Tag Archives: warship wednesday

Warship Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2024: The Little Giant

Posted on by 2 comments

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

Warship Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2024: The Little Giant

U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 43506

Above we see the brand new Independence-class light carrier USS San Jacinto (CVL-30) at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, some 80 years ago today– 17 January 1944– painted in a fresh Measure 33, Design 7a camouflage pattern. She would soon be in combat in the Marshall Islands, beginning a 16-month fight across the Pacific that would end with her Air Group plastering the Japanese Home Islands from Okinawa to Hokkaido.

The Indies

In 1942, the Navy had its ass in a bind.

Starting the war with just six large-deck fleet carriers, within the first six months of combat was down to just four, and by the end of the year; just a single one of these (Enterprise) was still afloat and operational.

While the first huge and ultra-modern 34,000-ton Essex-class carriers were building as fast as the riveters could rivet and the welders could chip slag, they would not be able to arrive in numbers until 1944. This put the Big Blue behind the Japanese 8-ball in naval warfare.

FDR, himself always a Navy man (he won a naval warfare essay contest while a teenager and slept with Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power upon History on his nightstand before being appointed Asst. Scty of the Navy during World War One), came up with the idea to convert a bunch of cruisers that were already partially complete at the New York Navy Yard over to flat-tops. Although the Navy balked, FDR was the commander and chief, so guess who won?

USS Cleveland CL-55 1942. The Navy wanted between 40-50 of these hardy little cruisers. They settled for much less, and nine of those became aircraft carriers while still under construction

USS Cleveland CL-55 1942. The Navy wanted between 40-50 of these hardy little cruisers. They settled for much less, and nine of those became aircraft carriers while still under construction

The 14,000-ton Cleveland class light cruisers were designed after the gloves came off in 1940 and the U.S. no longer had to abide by the Washington and London Naval treaties of the 1920s and 30s. As such, these were very large cruisers, at just a hair over 600 feet long, and very fast (33 knots). Designed to carry a dozen 6-inch and a supplemental dozen 5-inch guns, they were also heavily armed.

In all the Navy wanted something on the order of 40 of these cruisers to lead destroyer groups, escort convoys, scout ahead of battle groups, and screen carriers and battleships. Well, FDR carved nine whose hulls were nearing completion but did not have decks, guns, or superstructures installed yet.

A scale model of the Independence-class light carriers and the Cleveland-class light cruiser. Note the hulls.

A scale model of the Independence-class light carriers and the Cleveland-class light cruiser. Note the hulls.

It was not that hard of a concept. Many of the first carriers were auxiliaries, cruisers, and battleships that had their topside removed and covered with a flat top. Langley, the first U.S. carrier, was a collier. Lexington and Saratoga, the country’s second and third carriers respectively, were originally laid down as battlecruisers.

The first of the class of FDR’s “cruiser carriers,” laid down originally as the cruiser Amsterdam but commissioned instead as the USS Independence, was commissioned on 14 January 1943 and rushed to the fleet. Over the next nine months, eight sisters would join her, roughly one every 45 days on average. They were all constructed in the same yard to keep the program streamlined.

A “30/30” ship, they could make 30+ knots and carry 30+ aircraft while having legs long enough to cross the Pacific and operate on their own for a few weeks before she needed to find an oiler. While they were still much smaller than a regular fleet carrier such as the Enterprise that could carry 80-90 aircraft, they could still put a few squadrons in the air and fill lots of needs.

Simultaneously, they were much faster than the similarly sized quartet of converted oilers that had already been rushed into service and could keep up with a fast-moving battle force. Initially classified as normal fleet carriers (CV), all were re-designated “small aircraft carriers” (CVL) on 15 July 1943.

From U.S. Navy manual FM 30-50: Recognition Pictorial Manual of Naval Vessels, showing U.S. ship silhouettes showing the relative size of the various classes of aircraft carriers, battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. Note the big difference between the size of the large fleet carrier classes (top center), the assorted escort carriers (center to bottom), and the Independence class CVLs, which are right in the middle

Side-by-side comparisons show the principal fleet carriers of the Pacific War compared to an Independence-class CVL. Outside left are the prewar USS Saratoga (CV-3) and USS Enterprise (CV-6), moored near the short-hulled Essex-class USS Hornet (CV-12). Beyond the Hornet is moored the Independence-class USS San Jacinto (CVL-30). U.S. Navy photo 80-G-701512

Worth, in his Fleets of World War II, described the Indys as such:

These were not attractive ships. They had no deck edge elevator, just one catapult, and a small air group (usually 33 planes). Though meant to carry one or two 5-inch DP guns, they never received them. The armor layout provided modest protection, though the first two ships scrambled into service so hurriedly they never got their side armor. In spite of all of this, the design was a success. Not a war winner, it augmented the fleet’s main strength, having sufficient size and speed to bring modern aircraft into battle.

Meet San Jacinto

The second U.S. Navy warship named in honor of the 1836 battle that saw General Sam Houston and his outnumbered troops win independence for Texas by routing a Mexican army at the San Jacinto River, the first was a Civil War-era 4-gun screw frigate that earned a place in history with the Trent Incident that almost led to war with England.

Trent Incident, 8 November 1861. USS San Jacinto removes Confederate commissioners Mason and Slidell from the British Mali steamer Trent, in the old Bahama channel. Hand-colored engraving from The Illustrated London News Supplement, 7 December 1861. NH 73990

Laid down on 26 October 1942 at New York Shipbuilding Corporation’s yard in Camden, New Jersey, our subject was originally intended to be the light cruiser USS Newark (CL-100), then, after she was to become a light carrier, initially was going to be commissioned as USS Reprisal, recycling the name of an 18-gun brig purchased by the Continental Congress in 1776. However, before she was christened, it was decided to use the Reprisal moniker for a larger Essex-class fleet carrier, CV-35, and our then-twice renamed hull became the second USS San Jacinto, christened by Texas philanthropist Mary Gibbs Jones (wife of Jesse Holman Jones, then U.S. Secretary of Commerce).

USS San Jacinto (CVL-30) sliding down the building ways at the New York Shipbuilding Corp. yard, Camden, New Jersey, after she was christened by Mrs. Jesse H. Jones, 26 September 1943. 80-G-44590

She was a “freebee” of sorts to the Navy, as the citizens of Houston raised more than $85 million for the carrier’s construction and for the construction of another vessel, as a replacement for the recently lost cruiser USS Houston (CA-30).

According to her “short” 105-page War History, which makes great reading:

From her gaff under the Stars and Stripes she flew in battle the Lone Star State flag of Texas, a tribute to her name and to the citizens who subscribed to her cost.

More detail:

USS San Jacinto (CVL-30) underway off the U.S. east coast (position 36 55’N, 75 07’W) on 23 January 1944, with an SNJ training plane parked on her flight deck. Photographed from a Squadron ZP-14 blimp. The ship is painted in camouflage Measure 33, Design 7A. 80-G-212798

Same as the above, 80-G-212799

Her first embarked air wing was the newly formed Air Group 51 (AG51), including the TBM-1C Avengers of VT-51 and F6F-3 Hellcats of VF-51. Arriving onboard starting in January 1944, they would sail with San Jacinto until November 1944.

Party to celebrate first landing on USS San Jacinto (CVL-30). Cake cutting by LCDR T.B. Bradbury. 26 February 1944. 80-G-227307

Wrapping up her shakedown cruise and landing quals with her new squadrons, San Jacinto transited the Panama Canal in April 1944 and headed to the Pacific.

War!

 

USS San Jacinto (CVL-30), LCDR Albert B. Cahn gives the take-off signal to a TBM-1C Avenger of Torpedo Squadron 51, during exercises on 16 May 1944. 80-G-238772

San Jacinto Wed, 31 May 1944. Note the big Avengers on her deck. 80-G-265714

Attached to VADM Marc A. Mitscher’s Task Force 58/38 fast carrier striking force, San Jacinto tagged along for raids on the Marcus Islands (8-15 May) and Wake (23 May), from there got thrown in the deep end with the push into the Marianas Islands and the resulting “Marianas Turkey Shoot” on 19 June. It was the start of a run that saw our little carrier heavily involved in the war.

USS San Jacinto (CVL-30), right foreground, steaming in formation with USS Lexington (CV-16) and a DD-348 class destroyer, during pre-invasion operations in the Marianas area, 13 June 1944. Both carriers belonged to Task Group 58.3. 80-G-238786

Attempted Japanese air attack on Task Force 58 intercepted by carrier-based planes west of Guam Island in the Mariana Islands. Shown is an attack on USS San Jacinto (CVL 30). Photographed from USS Healy (DD 672), June 19, 1944. 80-G-239292

Battle of The Philippine Sea, June 1944. Japanese plane shot down by USS San Jacinto gunners while attacking USS Enterprise (CV-6) on 19 June 1944. Originally caption calls this plane a “Judy” (Yokosuka D4Y). 80-G-238951

TBM-1C Avenger, of Torpedo Squadron 51 (VT-51) Takes off from USS San Jacinto (CVL-30) for a raid on Guam, 28 June 1944. The catapult operator is on the right. 80-G-238783

Chichi Jima, Bonin Island. Seaplane base and town under attack by U.S. carrier aircraft, 2 September 1944. Photographed by a USS San Jacinto plane. 80-G-248844

USS San Jacinto (CVL-30) rolling heavily and pitching in rough seas, while in route to raid Okinawa with Task Force 58, 6 October 1944. TBM Avenger torpedo planes of Torpedo Squadron 51 are parked at right, with landing gear well-lashed to the deck. Note palisade windbreak in an elevated position across the flight deck, forward of the planes. 80-G-284859

A VT-51 TBM “Avenger”, from USS San Jacinto (CVL-30) flying near Okinawa during the raids, 10 October 1944. A small ship is afire below. 80-G-284857

Battle off Cape Engaño, 25 October 1944. Arming a Torpedo Squadron 51 (VT-51) TBM torpedo bomber on USS San Jacinto (CVL-30). Probably taken before the squadron’s planes attacked the Japanese carrier force. The Torpedo is a Mark XIII, fitted with a wooden stabilizer around its tail and drag ring around its nose. 80-G-284708

Japanese Ise class battleship and destroyer in action during the battle off Cape Engano, 25 October 1944. Photographed by a TBM from USS San Jacinto, note damaged wingtip on plane. 80-G-284705

Operation Ten-Go. Japanese suicide splashing after being hit by anti-aircraft fire from Task Force 58 off the bow of USS San Jacinto (CVL-30). Note the part of the airplane in flight over the bow. 80-G-331605

Following Cape Engaño, our trusty Air Group 51 would move ashore at Guam, having lost 50 percent of its aircrew, and later be disestablished, with San Jac being their only carrier deployment.

They would be replaced on 24 January 1945 by Air Group 45 (F6F-3 and F6F-5P Hellcats of VF-45, and TBM-3s of VT-45) and would remain aboard until Air Group 49 (F6F-5 and F6F-5P Hellcats of VF-49, and TBM-3s of VT-49) replaced them in May 1945.

These two final groups would land some serious blows as San Jacinto moved into Japanese Home Waters along with other carrier strike groups and were able to catch the last remnants of the Combined Fleet sheltering there.

Incomplete 17,000-ton Japanese Unryū-class aircraft carrier Ikoma afire during attacks by U.S. Navy carrier planes, at Kobe, 19 March 1945. Ikoma’s stern is clearly visible, while her bow is obscured by smoke. Note the large “standard” type freighter off Ikoma’s starboard bow. Photographed from a USS San Jacinto plane. NH 95779

Same target and date as the above, NH 95780

Attack on a Japanese escort carrier in Kobe Harbor, 19 March 1945. She is probably the 11,000-ton Shimane Maru, which was then nearly complete at Kobe. Note the large cargo ship at the top of the photo. Taken from a USS San Jacinto plane. NH 95782

Bombs fall near an enemy escort carrier and several small cargo ships, in Kobe Harbor, 19 March 1945. The CVE is probably the Shimane Maru. Taken from a USS San Jacinto plane. NH 95783

Japanese aircraft carriers under attack at Kure on 24 July 1945. The ship on the left, receiving mostly bombs, is Amagi. A heavily camouflaged ship in the right center is Katsuragi. Photo by USS San Jacinto (CVL-30) plane. 80-G-490162

When news of the end of hostilities with Japan came on 15 August, San Jacinto began conducting mercy flights over identified Allied prisoner-of-war camps, dropping food and medicine until the haggard survivors could be rescued. Then, on 20 August, she was relieved and ordered back to San Francisco, arriving there on 14 September.

click to big up

San Jacinto participated in seven major campaigns, earned five battle stars (her Air Groups earned the full seven), and was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for her WWII service.

From the opening of her War History, a great (if somewhat verbose) summation:

She was to write a record in the heart blood of Japan across 16 flaming months and seven major campaigns. She was to destroy 712 Japanese aircraft [12 by ship’s guns, 148 shot down by Air Group, 256 destroyed on the ground, plus 296 “damaged”), sink or damage six aircraft carriers, two battleships, four cruisers, ten destroyers, and 200,000 tons of auxiliaries, merchant ships, small craft, expend with telling effects 930 tons of bombs, 5,436 rockets, 42 torpedoes, 1,478,750 .50 caliber machine gun bullets [and another 22,530 .30 caliber rounds from aerial gunners], fly 11,120 sorties [on 309 offensive missions], steam 153,883 combat miles, and spend 471 days in combat.

A breakdown of air group targets: 

Meanwhile, her onboard AAA gunners fired 14,740 40mm Bofors shells and another 19,160 20mm. Their engagements:

She conducted many replenishments underway across 357 days at sea including 86 meetings with oilers, received 218 destroyers alongside for mail, passengers, and freight; and received munitions from AEs 19 times.

She lost 40 officers and men during the conflict, most from her embarked Air Groups.

Further, as noted by the War History:

She was to earn and wear in honor the respectful sobriquet of “The Little Queen,” first bestowed by one of her famous big sisters, accepted with prideful love by her crew. Late in her combat career, the daring and accomplishments of her Air Group earned her the name of “The Little Giant.”

Still, her type was unneeded with so many brand-new Essex-class fleet carriers around, San Jacinto was decommissioned on 1 March 1947 and mothballed at San Diego. Reclassified as an auxiliary aircraft transport (AVT-5) on 15 May 1959 while still laid up, she was struck from the Navy list on 1 June 1970.

She had been the last of her class in U.S. Navy possession, sold to the breakers in December 1971 after sitting on red lead row for 24 long and unkind years.

Epilogue

Her war diary and plans are in the National Archives.

San Jac is perhaps best known for a young aviator of Torpedo Fifty-One (VT-51), Lt.(j.g.) George H. W. Bush, USNR. While leading a four-plane division in a strike against a radio station on Chichi Jima on 2 September 1944, antiaircraft fire downed “Barabara,” Bush’s Avenger, and he was recovered by the submarine USS Finback (SS-230), lifeguarding for the strike. Bush returned to San Jacinto in November 1944 participated in operations in the Philippines, and rotated out when AG 51 left the carrier, having flown 58 combat missions.

Portrait montage of squadron officers of VT-51 and senior officers of its parent carrier, USS San Jacinto, circa mid-1944. The ship’s Commanding Officer, Captain Harold M. Martin, is seen in the upper left. Officer second from right, second row from bottom, is George H.W. Bush.

The rescued Avenger pilot went on to become the 41st President of the United States. He finished the war with VT-153 which was stateside working up to deploy when the Japanese admitted defeat. He was credited with 126 carrier landings and 1,228 flight hours. He earned the Distinguished Flying Cross, three Air Medals, and shared in San Jac’s Presidential Unit Citation.

In 1986, a new Ticonderoga class cruiser, CG-56, would become the third USS San Jacinto. The Ingall’s built ship was commissioned on 23 January 1988, by then vice-president George H. W. Bush in Houston having passed the San Jacinto battlefield on her way there and back out to sea.

She was decommissioned last September, capping a 35-year career.

Manhattan, N.Y. (May 24, 2017) The missile-guided cruiser USS San Jacinto (CG 56) renders honors as it approaches the Statue of Liberty during the 29th annual Fleet Week New York’s (FWNY) Parade of Ships. (U.S. Navy photo 70524-N-UN744-064 by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Travis Simmons/Released)

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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

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

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

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.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) Jan. 11, 2024: Like a Bad Penny

Posted on by 3 comments

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

Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) Jan. 11, 2024: Like a Bad Penny

Above we see the modified Russian Sokol (Falcon) class destroyer Reshitel‘nyi (also seen in the west transliterated as Rieshitelni, Ryeshitelni, or Reshitelnyy, and often confused with sister Rastoropny) and her crew in Port Arthur in 1904. 

She had…an odd career. 

The Sokol class

Basically the default class of Russian torpedo boat destroyers in the 1900s, the Sokols (sometimes referred to as the Krechet class as the second ship incorporated several minor changes) were a Yarrow design and were one of the world’s fastest such ships when they took to the water, with the lead ship hitting 30.2 knots at 4,500hp on trials– although with the more typical 3,800 hp output they were rated at 29 knots, which was still plenty fast for the era.

An artist’s impression of Sokol

Small and sleek, they were not much larger than torpedo boats, running about 190 feet overall with just a narrow 18.5-foot beam. They could float in just seven feet of water, making them ideal for littoral operations. Displacing around 240 tons, they used 2 VTE steam engines fed by 4 Yarrow boilers and were good for about 600 miles on a maximum 58-ton coal load when chugging along at 15 knots.

Sokol before delivery in 1895 while still in the Glasgow area on trials with her recently arrived Russian crew, but no armament. Via Cassiers Magazine circa 1897

Destroyer Сокол ‘Sokol’ during her travels from Great Britain to St. Petersburg in 1895, after a heavy green paint was applied and her armament installed.

Owl, later Ryanyy, on trials in the Gulf of Finland in May 1901. She would serve in the Baltic Fleet her entire career, survive the Great War, and was captured in Helsingfors by Finnish White Guards in 1918, later becoming S1, the first Finnish destroyer although she was largely just used for training along with four of her sisters. She was the last of the class afloat, only discarded in 1939.

Sokol class destroyer Prytkiy (Quick) formerly Kretchet

Their main armament was two Russian-pattern 15-inch Lessner-type torpedo tubes on aft turnstiles with six Whitehead torpedoes (two loaded, four in the bow cockpit with their warheads in the magazines) while her guns were French: a single 3″/48 Canet gun with 180 shells, and three 47mm 3-pounder Hotchkiss guns with a supply of 800 rounds. They could also carry as many as 18 mines in a pinch.

Sokol class destroyer. Note her large Canet gun forward, three smaller Hotchkiss guns spread out stern and amidships, and her two aft torpedo tubes. Observe the rail track running down the starboard side of the deck. This allowed reload torpedoes to be moved from the bow cockpit to the tubes and could also double as parking for mines, which could be deployed over the side

The crew was about 50 officers and men.

In all, 27 hulls of the Sokol/Krechet class were constructed between November 1894 when the class leader was laid down at Yarrow in Glasgow and the final, Statnyy, laid down by the Nevskiy works in St. Petersburg, was completed in July 1904. In between, two other yards– that of Wm. Crichton’s works in Finland and St. Petersburg and the Izhora Admiralty Works at Kolpino– got in on the contracts. Following Sokol’s lead, they were initially all issued bird names, but in 1902 this was changed to a more dynamic naming convention after attributes (Obedient, Strong, Zealous, et.al.)

Meet Our Tin Can

Laid down at the Nevskiy Works as Kondor in 1900, just after the Tsar’s government had wrestled a 25-year lease on the Chinese harbor at Port Arthur along with a concession to extend the Russian-run Chinese Eastern Railway to the port, the 12th Sokol was also the first of a series of 12 destroyers that would be shipped, incomplete, in sections some 7,000 miles east by rail and boat to be completed at the growing naval base on the Liaotung Peninsula.

These 12 were very slightly longer (200 feet oal vs the 190 feet of the standard Sokol) and heavier (300 tons full load vs 240) with a beam a few inches wider and a draft a few inches deeper. This was to accommodate eight smaller but more efficient Yarrow boilers and bunkers to carry as much as 80 tons of coal, giving them an endurance of 750 miles at 15 knots, something thought beneficial for the Pacific.

At that, Kondor, which had been renamed while incomplete, first to Baklan (Cormorant) and then to Reshitel‘nyi (Resolute) under the new naming convention for the type, took to the water of the Pacific and was commissioned on 14 July 1903.

Russian destroyer Reshitel‘nyi. One of the very few images of her

Of the 12 stretched Sokols sent to Port Arthur in such a manner, all managed to be completed although the final three– Strashnyy, Stroynyy, and Statnyy— were done in the summer of 1904 while the port was under Japanese blockade, so the shakedown period was…difficult.

War!

As covered above, Reshitel‘nyi was the oldest of the dozen modified Sokol class destroyers at Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War.

Her first skipper, the noted polar explorer LT Alexander Alekseevich Korniliev, died of pneumonia and severe concussion received in his ship’s first battle with the Japanese fleet in the frigid waters, one that saw the sister destroyer Steregushchiy sent to the bottom while on a scouting mission that bumped into a superior force.

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

Reshitel‘nyi’s second skipper was Capt. (2nd Rate) Fyodor Emilievich Bosse, who had been in command of the two-ship task group when Steregushchiy was lost and was ordered to take over for the ailing LT Korniliev. Bosse, who was also wounded in the engagement, surrendered his command in March 1904 and was invalided back to European Russia (while the railroad was still connected) for recovery– saving him from the disaster that would befall the Tsar’s Pacific Squadron.

Bosse, who commanded the ill-fated task group that left Steregushchiy sunk, Reshitel‘nyi damaged, and himself wounded bad enough to be sent home. He would retire as a rear admiral in 1916 after 40 years of service, survive the Revolution and Civil War, and then go on to be an advisor to the Peruvian Navy during the 1932-1933 Peruvian-Colombian War. He is buried in Lima.

With her third skipper in less than a year, LT Platon Platonovich Travlinsky, the scratch-and-dent Reshitel‘nyi was one of the Russian destroyers on patrol just outside of Port Arthur that spoiled the second Japanese attempt to scuttle four blockships at the entrance, torpedoing them well short of the outer harbor, too far out to fill their intended role.

Russian accounts credit the destroyer Silnyii with hitting two of the blockships while Reshitel‘nyi torpedoed a third.

Second attempt to block Port Arthur, 27 March 1904 William Lionel Wylie RMG PV0976

In July, out of torpedoes, Reshitel‘nyi conducted two successful mine laying operations near the harbor’s approaches.

Escape to China

Russian RADM Wilgelm Vitgeft, the third head of the Russian Squadron at Port Arthur since the war started (the first was sacked and the second killed when his flagship was sunk), was ordered against his better judgment to break out of the besieged port in early August 1904 and form up with a group of armored cruisers that made up the Vladivostok squadron, turning the tables on the Japanese blockade force under Admiral Togo.

In a poor state and with repair facilities in Port Arthur lacking, Reshitel‘nyi was unlikely to be able to break out for Vladivostok and would have to remain in the port to be destroyed or scuttled by her crew should the siege not be lifted.

On the morning of 10 August, Vitgeft took everything he thought that could make it– the battleships Tsesarevich, Retvizan, Pobeda, Peresvet, Sevastopol, and Poltava, the protected cruisers Askold, Diana, Novik and Pallada, and 14 destroyers– out to sea. A few hours later, most of them limped back after being repulsed by Togo. Vitgeft and his staff were killed by a 12-inch salvo from the Japanese battleship Asahi that cleared the bridge of his flagship, Tsesarevich, which, heavily damaged, made for exile in the German treaty port of Tsingtao along with three German-made destroyers.

That afternoon came orders for Reshitel‘nyi to limp out under the cover of darkness to the nearest neutral port with a Russian consulate, Chefoo (now Yantai), some 100 miles directly across the Bohai Strait from Port Arthur on the Shandong Peninsula. There, she would bring vital dispatches for the consul to send on to the higher authorities, among them the details of Vitgeft’s defeat.

But first, let us paint you a picture of Chefoo during the Russo-Japanese War.

It was from Chefoo that the flotsam and jetsam of the combat at Port Arthur washed up. As early as February 1904, shipwrecked Japanese sailors rowed into the harbor in the lifeboats. This was followed by successive waves of Russian refugees and blockade runners of all stripes smuggling contraband across to the besieged garrison via sampan and coaster. Meanwhile, foreign correspondents of all stripes set up shop in Chefoo to turn second and third-hand tittle-tattle into news stories for the hungry masses back home. For example, many of the columns on the war appearing in the New York Times in 1904 were filed from Chefoo.

The indifferent Chinese Qing dynasty’s government at Chefoo was represented by one Admiral Sah aboard the fine German-built protected cruiser Hai Yung (2680 tons, 3×5.9 inch, 8x 4.1 inch, 3 tt), resting at anchor under the protection of a battery of Krupp-made coastal artillery that controlled the harbor.

Ashore was a division of the Qing New Army’s infantry and brigade of cavalry, both of which had Japanese instructors, so there is that.

Western warships also often could be found in the harbor, with the American cruiser USS Cincinnati sharing space that summer with German VADM Curt von Prittwitz’s visiting East Asiatic Squadron, with the old man aboard his flagship, the cruiser Furst Bismarck.

Now back to the story of our little destroyer’s breakout.

Moving out of Port Arthur on the dark night of 10 August, Reshitel‘nyi was able to make 18 knots and miraculously threaded her way through holes in the Japanese screen, arriving at Chefoo at 0605 on the morning of 11 August.

Reshitel‘nyi (spelled “Rieshitelni” on the record), was photographed at Chefoo, China, on 11 August 1904, possibly by U.S. Navy personnel or the American consul. Courtesy of Mr. Boris V. Drashpil, 1982. NH 94358

Her fourth skipper, the eager LT Mikhail Sergeevich Roshchakovsky (formerly of the daring little minelayer Avos who had crept within yards of Japanese warships to lay mines outside of Port Arthur), had a plan of his own which included patching his little warship up enough to be able to sortie south to the only allied port, Saigon in French Indochina, where he could presumably join Admiral Rozhestvensky’s Russian Baltic Fleet (dubbed the Second Pacific Squadron) for their final voyage.

Floating under the radar, so to speak, in the Chinese port without surrendering to internment wasn’t out of the question. At the same time, the damaged Russian light cruiser Askold and the destroyer Grosovoi had taken refuge in the port Wusong on the Yangzi and remained there, fully armed, until they voluntarily accepted internment the next month.

Service aboard shrapnel-riddled Askold in Shanghai

However, even in good repair, the likelihood that Reshitel‘nyi would be able to cover the 1,085 sea miles from Chefoo to Saigon, when her maximum range at 15 knots was only about 750 miles when packed with coal, avoiding prowling Japanese warships along the way, was slim.

Still, she would eventually link up with Rozhestvensky but in a quite different way than what Roshchakovsky had in mind.

Unluckily for Roshchakovsky’s plan, Admiral Sah, sending over officers from his cruiser, ordered the Russian destroyer disarmed within 24 hours or he would eject them from the port. Taking a vote from his crew, who elected to tap out rather than roll the dice at sea with moody engines, Roshchakovsky dutifully handed over the breechblocks from his deck guns, barred his torpedo tubes, and surrendered his small arms locker (13 rifles and two revolvers), in addition to disabling his engines and supplying the Chinese with a list of names of his crew. The Russians signed a pledge not to participate in further hostilities.

Roshchakovsky requested his ship be moved from the outer mole closer to shore where the guns of the cruiser Hai Yung and the Chinese coastal battery could protect it. Just in case, he ordered three small charges placed on the bulkheads in the magazines belowdecks, ready to scuttle if needed.

Reshitel‘nyi was out of the war.

Except she wasn’t.

Not wanting to let a juicy prize slip away, the Japanese destroyers Asashio and Kasumi entered the port shortly after Reshitel‘nyi was disarmed but before she could be moved to the inner harbor and dropped anchor in a position that cornered the Russian tin can. Refusing Admiral Sah’s signals to disarm and be interned or leave immediately, they replied that they would leave the next morning

Putting an armed prize party aboard the disarmed Reshitel‘nyi at 0330 on 11 August from two whale boats, Roshchakovsky confronted the Japanese officer in charge. With his hand on a sheathed sword, the Japanese lieutenant offered two options: immediately go to sea and engage in battle, even if he had to be towed, or surrender. Roshchakovsky selected a third option, and grabbed the Japanese officer, forcing him overboard and following him over the side into the harbor. A volley of fire from the Japanese blue jackets wounded the Russian with a bullet in his thigh.

In the ensuing melee, the Reshitel‘nyi’s crew, which more than outnumbered the two boats of Japanese, armed themselves with wrenches, fire axes, and coal shovels and fought it out, that is, until someone triggered the charges in the magazine, which were lackluster in performance.

Damaged but not sinking, the battle could end only one way, with the Japanese eventually taking over the Russian destroyer. Meanwhile, the waterlogged and bleeding Roshchakovsky and his 55 crew– with two men missing and several wounded– withdrew and made for shore. The Japanese suffered as well, losing at least two of their own.

Dawn came with the Japanese towing the captured Reshitel‘nyi out of the harbor and the Russians proceeding to their consulate, where most would spend the rest of the war.

The body of one of Reshitel‘nyi’s missing was recovered and buried ashore with full military honors, carried by her crewmates and escorted by an armed honor guard provided by Admiral Sah.

The crew of the Reshitel‘nyi in the courtyard of the Russian consulate in Chefoo grave of sailor Volovich. Roshchakovsky is the bearded officer in the center. 

The fisticuffs became worldwide news and were interpreted by newspaper artists around the globe.

The crew was decorated, with Roshchakovsky both the Order of St. Stanislaus, 2nd class with swords, and the Order of St. Vladimir, IV degree with swords and bow. His men received the Order of St. Anne.

They were Russian heroes in a war with few of those and became legends.

The Russians in late 1904 lodged a “Seven Points” letter with the Great Powers protesting China’s Japanese-leaning neutrality including the use by Japan of the Chinese Miano islands as a naval base, the transport of Japanese war material on the Shanhai-Newchwang railway, China’s Hongkew ironworks accepting Japanese military contracts, Chinese soldiers being enlisted in the Japanese Army, the use of Japanese officers in training the Chinese army, Japan paying Manchurian Hunhutses bandits as irregulars, and, last but not least, the Reshitel‘nyi incident in Chefoo.

Illustration of a “shameless geisha” holding Reshitel‘nyi after Japan captured the destroyer in a neutral port, from the Russian magazine Budil’nik. No. 32, 1904.

Of course, the Japanese countered with an equally lengthy list of instances where Russia had abused Chinese good graces during the conflict including the use of Chinese Army uniforms captured during the Boxer rebellion by scouting units in Manchuria and the entire concept of the East Chinese Railroad.

Under the Rising Sun

It turned out that, as Reshitel‘nyi was built to a British Yarrow design and carried common boilers and engines, the British-allied Japanese were able to repair her rapidly.

The breechblocks to her guns were replaced, and her 15-inch torpedo tubes were swapped out for larger 18-inch tubes. The refurbishment took six months, and she entered Japanese service on 17 January 1905 as the destroyer Akatsuki, taking that moniker to obscure the fact that the Japanese had lost a tin can of the same name to a mine the previous May.

Japanese Navy destroyer Akatsuki (ex-Russian Reshitelnyi) underway to participate in the Battle of the Sea of ​​Japan

Placed under the command of Capt. Masasaku Harada, she was with Togo’s fleet as part of his 1st Destroyer Division when it met Admiral Rozhestvensky’s Second Pacific Squadron at Tsushima in May 1905.

Ironically, her last Russian skipper, LT Roshchakovsky, was there as well, sailing on the old Admiral Ushakov-class coastal battleship Admiral Seniavin as the commander of the ship’s bow 10-inch turret. Roshchakovsky had quickly left Chefoo for Russia the previous August and, after meeting with the Tsar personally to brief him of the loss of Reshitel‘nyi, had asked for an appointment with Rozhestvensky’s squadron, joining Seniavin in October only days before the tub left Russia on her 18,000 trip that ended at Tsushima.

While Roshchakovsky and Harada did not personally engage in the swirling fleet action, the battle did not go well for either. Admiral Seniavin was surrendered on the morning of the 28th and became a Japanese prize– with Roshchakovsky becoming a guest of the emperor for the rest of the war. Meanwhile, Akatsuki/Reshitel‘nyi got so turned around in the dark due to heavy seas and harsh weather that she caused Japanese TB No. 69 to capsize and sink– one of Togo’s few losses in the battle.

Following the end of hostilities, Akatsuki/Reshitel‘nyi/Kondor/Baklan picked up her fifth name, Yamahiko (also seen as Yamabiko), and the loss of the original Akatsuki, a war secret, was finally announced. She would be joined in Japanese service by her sister Sokol class sister Silnyy, which had been scuttled at Port Arthur and rebuilt and renamed Fuzuki/Fumizuki.

Also captured by the Japanese were sisters Serdityy, Smelyy, Skoryy, and Statnyy, who were not returned to service. Meanwhile, sisters Storozhevoy, Steregushchiy, Razyashchiy, Rastoropnyy, Strashnyy, and Stroyny had been lost during the conflict.

Yamahiko in the 1914 Janes, the last of her class in Japanese service. Silnyy/Fuzuki had already been hulked in 1913.

Yamahiko in the 1915 Brassey’s

In 1917, our little destroyer was disarmed and removed from Japanese naval service. Working as the coaster Yamahiko Maru for some time, she was scrapped in 1919.

Epilogue

Of the 15 Sokols left in Russian service after 1905, two (Berkut and Prytkiy) were disposed of interwar while the rest were eventually rerated as dispatch vessels or torpedo boats, in the latter tasking picking up larger 450mm tubes. They would endure in the Baltic and Black Sea fleets for another decade, with some transferred to the inland Astrakhan-Caspian Sea flotilla via the Volga.

Baltic Fleet Sokol class destroyers 1912, Ryanyy in front

The Black Sea Sokols, in the 1914 Janes.

The final members retained in Soviet service– Prochnyy, Porazhayushchiy, Retivyy, Strogiy, and Svirepyy— would all be gone by the late 1920s.

The Sokol class destroyer Porazhayushchiy, which served in the Baltic fleet from commissioning until 1918, her crew helped to recover the vital cipher book from the grounded German cruiser Magdeburg in 1914. Porazhayushchiy was later transferred to the Caspian where she retired in 1925.

Following the collapse of Imperial Russia, five of the Sokols in the Baltic fleet– Korshun, Prozorlivyy, Rezvyy, Ryanyy, and Podvizhnyy— were captured by the newly independent Finns at Helsingfors (Helsinki) and Hango in 1918. They would be used by the nascent Finnish Navy as S1-S5 and disposed of throughout the 1930s.

S3 (Finnish destroyer) in commission from 1898 to 1921. Photographed about 1920. This ship was the former Russian Sokol-class Prozorlivyy,

The Finnish S-class boats in the 1931 ed of Janes, which at the time still in numbered two former Russian Sokols picked up in 1918.

Roshchakovsky

Now, we touch on the fate of the unsinkable LT Roshchakovsky.

Repatriated from Japan in January 1906 and still nursing wounds from Tsushima and Chefoo, he was seconded to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for use as a naval attaché in Greece and Germany until he was able to return to duty with the Baltic Fleet in 1908. He would go on to spend the rest of his career with the Tsarist Navy in minelaying/minesweeping work and in small escorts, including command of the Ohotnik-class mine cruiser (minnykh kreyserov) Pogranichnik in the Great War. By 1916, he was in command of the defenses to Kola Bay and Arkhangelsk, where war material was stacked up.

When the Revolution came, Roshchakovsky was cashiered and denied even a pension despite his 23 years of service. He sat out the Civil War in Norway without taking sides– notably writing White Russian General Denikin and urging him to throw in the towel for the sake of the country-– but would spend the rest of his life filing requests with the Soviets to return to naval service, all of which were officially denied. A trained engineer who had won the Admiral Nakhimov Prize while a cadet in 1896, while in Norway Roshchakovsky worked for a shipbuilding company.

Returning to the Motherland in 1925, he served as head of the foreign department under the board of НиГРЭС, the new Nizhny Novgorod powerplant, until 1928, when he was arrested for his past ties to the old regime and exiled to Siberia for three years.

In 1937, at age 61, Stalin’s NKVD picked him up again and gave him five years in a labor camp due to being a “socially dangerous element.”

Capt. 1st Rank Mikhail Sergeevich Roshchakovsky, three-time winner of the St. Anne in addition to the St. Stanislaus and St. Vladimir, perished in the gulag sometime in 1938, the date and place lost to the butcher.

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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

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

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

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.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday), Jan. 4, 2024: They Look Funny, But They Work

Posted on by 2 comments

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

Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday), Jan. 4, 2024: They Look Funny, But They Work

National Archives Photo 80-G-205356

Above we see a column of shorts and sandal-clad German and Italian EPOWs marching under naval guard in Recife, Brazil 80 years ago this week. They are the 133 waterlogged survivors from the armed and deadly blockade runner Westerland delivered to captivity from the ship that halted their run from the Pacific to Brest, the destroyer USS Somers (DD-381), seen on the pier at the right.

Besides Westerland, Somers had two other Axis blockade runners on her scoreboard by this point in the war and she had a lot of fight still to come.

The Somers class

The five Somers and their follow-on cousins of the Gridley (4 ships), Bagley (8), Benham (10), and Sims (12) classes were something of an evolutionary dead end for the American destroyer force. Sandwiched between the hundreds of four-pipers of the Great War, the more or less experimental two-stack Farragut (8) and Porter (8) classes of the early 1930s, and the twin pipers of the more mature and prolific wartime Benson (30), Gleaves (66), Fletcher (175), Sumner (58) and Gearing (98) classes, the Somers were members of the rare club that was single-stack American destroyers.

Designed as destroyer leaders (of which 13 were allowed under the London Naval Treaty) to host a commodore of a four-piper DESRON and make up for the American shortfall in light cruisers in the early 1930s, the Somers was essentially a repeat of the twin stack Porter destroyer leader design (381 feet oal, 1850 tons, 50,000shp, 37 knots, 8x 5-inch guns, 8x torpedo tubes) using the same hull and gun armament but with a more efficient engineering suite (trunked into a single stack) that generated 53,000 shp to allow for 38.6 knots on trials. The torpedo battery was likewise a little different, mounting a trio of quad 21-inch tubes to give a full dozen tubes by redesigning the superstructure instead of the eight tubes of the Porters. However, the Somers did not carry reloads while the Porters did, gambling on 12 ready fish rather than 8 in the tubes and 8 in the magazine.

A typical 1930s Porter:

The Porter class destroyer USS Balch (DD-363) underway, probably during trials in about September 1936. Note her superstructure including her large aft deck house, twin 4-tube torpedo turnstiles amidships, and twin funnels. NH 61694

Compare to a 1930s Somers, noting the different topside appearance to include three 4-tube torpedo turnstiles and a single funnel:

Somers class USS Jouett (DD 396), starboard view, at New York City 1939 NH 81177

Another thing that the Porters and Somers shared besides hulls was their peculiar Mark 22 mounts for their twin 5″/38 guns. These were limited elevation gun houses that relegated these rapid-fire guns to being capable of surface actions only.

As noted by Navweaps:

“Their low maximum elevation of +35 degrees of elevation was adopted mainly as a weight savings, as it was calculated that these ships would only be able to carry six DP guns rather than the eight SP guns that they actually did carry. The Mark 22 mounting used a 15 hp training motor and a 5 hp elevating motor.”

Check out those funky Mark 22 turrets! Somers-class sister USS Warrington (DD 383) arriving at New York City with Queen Mary and King George VI on board, 1939. Also, note a great view of her quad 1.1-inch AAA mount in front of the wheelhouse. LC-USZ62-120854

Most of the Porters and Somers would have their low-angle 4×2 Mark 22s replaced later in the war with 3×2 Mark 38 DP mounts, but we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Still, the Somers got their SP 5 inchers into the fight during the upcoming war, as we shall see.

As for AAA, the Somers as commissioned carried two “Chicago Piano” quad 1.1-inch mounts and a pair of flexible water-cooled .50 cals.

Official U.S. Navy photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 80-G-21955

Meet Somers

Our ship is the fifth named in honor of Lieutenant Richard Somers who joined the Navy as a mid at age 19 in 1798. After service during the Quasi-War with France on the frigate USS United States with Decatur, he later made a name for himself for fighting three duels in one day and was given command of the schooner USS Nautilus during the Barbary Wars. It was during the latter that the ballsy Somers, under command of the “floating volcano” fire ship Intrepid, attempted to sail into Tripoli harbor and blow up the corsair fleet, a mission that ended in Intrepid going sky-high with Somers and all 12 volunteer crew members short of her intended target. Their remains were recovered by the locals, desecrated, and have been buried ashore in Tripoli.

Lieutenant Richard Somers, USN. Dates of rank: Midshipman, 30 April 1798; Lieutenant, 21 May 1799. Died 4 September 1804. NH 45024/ “Blowing Up of the Fire Ship Intrepid commanded by Capt. Somers in the Harbor of Tripoli on the night of 4th Sepr. 1804” via NARA.

The four previous USS Somers include a schooner that fought in the War of 1812, a brig famous for hosting the only actual mutiny in U.S. Navy history, a turn-of-the-century German-built torpedo boat, and a Great War-era Clemson-class four-piper.

Schooners USS Somers, USS Ohio, and USS Porcupine Attacked by British Boats Near Fort Erie, August 1814 USN 902811. U.S. Brig Somers (1842-1846) a sketch by a crew member of USS Columbus. NH 97588-KN. Torpedo boat USS Somers (TB-22), 21 February 1900. 19-N-15-11-3. USS Somers (DD-301) Underway at very low speed, circa 1923-1930. NH 98020

Laid down on 27 June 1935 by the Federal Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co., Kearny, New Jersey, our destroyer was later sponsored by two of LT Somers’s descendants and commissioned at the New York Navy Yard on 1 December 1937.

Shakedown and trials complete, she began service with the Atlantic Fleet, soon to be joined by her four sisters.

Navy destroyer USS Somers (DD-381) at anchor in September 1938 NH66340

DD-381 USS Somers

War! (Not always declared…)

Five days after WWII began in Europe, FDR’s tense and problematic Neutrality Patrol kicked off and the Atlantic Fleet got a lot more muscular when it came to its operations just short of war. As part of this, Somers was on patrol in South America with the old light (scout) cruiser and Warship Wednesday alumni USS Omaha (CL-4).

On 6 November 1941 Somers spied an American-flagged ship, the freighter Willmoto out of Philadelphia, and closed to inspect her. When a boarding team came close, the freighter’s crew started abandoning the ship, signaling it was sinking.

Taking quick action Navy went to salvage work and saved the ship, which turned out to be the 5,098-tonner Odenwald owned by the Hamburg-American Line. En route to Germany from then-neutral Japan when she was seized, she was packed with 3,800 tons of desperately needed rubber and tires that never made it to the Third Reich.

Odenwald, NH 123752

Odenwald, NH 123752

USS OMAHA/ODENWALD Incident during World War II. Autographed Portrait of Salvage Detail. American Flag and emblem of the Nazi party/ Swastika flag on ship with Salvage Detail portrait signed by each member of Salvage Detail.NH 123757

USS OMAHA/ODENWALD Incident during World War II. Autographed Portrait of Salvage Detail. American Flag and emblem of the Nazi party/ Swastika flag on the ship with Salvage Detail portrait signed by each member of Salvage Detail.NH 123757

Odenwald was escorted to Puerto Rico and made a big splash when she arrived.

According to the U-boat Archive, Odenwald contained the first German military POW taken by the U.S. though they didn’t know it:

Helmut Ruge was a Kriegsmarine radioman aboard the Graf Spee when that ship was scuttled after the battle of the River Plate. He escaped from internment crossing the Andes on foot to Chile and then on to Japan where he joined the crew of the Odenwald for the return to Germany.

During his initial interrogation both U.S. Army and Navy interrogators failed to discover that Helmut Ruge was not a civilian merchant marine officer but in fact was a German Navy sailor or that he was an escaped internee from the crew of the Graf Spee. Throughout his captivity he was interned with the civilian crews of German merchant ships and not with other German Navy personnel.

Odenwald Incident, November 1941. USS Omaha (CL-4), in right-center, standing by the German blockade runner Odenwald, which has a U.S. boarding party on board, in the South Atlantic, 6 November 1941. Photographed from USS Somers (DD-381). NH 49935

In a 1946 interview with the Navy, Chief Firecontrolman Charles J. Martin, who was on Somers at the time, remembered the incident being more Somers than Omaha.

From the interview:

It was around this time that Somers and her sisters would be refit for a bigger war, landing their Chicago Pianos, .50 cals, and one set of torpedo tubes for a mix of 40mm Bofors and 20mm Oerlikon, and soon be fitted for SC, SG, and Mk 3 radars. For use in fighting U-boats, they picked up six depth charger throwers and racks to accommodate 62 ash cans. A QC sonar set and DAQ direction finder became standard as well.

After the U.S. entered the war post-Pearl Harbor, Somers continued her work in the South Atlantic, an eye peeled for Axis blockade runners. This paid off when, in November 1942, working in tandem with the light cruisers USS Cincinnati (CL-6) and Milwaukee (CL-5) as Task Group 23.2, Somers went to close with a suspicious Norwegian merchant ship SS Skjilbred.

When Somers got close, the ship, later identified as the armed (1x 4-inch gun, two 20mm flak, 4 MGs) German freighter Anneliese Essberger (5,173 tons) with a crew of 62 about a third of which were Kriegsmarine ratings, scuttled herself without a fight.

Anneliese Essberger scuttling, images likely taken from Somers, via the NHHC.

From FCC Martin’s interview, where he confuses Milwaukee with sistership cruiser Memphis (CL-13), which Somers had also worked with:

USS Somers (DD-381). At the Charleston Navy Yard, South Carolina, 16 February 1942. She is wearing Measure 12 (modified) camouflage. NHHC Photograph Collection, NH 98021.

1943 saw Somers dispatched to escort Memphis to Bathurst, Gambia and remained by the old cruiser while she served as flagship for FDR during the Casablanca Conference between Churchill and Roosevelt in January, just weeks after the Anglo-American Torch landings in French North Africa.

The diplomatic mission wrapped up, Somers was tasked with escorting the incomplete (and damaged) French battleship Richelieu and heavy cruiser Montcalm, recently added to De Gaulle’s Free French Navy, from their former Vichy stronghold in Dakar to the U.S. East Coast for repairs and modernization.

French battleship Richelieu arrives in New York with her damaged turret; the uppermost fire control director on the fore tower had to be dismantled for her to pass under the Brooklyn Bridge, in 1943. She had made it across the Atlantic under the escort of Somers.

Weserland

In October-November 1943, three German blockade runners slipped out of Soerabaja and Batavia in the Japanese-owned Dutch East Indies bound for Europe: Rio Grande (6062 GRT, sailed 29 October), Burgenland (7230 GRT, 25 November) and Weserland (6528 GRT, 22 November). They carried such vital supplies as rubber, tin, and wolfram for the German war machine.

None of them made it.

Built as Ermland 1922 as part of the Havilland class for Hamburg-American Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (Hapag), the 449-foot freighter had a capacity for 18 passengers and worked the East Asia service as Warmia with her sisters in a partnership with North German Lloyd. Warmia, at the outbreak of the war in 1939, was in the Japanese port of Kaohsiung, Formosa, and made it back successfully to Germany disguised as the Russian Tbilisi from Vladivostok with her cargo– the first blockade runner from Japan to Europe– and reached Bordeaux in April 1941 after meeting with the raider Hilfskreuzer Orion to take 183 captured mariners and another 56 from the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer while on her trip.

Renamed Weserland and armed with a 10.5 cm gun and four 2 cm AAA guns while in further war service, she was dispatched back to Japan with a load of German war material for the Empire in the fall of 1943 and was bound back from East Asia carrying 35 Italian submariners in addition to their assigned German crew.

Weserland via Labomar

Consolidated PB4Y-1 Liberators of VB-107 out of windswept Wideawake field on Ascension Island– one of the Destroyers for Bases outposts– working on Ultra intercepts, was able to spot Weserland on New Years Day 1944 and clocked her continuously for the next two days.

While she was disguised as the British steamer Glenbank on the way to Montevideo from Cape Town she was sailing northeast, not northwest and, when challenged by a burst of .50 cal from one of the bombers (“Baker 9”) across her bow, was greeted with 20mm flak in return, hitting the aircraft three times.

Nonetheless, VB-107 kept contact and vectored our greyhound, Somers, to the wallowing freighter, which continued to spit fire whenever a plane got close enough, sending another away smoking (BuNo 32065, “Baker 12”) with a fuel leak and a dead No. 4 engine.

Weserland had shot down a British RAF Shorts Sunderland earlier in the war and, while being hunted in the South Atlantic the day before she met with Somers, had damaged at least two of VB-107’s bombers with Baker 12 not able to make it back to Ascension and had to ditch at sea 70 miles out, resulting in the death of all 10 of her crew.

Somers would make it right.

From her deck log for the running engagement, which included a no-doubt tense exchange with the British freighter Wascana Park headed from Durban to Bahia, and a one-sided surface battle with Weserland that saw Somers fire 464 rounds of 5-inch common and 32 illum rounds, ending with picking up 17 officers and 116 men from the blockade runner and delivering them to Recife on the morning of 6 January:

There, Somers landed her EPOWs to march them into captivity.

Survivors of SS Weserland disembark from USS Somers (DD 381) at Recife, Brazil. 80-G-205369

Same as the above, entering the stockade. Most would remain locked up until 1946. 80-G-205359

Heading to Europe

USS Somers (DD-381) underway at sea, circa 1944 camouflage Measure 32, Design 3D. Note that, while many of her class had their Mark 22s replaced by Mark 38 mounts, she still carried her original main armament NH 98022

Following an overhaul stateside, in May 1944, the five members of the Somers class, who thus far had spent the war sinking subs and capturing blockade runners in the South Atlantic, got the call up to the big leagues and headed to England to support Overlord, the Normandy landings.

In early June 1944, Somers and her sister USS Davis (DD-395) formed a fire support group around Channel Convoy EMB-2 off Bristol and screened the ammunition ship USS Nitro (AE-2), which was filled with heavy projectiles to refill battleships working the gunline.

Somers then clocked in on the Dixie Line, screening for E-boats off Omaha Beach on D+1, fired at a low-flying German plane on D+2, was involved in a confusing night action against what was thought to be E-boats on 12 June, screened at one time or another the cruisers HMS Black Prince and USS Tuscaloosa, and escorted HM FDT-13 out of the assault area. She wrapped up her Overlord duties on 17 June.

Not all the class was so lucky. Sister Davis survived a scrap with German E-boats only to hit a mine on 21 June, knocking her out of the war for six months for repair.

Then came reassignment to the Med where she was tasked to support the upcoming Dragoon Landings in Southern France.

Battle of Port Cros

While the Navy sank no less than 67 German U-boats in combat and torpedo/gun barrel brawls between combatants ranging from destroyer to battleship in the Southwest Pacific, particularly in 1942-43, were common, it was much rarer to see an engagement between American and Axis surface ships in the ETO.

With that being said, after supporting the Dragoon Landings in the Sitka assault area off the Iles d’Hyeres on the southern coast of France with Task Force 86 starting on 12 August, Somers got into a mix-up.

While on patrol south of Port Cros and the He du Levant on the early predawn morning (0347) of 15 August as part of Operation Sitro One, Somers obtained an SG radar contact on two ships at 15,680 yards. Maneuvering closer to investigate, a challenge was issued twice at 0440 with the destroyer’s 12-inch searchlight coming to play, and firing soon broke out at a range of 4,750 yards. The next 40 minutes was a swirling dog fight at sea until Somers checked fire, having let lose 270 rounds of 5-inch Common and left flaming hulks dead in the water. Dawn found life rafts full of survivors.

A map of the action from Somers’s report.

The two ships turned out to be the former Italian Gabbiano-class corvette Camoscio (740 tons, 1×3.9 inch, 7x20mm, 2xtt) which was operated as the German UJ6081 and the ex-French Chamois-class aviso/sloop Amiral Senes (900 tons, 2×4.1 inch, 4×13.2mm) which was operated as the German SG21.

An Italian Gabbiano-class corvette top and, French Chamois-class aviso sloop bottom, I cannot find photos of either Camoscio/UJ6081 or Amiral Senes/SG21 as both had a short career.

A boarding party from Somers sent aboard Camoscio/UJ6081 before she sank recovered several items of interest including her naval ensign and papers, which were transferred to the USS Tuscaloosa.

No rest for the weary, Somers was immediately tasked just hours later with providing NGFS to members of the combined American and Canadian “Devil’s Brigade” (1st SSF) as they landed on the island of Port-Cros proper to seize the series of German positions of Gren Reg 917 around Fort de l’Eminence on the Northeast corner of the island. Across six fire missions stretching well into the next morning, our destroyer would pummel the island with 710 rounds of 5-inch Common.

Somers would continue her Dragoon gunfighting by exchanging fire with German coastal batteries in the Bay of Marseilles on 26 August while supporting inshore minesweeping operations. That action saw her try to hit the Germans at Cape Croisette some 19,000 yards away while bracketed with splashes and shrapnel hits from the large Axis guns then make smoke to withdraw with her sweepers out of the impact zone. She was more successful against a position of smaller guns at closer Cape Mejean, forcing it to cease firing. In all, this exchange saw Somers rip out 404 rounds of 5-inch Common inside the span of 15 minutes, totaling no less than 1,384 rounds firing by the destroyer with her limited angle Mark 22 mounts across three actions in 12 days.

Not bad shooting.

However, all operations come to an end and as the Allied pressed inland from the Med, Somers’s role in the area was effectively over. Used as part of the escort for a quartet of cross-Atlantic convoys in late 1944 and early 1945, she arrived back stateside on 12 May 1945.

Used for a brief period on a series of training cruises along the East Coast and the Caribbean, VJ-Day closed out her dance card and she was decommissioned at Charleston on 28 October 1945. Unneeded even in the mothball fleet with hundreds of newer destroyers in commission, Somers was struck from the Navy list on 28 January 1947 and sold for breaking that same May.

Even though she was there for the capture of three blockade runners, made several historical escorts, worked the Dixie Line off Omaha Beach, and melted her guns down during the Dragoon Landings where she sent two German escorts to the bottom single-handed, the swashbuckling Somers only earned two battle stars for her WWII service.

When it comes to the rest of her class, one was lost during the conflict– USS Warrington (DD-383), sunk in a hurricane in 1944. Like Somers, the other three survivors were all sold for scrap by 1947.

Epilogue

Somers has few relics remaining outside of her war diaries and records in the National Archives.

Today, only period maritime art is still around. 

U.S.S. Somers by George Ashley PGA card. You can make out those beautiful long Mark 22 gunhouses. LCCN2003679903

Neptunia has a model of the USS Somers

A federal court in 1947 awarded the members of the boarding party and the salvage crew of the Odenwald $3,000 apiece while all the other crewmen in Omaha and the Somers at the time picked up two months’ pay and allowances. Although it has been reported this was prize money “the last paid by the Navy,” the fact is that the ruling classified it as salvage since the U.S. on 6 November 1941, was not at war with Germany.

In all, the court found that the value of the Odenwald was the sum of $500,000 and the value of her cargo $1,860,000, which was sold in 1941 and (emphasis mine):

“As a matter of law, the United States is entitled as owner of the two men of war involved in this case to collect salvage and the officers and members of the crews of the U.S.S. Omaha and U.S.S. Somers are also entitled to collect salvage. This is not a case of bounty or prize. The libelants are entitled to collect salvage in the aggregate sum of $397,424.06 with costs and expenses.”

As for Weserland, she continues to land lost soldiers in Brazil so to speak, with over 200 large bales of Japanese-marked natural rubber washing up on Brazilian beaches in 2018 attributed to her wreck.

The Navy recycled Somers’s name for a sixth time, issuing it to a new Forest Sherman-class tin can (DD-947) that was built by Bath and commissioned in 1959. One of four Shermans converted to a missile slinger– ASROC matchbox and Mk 13 one-armed bandit– and redesignated DDG-34 in 1967, Somers earned five battle stars during the Vietnam War and remained in the fleet until 1982.

USS Somers (DDG-34) underway, circa in the early 1980s. After a 24-year Cold War career with stints in Vietnam, DD-947/DDG-34 was in mothballs for another 16 years then expended in a SINKEX off Hawaii in 1998. USN 6483131

A Veterans group for past Somers crewmembers exists. 

It is past due for the Navy to have a seventh USS Somers.

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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

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

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

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.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2023: Battlebarge Unimaktica

Posted on by Leave a comment

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

Warship Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2023: Battlebarge Unimaktica

Above we see the 5″/38 DP Mk 12 forward mount of the 311-foot Casco-class high endurance cutter Unimak (WHEC-379) going loud sometime between 1982 and 1985. A WWII Battle of the Atlantic veteran, at the time of the above snapshot she was the last of her class in U.S. maritime service, four decades after joining the fleet, and still had a couple more years to go. The mighty Unimak began her journey 80 years ago this month.

The Barnegats

Back in the days before helicopters, the fleets of the world used seaplanes and floatplanes for search and rescue, scouting, long-distance naval gunfire artillery spotting, and general duties such as running mail and high-value passengers from ship to shore. Large seaplanes such as PBYs and PBMs could be forward deployed to any shallow water calm bay or atoll where a tender would support them.

Originally seaplane tenders were converted destroyers or large transport-type ships, but in 1938 the Navy sought out a purpose-built “small seaplane tender” (AVP) class, the Barnegats, who could support a squadron of flying boats while forward deployed and provide fuel (storage for 80,000 gallons of Avgas), bombs, depth charges, repairs, and general depot tasks for both the planes and their crews while being capable of surviving in a mildly hostile environment.

The United States Navy Barnegat-class seaplane tender USS Timbalier (AVP-54) with two Martin PBM-3D Mariner flying boats from the Pelicans of Patrol Squadron 45 in the late 1948. Timbaler´s quadruple 40mm gun mount on the fantail was added in around 1948. National Archives #80-G-483681

The United States Navy Barnegat-class seaplane tender USS Timbalier (AVP-54) with two Martin PBM-3D Mariner flying boats from the Pelicans of Patrol Squadron 45 in late 1948. Timber’s quadruple 40mm gun mount on the fantail was added around 1948. National Archives #80-G-483681

The 41 planned Barnegats were 2,500-ton, 311-foot long-legged 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.

Barnegat class tender plans

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 out by radar and even depth charges and sonar for busting subs.

All pretty sweet for an auxiliary.

We’ve covered them in the past including the horse-trading and gun-running USS Orca, the former “Queen of the Little White Fleet” USS Duxbury Bay (AVP-38), and the 60-year career of USS Chincoteague (AVP-24), but don’t worry, they have lots of great stories.

Meet Unimak

Laid down on 15 February 1942 at Harbor Island, near Seattle by Associated Shipbuilders (one of at least four of her class constructed at the yard), our tender would carry on the “Bay” naming convention of the rest of the Barnegats by being the first U.S. Navy ship named in honor of the bay on the southern side of windswept volcanic Unimak Island, in the Aleutians.

Unimak Island, Shishaldin Volcano. Part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. Photo by Vernon Barnes, USFWS.

The future USS Unimak was christened at Seattle, Washington, on 29 May 1942. The sponsor was Mrs. H. B. Berry. Photograph from the Bureau of Ships Collection in the U.S. National Archives. NHHC 19-N-58542

USS Unimak (AVP-31) was commissioned on 31 December 1943, CDR Hilfort Craft Owen, USN (USNA 1927), in command.

USS Unimak (AVP-31) At Seattle, Washington, on 31 January 1944 shortly after her delivery. Note her camouflage, two forward 5-inch mounts, and radar fit although it does seem as if some of her gun directors have been airbrushed out. Photograph from the Bureau of Ships Collection in the U.S. National Archives. Catalog #: 19-N-61152

War!

Although built in the Pacific Northwest, it was deemed Unimak was needed in the Atlantic and, following shakedown and running supplies to seaplane bases on the Pacific coast of Central America including Santa Elena Bay, Ecuador, and at Aeolian Bay, Battra Island, in Galapagos group, she crossed the Ditch into the Caribbean in April 1944.

Following a trip carrying men and supplies to Barranquilla, Colombia, she escorted the converted Lykes steamer SS Genevieve Lykes— then USS Valencia (AKA-81) — to Panama, from where she would continue west to take part in the invasion of Okinawa.

Unimak then spent the rest of 1944 at the disposal of Fleet Air Wing Three (FAW-3) out of NAS Coco Solo in the Canal Zone which at the time included PBM-3 Mariner flying boats of VPB-74, VPB-201, VPB-206, VPB-207, VPB-209, and VPB-215 and the PB2Y-3 Coronados of VPB-1 and VPB-15, PV-1 Ventura of VB-141, and the PBY-5A Catalinas of VPB-84.

Notable incidents during this period included three in July 1944– coming to the aid of the torpedoed T2-SE-A2 tanker SS Kittanning (which had been hit by U-539 under Kplt Hans-Jürgen Lauterbach-Emden), the search for lost Navy blimp K-53, and the recovery of a crewman from a lost FAW-3 aircraft. She helped nurse the still-afloat Kittanning into Panama, collected nine crew from K-53 and sank her floating wreckage with 40mm shells, and recovered the severely burned FAW-3 aviator, photographing his remains for further possible identification, and consigning him to the deep with full honors.

After being relieved on duty to FAW-3 by one of her sisters in December 1944, Unimak shipped up the East Coast and spent Christmas at Boston Navy Yard under refit. She would remain there until April 1945 when she crossed the Atlantic to bring back men and equipment from England.

On a second trip post-VE-Day, VPB-103 and VP-105, after flying their PB4Y-1s across the Atlantic from Europe, had their ground staff and cargo sent across aboard the Unimak, sailing from Bristol, England on 4 June 1945 and arriving at Norfolk on the 14th.

Then came Pacific service, Unimak chopped to the authority of FAW-4 out of Adak, Alaska– passing her namesake bay– on 13 September 1945 after a trip to pick up military personnel from the outposts at far-flung Palmyra (22 August) and Johnston Island (25 August) then dropping them at Pearl Harbor (27 August) where she observed VJ-Day. While serving with the frozen flying boats of FAW-4, she called at Massacre Bay on Attu (21 September), the Soviet Pacific Fleet base at Petropavlovsk in Siberia (25 September) and back to U.S. waters at Kodiak (30 September), shuttling aircrews and ground personnel back home.

Wrapping up her post-war clean-ups, Unimak was decommissioned on 26 July 1946. Records do not indicate she was eligible for any battlestars. A shame.

Likewise, her sisters were lucky, and none of the 35 completed (30 as seaplane tenders, four as PT boat tenders, and one as a catapult training ship) were lost in WWII.

Jane’s 1946 listing for the Barnegat class, note Unimak.

White Hull Days

With the Coast Guard losing many of their large pre-war cutters during the conflict (the 10 Lake class 240-foot vessels given as part of the “Destroyers for Bases” deal, the new 327-foot Treasury-class cutter Alexander Hamilton sunk by U-132 while patrolling the Icelandic coast in 1942, and the USCGC Escanaba blown up on convoy duty in 1943), and a new series of Ocean Stations established immediately following the war, the service needed more big hulls. The Lakes were meant to be replaced by the downright roly-poly 255-foot Oswego class gunboat/cutters, but it was thought that the Navy’s excess 311-foot Barnegats could help on Ocean Station duty at least for a while.

Between April 1946 and November 1949, the Navy would transfer no less than 18 surplus Barnegats to its eternally cash-strapped sister service. In USCG parlance, they became known as the “311” class after their overall length, or the Casco-class, after USS Casco (AVP-12), which was loaned to the U.S. Coast Guard on 19 April 1949.

As noted by the USCG Historian’s Office:

The fact that the class was very seaworthy, had good habitability, and long-range made them well suited to ocean-station duty. In fact, an assessment made by the Coast Guard on the suitability of these vessels for Coast Guard service noted:

“The workmanship on the vessel is generally quite superior to that observed on other vessels constructed during the war. The vessel has ample space for stores, living accommodations, ships, offices, and recreational facilities. The main engine system is excellent. The performance of the vessel in moderate to heavy seas is definitely superior to that of any other cutter. This vessel can be operated at higher speed without storm damage than other Coast Guard vessels.” [Memo, CDR W. C. Hogan, Commanding Officer, CGC MC CULLOCH to Commandant “SUBJ; CGC MC CULLOCH, Suitability [sic] for use as CG Cutter.,” 12 February 1947; copy in 311-Class Cutter File, USCG Historian’s Office.]

Once they were accepted into Coast Guard service, a number of changes were made in these ships to prepare them for ocean-station duty. A balloon shelter was added aft; there were spaces devoted to oceanographic equipment and a hydrographic winch as well as an oceanographic winch were added.

They would (eventually) land most of their wartime armament and sensors, retaining just the forward 5″38 DP single, but pick up a Mk 11 Mousetrap ASW device, SQS-1 sonar, and SPS-23 (later SPS-29A/B/D) radar in case they were needed for convoy escorts in a war with the Russians. Some also later gained a pair of Mk 32 Mod 5 ASW torpedo tubes.

In Coast Guard service, they became WAVPs at first– although the service did not typically operate their seaplanes in an expeditionary fashion, starting with hull number 370 to not step on any existing USCG pennant numbers. Also, in most cases, the former Navy name was retained. However, three (USS Wachapreague, USS Biscayne, and USS Willoughby) would inherit the name of traditional past cutters (becoming USCGC McCollough, USCGC Dexter, and USCGC Gresham, respectively).

Thus, the decommissioned USS Unimak (AVP-31) became USCGC Unimak (WAVP-379) on 3 January 1949. Likewise, her 18 now-Casco-class sisters all carried hull numbers ranging between WAVP-370 and WAVP-387.

For the Coast Guard, at the time the name Unimak was very symbolic. The service had lost five men at the Scotch Cap Lighthouse on the island to a tsunami in 1946 when a freak 130-foot wave struck the lighthouse. Scotch Cap had been the location of the first manned U.S. lighthouse along the Bering Sea in 1903.

Scotch Cap Lighthouse on Unimak Island. It was wiped out by a Tsunami, on April 1, 1946, killing 5 USCG members

“From ocean stations to drug busts, the 311-foot ships were among the most popular large cutters in the Coast Guard,” wrote Dr. Robert L. Scheina, the former USCG Historian in 1990. “Their reputation as fine sea boats was probably exceeded only by the 327-foot cutters.”

USCGC Unimak (WHEC-379). Note her installed Mousetrap ASW device behind her forward mount, open and ready to go. Courtesy of the Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale Museum

Speaking of ocean stations, Unimak was very busy on these, stationed out of Boston from January 1949 to September 1956, she served during this period twice each on OS Easy, OS Delta, and OS Coca in the North Atlantic.

Coast Guardsmen work on breaking the ice that coats the deck of USCG Unimak in February 1955, while on Ocean Station Coca in the North Atlantic

Then came a shift to New Jersey.

Unimak, Coast Guard Photo Number 5771, July 1957. [CDR William Wilson provided the following information regarding the cutter and the photo: “It was taken in July 1957 when she was homeported in Cape May. Where it was taken, I cannot remember, possibly off Wildwood, NJ as we did a lot of day ops just offshore. FYI, I am the sailor standing alone just forward of the three men on the starboard side of the 5″-38. I was in charge of the anchor detail when taken. I was a DC-2 at the time.”

Shifting to Cape May, New Jersey– home of the USCG’s basic training center– from September 1956 until August 1972, during this period Unimak often embarked young enlistees and strikers on training cruises ranging from Brazil and Nova Scotia. While at sea on these, the school ship was still very much a working cutter.

As noted by the USCG Historian, her rescues while working out of Cape May included:

  • 7 March 1967: rescued six Cuban refugees in the Yucatan Channel.
  • 10 March 1967: rescued survivors from F/V Bunkie III in Florida waters.
  • 15 March 1967: rescued 12 Cuban refugees who were stranded on an island.
  • 29 May 1969: towed the disabled F/V Sirocco 35 miles east of Fort Pierce, FL, to safety.
  • 3 April 1970: stood by the grounded M/V Vassiliki near Mayaguana Island until a commercial tug arrived.

Unimak and her kind were largely redesignated as high endurance cutters (with Unimak becoming WHEC-379) on 1 May 1966. Unimak was then re-rated to a training cutter (WTR-379 in 1969).

While most of her sisters in Coast Guard service were soon sent to Vietnam waters (with seven transferred to the South Vietnam Navy in 1972) she was reassigned from Cape May on 7 August 1972 to Reserve Training Center Yorktown, Virginia, to serve as a school ship for Coast Guard reservists.

Unimak at sea, Sept 1970

Guantanamo 1971. 311-foot Casco class cutter likely USCGC Unimak (although I’m not sure about the aft mast radar fit), passing Bibb

In this, she was the first cutter to take female officer candidates to sea.

Original caption: “9 May 1973 Boston — COMING INTO PORT aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Unimak are five women officer candidates training for the first time alongside their male counterparts. The stopover in Boston is part of a two-week training cruise designed to give students at the Coast Guard Officer Candidate School in Yorktown, Virginia, a taste of life at sea. Shown are Officer Candidates (from left to right) Lynn W. Smith, Sue E. Jennings, Bonnijill McGhee, Sheila E. Denison, and Margaret R. Riley.” USCG photo 210429-G-G0000

By early 1973, all 18 of the Cascos save for two– including Unimak— had been either returned to the Navy or given to the doomed Saigon regime.

Unimak and sistership Gresham (ex-USS Willoughby) in the 1973 Jane’s. At this point, Gresham was an unarmed weather ship (WAGW) while Unimak was still a WTR assigned to Yorktown.

After Gresham was formally decommissioned on 25 April 1973 and sold for scrap to a Dutch breaker that fall, Unimak was the last of her type in U.S. service.

Finally, her number came up and Unimak was decommissioned on 29 May 1975 and laid up at the USCG Yard at Curtis Bay, Maryland.

However, after just 28 months in mothballs, the operational needs to stem the time of Cuban refugees and drugs heading across the Caribbean left the Coast Guard pressing everything from old icebreakers to tugboats in service on the southern line.

This left Unimak ready for her second recommissioning, on 22 August 1977, returning once again as a high endurance cutter (WHEC-379).

Unimak 311 Casco/Barnegat WHEC 379, wearing her glad rags

While her Mousetrap had long been removed, her 5-incher still worked. Added to this were six mounts for M2 .50 cal Brownings, and two M29 81mm mortars on the 01 deck forward of the bridge for use in firing illumination rounds.

USCGC UNIMAK somewhere in the York River 1979

USCG Base Boston UNIMAK and the larger 378-foot USCGC CHASE Circa 1979

USCGC 379 UNIMAK Cutter

UNIMAK at RTC Yorktown Circa 1980

Unimak, WHEC-379 8 June 1987, USCG Historians Office

Stationed out of New Bedford, Massachusetts, it was intended that she be used for fisheries patrol, freeing up more modern cutters for the trip down to Florida.

However, she did make her LE patrols down to the Straits, scoring some notable counter-drug busts:

  • 6 October 1980: seized M/V Janeth 340 miles southeast of Miami carrying 500 bales of marijuana.
  • 14 October 1980: seized P/C Rescue carrying 500 bales of marijuana and P/C Snail with two tons of marijuana in the Gulf of Mexico.
  • 17 October 1980: seized M/V Amalaka southwest of Key West with 1,000 bales of marijuana.
  • 19 October 1980: seized F/V Wright’s Pride southwest of Key West, carrying 30 tons of marijuana.
  • March 1981: intercepted M/V Mayo with 40 tons of marijuana.
  • 30 November 1984: seized the sailboat Lola 100 miles north of Barranquilla carrying 1.5 tons of marijuana.
  • 2 November 1985: seized tugboat Zeus 3 and a barge 200 miles south of the Dominican Republic carrying 40 tons of marijuana.

And of course, she came to more rescues in her second stint with the Coast Guard:

  • 9 December 1982: towed the disabled F/V Sacred Heart away from Daid Banks, 45 miles east of Cape Cod, in 30-foot seas. As noted by QMCM Ronald D. Meyer, USGC, ret: “It was horrific, seas over 30 feet, constantly, wind extremely strong. Ever seen a 300-foot ship tossed like a play toy until the steel hull cracks the ladders outside bend. I thought we were ALL going to die, no exaggeration. I was the one guy on board who knew for real because I knew where we were, and it was what I thought. Truth is the Captain struggled with the same thought as well. Only a handful of men were even capable of doing their jobs, which were critically needed. A handful of over 100 men were even able to function.”
  • 27/28 February 1983: she towed the dismasted Wandering Star to Mathew Town, Great Iguana.
  • 3 March 1983: towed the disabled M/V Yadrina to Mathew Town.

During her long USCG service, Unimak was nicknamed at one time or another:

“The Lone Ranger”; “Battlebarge Unimaktica”; “Unibarge”; “Unisub”; “RONC The Long Ranger”; “Uni-rust”; “Fast Attack Missile Sponge” (coined from the numerous missile hit drills from REFTRE in Gtmo); “New Bedford’s Virgin Girl” (based on her call sign NBVG); “Runamuck”; and the “Big Mac Attack.”

This was largely due to the practice of Coast Guard cutters that were assigned to or visited Nantucket playing the “Ring Game” with the famed Nantucket Angler’s Club for “ownership” of the cutter. Should the skipper lose, the NAC becomes the cutter’s “owner,” and a RONC (“Republic of Nantucket Cutter”) moniker is assigned. Key West has a similar and much better-publicized relationship with the Coast Guard and the whole Conch Republic thing.

Finally, with the new 270-foot Bear class cutters entering service, the Coast Guard no longer needed the 45-year-old Unimak, and she was decommissioned for the third and final time on 29 April 1988. Returned to the U.S. Navy for disposal, she was eventually stripped and sunk for use as a reef off the Virginia coast.

She had been commanded by three Navy officers in WWII and 23 Coast Guard officers between 1949-75 and 1977-88.

Epilogue

I cannot find any details about the location of the Unimak reef.

A veteran’s group was online between 2005 and 2018 but has since gone dormant. Some reunion videos and pictures are still on YT.

Unimak’s Coast Guard and Navy deck logs are in the National Archives as are her plans. 

Neither service has commissioned a second Unimak.

There are some period postcards that remain in circulation of her service, showing her shifting Coast Guard livery over the years. 

When it comes to the Barnegat class, they have all gone on to the breakers or been reefed with the final class member afloat, ex-Chincoteague (AVP-24/WHEC-375)/Ly Thuong Kiet (HQ-16)/Andres Bonifacio (PF-7) scrapped in the Philippines in 2003. None remain above water.

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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

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

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

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.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Scorpion vs Trawler

Posted on by Leave a comment

In news out of Chile, the country’s very professional (if somewhat outdated) navy has been keeping tabs on a foreign fishing fleet of 8 large trawlers crossing through the Juan Fernández Archipelago National Park and then into the Strait of Magellan to make sure they don’t illegally drop nets or lines in Chile’s EEZ.

While aerial observation occurred– conducted by AS365 Dauphin 2s, at least one submarine kept an eye on the Chinese fishing fleet as well, a great example of how modern sea power is meshing with roaming international IUU concerns.

These images were released by the Chilean Navy on 16 December, as part of Operación de Fiscalización Pesquera Oceánica (OFPO) (and you know how much of a sucker I am for periscope shots!):

The submarine looks to be a French-made Scorpène-class SSK, two of which — Carrera (SS-22) and O’Higgins (SS-23)— were delivered in 2005-06. The country’s fleet also runs an older pair of German HDW-made Type 209-1400s– Thomson (SS-20) and Simpson (SS-21)— which were delivered in the early 1980s during tensions with Argentina and today serve more of a training role.

While the Chileans aren’t saying, odds are the above images show Carrera, who just returned on 22 December to her homeport at Talcahuano following four months in San Diego as an OPFOR in the 2023 Diesel-Electric Submarine Initiative (DESI) and would have been transiting the area just in time to give a good flex. DESI 2023 saw the Colombian Navy submarine ARC Pijao’s deployment (the country’s 13th DESI) at Naval Station Mayport, Florida for training with Atlantic forces while Carrera did the same on the West Coast under the control of Submarine Squadron 11. This was Chile’s 10th DESI deployment since the program was established in 2001.

Submarine “Carrera” returned to Chile after participating in the DESI 2023 exercise (PHOTO: Chilean Navy)

Chile has been in the submarine biz since 1917.

For reference, before their current boats, the Chileans ran a pair of British-built Oberon-class submarines (O’Brien and Hyatt) for three decades.

Going even further back, Santiago picked up two non-GUPPY Snorkel conversion Balao-class boats– USS Spot (SS-413)/Simpson and USS Springer (SS-414)/Thomson in 1962.

They began their submarine arm with a six-pack of American-built British Holland 602/H-class-class boats put into service starting in 1917 as the Guacolda-class followed by three Odin class boats (Almirante Simpson, Capitan O’Brien, Capitan Thompson) in 1928.

Chile Guacolda class H-class submarines Holland 602, via Jane’s 1946

Warship Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2023: Old Lovely

Posted on by 3 comments

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

Warship Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2023: Old Lovely

Courtesy of William H. Davis, 1976. Naval History and Heritage Command Catalog #: NH 84879

Above we see the 542-class tank landing ship USS Meeker County (LST-980) arriving at San Diego, California, on 6 September 1970, capping a four-year stint in Vietnam where she, just a few months before, had survived an attempted mining by a VC dive team. Note that her guns– including WWII-era Bofors– are covered and she is carrying much topside cargo to include vehicles and cranes.

The Normandy veteran was laid down 80 years ago this month, saw lots of service in a few different wars, and was among the very last of her class in U.S. Naval service.

The 542s

A revolutionary concept that, by and large, went a long way to win WWII (and later turn the tables in Korea) was the LST. Designed to beach their bows at the surf line and pull themselves back off via a combination of rear anchor winching and reverse prop work, they were big and slow, earning them the invariable nicknames of “Large Slow Target” or “Last Ship (to) Tokyo.”

While a few early designs were built by the British (the Maracaibo and Boxer classes) it wasn’t until the Royal Navy placed a wish list with the U.S. for 200 LST (2) type vessels that the Americans got into the landing tank ship design in a big way.

This general 1,800-ton, 327-foot vessel, powered (eventually) by two easily maintained GM EMD locomotive diesels, was ultimately built in a whopping 1,052 examples between 1942 and 1945. They could carry around 120 troops, which could be landed by as many as a half-dozen davit-carried Higgins boats, but their main claim to fame was in being able to tote almost 1,500 tons of cargo and vehicles on their tank deck for landing ashore.

Built across three different subclasses (390 LST-1 type, 51 LST-491 type, and 611 LST-542) in nine different yards spread across the country– including five “cornfield shipyards” in the Midwest, then shipped via river to the coast– our humble “gator” was of the latter type.

The 542s, while using the same general hull and engineering plant, were equipped with an enclosed navigation bridge, a large 4,000 gal per day saltwater distilling plant, and a heavier armament (1 3″/50 DP open mount, 2 twin 40mm Bofors w/Mk.51 directors, 4 single Bofors, and 12 20mm Oerlikon) than previous members of the class. This, however, dropped their maximum cargo load from 2,100 tons as carried by previous sisters, down to “only” 1,900.

LST-542 type, cutaway model. Note the extensive 40mm and 20mm gun tubs, six LCVPs in davits, and tank deck. The 542s and some late 491s used a simple ramp rather than an elevator to move vehicles from the topside to the tank deck and vice versa. NMUSN-4950

The first to enter service, LST-542, was commissioned on 29 February 1944, while the last completed was LST-1152, commissioned on 30 June 1945. Now that is production, baby!

Meet LST-980

Laid down on 9 December 1943, at Boston Navy Yard, LST-980 was constructed in just 79 days to be commissioned on 26 February 1944. T

hen came two months of shakedown and post-delivery refits before she left, packed with equipment, bound for England where “the big show” was soon to start.

Touring Beachside France

After leaving Southend on the afternoon of 5 June, on D-Day, LST-980, along with sisters LST-543, 981, 982, and 983, made up Flotilla 17, Group 52, Division 103, under CDR William J. Whiteside as commodore.

The group brought their loads, elements of the British Army, successfully to Juno Beach in the afternoon of the 6th.

Part of L Force, they carried the British 7 Armoured Division and 51 Division along with parts of both I Corps and XXX Corps.

Mitchell Jamieson, “Morning of D-Day from LST” NHHC 88-193-hi

LST in Channel Convoy June 1944 Drawing, Ink and Wash on Paper; by Mitchell Jamieson; 1944; Framed Dimensions 30H X 25W Accession #88-193-HK

After reloading, on 7 June, while carrying elements of the 1st British Army Corps to the No. 102 Beach area on Sword Beach, LST-980 was the subject of several low-level German air attacks, one of which hit the gator with two small (125 pound) (SC50?) bombs, neither of which seemed to have had enough time/distance to arm. The second passed through the main deck and continued into the water. The first, however, likewise passed through the main deck but came to rest in a truck parked on the tank deck.

This problem was carefully addressed by four engineers (LT JHB Monday, SGT H. Charnley, CPL J. McAninly, LCPL F. Crick) of 1 Electrical & Mechanical Section, 282 General Transport Company, who gingerly picked it up, placed it on a field stretcher, carried it to the opened bow doors, and deep-sixed it. While DANFS reports one killed in this incident, other sources note there were no personnel casualties and only minor damage.

Several of her sisters would not be as lucky.

LST-376 was sunk by German E-boats off Normandy on 9 June 1944, LST-499, LST-496, and LST-523 were lost to German mines between 8 June and 19 June; and LST-921 was torpedoed by U-764 on 14 August.

Speaking of August, look at this report from LST-980 filed in September, covering her continued operations on the England to France cross-channel run. Among the more interesting spots are narrowly avoiding German coastal batteries on occupied Gurnsey Island while loaded with artillery shells, shipping 167 U.S. Army vehicles (including 25 tanks and two batteries of field artillery) and 521 soldiers to the Continent while returning to England with 1,106 captured German personnel (guarded at a ratio of 200 EPOWs to 9 MPs) including 30 female nurses.

By February 1945, with the prospect of further amphibious landings in the European Theatre unlikely, LST-980 was sent back to the East Coast to serve as a training ship at Little Creek for troops headed to the Pacific for the ongoing push on Tokyo and the Navy/Coast Guardsmen that would carry them. Our gator was there on VE-Day and VJ-Day.

Naval Gun Factory, Navy Day, October 27 October 1945. Visitors are shown to the U.S. Navy ships at the waterfront. Shown right to left: USS Meeker County (LST 980); USS Dyson (DD 572); USS Claxton (DD 571); USS Converse (DD 509); and USS Charles Ausburne (DD 570). Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph, Navy Subject Files, WNY Box 7, Folder 1.

In April 1949, just three weeks after NATO was formed, LST-980 sailed for a six-month stint with the 6th Fleet in the Med at a time when Europe was still very much in a post-war recovery, with the Cold War dawning.

Records indicate her crew was eligible for a battle star for the Invasion of Normandy from 6 June to 25 June 1944 and later a Navy Occupation Medal for service in Europe from 19 May to 19 September 1949.

When it came to her sisters, no less than 41 were lost during the conflict including six in the so-called West Loch Disaster, two at Slapton Sands to German E-boats during Exercise Tiger, seven to Japanese aircraft and kamikaze, six to Japanese and German submarines, and one (LST-282) to a German glider bomb

Post-war service

In the period immediately following VJ-Day, the Navy rapidly shed their huge LST fleet, giving ships away to allies, selling others on the commercial market (they proved a hit for ferry conversions, as coasters in remote areas, and use in the logging industry), and laying up most of the remainder. More than 100 vessels that were still under contract but not completed were canceled. 

By August 1946, only 480 of the 1,011 survivors were still in some sort of active U.S. Navy service with many of those slated for conversion, mothballs, or disposal.

Many had been reclassified to auxiliary roles as diverse as PT-boat tenders (AGP), repair ships (ARL), battle damage repair ships (ARB), self-propelled barracks ships (APB), cargo ships (AKS), electronic parts supply ships (AG), and salvage craft tenders (ARST). Others, like LST-822, were transferred to the civilian mariner-run Military Sea Transportation Service and traded their USS for USNS. Heck, some had even served during the war as mini-aircraft carriers, toting Army Grasshoppers.

Jane’s 1946 listing, covering a thumbnail of the U.S. Navy’s LST classes.

However, LST-980 remained on active service through the Korean conflict, where she was semi-exiled to support the Army and Air Force’s polar basing efforts in Greenland, carrying supplies through the barely thawed Baffin Bay in the summers of 1951, 1952, and 1953, earning a trifecta of Blue Noses for her crew.

USS LST-980 working her way through the Baffin Bay icepack en route to U.S. Air Force Base Thule, Greenland in the summer of 1953. USS LST-980 sailed in August from NAB Little Creek, VA. to Thule Air Force Base, Greenland. LST-980’s load was construction equipment. The ship moved through the icepack behind the Icebreaker USS Northwind (AGB-5). Despite careful sounding of the landing route to the beach at Thule, LST-980 settled on a huge underwater boulder puncturing two of the ship’s fuel tanks and disabling two of the three ship’s generators. After unloading, divers from the seagoing tug in our company patched the punctures and LST-980 proceeded back to Portsmouth, VA. at reduced speed, in the company of the tug. At Portsmouth, the ship was hauled out onto a marine railway for repairs. LST-980 was not able to pump out the damaged fuel tanks, consequently, thousands of gallons of diesel fuel drained into the James River. Repairs were made and LST-980 was back in the fleet in a couple of months. Photo from Alvin Taub, Engineering Officer USS LST-980, via Navsource.

As something of a reward, LST-980 would spend the winters during the same period schlepping Marines around the sunny Caribbean on exercises, typically out of Gtmo and Vieques/Rosy Roads.

LST-980 photographed circa 1950s. Courtesy of William H. Davis, 1976 NH 84878

In July 1955, the 158 LSTs remaining on the Naval List (including the two post-WWII era LST-1153 class and the 54 Korean War-era LST 1156 class vessels) were given county names to go with the hull numbers. Thus, our LST-980 became USS Meeker County, the only ship named in honor of the rural south-central Minnesota county with Litchfield as its seat.

By this time, with over a decade of good service on her hull and most of her class either under a different flag or rusting away in mothballs, the ax came for our girl.

On 16 December 1955, the newly named Meeker County was decommissioned and placed in reserve status, first in Green Cove Springs, Florida, and then in Philly.

Reactivation, and headed to China Beach

With the problems in Southeast Asia suddenly coming to a head in 1965, and the Marines of Battalion Landing Team 3/9 wading ashore at Red Beach Two, north of Da Nang, on 8 March, the Navy suddenly found itself needing more gators.

“Coming Ashore: Marines of the 3rd Battalion, 9th Marines [BLT 3/9] wade ashore from landing craft at Red Beach 2, just north of Da Nang on March 8, 1965.” From the Jonathan F. Abel Collection (COLL/3611) at the Archives Branch, Marine Corps History Division

Several mothballed LSTs were inspected and those found to be in better condition were modernized and reactivated for West Pac service.

The retrofit saw modern (ish) radars and commo gear installed on a new mast to the rear of the wheelhouse, the four forward Higgins boat davits removed while two aft were retained for 36-foot LCVPs, the armament reduced, and a helicopter deck installed on the top deck between Frames 16 and 26.

Observed the changes as shown on sister USS Hamilton County (LST-802) click to big up:

Meeker County was towed to Baltimore, modernized, and recommissioned on 23 September 1966.

A much cleaner Meeker County. Note the helicopter pad and large rear mast but retained 40mm and 20mm guns

Four months later she shipped out for Guam, her official “home port” although she would be bound for semi-permanent service with Landing Ship Squadron Three in Danang. LSRON3 was composed of a dozen modernized WWII LSTs (LST-344, 509, 525, 603, 819, 839, 901, 980, 1077, 1082, 1123, and 1150).

Meeker County, nicknamed at this point “Old Lovely” by her crew, would spend most of the next four years deployed to the South Vietnam littoral, with the gaps between the below periods generally seeing the LST in Subic Bay, Guam, Hong Kong, or Pearl Harbor undergoing maintenance, rotating crewmembers, or getting some much-needed R&R. 

In country: 

  • April-June; September-December 1967
  • February-May; June-October, and December 1968 (including the Tet Offensive)
  • January; March-April 1969
  • January-March, June-July 1970

Beautiful color footage exists from this period. 

Check out this great two-pager, “Shuttle Run,” covering Meeker County‘s role in moving the Army’s 5th Cavalry Division from Danang to Cua Viet in the I Corps area of Vietnam, just a hair south of the DMZ, by JOC Dick Benjamin in the July 1968 issue of All Hands.

Two snippets:

These are not milk runs. Meeker County and her sister LSTs are often shelled by enemy mortar and artillery fire.

And, as the LST was almost done unloading:

Just a few trailers were left to unload when mortar rounds started coming in, hitting 200 yards from the ship. Before the enemy could correct their range, the unloading was completed and LT [Frank Elwood] Clark backed the ship away. As Meeker County started toward the narrow inlet, heavier artillery rounds began hitting the ramp. More rounds followed the ship as she made her way to the open sea; each succeeding round hit where the ship had been only a few seconds before.

Besides shells and mortar bombs, American ships were subject to repeated attacks by swimmers carrying improvised limpet mines.

These crack Binh chủng Đặc công sappers mounted at least 88 successful attacks against shipping in Vietnamese waters between January 1962 and June 1969 which killed more than 210 personnel and wounded 325. The worst of these was on a gator, USS Westchester County (LST-1167), which resulted in the U.S. Navy’s greatest single-incident combat loss of life during the entire Vietnam War: 25 killed and 27 wounded.

At a camp in the jungle, Viet Cong (VC) swimmer sappers raise their right arms in salute at the completion of a briefing for a demolition attack on a bridge in the province. The original photograph was captured from the VC. AWM P01003.010

To counter such attacks, ships inshore would mount extensive topside sentries with grenades and rifles and occasionally spin up their props to scare away sneaky swimmers.

Note this passage from Meeker’s deck log:

Meeker, in a repeat of her Normandy bombing, was once again lucky when the sappers came paddling through.

At 0220 on 28 June 1970, while berthed at the De Long Pier in Vung Tau with 14 feet of muddy water under her keel, a sentry on Meeker County spotted a nylon line secured to the pier, and soon after a swimmer was spotted in the area.

Coming to her assistance were EOD divers of the Royal Australian Navy’s Clearance Diving Team 3. LT Ross Blue, Petty Officer John Kershler, and Able Seaman Gerald Kingston.

As described by the Australian War Memorial:

Kershler dove into the water to discover explosives wrapped in black plastic, and four fishing floats secured to the nylon line.

The bundle was drawn clear of the ship and Blue towed it away using a small craft, so it didn’t touch the bottom of the harbour. It was secured to an empty barge a kilometer from the Meeker County and away from the main shipping channel. The plan was to move it to a nearby mud bank at high tide to inspect it more closely.

A few hours before that could occur, the package exploded, shooting water ten metres into the air. Fortunately, no one was near the package at the time, and there were no injuries or damage from the blast.

Meeker County’s deck log for the day:

CDT 3 7th Team 1970: Rear: ABCD Jock Kingston, LSCD John Aldenhoven, (Inset ABCD Bob Wojcik, Killed 21 June 1970). Front: CPOCD Dollar, LT Ross Blue, and POCD John Kershler. Photo via the Military Operations Analysis Team (MOAT) at the University of New South Wales (Canberra)/AWM P01620.003

All told, Meeker County would earn 10 battle stars, the Meritorious Unit Commendation, and the Navy Unit Commendation for Vietnam service, adding to her WWII battle star from Normandy and her Occupation Medal.

Meeker County was decommissioned, in December 1970, at Bremerton and laid up there. She joined 15 remaining WWII LSTs in U.S. service in mothballs while the last of the type on active duty, USS Pitkin County (LST-1082), was decommissioned the following September.

The 1973 Jane’s listing for what was left of the class, all of which were laid up.

By 1975, with Saigon fallen, the Navy moved to dispose of the last of its WWII LSTs, and they were stricken from the Naval Register. The hulls would be transferred overseas, some scrapped, and others sold on the commercial market. The last to go was USS Duval County (LST-758), sold by MARAD in 1981.

Our Meeker County struck on April Fool’s Day 1975, was sold that December to Max Rouse & Sons, Beverly Hills, and soon was resold to fly a Singapore flag as MV LST 3. By 1978, she was operated by a Panama-owned Greek-flagged firm as MV Petrola 143 (IMO 7629893). Out of service by 1996, she was sold to a breaker in Turkey.

Epilogue

When it comes to enduring relics of our humble LST, little remains.

Some of her deck logs have been digitized in the National Archives.

The Admiral Benson Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2818 in Litchfield, Minnesota is a dedicated Navy Club that remembers USS Meeker County.

Further, the LST Memorial has several photos of LST-980 and her crew digitized and preserved. 

One curious relic, the simple handmade snorkel that was left behind by Viet Cong saboteurs who tried to blow up Meeker County in 1970 was recovered by the Australian divers of CDT3 and is cataloged as part of the AWM’s collection.

“Improvised snorkel with plastic tube connected to a rubber mouthpiece, made from a tyre. Tied around the tube is a piece of khaki green lanyard, to be worn around the neck. A piece of roughly woven string is also attached to the snorkel. It divides at the other end into two piece of string, to which are attached two small balls for insertion in the nose while in use.” AWM RELAWM40821

As for the Ozzies of CDT 3, in the four years (February 1967 – May 1971) they were in Vietnam, they performed over 7,000 ship inspections and safely removed no less than 78 devices from allied hulls.

When it comes to Meeker County’s vast collection of over 1,000 sisters and near-sisters, 11 remain in some sort of service including Mexico, Taiwan, Vietnam, and the Philippines– where one, BRP Sierra Madre (LT-57), ex USS Harnett County (LST-821/AGP-281)/RVNS My Tho (HQ-800,) is famously grounded as an outpost on Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratly Islands.

Meanwhile, two WWII LSTs, none 542 types, are preserved as museum ships in the States. They are USS LST-325 in Evansville, Indiana, and LST-393 in Muskegon, Michigan. Please visit them if you have a chance.

And please visit and join the United States LST Association, a group that remembers them all.

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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

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

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

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.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2023: An Everlasting Pansarbat

Posted on by One comment

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

Warship Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2023: An Everlasting Pansarbat

Swedish Marinmuseum photo D 15043

Above we see the Aran-class pansarskepp HSvMS Manligheten of the Royal Swedish Navy as she pokes around Europe in the summer of 1937 while on a midshipman’s cruise. Note her distinctive funnel flash and forward superstructure arrangement which differentiated the “coastal battleship” from her three sisters.

She is 34 years young in the above image– launched some 120 years ago this month in fact– but still looks clean and neat. It should come as no surprise that Manligheten would continue to be afloat and in use in one form or another until just a few years ago.

The Aran class

Just after Swedish-born engineer John Ericsson had introduced the ironclad turret warship in 1862 when he lent his genius to the USS Monitor, his homeland soon ordered two classes of iron-hulled coastal monitors to counter Baltic Sea rival, Imperial Russia, as the Tsar was upgrading his own fleet with American-designed monitors. However, by the 1880s, those aforementioned vessels were almost considered quaint by rapidly evolving naval technology.

To reboot their fleet from the first-generation ironclads to steel warships, the Swedes in 1883 placed an order for the 3,050-ton, 248-foot HSvMS Svea for 1.24 million kron, followed by her two half-sisters, HSvMS Göta and HSvMS Thule. Carrying large (10-inch) main guns and swathed in as much as 10 inches of armor plate, they were rightly considered something of a coastal battleship or slow protected cruiser for their period.

This pansarbarten/pansarskepp concept was well-liked by the Swedes, who ordered another three-ship class, the Oden-class pansarskepp-type coastal defense ships (3445 tons, 2-10 inch guns, 9.5 inches armor, 16.5 knots) which were completed in 1899 and the one-off HSvMS Dristigheten (Audacity) which was basically an improved Oden with better armament.

Then, with lessons learned around the world that came from the Spanish-American War, the four-ship Äran class was ordered.

Made of all riveted steel in a 287-foot hull with 11 watertight sections, they were the heaviest Swedish warships at the time of their construction, hitting the water at 3,700 tons due to a belt that ran as thick as 7 inches of Krupp armor (as opposed to Harvey nickel-steel in the previous ships). Able to float in just 16 feet of water at a maximum load, they could hug the shoreline where larger battlewagons could not tread and still make 17 knots on an engineering suite that included 8 coal-fired Yarrow boilers and two Motala 3-cylinder triple-expanding steam engines.

The four members of the class were Äran/Eran/Aeran (Honor), Wasa/Vasa (in honor of several former Swedish ships of the line), Tapperheten (Bravery), and Manligheten (Manhood). To speed up construction as tensions were high with Norway at the time, they were completed at three different domestic yards– Lindholmen shipyard in Gothenburg (Äran), Finnboda shipyard in Stockholm (Wasa), and Kockum’s Mekaniska Verkstad in Malmö (Tapperheten and Manligheten). Approved in the Riksdag in 1899 (first three) and 1901 (Manligheten), all had entered service by 1904.

Launching of the Swedish coastal defense ship Wasa at Finnboda in 1901

Navy Yard Karlskrona with Pansarskepp Manligheten, Tapperheten, Wasa

While the earlier Sveas carried two Armstrong 1880s BL 10-inch guns, and the Odens two French-made 8.3″/42cal Canet m/94A guns, these new Äran-class pansarbarten would be equipped with a longer locally made 8.2″/45 m/98 gun produced by Bofors Gallspanz and trialed on Dristigheten. As noted by the 1914 Janes, these Swedish 8.2s could fire a 275-pound AP shell on a blend of special Bofors-made nitro-compound that was capable of penetrating 9.5 inches of armor at 3,000 yards. The maximum range was 11,000 yards due to the limited 12-degree elevation limits on the turret. The rate of fire was about one round per minute.

Here, the bow mount on Manligheten shows off one of her 8.2″/45 m/98s. The 21 cm kanon M/98 was made by Bofors and they were the standard main battery for Dristigheten, the four Ärans, and the circa 1905 one-off HSwMS Oscar II. Fo62130A

The secondary battery was another Swedish naval favorite, the 15,2 cm kanon (6″/45) m/98. Introduced in 1898 on Dristigheten, they would be used on the Ärans as well as the large minesweeper/training ship HSwMS Älvsnabben (M01). The Ärans would carry six of these guns in armored single-mount turrets, divided three on each broadside– a departure from casemated secondaries in previous Swedish pansarbarten. They were capable of firing a 101-pound shell to 10,000 yards at a rate of up to 7 shots per minute.

Dragning av en 15 cm kanon Manligheten Fo199419

The tertiary battery was 10 57mm/48 cal kanon m/89 guns. Made domestically by Finspongs bruk under license by Maxim-Nordenfeldt, these were QF guns that could fire 6-pounder shells out to 6,000 yards as fast as 35 rounds per minute as long as the passers and hoists could keep up. These were typically described as anti-torpedo boat guns in their era.

Manligheten Pansarskepp salute with 57mm ssk M89 mount. Note the 4,800-ton pansarkryssare or armored cruiser, HSvMS Fylgia in the background. Fo192889

Besides the mounted gun armament, the class carried a pair of m/1899 18-inch Armstrong torpedo tubes below the waterline for a dozen Whitehead m/93 and m/03 torpedoes while each of their two embarked 28-foot steam sloops could carry spar torpedoes and a one-pounder 37mm m/98B gun.

The Aran class, 1914 Jane’s

How the Arans stacked up against the rest of Sweden’s coastal battlewagons, via the 1915 Brassy’s.

Meet Manligheten

Laid down at Kockum’s behind her sister Tapperheten, Manligheten was launched on 1 December 1903. Her honorable name had been used by the Swedish Navy by a circa 1785 64-gun ship-of-the-line that had fought in Gustav III’s Russian war in 1788-80– blockading Viborg– as well as in the naval battles during the Finnish War of 1808–1809 and was only disposed of in 1864.

Manligheten was commissioned on 3 December 1904, the last of her class to join the fleet. A happy ship, she, along with her three sisters, formed the 1st Pansarbåtsdivisionen in 1905.

Pansarbåtseskader in Karlskrona i July 1906 showing Oden, Aran, Thule, Manligheten, Gota, Niord, and Svea. D 8868

Pansarbåten Manligheten år 1907 D 1391

She sailed in the summer of 1912, along with the cruiser Fylgia and the larger pansarbat Oscar II to bring King Gustav V and his family to Pitkepaasi outside Viborg for a meeting with the Tsar of Russia and his family to Russia.

HSvMS Fylgia, Manligheten, and HSvMS Oscar II in the 1912 painting by Johanson Arvid now in the Sjöhistoriska museet collection (Accession O 10597) celebrating the Swedish squadron’s return to Stockholm after the visit to Russia outside Viborg that summer. Salutes are being fired and King Gustav V and Queen Victoria are disembarking from a steam sloop.

War!

The Great War, with Sweden’s strictly enforced armed neutrality (Neutralitesvakten), saw the Arans were slightly modified in 1916, trading out a couple of their low-angle 57mm 6-pounders for some newer Lvk m/1924 models with increased elevation, meant for AAA and balloon busting.

Manligheten. Note her searchlights and mast arrangement. Fo197006A

As easy interbellum

In 1920, Manligheten took a cruise to Amsterdam, the first trip outside of Scandinavia by a Swedish coastal battleship since the summer of 1913.

In the mid-1920s, a refit saw new boilers installed including two oil-fired and six coal-fired. By this time, two further low-angle 6-pounders had been landed, replaced by two 25mm AAA guns– one on the top of each 8.3-inch turret.

25 mm automatkanon on aft turret Manligheten. This photo was during her WWII era. Fo199420

Pansarskeppet Manligheten D 14983_21

Manligheten i Oban MM01497

Manligheten Pansarskepp MM01485

Sisters Tapperheten and Manligheten, once completing their mid-life refit, would undertake two back-to-back European goodwill tours during the summers of 1926 (Amsterdam-Portsmouth-Guernsey-Vlaardinggen) and 1927 (Plymouth-San Sebastian-Bilbao-Rotterdam).

Swedish pansarskeppet Tapperheten and Manligheten in San Sebastian, Spain, during the long voyage they undertook together in 1927. Fo229219

Aran class Swedish coastal battleships Janes 1931

Besides her typical spate of peacetime drills and exercises, followed by iced-in winters, Manligheten survived a grounding in 1930 and was tapped for another European deployment in the summer of 1937. This latter trip, with port calls at Amsterdam, Newcastle, Rouen, Cardiff, Oban, Trondheim, and Memel, was her only solo tour and she embarked 90 officer cadets. It was largely followed by a repeat trip in the summer of 1938. By then, she carried both a pair of 25mm/58 cal Bofors m/32 AAA guns and 37mm Bofors as well. 

Manligheten in Memel Lithuania July 25, 1938. Note the 37mm AAA guns arrayed behind the 8.2-inch mount (with a covered 25mm gun atop) and four forward-facing 6-inch turrets. MM01502

Swedish Sweden Aran Class Coastal Defence Ship HSwMS Manligheten Queen Alexandra Docks Cardiff to Coal,1937

John Grantham, Lord Mayor of Newcastle on board the visiting Swedish warship Manligheten, 5 June 1937 TWAM ref. DF.GRA53

Swedish Aran Class Coastal Defence Ship HSwMS Manligheten at the Queen Alexandra Docks, Cardiff to coal, 1937

Swedish Aran Class Coastal Defence Ship HSwMS Manligheten at the Queen Alexandra Docks Cardiff, 1937. Note her large steam launch, covered to the left

That’s no joke

Blindfolded Boxing in Öresund on board Manligheten 1938 MM01487

A close-up of the above (MM01487). Check out those expressions.

Manligheten at sea 1938 MM01499

War, again

Then came World War II and, with Sweden seriously isolated and pressured by the Germans, stepped up her Neutralitesvakten as much as possible.

However, by this time the 40-year-old Arans were in rough shape. Tapperheten had been laid up in a sort of reserve capacity since 1928 while Aran was likewise mothballed in 1933. Wasa, which had not been refitted since 1924, was found to be in such poor condition that she was decommissioned in 1940 and rebuilt for use as a decoy target ship.

Manligheten, in the best material condition, retained her original 8.3-inch and 6″/45 guns as well as her pair of 25mm/58 cal Bofors m/32 AAA guns, but landed all of her old 57s in favor of a battery of four 57mm Bofors Lvk m/1924s, two 40mm/56 cal Bofors m/36s, and a pair of 8x63mm Browning Kulspruta Lvksp m/36 water-cooled heavy machine guns. Her torpedo tubes were retired. This armament package, along with topside changes, a single and more streamlined mast, camouflage, and recognition stripe, greatly changed her appearance.

H.M. Pansarskepp Manligheten WWII D 14983_23

Trainees on Manligheten note 40mm Bofors Fo196844

Pansarbåt Manligheten WWII Fo124AB

Tapperheten and Aran likewise received the same modernization.

Manligheten was, notably, a flagship for the task force searching for the lost Swedish Draken class submarine HSvMS Ulven (Wolf) in April 1943, which had been sunk by a mine.

Battleship Manligheten. On the West Coast on 20 Apr. 1943 Fo89732A

Two Swedish minesweeping trawlers (Minsvepare) and Pansarskepp Manligheten, during the search for the submarine Ulven. Note the false bow and wave painted on her hull. Fo125AB

1945: The 1,500-ton Sveabolaget-owned cargo ship turned auxiliary cruiser (hjälpkryssaren) Fidra (Hjkr 10), pansarskeppet Manligheten, 1,200-ron Gothenburg-class destroyer leader (stadsjagare) Karlskrona (J8), and the 685-ton coastal destroyer (kustjagare) Mode (29). Marinmuseum IV1025

Gothenburg Squadron summer 1946, sans white recognition stripe. HMS Manligheten MM01373

The 1946 Jane’s listing for the three active members of the class (Wasa was a target ship by 1940).

Following the end of the war, Aran and Tapperheten were withdrawn from service on 13 June 1947 and scrapped, while the hulked target ship/decoy Wasa experienced a similar fate.

Manligheten was the last of her class in commission, withdrawn from service on 24 February 1950. She was partially scrapped in 1952-53 at Karlskrona.

Manligheten Skrotningar scrapping 1953 V5515

Manligheten Skrotningar scrapping 1953 V5516

While her guns (more on this below), superstructure, and machinery were removed, Manligheten’s welded-up armored hull, under the shortened name “MA” proved sturdy enough to continue service as a floating pontoon dock at the new Gullmarsbasen naval base in remote Skredsvik on the country’s west coast, where she served as a base for the minesweepers stationed there in the 1950s and the mothballed destroyers HSvMS Göteborg (J5) and HSvMS Stockholm (J6) in the 1960s.

It was planned to tow the old girl around the country for use as a Krigsbro (ersatz war bridge) if needed during WWIII.

In 1984, ex-Manligheten/MA was disposed of by the Swedish military after 80 years of service and sold commercially for continued use as a floating dock, a role she would continue until 2015, hosting tugs for the Switzer group at Lahälla in Brofjorden. It was only afterward that she was sold to the breakers. 

Manligheten’s hull in Lahälla in Brofjorden in Bohuslän in 2011. The ship’s hull then functioned as a berth for tugboats. Preemraff can be seen in the background. Photo via WikiCommons

Arming coastal outposts

The main and secondary armament from Oscar II, the three Svea class, and the four Aran class pansarskepp were extensively redeployed around the country in the 1940s ashore as kustartilleripjäs (coastal artillery piece) for use by the five coastal artillery regiments (kustartilleriregemente)– KA 1, Vaxholms; KA 2, Karlskrona; KA 3 Gotlands, KA 4, Älvsborg; KA 5, Härnösands. These included eight 210mm guns in three batteries and 22 152mm guns in nine batteries. In all, they would remain in operation (typically held in readiness for use by reserves upon mobilization) until the late 1960s in the case of the 210s and 2001(!) when it came to the 152s.

One of the three 152mm guns of Battery Trelge (TG), manned by KA3 in wartime, remained in materiel readiness a bit into the 1980s. Even these old guns, manned by a dozen reservists, could still crank out 101-pound shells at 7 shots per minute to a range of 23,000 yards. The cage around it is for camouflage netting. GFM.001870

21 cm kanon m/98A

  • Hamnskär (3 pj) HS KA1 Discontinued 1962, (last firing 1962).
  • Hultungs (3 pj) HG KA3 Discontinued 1964 (last firing 64), Decommissioned 1968.
  • Öppenskär (2 pj) ÖS KA2 Discontinued 1959, Decommissioned 1965.

15,2 cm kanon m/98E i 15,2 cm vallav m/38 (15,2 cm pjäs m/98E-38)

  • Korsö (2 pj) KO/KO1 KA1 Decommissioned 1992.
  • Korsö (2 pj) KO/KO1 KA1 Decommissioned 1992.
  • Söderarm (2 pj) SA/SA1 KA1 Replaced by 12/70, last KFÖ 1968.
  • Mellsten (3 pj) M1 KA1 Replaced by 12/70.
  • Bungenäs (3 pj) BN KA3 Replaced by 15/51, Decommissioned 2001.
  • Trelge (3 pj) TG KA3 Discontinued 1978/79, Decommissioned 1999.
  • Lungskär (3 pj) LR KA2 Discontinued 1978/79, Decommissioned 1999.
  • Trelleborg (Dalköpinge) (1 pj) TE/TE1 KA2 Replaced by 12/70.
  • Holmögadd (3 pj) HD/HO1 KA5 Replaced by 12/70, Decommissioned 1980.

The coast artillery augmented these static gun batteries with S.11 rockets (RBS- 52) and locally made RBS-15s as well as 24 Bofors 120mm R Kapj 12/80 KARIN mobile guns and 30 12/70 single ERSTA emplacements— the latter two based on the excellent domestically produced Haubits FH-77 field howitzer– in the 1980s.

The 120mm 12/70 ERSTA emplacements and 12/80 KARIN mobile guns had a rate of fire of up to 16 rounds per minute and a range of 32 kilometers. They were only withdrawn in 2000. 

The last Bofors guns were fired on 26 September 2000 and the units disbanded by October 31 of that year, rebranded as amphibious troops (amfibiebataljonen).

Today they use portable Hellfire launchers, designated the RBS-17.

Swedish Älvsborgs amfibieregemente coast ranger RBS-17 Sjömålsrobot 17 Hellfire

A few 210s and 152 from the old battlewagons remain as museums, for instance, these at the Gotlands Försvarsmuseum

A 21 cm pjäs m98, removed from its emplacement. This was formerly a Pansarbåt gun.

Epilogue

When it comes to enduring relics, Manligheten’s 54×82 inch stern ornament is preserved at the Marinmuseum as well as some other items.

There is also some maritime art, such as the painting by Arvid above, and period postcards that remember the ship in better times. 

The Swedish Navy has not christened a third Manligheten.

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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

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

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

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.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2023: One Hearty Brazilian

Posted on by Leave a comment

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

Warship Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2023: One Hearty Brazilian

Photo by LT CH Parnall, Royal Navy official photographer, IWM A 20897

Above we see a scene from the life of the modified H-class destroyer HMS Hesperus (H57), some 80 years ago today on 6 December 1943, with Ordinary Seaman P. S. Buckingham, of Norwich, freshening up the ship’s record of U-boat kills on the side of the wheelhouse as the greyhound was docked at Liverpool.

While many ships would see their scoreboard whittled down greatly following post-war analysis, Hesperus went down in the books as going five for five.

The H-class

The British Royal Navy would order some 27 assorted “G”, “H” and “I” Class destroyers between 1934 and 1936 as part of the rearmament to safeguard against the growing German, Italian, and Japanese fleets in the uneasy peace leading up to WWII. They were slight ships, of just 1,800 tons and 323 feet overall length with a narrow 33-foot beam, giving them a dagger-like 1:10 length-to-beam ratio. With a speed of 35 knots and a 5,000 nm range at half that, they could keep up with the fleet or operate independently and had long enough legs for North Atlantic convoy work, should such a thing ever be needed in the future.

The differences between the three classes were primarily in engineering fit, minor superstructure changes, and armament. They were typically fitted with a quartet of QF 4.7-inch (120 mm) Mk IX guns, a few AAA mounts, between 8 and 10 anti-ship torpedo tubes, and depth charges for ASW work.

HMS Grenade (H86), a G-class destroyer. Note her layout which was like all her sisters. Grenade would be sunk in May 1940 off Dunkirk by German Stukas.

The 27th and last of the type delivered to the RN from the ships the Admiralty ordered was HMS Ivanhoe (D16) on 24 August 1937, completing the classes built out in just four years, which is not bad for peacetime production.

The G/H/Is would prove so successful of a design that the British exported it, accepting prewar orders for 19 ships for overseas allies: Argentina (seven Buenos Aires class ships delivered in 1938), Greece (two Georgios class delivered in 1939), Turkey (four desperately needed Inconstant class delivered in 1942, largely to keep Istanbul friendly at a crucial time in the war) and a half-dozen Jurua-class tin cans for the Brazilian Navy…that’s where Hesperus comes in.

Meet Hesperus

The Brazilian Navy in early 1938 ordered six modified H-class destroyers, spread across the Vickers, White, and Thornycroft yards. They would be named Jurua, Javary, Jutahy, Juruena, Jaguaribe, and Japura after rivers and towns in Brazil. Construction proceeded along nicely, and all were christened with their intended names by visiting dignitaries from the Latin American country and afloat in the summer of 1939.

Then, with the war in Europe, London made a deal to purchase the six nearly complete Juruas from Rio while they were still fitting out in a deal that would include providing assistance and plans for Brazil to build another six H-class destroyers domestically at the government’s Ilha das Cobras shipyard.

Rather than a fit for four 4.7-inch guns, these six former Brazilian destroyers in British service would carry only three with the extra deck space freed up to be used for more depth charges– capable of toting as many as 110 ash cans across three rails and eight throwers. They would enter service between December 1939 and June 1940 as the Havant class (Havant, Handy, Havelock, Hearty, Highlander, and Hurricane) keeping with the “H” class naming sequence.

Our subject, the former Brazilian Juruena, was at first dubbed HMS Hearty on 15 January 1940 and then became the first of HM’s warships to be named Hesperus on 27 February 1940 in honor of the Greek name for the planet Venus in the evening, son of the dawn goddess Eos, and half-brother of Phosphorus– the latter the name for the same planet in the morning. This latter name change came to avoid confusing HMS Hearty with near-sister HMS Hardy (H87) in signals.

War!

In March 1940, after a rushed shakedown, Hesperus was assigned to convoy escort duty in the Northwest Approaches, a duty that would take up most of her wartime experience. In all, she would serve on no less than 74 crossings from Convoy AP 001/3 in April 1940 to Convoy MKF 042 in April 1945.

Hesperus underway at sea, resplendent in her war paint. IWM A 7101

In this work, Hesperus made five (two shared) high-profile confirmed “kills” on Donitz’s steel sharks inside of 18 months:

  • Type VIIC U-208 (Oblt. Alfred Schlieper) on 7 December 1941, west of Gibraltar, shared with sister HMS Harvester.
  • Type VIIC U-93 (Oblt. Horst Elfe) on 15 January 1942 north-east of Madeira
  • Type VIIC U-357 (Kptlt. Adolf Kellner) on 26 December 1942, north-west of Ireland, shared with HMS Vanessa
  • Type IXC/40 U-191 (Kptlt. Helmut Fiehn) on 23 April 1943, south-east of Cape Farewell, Greenland
  • Type IXC/40 U-186 (KrvKpt. Siegfried Hesemann) on 14 May 1943, northwest of the Azores.

She plucked Oblt. Elfe and 40 survivors from U-93 out of the water and delivered them ashore at Gibraltar to finish their war in a POW camp, providing useful intelligence when interrogated. U-357 went down with only six survivors fished from the drink by the British. Meanwhile, U-208, U-191, and U-186 went down with all hands.

Waterlogged survivors of U-93 leaving HMS Hesperus at Gibraltar on 16 January 1942. IWM A 8116

Prisoners from the U-boat, likely U-357, disembarking from HMS Hesperus at Liverpool. Note the rope stays used by the guards as clubs. IWM A 13978

The fight with U-357 was particularly rough, ending on the surface with the boat electing to fight it out after depth charges and Hesperus finishing her off by ramming– the oldest of ASW techniques.

HMS Hesperus entering Liverpool harbor, on 28 December 1942, showing damage to her bows caused by ramming U-357. IWM A 13987

Same as the above, IWM A 13986

In addition to her ASW work, Hesperus also took breaks from her convoy work to escort HMs battlewagons and carriers including HMS Resolution and HMS Ark Royal to Norway (in a campaign that also saw Hesperus ferry men of the Scots Guards ashore at Bodo in May 1940).

She would again team up with Ark Royal for the Malta relief convoys in 1941 (Operations Tiger and Splice) and as a screen for the battlecruiser HMS Renown during the hunt for the Bismarck. She screened the Churchill-carrying HMS Prince of Wales to Newfoundland for him to meet with FDR in August 1941.

Kodachrome of HMS Hesperus H57 in Canadian waters, circa 1942. Library and Archives Canada MIKAN 4821059

Aerial photo of HMS Hesperus, September 1942. Note her extensive depth charge fit. IWM A 20376

In May 1945, with the endgame in Europe, she escorted surrendered U-boats from Lochalsh to Loch Foyle for disposal as part of Operation Deadlight then, on the 29th, headed back to Norway to assist with the demobilization of German troops there.

By mid-June 1945, she was tasked with supporting aircrew training, a role that meant she was an OPFOR for coastal command bombers and patrol planes. She endured this until May 1946 when she was reduced to Reserve status at Rosyth.

Hesperus, post-war, sans camouflage and most of her depth charges. IWM A 30688.

Nominated for sale and, after removal of equipment and stores, laid up at Grangemouth awaiting demolition, ex-Hesperus was broken up there in May 1947 by G W Brunton.

End of a U-boat by Norman Wilkinson via Royal Museums Greenwich, depicting a GHI-type destroyer next to a German U-boat in its death throes amid a convoy– a sight seen by Hesperus and her sisters many times. 

As for her 27 British, two Greek, and six British via Brazil sisters that saw combat, a whopping 25 were lost during the war to assorted causes, most in direct combat with the Germans.

The 10 battle-scarred survivors were either, like Hesperus, scrapped almost immediately post-war or transferred abroad for further service (Garland to the Dutch, Hotspur to the Dominican Navy).

The last G/H/I afloat were the Buenos Aires-class destroyers in Argentine service, scrapped in 1973, with their Turkish sisters preceding them. None of the class members endure or are maintained as museums.

Epilogue

At the helm of Hesperus for three of her U-boat kills was CDR Donald George Frederick Wyville MacIntyre, DSO, RN. He would add two Bars to his DSO and a DSC to his coat before his tour on Hesperus was over. He had been her plank owner skipper and commanded her for the first year of her war, including the Norway campaign, but had taken a break from the ship to command HMS Walker (D 27) in 1941– during which he was responsible for sinking two of Germany’s foremost U-boat aces, Otto Kretschmer and Joachim Schepkle aboard U-100.

MacIntyre would retire from the RN in 1955 after a 33-year career, and pass in 1981, aged 77.

Oh yes, remember Kapitänleutnant Horst Elfe, of U-93? He was the sole U-boat skipper to survive a brush with Hesperus, and survived the war as well by nature of his time as a POW in Canada which only ended in 1947 and included the “Battle of Bowmanville.” He died in Berlin in 2008, aged 91.

Elfe went on eight patrols, four as a skipper, without sinking a ship. He became a noted steel executive in Germany after the war.

HMS Hesperus had been “adopted” by Yeovil and District in its National Savings “Warship Week” that began on 28 February 1942, in which the building cost, more than £300,000 was raised.

The town has a plaque carried aboard the ship during the war as well as her final white ensign in the tower of St John’s church.

War artist William Dring visited Hesperus during the war and painted several pastels of her crew at work.

Engine Room Artificer W Wakefield wearing overalls, turning a large wheel in the engine room. Behind him are two other colleagues at work. IWM ART LD 3536

She is also remembered in modern maritime art.

Jones, C.; HMS ‘Hesperus’; Poole Museum Service; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/hms-hesperus-60183

HMS Hesperus, by Dion Pears

Thus far, the RN has chosen to not reissue the name “Hesperus” to a second ship, which is a shame.

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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

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

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

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.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2023: As Easy as 123

Posted on by Leave a comment

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

Warship Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2023: As Easy As 123

Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph NH 109514

Above we see Wickes-class tin can USS Gamble (Destroyer No. 123) steaming into after the review of Pacific Fleet, 13 September 1919, with her sister USS Radford (DD-120) trailing behind.

Brand new and beautiful in this image, she was commissioned 105 years ago today. Gamble would give her last full measure off Iwo Jima and be deep-sixed a month before the end of World War II but don’t worry, she rolled the dice and took a few of the Emperor’s ships with her.

The Wickes

Gamble was one of the iconic first flights of “Four Piper” destroyers that were designed in 1915-16 with input from no less an authority as Captain (later Admiral) W.S. Sims. Beamy ships with a flush deck and a quartet of boilers (with a smokestack for each) were coupled to a pair of Parsons geared turbines to provide 35.3 knots designed speed– which is still considered fast today, more than a century later.

The teeth of these 314-foot, 1,250-ton greyhounds were four 4-inch/50 cal MK 9 guns and a full dozen 21-inch torpedo tubes.

They reportedly had short legs and were very wet, which made long-range operations a problem, but they gave a good account of themselves. Originally a class of 50 was authorized in 1916, but once the U.S. entered WWI in April 1917, this was soon increased and increased again to some 111 ships built by 1920.

 

Wickes class USS Yarnall (DD-143): Booklet of General Plans – Inboard Profile / Outboard Profile, June 10, 1918, NARA NAID: 158704871

 

Wickes class USS Yarnall (DD-143): Booklet of General Plans – Main Deck / 1st Platform Deck / S’ch L’t P’f’m, S’ch L’t Control P’f’m, Fire Control P’f’m Bridge, Galley Top, After Dk. House and 2nd Platform Deck. / June 10, 1918, Hold NARA NAID: 158704873

Wickes class. A close-up of her stern top-down view of plans shows the Wickes class’s primary armament– a dozen torpedo tubes in four turnstiles and stern depth charges.

Meet Gamble

Our subject is the first Navy ship to be named in honor of at least two of the quartet of Gamble brothers who served in the War of 1812. The four brothers including Capt. Thomas Gamble (USN) who served aboard USS Onedia during the war and perished while in command of the sloop USS Erie of the Navy’s Mediterranean Squadron in 1818; 1st Lt. Peter Gamble (USN) killed on the USS Saratoga during the Battle of Lake Champlain in 1814; Lt. Francis B. Gamble (USN) who died of yellow fever in 1824 while in command of the USS Decoy of the navy’s West Indies Squadron; and U.S. Marine hero Lt. Col. (Brvt) John Marshall Gamble, the only member of the Corps to command an American warship in battle– the prize ship USS Greenwich in her combat with the British armed whaler Seringapatam in 1813. Only John lived into the 1830s, passing at age 44, still on active duty.

Two of the four brothers Gamble. Midshipman Thomas Gamble, USN (L) via Analectic magazine. Painted by Waldo, and engraved by J.B. Longacre. NH 49483 and Lt. John M. Gamble, USMC (R). Photo from a portrait in possession of his grandson. (Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph NH 49482)

Gamble (Destroyer No. 123) was laid down on 12 November 1917 at Newport News, launched on 11 May 1918 sponsored by a dour relative of SECNAV Josephus “Cup of Joe” Daniels; and commissioned at Norfolk 18 days after the Armistice on 29 November 1918.

Wickes class sisters USS Breese (DD-122) and USS Gamble (DD-123) on the ways at Newport News between November 1917 and May 1918. NH 43018

USS Gamble (DD-123) launched at Newport News, Virginia, on 11 May 1918. Her sistership USS Breese (DD-122) is next to her and launched the same day in a dual ceremony. NH 53813

Same as above, NH 53812

Entering a crowded and rapidly demobilizing fleet that was just coming off the Great War, Gamble would spend the next several months in a series of shakedowns and trials up and down the East Coast from Maine to Cuba but notably was one of the ships escorting the troop transport George Washington, which was carrying President Woodrow Wilson back to the U.S. from peace negotiations in Paris to Boston in February 1919 and again in July.

In May 1919, she was one of the support ships for the legendary first transatlantic flight by the Navy’s Curtiss NC flying boats, helping spot NC-4 through the Azores.

In mid-July 1919, Gamble, along with sisters Breese, Lamberton (Destroyer No. 119), and Montgomery (Destroyer No. 121), were shifted to the Pacific Fleet to join Destroyer Division 12 and made their way to San Diego via the Panama Canal.

USS Gamble (DD-123) and USS Breese (DD-122) photographed circa 1919, probably at Balboa, Panama, Canal zone. Courtesy of Jack Howland, 1983. NH 94956

Once on the West Coast, she would spend most of the next three years haze gray and underway, so to speak, steaming from up and down the West Coast from San Diego to Seattle and out to Pearl and back in a series of tests, maneuvers, and reviews.

Gamble photographed about 1919. NH 53815

Gamble at San Diego, California, circa 1919. NH 53816

USS Gamble (DD-123) photographed on 23 April 1919 with extensive tropical awnings covering her decks. Sister USS Breese (DD-122) is in the background. NH 53814

Gamble with her original DD-123 hull numbers. NH 67684

Destroyers at the Mare Island Navy Yard, 1919 (from left to right): USS Tarbell (Destroyer # 142); USS Thatcher (Destroyer # 162); USS Rizal (Destroyer # 174); USS Hart (Destroyer # 110); USS Hogan (Destroyer # 178); USS Gamble (Destroyer # 123); USS Ramsay (Destroyer # 124); and USS Williams (Destroyer # 108). Donation of Rear Admiral Ammen Farenholt, USN (Medical Corps). NH 42537

USS Gamble (DD-123) at anchor and dressed with flags, circa 1921, following the relocation of her after 4″/50 cal gun to the top of the after deckhouse. NH 59648

Battleship USS Mississippi (BB-41) at sea for maneuvers, during the early 1920s. Wickes class destroyers in the background include USS Radford (DD-120) and USS Gamble (DD-123). NH 46051

Destroyer tender USS Prairie (AD-5) in San Diego Harbor, California, with USS Gamble (DD-123) alongside, circa 1920-1922. NH 105775

U.S. fleet in Balboa, Panama, early 1920s. The center of the photo is the battleship USS New Mexico BB-40, then a cluster of flush deck destroyers including USS Ramsey DD-124, USS Montgomery DD-121, USS Breese DD-122, USS Lamberton DD-119, and USS Gamble DD-123. In the background are the battleship USS Mississippi BB-41, the tin cans USS O’Bannon DD-177, USS MacKenzie DD-175, USS Hugan DD-178, USS Anthony DD-172, and several other destroyers and another battleship in the far distance.

With budget cuts, Gamble was tapped to begin inactivation procedures and was decommissioned on 17 June 1922 and was held in reserve at San Diego.

Recall, and a job change

After nearly a decade on red lead row, Gamble was taken out of mothballs and redesignated a fast destroyer minelayer (DM-15) on 24 May 1930. This saw her head to Mare Island for a general overhaul and conversion.

The Navy had previously converted 14 Wickes and Clemson class ships to this designation in 1920, with the simple swap out of having their torpedo tubes replaced with a set of two 140-foot tracks that could carry approximately 85 1,400-pound Mark VI moored antenna mines (of which the Navy had 50,000 left over from the Great War) to drop over the stern.

The Navy ordered 100,000 Mark VI (MK 6) mines in 1917, carrying a 300-pound charge, and had so many left that even after using thousands during WWII they remained in U.S. service into the 1980s. Gamble and her sisters could carry as many as 85 of these on a pair of rails that ran, port and starboard, down the aft half of the ship.

As noted by Destroyer History.org:

Among the lessons World War I offered the US Navy was the possibility that fast ships could be effective in laying minefields to disrupt enemy operations. The surplus of flush-deckers at the end of the war provided an opportunity to experiment.

The original 14 circa 1920 rated destroyer-minelayers were slowly replaced throughout the 1930s by a smaller group of eight converted flush-deckers taken from mothballs– USS Gamble (DM-15)(DD-123), USS Ramsey (DM-16)(DD-124), USS Montgomery (DM-17)(DD-121), USS Breese (DM-18)(DD-122), USS Tracy (DM-19)(DD-214), USS Preble (DM-20)(DD-345), USS Sicard (DM-21)(DD-346) and USS Pruitt (DM-22)(DD-347).

Jane’s 1931 entry on the type. Note Breese is misspelled as “Breeze.”

Curiously, these ships would retain their white DD-hull numbers but wore Mine Force insignia on their bow, outwardly looking much more destroyer than minelayer.

Wickes-class destroyer USS Ramsey (DM-16)(DD-124) view was taken by Tai Sing Loo, at Pearl Harbor, T. H., circa 1930. Note that she is fitted out as a minelayer (DM) and retains her DD-hull number while wearing a mine-force insignia on her bow. NH 49953

In addition to these minelayers, several Wickes/Clemson class flush deckers were converted during the WWII era to other tasks including eighteen fast minesweepers (DMS), fourteen seaplane tenders (AVD), and six fast “Green Dragon” transports (APD) plus test ship Semmes (AG 24, ex-DD 189) at the Key West Sound School and damage control hulk Walker (DCH 1, ex-YW 57, ex-DD 163) which was reclaimed from commercial service as a dockside restaurant at San Diego.

All eight of the active destroyer-minelayers were formed into Mine Squadron 1 headed up by the old minelayer USS Oglala (CM 4), flagship of Rear Admiral William R. Furlong, commander of Minecraft for the Battle Force of the Pacific Fleet, and forward-based with “The Pineapple Fleet” at Pearl Harbor, where a new conflict would soon find them.

USS Oglala (CM-4); USS Gamble (DD-123/DM-15); USS Ramsay (DD-124/DM-16). (listed L-R) anchored off Cocoanut Island, Hilo Harbor, Hawaii, T.H., 12 December 1931. Mauna Kea Volcano is in the distance. Note that the DMs are still wearing their destroyer hull numbers but with Mine Force insignias. 80-G-409991

Gamble and her crew were busy while in Hawaiian waters in the 1930s, and often helped in search and rescue cases including that of the missing aircraft Stella Australis, the disabled steamer President Lincoln, and the yacht Lanikai.

She was also something of a public relations boat and was tapped to carry Territorial Governor Lawrence M. Judd from Honolulu to Hilo in 1931 then hosted the six-year-old singing and dancing wonder, Ms. Shirley Temple, in 1935.

Besides spending the day on Gamble, Temple was declared a Colonel of the Hawaiian National Guard, inducted as a Waikiki Beach lifeguard, and given a surfboard by Duke Kahanamoku during her 1935 Hawaiian trip.

Gamble (DM-15) dressed with flags while tied up in port, circa 1940 at the Golden Gate International Exposition (World’s Fair) in San Francisco. Note the circular Mine Force insignia, red/blue/white with a black center and outline, on her bow. In the distance is a USCG 240-foot Lake class cutter. Courtesy of the Mariners Museum, Newport News, Virginia. Ted Stone Collection. NH 66812

War!

All MineRon1’s ships were swaying at their berths at Pearl’s Middle Loch on 7 December 1941 when the Japanese attack came in. The squadron was divided into two divisions, with MinDiv2 consisting of Gamble, Montgomery, Breese, and Ramsay.

The response by Gamble, among others, was immediate, opening fire just two minutes after her lookouts saw enemy planes.

From her after-action report:

0745 Heard explosions on Ford Island.
0756 Wave of about 50 Japanese planes attacked battleships and Naval Air Station, Ford Island, planes flying at low altitudes about 500 feet over battleships from the direction of Diamond Head, about 700 feet over Ford Island. Five successive waves of the attack of about 10 planes each.
0758 Went to General Quarters, opened fire with .50 cal. machine guns on planes passing over nest at about 800 feet altitude. Set material condition afirm except for certain protected ammunition passages.
0759 Opened fire with 3″/23 cal. AA guns, firing as planes came within range, fuses set 3 to 8 secs.
0805 Mounted and commenced firing with .30 cal. machine guns on galley deck house.
0810 Commenced making preparations to get underway. Lighted off four boilers.
0925 One Japanese plane shot down by A.A. fire, falling in water on port beam about 1000 yards away from ship. Believed shot down by ROBERTS, W.L., BM2c, U.S.S. Gamble, port machine gunner (#2 machine gun) .50 cal., and JOOS, H.W., GM3c, U.S.S. Gamble (#1 machine gun) starboard.
0930 Division commenced getting underway. U.S.S. Breese underway.
0930 U.S.S. Gamble got underway and cleared mooring buoy.
0937 Japanese planes attacked near main channel entrance.
0955 Temporarily anchored, astern of U.S.S. Medusa.
1005 Underway proceeding out of channel.
1015 Shifted .30 cal. A.A. machine guns to top of pilot house on fire control platform.
1021 Cleared channel entrance. Eight depth charges were armed and the ship commenced off-shore anti-submarine patrol off Pearl Harbor entrance.
1204 Established sound contact with submarine and dropped three depth charges. Position bearing 162° T from Diamond Head Light, distant 2.5 miles.
1255 Proceeded on course 270° T at 20 knots to join friendly forces upon receipt of orders from CinCPac.
1412 Sighted sampan bearing 320° T.
1435 Slowed to investigate but did not search. Sampan position approximately 4 miles south of Barbers point.
1628 Sighted smoke bomb off port bow.
1631 Submarine surfaced.*
1632 Fired one shot 4″ gun and missed, short and to the left. Submarine displayed U.S. colors, and ceased firing. Submarine submerged and fired recognition red smoke bomb.
1647 Proceeded west.
1732 Sighted Enterprise and exchanged calls. Instructed by Commander Aircraft, Battle Force to join Enterprise.
1744 Joined Enterprise and took station as third ship with two other plane guard destroyers.

*The friendly submarine turned out to be the Tambor class boat USS Thresher (SS-200), which was unharmed although a critically ill member of her crew– the reason for her surfacing and heading to port– passed. She again tried to enter the harbor on 8 December but was driven off by depth bombs from a patrol plane and only made it into Pearl under escort from a seaplane tender. Thresher went on to become the most decorated submarine of the war with 15 battle stars and a Navy Unit Commendation.

Gamble would remain off Pearl for the rest of the month, dropping depth charges on at least two further underwater sound contacts, and continue her ASW mission into 1942 when she expanded her operations to Samoa and Fiji, sowing defensive minefields in the waters of both. She also picked up some much-needed extra AAA in the form of a couple of 20mm Oerlikons.

Escorting a convoy to Midway in June, Gamble returned with a high-profile enemy POW, CDR Kunizo Aiso, the former chief engineering officer of the Japanese carrier Hiryu which had been sunk in the pivotal battle.

Carrier flagship Hiryu: Last Moments of Admiral Yamaguchi at the Battle of Midway. oil painting by Renzo Kita, 1943. Most of the ship’s officers chose to ride her to the bottom or were evacuated. Aiso, forgotten in the engineering spaces with a small group of snipes, surfaced after the ship had been left to the sea and managed to take to lifeboats. 

Aiso was the senior Japanese naval officer imprisoned in the U.S. at the time and would be until 1944. Picked up at sea in a crowded lifeboat with 34 other survivors of his carrier after 12 days bobbing around the Pacific some 250 miles west of Midway, the English-speaking officer reportedly did not wish to return to Japan, nor wish his government be informed of his capture, preferring to be recorded as lost with his ship. For the trip to Hawaii, CDR Aiso was issued USN officer khakis and barricaded inside Gamble’s captain’s cabin with the wings cut off the wingnuts of the battle ports.

Finally, picking up 85 Mark VI mines at Pearl for points West, Gamble set off for Espíritu Santo in August 1942 and, from there, Guadalcanal.

DD-123, meet I-123

When it comes to pennant numbers, the meeting that Gamble had on the morning of 29 August some 60 miles east of Savo Island was curious. She came across I-123, a big Japanese I-121-class minelaying submarine, operating on the surface. On her fifth war patrol, she had left Rabaul two weeks prior under the command of LCDR Nakai Makoto and had already given the Marines on Lungga Point heartburn with her deck gun.

Type I-121 Submarine I-23 pictured at Kobe Naval Arsenal on April 28th, 1928

The rolling ship vs submarine combat between DM-15 (formerly DD-123) and I-123 over the course of four hours ended with Makoto and his 71 crewmembers receiving a promotion, posthumously.

Gamble’s report:

While the Japanese lost 131 seagoing Ro- and I-class submarines during World War II (100 by Allied action including mines, 3 in accidents, and 28 by unknown causes) I-123 was only the 12th boat sent to the bottom in the conflict and was one of the Empire’s first early losses.

Gamble was soon back to work.

The very afternoon after she sank I-123, she sped to Nura Island to pick up four shot-down TBF-1 Avenger (Bu. No. 00396) aviators of Torpedo 8 from the Saratoga (LT JG EL Fayle, ARM3c W Velogquz, S1C RL Minning and ARM3c JR Moncarrow), retrieved via her whaleboat from the surf line. She would rescue two more lost Airedales from Palikulo Bay two weeks later, picking up 2nd LT EN Railsbach, USMC, and Ens. EF Grant, USNR, after their SBD burned in.

Gamble was pressed into service at Guadalcanal as a fast troop transport, on the morning of 31 August carrying 158 Marines from Guadalcanal to Tulagi in company with sisters USS Gregory and USS Little, who were equally loaded down with Devil Dogs.

Gamble also was soon performing her primary role once again, that of sowing minefields around the area, planting 42 in a defensive belt in Segond Channel in December 1942.

Speaking of which…

Stopping the “Tokyo Express”

On 7 May 1943, Gamble and sisters Breese and Preble laid mines in the Ferguson Passage/Blackett Strait between Gizo and Wanawana Islands in the Solomons southwest of Rendova. Hidden by a rain squall and with enemy attention diverted by a supporting cruiser-destroyer group, the old four pipers were able to sow 250 sea mines in three rough lines across the strait in just 17 minutes.

Hours later, these mines were stumbled upon by a passing column of first-class Japanese tin cans of DesDiv 15 on an overnight fast troop transport run and sank the Kagero-class destroyer Kuroshio, with 83 lives, and crippled two sisterships– Oyashio and Kagero– which, barely able to maneuver and full of seawater, would be sunk the next day after being spotted by Navy dive bombers from Guadalcanal.

IJN First-class destroyer Hamakaze of the Kagerō-class. Three of her sisters were killed due to mines laid by Gamble and company. 

As noted by Allyn D. Nevitt over at Combined Fleet, “The loss of even one such modern destroyer was fast becoming intolerable to the Japanese; having a crack unit of three erased in one blow was pure catastrophe. American daring and ingenuity in the Blackett Strait had reaped a substantial reward indeed.”

After further service– including supporting the invasion of New Georgia and planting more mines– Gamble was sent to San Francisco in July 1943 for a three-month overhaul at Hunter’s Point Navy Yard. Arriving back in the South Pacific, Gamble spent November 1943 conducting several mining runs off Bougainville in the Solomon Islands in support of the Allied offensive there.

Then, as noted by DANFS:

Through late 1943 and much of 1944, Gamble generally served as convoy escort ship screening for enemy submarines while operating between Guadalcanal and Florida Island in the Solomons; Espíritu Santo; and Noumea, with additional runs to Suva, Fiji; Finschhaven and New Britain Island, New Guinea; Sydney; and Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands.

Overhaul

In September 1944, Gamble was sent back to the West Coast for four months at the Bethlehem Steel Repair Yard at Alameda. This led to a serious overhaul of her guns, landing all her old 3″/23s and 4-inchers in favor of a homogenized set of 3″/50s and 20mm Oerlikons.

According to her December 1944 plans, her WWII topside armament was mostly emplaced on a series of superstructure platforms except for a forward 3″/50 DP above the CPO quarters just 20 feet from the bow and a 20mm Oerlikon directly behind it in front of the wheelhouse. The ammo magazine was three decks down on the keel amidships and another on astern near the shafts, meaning a chain gang had to be established to hump it up top. The main gun platform was over the galley between the three remaining funnels and held two 3″/50 DPs (port and starboard) with hinged sponsons for the gun crew and two Oerlikons. A small gun tub with two single 20mm Oerlikons (port and starboard) was above Radio 3 next to the stub mast. The stern superstructure gun platform was built atop the crew’s washhouse and armory and held a single 3″/50 DP installed just 22 feet from the stern. Two portable .50 cals were set up midship atop the pilot house and on the main deck at frame 117 (of 177 frames).

She also only had three stacks by this point. 

All told, this fit gave her four 3″/50 DPs, five 20mm Oerlikons, and two .50 cals. She would also be fitted with a twin 40mm Bofors gun, although I am not sure of its placement. Not a lot of throw weight there, but then of course her main armament was in her mine rails and projectors for Mark VI depth charges.

Eight breakaway Carely float-type life rafts were installed to augment the ship’s 26-foot whaleboat and punt. The crew at this time was a skipper (LCDR/CDR) and 8 wardroom officers along with a mix of 132 rates and enlisted (62 Seamans branch, 57 Artificer branch, 4 Special branch, 4 Commissary branch, 5 Messman branch). By this time, she carried SF and SC radar sets and QCL sonar.

She also picked up a new camo scheme.

Camouflage Measure 32, Design 7D drawings prepared by the Bureau of Ships for a camouflage scheme intended for light minelayers of the DM-15 (Gamble) class. This plan, approved by Captain Torvald A. Solberg, USN, is dated 14 June 1944. 80-G-173486 and 80-G-173487.

This readied her for the “Big Show,” the push to Iwo Jima, Operation Detachment, in February 1945.

Back in the thick of it

On D+3, 17 February, Gamble closed into the beach close enough to cover the small minesweepers (YMS) and UDT teams of Sweep 5 and 6 clearing a path in the shoaling waters, shelling Japanese coastal emplacements and positions with her 3-inch and 40mm guns to silence them from harassing the cleaners via the application of 204 rounds of 3-inch AA Common and 254 of 40mm HETSD over seven hours. There, roughly six miles off Mt. Suribachi, she scored a hit on a large ammo dump with secondary explosions as well as silencing several enemy guns and bird-dogging other emplacements for the battlewagons.

Her NGFS report: 

Taking position off the old battlewagon Nevada the next night, she was hit by two small 250-pound bombs dropped by a  Japanese Kawasaki Ki-45 Toryu (Nick) twin-engine bomber that came in low and fast while she was silhouetted by star shells ashore. The bombs effectively wrecked our Gamble.

From her report:

Her crew was removed, and the shattered Gamble was towed to Saipan where she was decommissioned on 1 June 1945, and her name was stricken from the Navy Register three weeks later.

Stripped of anything thought useful, a series of images and videos were captured of her scuttling process, which took place off Guam on 16 July.

 

“Down Went the Gamble (DM 15).” Gamble was scuttled in June 1945. She was previously hit by Japanese enemy bombs in Feb 1945. Artist: Standish Backus, No.9. U.S. Navy photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 428-GX-KN 18978

Gamble received seven battle stars for service in World War II.

Epilogue

As Gamble was scuttled off Guam in deep water, few relics of her remain topside.

The wooden mold for her D Sharp ship’s bell, cast at Mare Island, resurfaced in 1991.

Her plans, drawings, deck logs, and war history are online in the National Archives. 

As for Shirley Temple, a bosun whistle presented to her by Gamble’s crew in 1935 remained a treasured possession for years. After all, she would meet her future husband, Charles Alden Black, a former Naval intelligence officer, in Hawaii in 1950 so perhaps those long-ago Pearl Harbor USN memories were prized. The whistle remained part of Ms. Temple’s estate and archives until it was sold at a 2015 auction by Theriault’s in New York.

It is undoubtedly in some collector’s display as this is written and perhaps will resurface one day.

Thus far, the Navy has chosen to not reissue the name “Gamble” to a second ship, which is a pity.

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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

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

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

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.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023: From Midway to Trafalgar

Posted on by One comment

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

Warship Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023: From Midway to Trafalgar

Above we see a great bow-on shot of the FRAM’d Gearing class destroyer USS Eugene A. Greene (DD/DDR-711)with a bone in her teeth in her second life as the Spanish Navy’s Churruca (D61) in the 1980s, the country’s traditional crimson and gold Rojigualda ensign on her mast, a twin 5″/38 hood ornament and two forward-facing Mk.32 triple torpedo tubes under the bridge wings. Her original moniker comes from naval aviator Eugene Allen Green, born 98 years ago this week.

The Gearings

In July 1942 the U.S. Navy, fighting a U-boat horde in the Atlantic and the Combined Fleet in the Pacific was losing ships faster than any admiral ever feared in his worst nightmare. With that in mind, the Navy needed a lot of destroyers. While the Fletcher and Allen M. Sumner classes were being built en mass, the go-ahead for some 156 new and improved Sumners— stretched some 14 feet to allow for more fuel and thus longer legs to get to those far-off battlegrounds– was given. This simple mod led to these ships originally being considered “long hull Sumners.”

These hardy 3,500-ton/390-foot-long tin cans, the Gearing class, were soon being laid down in nine different yards across the country.

Designed to carry three twin 5-inch/38 cal DP mounts, two dozen 40mm and 20mm AAA guns, depth charge racks and projectors for submarine work, and an impressive battery of 10 21-inch torpedo tubes (downgraded to just 5 tubes) capable of blowing the bottom out of a battleship provided they could get close enough, they were well-armed. Fast at over 36 knots, they could race into and away from danger when needed.

Meet Eugene A. Greene

Our subject is the first Navy ship to be named in honor of Eugene Allen Green, born in Smithtown, New York on 21 November 1921. A 1940 graduate of Rhode Island State College, he attended ROTC while in school and promptly enlisted in the U.S. Navy Reserve’s air cadet program, earning his ensign bar along with his wings of gold by August 1941.

Assigned to Bombing (VB) Six aboard USS Enterprise (CV-6) in March 1942, he gave his last full measure behind the controls of his SBD (6-B-9) at the ripe old age of 21 during the Battle of Midway when, following the attack by VB-6 against the aircraft carrier Kaga on 4 June, he was one of 14 of the “Big E’s” pilots that had to ditch their planes on the way back home, out of fuel. Greene and his gunner, RM3c SA Mutane, along with the crews of eight other ditched aircraft from Enterprise that day, would never be seen again.

Greene was granted a posthumous Navy Cross in December 1942 and his widow, Mrs. Anita M. Greene, would sponsor the destroyer named in his honor.

The second of 16 Gearings contracted via Federal Shipbuilding, Kearny, New Jersey, the future USS Eugene A. Greene (DD-711) was laid down on 17 August 1944, launched the following March, and commissioned on 8 June 1945.

War!

While 98 Gearings would eventually be completed, most of these arrived too late to take part in WWII, with Greene joining a club that only included 44 sisters who arrived very late in the war. Although some were present in the final push to Tokyo, none were damaged or lost. Three of the class– USS Frank Knox, Southerland, and Perkins— entered Tokyo Bay in time to be present at the Japanese surrender, on 2 September 1945.

As for Greene, her WWII service, as detailed by her War History, consisted primarily of a shakedown cruise ranging from Penobscot Bay, Maine to Guantanamo Bay then, in mid-August following the news of the Japanese surrender, was assigned to the Atlantic fleet to serve as a school ship in Norfolk and Casco Bay, then to Pensacola to assist as a plane guard for aviation cadets– a task she would be well-versed in over her career.

USS Eugene A. Greene (DD-711) off New York City on 29 May 1946. She is still painted in wartime Camouflage Measure 22. NH 66345

A Chilly Peace

As the Navy’s newest destroyers, none of the new Gearings were mothballed after the war.

On 13 February 1947, Greene sailed south in a task group bound for Montevideo, Uruguay, to participate in the festivities accompanying the inauguration of the country’s new president, Tomás Berreta. The group also paid a goodwill visit to Rio de Janeiro before returning to Norfolk on 31 March.

Light cruiser USS Fresno (CL-121) on port call at Rio De Janeiro, March 1947, alongside her Gearing class consorts, USS Gearing, USS Gyatt, and USS Eugene A. Greene. Note the stern depth charge racks. The quartet was returning from Uruguay where they represented the U.S. at the inauguration of the new Uruguayan president. The Fresno was launched in 1946, too late to serve in WWII, so she took part in good-will diplomatic missions like this. She was sold for scrap in 1966. Photo attributed to Robert Norville, from NavSource.

As detailed by DANFS, the Norfolk-based Greene then became a staple of the 6th Fleet until 1960:

On 10 November 1947, Eugene A. Greene sailed on the first of 9 Mediterranean cruises made over the next 13 years. During those years, she and her sisters of the U.S. 6th Fleet have guarded the interests of peace and order in that sea which was the cradle of democratic government. Voyages to northern Europe and the Arctic varied the routine of overseas deployment for Eugene A. Greene.

What was skipped by DANFS was the fact that Greene was on hand in the region for five months through the 1956 Suez Crisis just in case she was needed.

It should be noted that, by this stage, she was significantly modernized, picking up a new tripod mast with AN/SPS-6 L-band radar (later augmented by an SPS-8A S-band capable of spotting aircraft 60nm away) and lightened her topside by landing most of her WWII AAA suite, torpedoes, and depth charges. This resulted in a change to a destroyer radar picket (DDR-711) that she held from July 1952 until she reverted to the simpler DD-711 in March 1963.

USS Eugene A. Greene (DD-711) underway at sea on 19 September 1950. Note that she has received a new tripod mast with AN/SPS-6 radar and has landed much of her WWII AAA suite, torpedoes, and depth charges. National Archives Identifier 24743125

At sea, October 1951. 80-G-442191

USS Eugene A. Greene (DDR-711) off the Norfolk Naval Shipyard on 18 December 1952. National Archives Identifier 24743145

Same as the above, bow on 24743147

Same as the above, stb profile. Note the newly installed AN/SPS-8 air search radar aft for her role as a DDR picket. 24743143

The Frostiest Part of the Cold War

Greene experienced the life that came with all the classic 1960s naval adventures in the Atlantic.

Greene is on the list of U.S. Navy ships that received the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal for participating in the Cuban quarantine, from 24 October through 20 November 1962.

Roger Powell missed ship’s movement of the destroyer USS Rush (DD-714) — along with 44 other shipmates as she sortied out over the weekend on little notice– and was tacked on to help fill out Greene’s crew, similarly, headed for Cuba to be a plane guard alongside the USS Enterprise.

Greene would undergo a nearly year-long FRAM I reconstruction at Boston NSY, completed in October 1963. Meant to add 8 years to the ship’s life via a complete rehabilitation of all shipboard components, it also fundamentally changed the destroyer to a modern sub-buster. The 5″/38 Mount 52 forward was removed during the rebuild while a hangar and platform for the QH-50C DASH ASW drone was added in place of the SPS-8A radar house.

Also new was an 8-cell ASROC matchbox launcher amidships, SQS-23 SONAR, VDS, and a six-pack of Mark 32 torpedo tubes. She added Mk 44 ASW torps to her magazine, for use by her own Mk32s as well as DASH, which theoretically could drop them some 20 miles away from the destroyer.

When she left Boston, she became first the flag of Destroyer Squadron 28, then DESRON 32.

Like most East Coast-based Navy ships in the era, Greene participated in several NASA recovery missions between other assignments, logging two (Mercury-Atlas 2 and 3) in early 1961 and Gemini-Titan 2 (GT-2) in 1965, supporting the primary recovery ship, USS Lake Champlain (CVS-39).

A great view of the post-FRAM’d USS Eugene A. Greene (DD-711) steaming past USS Lake Champlain (CVS-39) during operations on 23 September 1964. Note her ASROC amidships and her big DASH hangar aft in place of the deleted Mount 52. She still carries her aft mount (Mount 53) and forward (51). One of the carrier’s big Sikorsky SH-3 Sea King ASW helicopters is flying by in the right foreground, and another destroyer is in the left distance. Photographer: AN Thomas J. Parrett. NH 107007

Speaking of the Med, Greene would make another four deployments there between 1968 and 1972– and on two of them job into the Persian Gulf/Indian Ocean to show the flag in the increasingly important region. This included a seven-month goodwill cruise with the U.S. Middle East Force in 1968 during which she was the first U.S. ship to enter the new Iranian port of Bander Abbas, doing the Shah’s Navy the courtesy of charting the harbor from end to end with her advanced sonar.

Earning “blue noses” for her crew, she also took part in Operation Deep Freeze ’69 in the Antarctic and two North Atlantic cruises that crossed the Arctic Circle. Warming up, she went to Latin America once again in UNITAS ’68.

War! (This time for real)

Greene, being a top-of-the-line ASW boat post FRAM mods, also sailed to the Pacific to take part in a West Pac deployment (June-December 1966) to Vietnamese waters, shipping via the Panama Canal, Pearl Harbor, Guam, Subic Bay, and Hong Kong to take up station as a plane guard alongside the carrier USS Constellation (CVA-64) on 28 July.

There she remained for a month at sea, every day closing to within 4,000 yards with a rescue detail at the ready in case one of Conny’s birds went into the drink, all the while her sonar techs kept an ear out for anything funny in the depths.

USS Constellation (CVA-64), the third ship named for the configuration of 15 stars on the original United States Flag shows an A-4 Skyhawk given landing instructions by a technical crewman using the Landing Signal Officer’s (LSO) console as the LSO watches, October 1966. Greene was her primary plane guard during a good part of Conny’s 1966 Far East Cruise (12 May–3 December) with CVW-15 on board during which 16 aircrewmen and 15 aircraft were lost in operations. K-33638

This lifeguard work paused on 21 August when Greene was dispatched to close to the South Vietnam littoral under control of Task Unit 70.8.9 where she stood by in the Republic of Vietnam’s I Corps area on call for naval gunfire support missions. Over the next five days, her gunners got in lots of work as she steamed as close as 2,000 yards from shore answering NGFS calls with 311 rounds of HE and WP and providing 90 nighttime star shell illumination for friendly outposts. She was credited with annihilating an enemy base camp, wiping out a platoon-sized element of infiltrators in the open, and destroying several enemy supply buildings.

A sampling from her deck log:

Headed back to Yankee Station after rearming while underway, she worked alongside the carrier USS Coral Sea for the rest of her deployment until she slipped her port shaft in October and had to limp into Tse Ying, Taiwan, for a quick fix that would get her to Subic Bay. Returning to Norfolk in December via the Suez and the Med, Greene ended up circumnavigating the globe in a 205-day around-the-world deployment.

In short, her 27-year career with the U.S. Navy was diverse and, well, just remarkably busy. It was little surprise one of her lasting nicknames was “The Steamin’ Greene.”

But all good things must come to an end and on 31 August 1971, with Greene almost eight promised years to the dot past her FRAM I service life extension, she was decommissioned.

A second life

With the general post-WWII rapprochement between a still very fascist Franco and the Western allies, the 1953 Madrid agreements thawed the chill between the U.S. and the country, opening it to military aid in return for basing.

Soon, the country would receive its first modern submarine, the snorkel-equipped USS Kraken (SS-370) (taken in service as Almirante García de los Reyes, E-1), later joined by three Guppy’d Balao-class smoke boats.

Then came five Lepanto-class destroyers– WWII Fletcher-class tin cans– starting with USS Capps (DD-550) in 1957, which were transferred. The old light carrier USS Cabot was loaned to the Spanish Navy on 30 August 1967, which renamed her Dédalo (R.01).

In many ways, the Spanish fleet by the late 1960s, was very American.

These were soon joined by five FRAM I Gearing class destroyers, starting with USS Eugene A. Greene (DD/DDR-711) in 1972. By this time, the Spanish were also slated to get five new-made Baleares-class frigates, variants of the Knox class destroyer escort/fast frigates updated with Standard SAM suites.

Greene, still on the Navy List, was loaned to Spain the same day she was decommissioned. Renamed Churruca (D61) she honored RADM Cosme Damián Churruca y Elorza, who was lost on his ship-of-the-line San Juan Nepomuceno at Trafalgar in 1805.

Muerte de Cosme Damián Churruca (detalle), Eugenio Álvarez Dumont

Stricken from the U.S. Navy List on 2 June 1975 three years after she joined the Spanish Navy, Greene was sold to Spain for a token fee and remained in service with the force through the 1980s, class leader of her 11th Destroyer Division sisters. To be fair, although they were 30 years old, these FRAM I Gearings in the 1970s and 80s were still capable against Russki Whiskey, Romeo and Foxtrot-type smoke boats and their guns still worked enough for old-school NGFS should the large Spanish naval infantry need fire missions.

Period photos of Churruca show her still very much in her prime.

With the Cold War ending, so did the Gearings worldwide. Churruca was stricken by Spain on 15 September 1989, and disposed of in a SINKEX in 1991.

Sent to the bottom by a mixture of ordnance from Spanish Air Force F-18s and Spanish Navy AV-8 Matadors as well as some Standard missiles and Harpoons, her death was captured on grainy video, much like a snuff film.

Her four sisters in Spanish service (Gravina, ex-USS Furse; Méndez Núñez, ex-USS O’Hare; Lángara, ex-USS Leary; and Blas de Lezo, ex-USS Noa) were all disposed of within another year.

Epilogue

Greene’s deck logs are digitized in the National Archives and represent one of the few items left of the old girl. 

Of her massive armada of 98 Gearing-class sisterships that were completed, 10 survive above water in one form or another including three largely inactive hulls in the navies of Mexico and Taiwan. The others are museum ships overseas except for USS Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. (DD-850) in Fall River, Massachusetts; and the USS Orleck (DD-886) in Jacksonville. Please visit these vital floating maritime relics.

Orleck, fresh out of dry dock, being towed to her new home in Jacksonville

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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

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

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

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.

I’m a member, so should you be!

« Older Entries Recent Entries »