of her red crew and the men that were recycled from the Potemkin mutineers, 14 were exiled to Siberia, 103 imprisoned at hard labor at terms several years, and 151 sent to labor battalions to serve the rest of their original enlistment.
As for Ochakov, her magazines flooded to prevent her from going in one quick puff of smoke, she smoldered for two days but did not sink. Towed into the yard for repairs, the blackened ship had 63 shell holes in her hull and superstructure and several compartments with human remains.
To erase her memory from the fleet, the ship was extensively reconstructed and, oddly enough, given the name of her sister– Kagul, which was, in turn, renamed Pamyat’ Merkuriya in March 1907.
Returning to the fleet, Kagul II as we like to call her (ex-Ochakov), was a much different ship. She proved relatively effective, rebuilt with lessons learned from her plastering by the fleet in 1905 and from against the Japanese.
She also became a test bed for seaplane use for reconnaissance and scouting purposes.
Russian Navy Curtiss Floatplane being hoisted aboard the Cruiser KAGUL (1902-1933) in February 1915, in the Black Sea. Courtesy of Mr. Boris V. Drapshil of Margate, Florida, 1984. Description: Catalog #: NH 100152
Russian Navy Curtiss F-type flying boat serial number 15 seen in the Black Sea, with the cruiser KAGUL (1902-1933) in the background. Information accompanying this photograph indicates that it was taken during the 28 March 1915 operation off the Bosporus. Description: Courtesy of Mr. Boris V. Drashpil of Margate, Florida, 1984.Catalog #: NH 100153
When the Great War came, the two cruisers served as the eyes of the Black Sea Fleet and hunted for the German cruisers Goeben and Breslau, bombarded fired the Turkish coast, covered minelaying expeditions (and themselves laid several of their own mine barriers) and captured or sank a number of Ottoman and later Bulgarian coasters.
Unidentified personnel seen on deck aboard the protected cruiser KAGUL (1902-1934) in The Black Sea on 20 March 1915. A twin 152mm/ 6-inch, 45-caliber gun turret appears in the center. Description: Courtesy of Mr. Boris V. Drashpil of Margate, Fla., 1983 Catalog #: NH 94406
AMALIA (Turkish Merchant Ship) Photographed in the Black Sea at the time of capture on 4 May 1915 off the Rumelian coast. This 430-register ton merchant ship was carrying a cargo of petrol. This view was taken from aboard the Russian cruiser KAGUL (1902-1932) which made the capture while on a raiding cruise. Description: Courtesy of Boris V. Drashpil Catalog #: NH 94798
Photographed in Port at Novorossiysk on the Black Sea on 27 March 1916 (old style calendar, 13 days behind present western dating). Courtesy of Mr. Boris V. Drashpil of Margate, Fla., 1893 Catalog #: NH 94408
After her Great War redemption, again came the revolution.
On 15 March 1917, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated after a week of riots and mutinies by the Imperial Guard in Petrograd. The Baltic Fleet, Northern Fleet, and Pacific Squadron followed suit in swearing allegiance to the Provisional Government, as did the Black Sea Fleet. Memories of the 1905 Mutiny in Odessa and Sevastopol were still strong and, at the end of the month with a red flag on her mast once more, Kagul (II) became Ochakov again, her sailor’s committee in charge.
With the decline of the Russian war effort against the Central Powers, and Lenin and Co removing the Provisional Government in November, the country dropped out of the conflict with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918. Ceded to German/Austrian control as part of the pact, Ochakov was captured by the Germans in May and remained in nominal service to the Kaiser until the British arrived on 24 November, two weeks after the Armistice.
Turned over to the anti-Bolshevik White Army forces, the largely crewless warship became part of Lt. Gen. Anton Denikin’s Armed Forces of the South of Russia, which led to the cruiser being renamed after that force’s early leader, General Lavr Kornilov (who himself was zapped by Red artillery in April 1918).
In 1919, after Denikin’s attack upon Moscow faltered, he fell back to the Black Sea and evacuated the remnants of his forces from Novorossiysk to the Crimea where Lt. Gen. Piotr Wrangel took over the force, our cruiser included.
The endgame of Wrangel’s effort came in November 1920 when 140,000 soldiers, Cossacks, monarchists and general White Russian diaspora left the Crimea on everything that could float. Wrangel, on his yacht Lucullus, led the working ships of the Black Sea Fleet including two battleships, two cruisers (including our subject), 15 destroyers/escorts, and five submarines first to Constantinople and then to Bizerte in French North Africa where they arrived in December.
There, the fleet in being remained for four years under RADM. Mikhail Berens until its disarmament after the recognition by France of the Soviet Union on 29 October 1924, when her old Cross of St. Andrew was hauled down as ownership had been transferred to the Soviets. After inspection by emissaries from Moscow, Ochakov/Kornilov never left Tunisia and was instead sold as scrap in 1933. Some of her guns were later likely used in French coastal defenses.
GENERAL KORNILOV Possibly photographed at Bizerte, where the ship spent 1920 to 1932 as a unit of the White Russian “Wrangel-Fleet.” From the P.A. Warneck Collection, 1981; Courtesy of B. V. Drashpil of Margate, Florida. Catalog #: NH 92158
Of her sisters, Bogatyr was scrapped in Germany in 1922 after the Reds sold her for spare change along with a number of other Baltic Fleet vessels while Oleg was written off by the Bolsheviks as a combat loss 17 June 1919 after she was torpedoed and sunk by Royal Navy speedboat CMB-4 commanded by Captain Augustus Agar at Kronstadt. As for Kagul I (Pamiat’ Merkuria) she was unable to sortie with Wrangel’s last fleet and, captured at Sevastopol, was renamed Komintern and refitted with material salvaged from Bogatyr and Oleg, later fighting the Germans in WWII until her loss in 1942.
The name Ochakov was celebrated in the Soviet Union, going on to grace a Kara-class cruiser in 1969. Based in the Black Sea (where else?) she was decommissioned in 2011 but later sunk as a blockship to piss off the Ukrainians in 2014.
The more things change.
Specs:
Displacement: 7800 fl
Length: 439 ft. 8 in
Beam: 54 ft. 6 in
Draft: 20 ft. 8 in
Propulsion:
2 shaft vertical triple-expansion steam engines
16 Normand-type boilers
23,000 hp
Speed: 23 knots
Endurance: 5320 (10) on 1194 tons coal
Complement: 30 officers and 550 sailors
Armament:
(As built)
12 × 152mm (6 in/44cal) Obuhovsky/Canet guns (2 twin turrets and 8 single guns), 2160 rounds
12 × 75mm (3in/48cal) 11-pounder guns, singles, 3600 rounds
8 × 47mm Hotchkiss guns, single
2 × 5-barrel 37 mm guns Hotchkiss guns
6 × 17.7 in (450 mm) torpedo tubes
292 M08 Sea mines
(1917)
10x 130mm/53cal singles
12 × 75mm (3in/48cal) 11-pounder guns, single
2x 64mm landing guns
8 × 47mm Hotchkiss guns, single
2 × 5-barrel 37 mm guns Hotchkiss guns
2 x Maxim machine guns
6 × 17.7 in (450 mm) torpedo tubes
292 M08 sea mines
Armor:
Deck: 80 mm (3.1 in)
Turrets: 127 mm (5.0 in)
Casemates: 80 mm (3.1 in)
Conning tower: 140 mm (5.5 in)
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.
Here we see past Warship Wednesday subject, the oldest vessel in the U.S. Coast Guard, and one of the last ships afloat and in active service that dates from World War II: the Gorch Fock-class segelschulschiffUSCGC Eagle (WIX-327), America’s only active-duty square rigger.
This uncommon view of her was taken last week at the Coast Guard Yard in Baltimore, the only one in the service, as Eagle undertakes the next step in her five-year SLEP modernization. She is inside the former U.S. Navy ARD-18 Class Auxiliary Repair Dock, USS Oak Ridge (ARDM-1).
Built at Alameda in 1944, the Oak Ridge is 81-years young and during her lengthy Naval career was based in the Philippines, Groton, Rota, and Kings Bay until she was disposed of in 2001. The 551-foot dock can lift ships up to 437-feet long, making her ideal for the Coast Guard as her largest vessels, the new National Security Cutters, are just 418-feet oal.
The dock was transferred to the Coasties in 2001 with the assumption she had about five more years left on her before she would be condemned, and Eagle may be Oak Ridge‘s last customer.
The dock is in bad shape.
According to a 2015 DHS report, she sank in 2011 resulting in $4 million in repairs and costs $1 million per year to barely maintain– 11 times greater than the more modern Syncrolift shiplift system the Yard has installed.
Her gantry cranes, installed in 1963, are inoperative as “it is no longer cost-effective to fabricate replacement parts for crane engines, structure, and controls.” Further, “Other installed equipment including diesel generators, auxiliary pumps, boilers, streamlines, welding gas, air compressors, airlines, and crew berthing have all been removed from
service over the past 10 years as a result of disrepair.”
As far as her hull, she is supposed to be dry-docked herself every 10 years but hasn’t been since the 1990s and there are no active shipyards within a safe distance from the CG Yard capable of drydocking her, so, “this work has been permanently deferred until Oak Ridge is removed from service,” which is expected in 2018.
As for Eagle, on the other hand, the last mid to walk her decks likely hasn’t been born yet.
Warship Wednesday, Sept 13, 2017: The Queen of the Little White Fleet
U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 97629
Here we see the Barnegat-class seaplane tender, converted to a floating command ship, USS Duxbury Bay (AVP-38), illuminated at night during a two-day visit to Basra, Iraq, as Middle East Force flagship in December 1960. You start life wanting to refuel PBYs and end up bobbing around the Persian Gulf for years…
The 41 Barnegats were 2,500-ton, 311-foot long-armed auxiliaries capable of floating in 12 feet of water. They had room for not only seaplane stores but also 150 aviators and aircrew. Their diesel suite wasn’t fast, but they could travel 8,000 miles at 15.6 knots. Originally designed for two 5-inch/38-caliber guns, this could be doubled if needed (and often was) which complemented a decent AAA armament helped by radar and even depth charges and sonar for busting subs.
All pretty sweet for an auxiliary.
The subject of our story, USS Duxbury Bay, is named for a popular 3-mile long bay on the coast of Massachusetts between Duxbury Beach on the east, Saquish Neck on the southeast, and the mainland on the west. The bay is also home to a maritime school that currently cycles through some 2,000 young mariners per year, so there’s that.
Laid down at the Lake Washington Shipyards, in Houghton, Washington, she was a fine craft easily mistaken for a destroyer escort or patrol frigate, as exhibited by these pre-commissioning builder’s photos:
USS Duxbury Bay (AVP-38) Photographed off the Lake Washington Shipyards, Houghton, Washington, on 28 December 1944. Her camouflage is Measure 33 Design 1F. Photograph from the Bureau of Ships Collection in the U.S. National Archives. Catalog #: 19-N-82815
19-N-82816
19-N-82817
Commissioned on New Year’s Eve, 1944, she sailed for the war in the Pacific, arriving to support the 3rd Fleet at Kerama Retto off Okinawa, 26 April 1945, and fought in the campaign for that island through June, tending both seaplanes and small craft/PT-boats when needed while dodging kamikazes.
In July, Duxbury Bay shifted to Japanese home waters before ending the war off China. She served on occupation duty in the Far East through 13 July 1948, with two short breaks stateside, supporting patrol squadrons at Okinawa and Yokosuka, Japan; Jinsen, Korea; Shanghai and Tsingtao, China; before the victory of the Communists under Mao brought a general evacuation from the latter area.
In all, Duxbury earned two battle stars for World War II service and suffered no damage, the latter an accomplishment for any ship.
Starting 17 March 1949, she left Long Beach, California on a five-month circumnavigation sailing through the Pacific and Med to Norfolk, where she arrived in time for the Independence Day holiday.
While on this trip, she tagged in as the flagship of Task Force 126, the small body of U.S. warships and auxiliaries in the Middle East, primarily in the Persian Gulf.
During WWII, the so-called “Persian Corridor” was a vital route through Iran into Soviet Azerbaijan that the Allies used to pump over 4 million tons of Lend-Lease supplies through to the East Front– and turn Tehran away from Axis influence. While the Persian Gulf Command sunsetted in late 1945, TF 126 kept the lights on for the Navy in the increasingly important part of the globe.
Duxbury Bay would see much more of the region.
USS Duxbury Bay (AVP-38) was photographed during the decade following World War II in haze gray. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 97626
Beginning in 1950, the Navy disestablished TF 126 and replaced it with the Middle East Force, which would be made up of two rotating destroyers and a dedicated flagship, which would also rotate. The three command ships for the MEF were all converted Barnegat-class ships: USS Valcour (AVP-55), USS Greenwich Bay (AVP-41), and our very own Duxbury— the oldest of the lot and the only one of the trio that had seen overseas WWII service.
Among the conversions done to the vessels were the installation of air conditioning and extensive canvas awnings over the decks, a white paint job to help reflect heat and show their status as “peace boats” (which earned them the title of the “Little White Fleet” a play on Teddy Roosevelt’s “Great White Fleet”), more commo gear, and a reduction in armament.
In general, the three flagships would swap out every four months and conduct leisurely cruises back and forth through the Med, waving the flag everywhere they went. As time went by, they became very active in President Eisenhower’s People-to-People program, delivering humanitarian aid ranging from food to coloring books and sewing machines in small backwater ports throughout the region– remember, as long as the harbor was at least 12 feet deep, they were good-to-go, and they went!
They served not only as a task group commander, interacting with Western allies (they were familiar sights at HMS Jufair, the Royal Navy base in Bahrain and its counterpart, HMS Sheba in Aden) but as a growing diplomatic tool for the State Department and U.S. companies (think=oil) looking to do business in the region, hosting state visits from local leaders and royalty (Duxford herself carried Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie to Somaliland in 1953).
The ships performed search-and-rescue missions for lost aviators and overdue boats, helped evac Western civilians in times of tension, served on the periphery of the 1956 Suez Crisis (which sent rotating MEF ships around the Cape of Good Hope rather than through the Med), and just generally served as modern station ships, a throwback to the old 19th-century practice of gunboat diplomacy.
Now gleaming white, photographed in Hampton Roads, Virginia, on 3 October 1957. Note her lack of 5-inch mounts. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph.
USS Duxbury Bay (AVP-38) Photographed during the late 1950s. Note the extensive awnings fitted. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 95370
USS Duxbury Bay (AVP-38) was photographed in the Shatt-al-Arab off Basra, Iraq, during her visit there on 12-14 December 1961 as Middle East Force flagship. Note she has the old-school Navy seaplane tender marking complete with pre-WWII “meatball” by her hull number. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 102678
In all, Duxbury Bay served 15 tours of duty in the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, and the Indian Ocean as flagship for ComMidEastFor between 1950 and 1966, plus her original stint with TF 126.
While on stateside “downtime” at Norfolk, she participated in the Cuban Missile Crisis, refueled the occasional seaplane, helped run UDTs and amphibious training out of Little Creek, and was on the USS Kearsarge battle group that plucked Maj. Gordon Cooper’s “Faith 7,” the last Mercury space mission, out of the Atlantic on 16 May 1963 after 22 orbits.
Navy frogmen deploy from a hovering helicopter to begin the recovery process of the Mercury-Atlas 9 “Faith 7” Capsule, with astronaut Gordon Cooper on board. Accession #: UA 343.01 Catalog #: UA 343.01.02
After 15 rotations, it was decided to move to a more permanent forward-deployed flag and two of the three members of the LWF were pulled from service.
USS Duxbury Bay (AVP-38) photographed ca. 1965 as Middle East Force flagship in her final configuration. She received a new mast and air search radar and a deckhouse extension during her last shipyard overhaul in the summer of 1962. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 69826
Duxbury Bay was decommissioned on 30 April 1966, and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register the next day. Both Duxberry and Greenwich Bay were sold for scrapping in July 1967, with just over 20~ years of service on their hulls.
Of their sisters, many endured for a good while longer than Duxbury.
These hardy seaplane tenders gave yeoman service to the Coast Guard and Navy through the Vietnam conflict. The last member of the LWF, Valcour, remained as the standalone forward-deployed flag for the Middle East Force, dubbed AGF-1 until she was relieved by USS La Salle (AGF-3) in 1972. Valcour went to the scrappers herself in 1977.
A total of 18 Barnegats transferred to Coast Guard in the 50s and 60s to become the “Casco” or “311” class (for their length) of heavy weather endurance cutters, WHEC, with pennant numbers 370 to 387. Many were renamed traditional USCG names, e.g after past Treasury Department Secretaries. Many of these were subsequently transferred a second time to overseas allies such as the Republic of Vietnam and the Philippines.
The last of the Barnegat afloat was the USS Chincoteague/Ly Thuong Kiet/Andres Bonifacio, a veteran of the U.S. Navy, Coast Guard, South Vietnamese, and Philippine navies that were finally withdrawn from frontline service with the latter in 1993. She endured another decade as a pierside hulk used for the occasional training until she was sent to the breakers in 2003.
The closest thing to a monument for these vessels is the USS/USCGC Unimak (AVP-31/WAVP/WHEC/WTR-379), the last of the class in U.S. service, which was sunk in 1988 as an artificial reef off the Virginia coast in 150 feet of water after three years with the Navy and 40 with the Coasties.
For their part, veterans from our ship visit Duxbury Bay in Mass often and hold ceremonies to remember their vessel.
As for the Middle East Force, it grew into CENTCOM in 1983, with the Navy contingent labeled United States Naval Forces Central Command (USNAVCENT) of course, and it is quite a bit larger than three little white seaplane tenders.
Barnegat type AVPs, WWII configuration, via Shipbucket
Displacement 1,766 t.(lt) 2,800 t.(fl)
Length 311′ 6″
Beam 41′ 1″
Draft 12′ 5″
Speed 18.2 knots (trial)
Fuel Capacities
Diesel 2,055 Bbls
Gasoline 84,340 Gals
Propulsion
Fairbanks-Morse, 38D8 1/2 Diesel engines
single Fairbanks-Morse Main Reduction Gears
Ship’s Service Generators
two Diesel-drive 100Kw 450V A.C.
two Diesel-drive 200Kw 450V A.C.
two propellers, 6,400shp
8,000 miles at 15.6 knots
Complement (as designed)
USN
Officers 14
Enlisted 201
USN Aviation Squadrons
Officers 59
Enlisted 93
Armament:
(1945)
one single 5″/38 cal. Mk 12, Mod 1 dual-purpose gun mount
one quad 40mm AA gun mount
two twin 40mm AA gun mounts
four twin 20mm AA gun mounts
depth charge racks
(1950)
one single 5″/38 cal. Mk 12, Mod 1 dual-purpose gun mount
one quad 40mm AA gun mount
two twin 40mm AA gun mounts
one Mk 52 Mod 3 director
one Mk 26 fire control radar
(1957)
one quad 40mm AA gun mount (deleted 1962)
two twin 40mm AA gun mounts (deleted 1962)
Assorted .50 cal M2 machine guns, small arms
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.
Here we see the Imperial Japanese Navy Myoko-class heavy cruiser Ashigara on 24 May 1937 in Kiel Harbor with the charming German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee peeking over her stern. At their wartime displacements, the Ashigara was actually about as heavy as the German panzerschiffe and could outrun her by about seven knots.
But she wasn’t designed to fight the Germans in the Baltic.
While the Washington Naval Treaty, limiting the fleets of the France, Italy, Japan, the U.K and the U.S, was registered in the League of Nations Treaty Series on 16 April 1924, the four Myōkō-class cruisers were ordered the same year with only a paper-thin veneer of compliance towards the document.
You got 10 8-inch guns, a top speed of 36-knots, 12 Long Lance torpedo tubes and up to 4-inches of armor in a ship less than 10K tons, OK!
While the treaty capped tonnage for cruisers at 10,000, the Myōkōs met this on paper but really went 11,600-tons standard and a jaw-dropping 15,933-tons at a full load. Equipped with 10 20 cm/50 (7.9″) 3rd Year Type guns in five double turrets, they were the most heavily armed cruisers of the day barring full-fledged battlecruisers and the German’s later pocket battleships, capable of raining 242.5-pound AP shells out to 30,000 yards.
A dozen Kampon boilers ran four geared turbines to a maximum of 130,000shp, generating over 36 knots at trials (for a more sedate 33.5 at full load). Equipped with a trio of reconnaissance planes, these long-legged vessels could be the eyes of the main fleet or operate as their own surface action group if needed. They carried a light belt of armor (102mm) over magazines and machinery, which tapered to as thin as 25mm over the guns.
The hero of our tale, Ashigara, was named for 3,978-foot volcanic Mount Ashigara on the border of Kanagawa and Shizuoka prefectures as well as recycling the name of a previous Imperial warship. Laid down at the Kobe Kawasaki yard in April 1925, she was commissioned 20 August 1929 and assigned to Cruiser Division 4 which consisted of Ashigara and her three sisters.
She was a showboat and participated in Emperor Hirohito’s Naval Review in 1930 and, following a one-year reconstruction after a turret explosion that killed 41, was designated flagship of her division under RADM. Kobayashi Sonosuke, then dispatched to Europe in March 1937.
Imperial Japanese Navy heavy cruiser Ashigara prior to the Spithead Coronation Fleet Review, May 19th, 1937
While on the way, she stopped and made merry at Singapore, Aden, the Suez Canal and Malta, arriving in Portsmouth in May where she participated in the Coronation Review in honor of “The Sailor King” George VI remember that Britain was a longtime Japanese ally.
IJN Heavy Cruiser Ashigara – 1937. Spithead. Note the two E8N Type 95 “Dave” seaplanes
From there, Ashigara went to Kiel.
Japanese and German naval officials celebrated first the anniversary of the Battle of Tsushima on 27 May, then the Battle of Jutland/Skagerraktag on 31 May.
The ship’s band was granted a special parade down Unter den Linden through the Brandenburg Gate– a feat likely not done by a Japanese martial band since. It was a major step in closer relations between the two countries.
Following up on the trip, in September, Prince Chichibu, Hirohito’s younger brother, visited Germany and was taken to the big Nazi rally at Nuremberg, further strengthening ties between the two nations. While this was occurring, Ashigara was back in the Pacific as the flagship of CruDiv 5 and was escorting a Japanese Imperial Army force to the Ma’andao islands and on to China.
Notably at the same time the Germans were training the Chinese Nationalist Army, who had been embroiled in full-scale conflict with the Japanese in the Sino-Japanese War since the Emperor’s troops crossed the Marco Polo bridge that July. With the growing pro-Japan vibe, Germany withdrew its support for China in 1938, recalling its advisors in May of that year.
Ashigara became a familiar sight in Chinese waters after that, photographed by U.S. Asiatic Naval officers and dutifully sent to the intelligence file.
HIJMS ASHIGARA Off Tsingtao, China, circa 1938.Description: Courtesy of Vice Admiral Morton L. Deyo, USN (retired)Catalog #: NH 77686
ASHIGARA off Tsingtao, China, circa 1938. The flagship of Vice Admiral Toyoda. Description: Courtesy of Rear Admiral J.P. Walker, USN (Ret), 1973.Catalog #: NH 78057
The view is taken at Tsingtao, China, in 1938. ASHIGARA at the center of the picture, to right of cruiser USS AUGUSTA. Description: Courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. Philip Yarnell, 1974.Catalog #: NH 81240
Ashigara and the Asiatic fleet even bumped heads.
While trying to escape from the Sino-Japanese war zone in December 1937, the 22,000-ton Dollar Steamship Lines ocean liner SS President Hoover(which had been damaged by a Chinese air force bomber while on the Yangtze who mistook her for Japanese troop ship) ran aground off Taiwan and Ashigara raced to her distress call. Arriving on scene, she helped transfer survivors from the stricken liner to the waiting SS President McKinley and President Pierce. Aboard Hoover was a young crewmember by the name of Robert S. McNamara who later did some things in the 1960s for JFK.
It would be the last solid that the cruiser would pay to the U.S., as during the operation news of the Panay attack reached the rescue party, which by that time included two American destroyers, USS Barker and USS Alden, who quietly kept ready ammo on hand if things turned sour.
Ashigara later became a flagship for VADM Ibo’s Third Fleet and participated in the occupation of Vichy France’s Indochina in July-August 1941 on the lead up to her involvement in WWII proper.
When the balloon went up in December 1941, she participated in the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, covering landings at Vigan and the Lingayen Gulf while dodging bombs from Navy PBYs and Army B-17s.
She next appeared at Balikpapan and Makassar in the Dutch East Indies in February 1942, covering the landings there and escorting Japanese shipping against the ABDA forces, which ironically included the former SS Hoover rescue partners USS Barker and USS Alden.
Ashigara at Balikpapan 1942
This ended up in the Battle of the Java Sea, where Ashigara fired salvos that helped in the sinking of British cruiser HMS Exeter (who ran Graf Spee to ground in 1939) and destroyer HMS Encounter. The same battle saw Spithead review alumni HNLMS Java sunk, though not by Ashigara’s guns.
After April 1942, her war wound down as she was left in the comparative backwater of Makassar as a flagship of the Second Southern Expeditionary Fleet, shuttling from there to Singapore regularly over a two-year period.
Ashigara at Singapore July 1943-Jan 1944
Serving later as the guard ship at the former Dutch key port of Surabaya, she received 8 25mm AAA guns and a Type 22 radar. She would ultimately carry 48 of these guns, landing one of her four-pack of 610mm torpedo tubes to save weight. She also updated her seaplanes.
Myoko-class cruiser Ashigara preparing to catapult an Aichi E13A seaplane
While escorting troops and supplies between Burma and the Indies, as noted by Combined Fleets, she came across the submarine USS Jack (SS-259) but did not become perforated.
By October 1944, she was assigned to VADM Kiyobide’s CruDiv 21 and was headed for fleet action in the Philippines where over an eight-day period she shrugged off brushes with the submarines USS Besugo (SS-321), USS Sterlet (SS-392), USS Trigger (SS-237), LCDR O’Kane’s famous USS Tang (SS-306), USS Seadragon (SS-194), USS Shark (SS-314), USS Blackfish (SS-221), USS Icefish (SS-367).
Used as part of Operation Sho-I-Go, which became the Battle of Leyte Gulf Ashigara somehow managed to escape intact from that action to Palawan and later Brunei. Returning to the Philippines in December, she picked up a 500-pound bomb from an Army B-25 the day after Christmas but repaid the favor by bombarding the U.S. beachhead at San Jose in Mindoro on 27 December with 200 7.9-inch shells.
Falling back to her old Dutch East Indies stomping grounds, she played cat and mouse with the Free Dutch submarine O-19 over a week-long battle in April 1945 during which the fabulously lucky cruiser somehow missed eight different torpedoes. It would be the last time she made it from a cruiser-v-sub engagement intact.
It would be the last time she made it from a cruiser-v-sub engagement intact.
With the end game coming, Ashigara left Singapore with 1,600 Imperial troops and 489 tons of supplies for Batavia, Java, and came across the submarines USS Blueback (SS-326), HMS Trenchant (P331) and HMS Stygian (P249) in the narrow Bangka Straits on 8 June. Trapped between a coastal minefield and three hungry sharks, her goose was cooked.
HMS ‘Submarine Trenchant’ Sinks the Cruiser ‘Ashigara’, 8 June 1945 by David Cobb; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation
The British T-class boat managed to get within 4,000 yards of the cruiser and hit her with five out of eight Mark VIIIs fired. The skipper of the British sub, “Baldy” Hezlet, administered a coup de grace with two more fish from her stern tubes, with at least one hitting. In all, she took 75 percent of the embarked Japanese troops with her as well as an estimated 100 crew.
Ashigara was tied for the largest Japanese warship sun by the Royal Navy during the war. Hazelt, who also helped drag the X-boats to attack the Tirpitz among other WWII tasks, was awarded his second DSO and was eventually promoted to vice-admiral and appointed KBE before his retirement in 1964. He passed in 2007.
As for Ashigara, she had outlived her sisters Nachi (sunk, 4 November 1944 off Corregidor by aircraft from USS Lexington) and Haguro (sunk, 16 May 1945 during a fight with five Royal Navy destroyers in the Strait of Malacca). The last of the class, the crippled Myōkō, formally surrendered to Royal Navy units on 21 September 1945 and was subsequently towed to the Strait of Malacca to be scuttled in deep water.
Today, Ashigara is remembered in several scale model kits and her name has been recycled for a destroyer of the Atago-class (DDG-178) which also has its own model.
Specs:
10,000-tons official, 11,633 tons (standard load) 15,000+ (full load)
Length: 669 ft. overall
Beam: 56 ft.
Draught: 19 ft.
Propulsion:
4-shaft geared turbines
12 Kampon boilers
130,000 shp
Speed: 35.5 knots
Range: 7,000 nmi 7at 14 kn with 2214 tons fuel oil
Complement: 773 (950 by 1944)
Armor:
2032.5 tons
4″ (102mm) NVNC belt inclined 12 degrees
Torpedo bulges with 2.3″ (58mm) HT holding bulkhead
1.4″ (35mm) NVNC middle deck
1.4″ (35mm) NVNC lower deck
3.5″ (89mm) NVNC uptakes
3.5″ (89mm) bulkheads
1″ (25mm) NVNC turrets
Armament:
(As built)
10x 120/45 guns (5×2)
6x 4.7 in (120 mm)/45 guns (6×1)
12 x 610 mm (24 in) torpedo tubes (4×3)
(1944)
10x 120/45 guns (5×2)
6x 4.7 in (120 mm)/45 guns (6×1)
8 x 610 mm (24 in) torpedo tubes (4×3)
48x 25mm guns along with 13-go, 22-go radars
Aircraft carried: 3 E8N Type 95 “Dave” seaplanes as built, later Aichi E13A ‘Jake’ Type 0 Reconnaissance Seaplane after 1941
Aviation facilities: 2 Kure Type 2 Model 51 catapults
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.
Warship Wednesday, August 23, 2017: ‘Great Scott and huckleberries, look at that!’
U.S. Navy Catalog #: NH 63740
Here we see the experimental 94-foot USS Stiletto, the fastest torpedo boat in the world at the time, firing an early Howell type torpedo from her bow tube around 1890, likely on the Sakonnet River, Tiverton, Rhode Island, home of the Hotchkiss factory’s torpedo test range.
To understand Stiletto, first, let’s talk about Capt. Nat Herreshoff.
Born in Bristol, Rhode Island in 1848, Herreshoff was a renaissance man of the period when it came to designing steam, sailing and, later, motor yachts. An accomplished sailor as well as a mechanical engineer in the days before Tesla, he ran the famous Corliss Stationary Engine, a 1,000kW dynamo at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Returning to Rhode Island, he started the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company in Bristol aimed at boat making as well as other endeavors.
“Nathanael G. Herreshoff was a singular genius whose 75-year career produced six America’s Cup winners and hundreds of other highly successful vessels. He introduced modern catamarans and designed highly efficient steam engines…The many Herreshoff boats still winning races today further attest to his legendary standing.”
In May 1876, he built Lightning (HMCo #20), a 58-foot wooden hulled boat powered by a steam plant that broke 20.3-knots on her trials.
She carried two spar-type torpedoes, basically, bombs on sticks held like lances in front of the craft. Drawing just 22-inches of water, she was perfect for harbor and coast defense. Lightning was bought by the Bureau of Naval Ordnance as Steam Launch No. 6, for $5,000 to be used by the Torpedo Board of Ordnance at Newport, Commander George A. Converse, commanding.
Bow view of the Herreshoff Manufacturing Co.’s SPAR torpedo boat Lightning (Steam Launch No. 6), launched May 1876, and the first torpedo boat purchased by the U.S. Navy. The Lightning is on a wooden cradle in front of an unidentified building, believed to be located at the Naval Torpedo Station, on Goat Island, in Newport, Rhode Island. Note the spar torpedoes in their stored position from where they would be extended before use. Source: John Palmieri, Curator Herreshoff Marine Museum/America’s Cup Hall of Fame.
With over 100 floating projects already worked through, in 1884 Herreshoff built Stiletto (HMCo project 118), a 94-foot wood-planked vessel with steel ribs as an experimental “Torpedo boat type, fitted as yacht.”
Unarmed and fitted with a 7-ft by 7-ft Almy boiler that could produce 359 hp on the inverted compound steam plant, the 28-ton vessel broke 26.4-knots in light condition and was originally rigged as a miniature three-masted schooner as a backup with her little masts looking like “walking sticks.”
Stiletto in 1887. Note the Yacht ensign and club pennants. By Nathaniel Stebbins – American & English Yachts, via Wiki
With her black hull and neat little white porthole row, the partially decked knife-shaped steamboat made a splash on the yacht club circuit during the 1885 summer season.
On June 10, while on the Hudson River in New York, she raced the 300-foot Hudson company paddle-wheel steamer Mary Powell which had “never been passed on the river” some 30 miles from West 22nd Street to Sing Sing prison.
The Mary Powell. Photo via the Fred B. Abele Transportation History Collection SC22662, Box 26, Folder 11a
According to a New York Times report from the day, a crew member from the speedy “Queen of the Hudson” Mary Powell called out to the tiny Stiletto, “That blamed little boat’ll bust itself tryin’ to beat us!” just before the race started.
Then, the Stiletto‘s skipper waved goodbye.
The Times:
Needless to say, Stiletto made the 30 mile trip to Sing Sing in something like 77 minutes, smoking her competition.
The next day, she beat the famous racing yacht Atalanta from Larchmont, New York to New London, Connecticut, gaining the title of the fastest ship on the water.
An illustration of the steam yacht Stiletto in her celebrated race against Atalanta, during the American Yacht Club Regatta, from Larchmont to New London, 11 June 1885. Image from The Frank Leslie Illustrated Newspaper. Navsource picture 05040120
With such a glowing record of speed, of course, Stiletto was purchased for the U.S. Navy under an Act of Congress dated 3 March 1887; and entered service in July 1887, attached to the Torpedo Station, Newport where she served alongside her smaller uncle Lightning.
She was commissioned as USS Stiletto, Wooden Torpedo Boat no. 1, WTB-1 (not to be confused with the later Warship Weds alum USS Cushing, a steel-hulled vessel, which was Torpedo Boat no. 1, TB-1) and was the Navy’s first torpedo boat capable of launching self-propelled torpedoes.
Made ready for war, her masts and sailing rigs were removed, wheelhouse reduced to a hatch, and was given a bow tube and trainable deck tube for LCDR John Howell’s Automobile Torpedo. Some 50 Howells had been ordered under contract through the Hotchkiss Ordnance Company of nearby Providence as the Mark I Torpedo. Why not have the Navy’s first real torpedo boat armed with its first real torpedo?
One of Howell’s Mk1 Locomotive torpedoes.
Capable of 25-knots, these early 14.2-inch wide fish had a 96-pound wet gun cotton warhead and could make 600 yards before running down the wind-up flywheel powered engine. Stiletto tested many of these on the company’s range in Tiverton.
They remained in service until 1896 when they had all (save for two, including the one shown above at the Newport Museum) been expended.
USS STILETTO Firing a torpedo from her deck tube, about 1890. Catalog #: NH 63741
Stiletto (wooden torpedo boat). Starboard side. 1891. Note the drastically different scheme from her 1887 yacht racing days.Photo via National Archives/NH 69210
Stiletto spent her entire naval career at the Torpedo Station, and as noted by the curator of the Herreshoff Museum, she was taken out of the water over the winter for maintenance.
She did, however, make it to Hampton Roads and back to the Hudson periodically for naval reviews and parades.
U.S. Navy ships from left to right: USS Concord (Patrol Gunboat #3), the wooden torpedo boat USS Stiletto, and USS Columbia (Cruiser #12) in New York Harbor, New York. Note the Statue of Liberty behind the warships. Reproduction of artwork by Fred S. Cozzens, 1894. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Lot-3365-2
USS STILETTO in Hampton Roads, Virginia, during a naval review. Courtesy of Erik Heyl. Catalog #: NH 64050
Howell’s last torpedo on the deck of USS STILETTO, 1896. Courtesy of the Newport Artillery Co. Museum, Newport, R. I., 1974. Catalog #: NH 81307
Stiletto. Likely firing a Bliss model fish from her bow tube. Note the different nose shape from the Howell. 1900 via National Archives
NH 63742 USS STILETTO (1887-1911)
USS STILETTO (1887-1911) Courtesy Smithsonian Institution, Skerritt Collection of the Bethlehem Steel Co. Archives. Catalog #: NH 64051
From left to right, the USS Porter (TB-6), USS Stiletto (WTB-1), and USS Cushing (TB-1) in Narragansett Bay. Nathanael Herreshoff was on board the Porter when this photograph was taken, and recorded the date in his diary as having been on December 18, 1896. Source: John Palmieri, Curator Herreshoff Marine Museum/America’s Cup Hall of Fame; http://www.herreshoff.org, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University
Besides testing the Howell and later Bliss model Whitehead torpedoes after 1891, Stiletto was used for special missions such as “running 12-hour high-speed trips delivering 2 tons of smokeless powder to New York ammunition depots.”
Reboilered in 1891, she was later fitted with an oil-fired suite which proved unimpressive.
By 1897, on the cusp of the Spanish-American War, the Navy had worked out torpedo tactics, had over 300 torpedoes in their magazines and a score of relatively ocean-going steel-hulled torpedo boats, none of which would have been possible without Stiletto.
During the war, she provided coastal defense duties and lingered on for a decade longer, marked for disposal after nearly 25 years as a floating test bed.
Struck from the Navy list on 27 January 1911, she was sold six months later to James F. Nolan of East Boston, Mass., for scrapping.
As for the Howells, in 2013, Space and Naval warfare Systems Center Pacific (SSC Pacific) discovered and recovered a spent Howell off the San Diego coast, near Hotel Del Coronado, during a mine-hunting training exercise with Navy dolphins.of stamped. Stamped “USN No. 24” it is only the third known to exist, with the other two held in the collection of the Naval Undersea Museum in Keyport, Wash. and the Naval War College Museum in Newport.
Specs:
Construction plan for the 94′ Stiletto, HMCo. # 118, via MIT
Displacement: 31 tons
Length: 94-feet
Beam: 11′ 6″
Draft: 4′ 10″
Fuel: 4 tons of egg coal, max
Boiler: sectional water tube-type 7-ft by 7-ft carrying 160-lbs of steam.
Engine: inverted compound condensing-type engine with 12.6- and 21-in diameter cylinders; 359 ihp (450 ihp under forced draft); 1 shaft.
Screw: 4′ diameter. 4 blades; 400 rpm.
Trial speed: 26.4 knots clean. Navy service speed: 18.2 knots
Complement: 6 (in Navy service, as few as three in civilian)
Armament: 2 early torpedoes
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.
