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Warship Wednesday, Mar. 30, 2022: Jesse James of the Java Sea

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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, Mar. 30, 2022: Jesse James of the Java Sea

Official U.S. Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval History and Heritage Command. Catalog #NH 99230

Here we see the Salmon-class fleet submarine USS Sturgeon (SS-187) off the Mare Island Navy Yard, California, 3 May 1943. Note the barrage balloon in the right background as it is just 18 months past Pearl Harbor and just over a year past when Japanese Navy submarine I-17 shelled the Ellwood Oil Field to the South in Santa Barbara. While the Cold War-era USS Sturgeon is well known to the current generation of naval enthusiasts, her WWII namesake gets little attention.

The Salmon class boats, and the successive very similar 10-boat Sargo class submarines, set the Navy on the road for the mass-produced WWII “fleet boats” of the Gato, Balao, and Tench classes. Some 308 feet in length, they were the first American boats able to hit 21 knots while surfaced, meaning they could help screen and scout for the fleet, and conduct a lengthy 75-day/11,000nm patrol without refueling/replenishment. They took with them a 3″/50 DP deck gun capable of sinking a small craft under 500 tons as well as space available for 24 torpedoes stored both in the hull and in topside deck storage. This put the whole Pacific at the feet of these vessels, and it was no surprise that Admiral Hart’s Philippine-based Asiatic Fleet in 1941 included all 16 Salmon and Sargo-class boats. 

The six boats, all with fish names beginning with an “S” (Salmon, Seal, Skipjack, Snapper, Stingray, Sturgeon) were ordered in 1936 from three yards: Electric Boat (SS 182-184); Portsmouth (SS 185,186), and Mare Island (SS 187) with our vessel being the sole West Coast model.

Class leader USS Salmon (SS-182) running speed trials in early 1938. Note the S1 designator. NH 69872

Salmon class subs USS Stingray (SS-186), foreground Operating in formation with other submarines, during Battle Force exercises, circa 1939. The other three submarines are (from left to right): Seal (SS-183); Salmon (SS-182) and Sturgeon (SS-187). Collection of Vice-Admiral George C. Dyer, USN (Retired). NH 77086

Same as the above, Submerging. NH 77089

Sturgeon, named for the large, bony-plated fish with an elongated body. It is found in both fresh and saltwater, was the second such vessel in the Navy with that name, the first being an early E-class submarine (SS-25) that was christened USS Sturgeon but was renamed USS E-2 before she entered the fleet in 1911 and went on to make four war patrols against the Germans in 1918.

Laid down at Mare Island on 27 October 1936, our Sturgeon was sponsored at launch by the wife of a Great War Navy Cross holder who retired as a vice admiral.

USS Sturgeon (SS 187) was launched by Mare Island Navy Yard, Vallejo, CA. Note St. Vincent Church in distance and the temporary “S6” designator on her hull. Via Mare Island Navy Museum

Commissioned on 25 June 1938, she was assigned to SubRon 6 and conducted her shakedown along the coast of Latin America, then made two summer squadron cruises (1939 and 1940) to Hawaii with the Pacific Fleet.

USS Sturgeon (SS-187) arriving at Pearl Harbor pre-war, likely on summer maneuvers in 1939 or 1940. Note the Somers-class destroyer USS Sampson (DD-394) in the distance. An East Coast-based tin can, Sampson was in Hawaii for both the 1939 and 1940 fleet exercises. 

It was around this time that LCDR William Leslie “Bull” Wright (USNA 1925), a colorful six-foot-three cigar-chomping Texan, arrived as her skipper.

A brand new beautiful West Coast submarine, the Navy detailed her to help film the 1939 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer action movie, Thunder Afloat, whose plot involved a piratical submarine, played by Sturgeon on screen.

Stock footage of Sturgeon surfacing, her crew dutifully barefoot and bare-chested, firing her deck gun at targets unseen and resubmerging all within a couple of minutes, was reused in other films for years.

On 18 November 1941, the submarine tender USS Holland (AS-3) with Salmon, Swordfish (SS-193), Skipjack, and our Sturgeon, arrived at Manila and formed SubDiv 21 of the Asiatic fleet.

War!

Sturgeon was moored in Mariveles Bay at the southern tip of Bataan on 7 December 1941, then put to sea the next afternoon to patrol an area between the Pescadores Islands and Formosa. After missing a chance at a target on the third day of the war, she spotted a Japanese cruiser escorting a coastwise invasion convoy on 18 December– the whole reason the Salmons were in the PI– but her attack was spoiled, and she received her first depth charge attack instead.

From her First War Patrol records:

Bull Wright and company returned to embattled Mariveles Bay on Christmas, then left again just three days later for her second war patrol.

Hart ordered Sturgeon and two other S-boats to patrol off Tarakan, Borneo, in the oil-rich Netherlands East Indies, with the hope of sniping Japanese convoys in the Makassar Strait. Meanwhile, other members of his submarine forces were left to try to run the blockade around the PI to keep Bataan in the fight. 

While Sturgeon claimed torpedo hits that were not borne out by post-war examination boards– and after believing she sank a Japanese ship, signaled to Pearl Harbor “Sturgeon no longer virgin!”– she ended her second war patrol at Surabaya on Java on 13 February 1942. She was then was forced to head for Australia within the week due to the looming fall of Java. She sailed with sisters Sturgeon and Stingray, escorting Holland, and the destroyer tender USS Black Hawk (AD-9) safely to Fremantle. Bull Wright received a Navy Cross. 

Departing on her third war patrol on the Ides of March, she headed for the Makassar Strait once again and, 80 years ago today, chalked up her first confirmed kill, that of the Japanese AK Choko Maru (842 GRT) off Makassar city.

Another notable incident of this patrol was to put ashore LT Chester William “Chet” Nimitz Jr. (yes, that Nimitz’s son) and a small search party looking for evading Australian personnel on Japanese-held Java.

Her fourth war patrol, which began on 5 June 1942 from Freemantle, would be both successful and incredibly tragic.

Montevideo Maru

Constructed at Nagasaki in the 1930s, the 7,266 ton, twin-screw diesel motor vessel passenger ship MV Montevideo Maru was used by the Imperial Japanese Navy as a troop transport in the early days of the war, supporting the landings at Makassar in February 1942 and was part of the Japanese seizure of New Britain. The vessel and her two sisters were well-known to U.S. Naval Intelligence before the war.

Via ONI 208J.

Sailing 22 June unescorted for Hainan Island off China, Montevideo Maru ran into Sturgeon eight days later. Our submarine pumped four fish into the “big fella” in the predawn hours of 1 July, after a four-hour stalk, with young Nimitz as the TDC officer.

Tragically, in what is now known as the “worst maritime disaster in Australian history,” Montevideo Maru was a “Hell Ship,” carrying more than 1,000 prisoners of the Japanese forces, including members of the Australian 2/22nd Battalion and No.1 Independent Company of the incredibly unlucky Lark Force which had been captured on New Britain.

All the prisoners on board died, locked below decks. Of note, more Australians died in the loss of the Montevideo Maru than in the country’s decade-long involvement in Vietnam.

Sturgeon, of course, was unaware that the ship was carrying Allied POWs and internees.

DANFS does not mention Montevideo Maru‘s cargo.

Four days later, Sturgeon damaged the Japanese oiler San Pedro Maru (7268 GRT) south of Luzon, then ended her 4th war patrol at Fremantle on 22 July.

A new skipper

On 13 August, Bull Wright left his submarine, replaced by LCDR Herman Arnold Pieczentkowski (USNA 1930), who would command Sturgeon for her 5th and 6th war patrol.

Of the Piaczentkowski period, only the 5th patrol, which sank the Japanese aircraft ferry Katsuragi Maru (8033 GRT) off Cape St. George on 1 October 1942 with a spread of four torpedoes, was the boat’s only success.

IJN Katsuragi Maru had just delivered A6M fighter aircraft to Bougainville when Sturgeon found her. Struck by at least three torpedoes, she carried two crew members and 27 ship gunners to the bottom. Here she is seen in an ONI photo taken in 1937 as she passed through the Panama Canal. NH 111553

On Christmas 1942, Sturgeon was sent to California for a five-month refit that would include swapping out her original diesels for a more reliable set of GM Detroit’s, relocating her main deck gun from aft of her sail to forward, and installing new sensors and equipment.

USS Sturgeon (SS-187) At the Hunters Point Navy Yard, San Francisco, California, 23 April 1943, following overhaul. White outlines mark recent alterations, among them the relocation of Sturgeon’s 3/50 deck gun, installation of watertight ready service ammunition lockers in her sail, and fitting of 20mm machine guns. Note the large concrete weight on deck, indicating that Sturgeon was then undergoing an inclining experiment to check her stability. 19-N-46405

USS Sturgeon (SS-187) Off the Mare Island Navy Yard, California, 3 May 1943. Note the barrage balloon and tall radio towers to the right. Photograph from the Bureau of Ships Collection in the U.S. National Archives. 19-N-46400

USS Sturgeon (SS-187) Off the Mare Island Navy Yard, California, 3 May 1943. Ship in the left-center distance is the Fulton-class submarine tender USS Bushnell (AS-15), which was then completing her post-commissioning outfitting. Of note, Bushnell would remain in service until 1970 and be expended in a 1983 SINKEX– appropriately enough sent to the bottom by submarines. NH 99231

Another new skipper and five more patrols

Getting back into the war in June 1943, Piaczentkowski would command Sturgeon for her 7th patrol– another quiet one despite being in Japanese home waters– then leave the boat on 6 August, replaced by LCDR Charlton Lewis Murphy (USNA 1932) who had already commanded the old R-boat USS R-7 (SS-84) on the East Coast.

Murphy and the gang would embark on a fruitless 8th war patrol then strike the Empire hard on the 9th. Conducted in Japan’s Home Waters, Sturgeon sank the transport Erie Maru (5493 GRT) on 11 January 1944, blew both the bow and stern off the destroyer Suzutsuki— killing 135 including the tin can’s skipper– four days later, then sank the transport Chosen Maru (3110 GRT) before the month was up. This earned Philadelphia-born Murphy a Navy Cross. 

On her 10th patrol, she sank the Japanese transport Seiryu Maru (1904 GRT) north of Chichi Jima on 11 May 1944.

Her 11th patrol, like her encounter with the Montevideo Maru, would earn the boat a degree of infamy.

Toyama Maru

Built in 1935 at Nagasaki as a 7,090-ton cargo ship for Nippon Yusen Kaisha, K. K. (NYK) Line, Tokyo, MV Toyama Maru was requisitioned by the Imperial Army as Army No. 782 in January 1941 to help move troops to Manchuria.

Japanese cargo ship Toyama Maru at the dock in Vancouver before the war. Photograph by Walter E. Frost, Vancouver City Archives CVA 447-2781.

Departing Koniya on 29 June 1944 for Naha as part of Convoy KATA-412, Toyama Maru was transporting over 6,000 men of the 44th Independent Mixed Brigade’s 298th IIB, 299th, 300th IIB, and 301st IIBs and a cargo of gasoline in cans, all of which would have proved a formidable reinforcement to the defenders on Okinawa.

Would have.

Sturgeon found her the same day and, four torpedoes later, she was ablaze and sinking, carrying some 5,400 IJA troops and ship’s crew members to the bottom in very short order– often described as the greatest loss of life in a ship sunk by a U.S. submarine. As payment for the title, Sturgeon’s crew withstood an estimated 273 depth charges and aircraft bombs between 29 June and 3 July, as the boat’s war history says, “All went for naught, for she was as tough-skinned as the fish whose name she bore.”

Murphy’s report on Toyama Maru sinking

As noted by RADM Cox in H-Gram 33, “Yanagi Missions and Submarine Atrocities”:

Of 6,000 Japanese troops of the 44th Independent Mixed Brigade on board, over 5,400 died, the highest death toll of any ship sunk by a U.S. submarine (and the fourth highest of any ship sunk by a submarine of any nation. The two highest tolls were German ships packed with thousands of civilian refugees sunk by Soviet submarines, and the third-highest was a Japanese “hell ship” crammed with thousands of Allied prisoners of war and native forced laborers unknowingly sunk by a British submarine).

Sturgeon ended her final patrol when she returned to Pearl Harbor on 5 August 1944 then was sent back to California for further overhaul, with it being likely those 273 depth charges and bombs left more damage than the war history would imply. Sent to the East Coast in early 1945, she ended the war as a training boat with SubRon 1 out of New London.

Sturgeon earned ten battle stars for World War II service, with seven of her war patrols deemed successful enough for a Submarine Combat Insignia.

She was decommissioned on 15 November 1945.

Epilogue

Ex-Sturgeon was sold for scrapping, on 12 June 1948, to Interstate Metals Corp., New York, New York, just short of 12 years after she was laid down.

Her class was very successful– and lucky– with all six boats still afloat on VJ Day, earning a total of 54 battle stars after completing 70 war patrols:

  • Class leader Salmon (nine battle stars, 11 patrols) was a constructive loss due to battle damage after a late war surface action with Japanese surface escorts that earned her the Presidential Unit Citation, was soon disposed of in late September 1945.
  • Seal (10 battle stars, 11 patrols) was used as a Naval Reserve training ship after the war and sold for scrapping in 1956.
  • Skipjack (seven battle stars, 10 patrols) was sunk as a target twice after the war, the first time at Bikini atoll in 1946 and then, raised and examined, off California in 1948.
  • Snapper (six battle stars, 11 patrols) assisted with training for a while post-war then was sold for scrap in 1948.
  • Stingray, with an impressive one dozen battle stars after 16 war patrols (the record for any American submarine), was scrapped in 1946 but two of her GM diesels were saved and are now part of the Gato-class museum sub USS Cod (SS-224) in Cleveland.

Speaking of relics and museums, few relics are around of the Sturgeon, but her war patrol reports are digitized and in the National Archives.

Her war flag is preserved at the USS Bowfin Museum in Hawaii.

There is also a smattering of period art.

Sturgeon Herz Postcard via the UC San Diego Library

Of her seven skippers, Bull Wright was the best known but, despite his Navy Cross, he never commanded a submarine again– perhaps dogged over the Montevideo Maru, or perhaps because he was 40 years old when he left Sturgeon— and he retired quietly from the Navy after the war as a rear admiral. Although a number of WWII submarines and skippers with lower tonnage or fewer patrols/battle stars under their belt were profiled in the most excellent 1950s “Silent Service” documentary series, Bull Wright and Sturgeon were skipped.

In late 1945, an author by the name of Carl Carmer, after sitting with Bull Wright, would pen the 119-page “Jesse James of the Java Sea,” which is filled with gems reportedly from the mouth of the submariner including, “You fire a fish, and it hits or misses. You sink one or get pasted. There isn’t much variety in our pattern, you know.”

Another anecdote about Bull:

He passed in 1980 in Corpus Christi, a Texan to the end.

Her other Navy Cross-earning skipper, the quieter CDR Charlton Lewis Murphy, who commanded the boat during her 8th-11th War Patrols and chalked up five big marus including the brigade-carrying Toyama Maru, ended the war on the USS Carbonero (SS-337) and retired as a rear admiral before passing in 1961, aged 53.

Don’t worry, we aren’t throwing rocks at Piaczentkowski, he too would earn a star before he retired.

Speaking of admirals, Chet Nimitz would skipper two submarines of his own after he left Sturgeon — USS Haddo (SS-255) and USS Sarda (SS-488)— then retire as a one-star in 1957, commanding SubRon 6– which was ironically the old Sturgeon’s first squadron. He saw the 21st century and passed in 2002.

The third, and so far, final, USS Sturgeon was the lead ship (SSN-637) of the last class of American submarines named for fish. Ordered in 1961, she had a career more than twice as long as “our” Sturgeon and was decommissioned in 1994, earning two Meritorious Unit Commendations and a Navy Unit Commendation. Her sail is preserved at the Naval Undersea Museum in Keyport, Washington, while her control center is now on display at the Submarine Force Library and Museum in Groton, Connecticut, giving her the distinction of stretching from coast to coast.

A starboard bow view of the nuclear-powered attack submarine USS STURGEON (SSN-637) underway off Long Island, N.Y, 2/1/1991 Photo by PH1 Grant. National Archives Identifier:6467979

As for Montevideo Maru, in July 2012 a new memorial by Melbourne sculptor James Parrett was dedicated on the grounds of the Australian War Memorial to commemorate those Australians who died in the defense of Rabaul, and those who later died as prisoners in the sinking of the Japanese transport.

Specs:

Displacement: 1,449 tons Surfaced; 2,198 tons Submerged.
Length: 308 feet
Beam: 26 ft. 2 in.
Draft 14′ 2″
Watertight Compartments: 7 plus conning tower.
Pressure Hull Plating: approx. 11/16 in. mild steel.
Propulsion:
4 main motors with 2,660 shaft horsepower (Hoover, Owens, Rentschler Co. diesels replaced in 1943-1944 with four General Motors 278A diesel engines
4 Elliot Motor Co. electric motors, 3,300 hp
2 126-cell main storage batteries.
Maximum Speed: 17 knots surfaced; 8.75 knots submerged.
Cruising Range: 11,000 miles surfaced at 10 knots.
Submerged Endurance: 48 hours at 2 knots.
Fuel Capacity: 96,025 gallons.
Patrol Endurance: 75 days.
Operating Depth: 250 feet.
Complement: 5 Officers 50 Enlisted
Armament:
Torpedo Tubes: 4 bows; 4 sterns.
Torpedo Load, Max: 20 internal, 4 external (later removed)
Deck Guns:
1 x 3″/50-cal Mk21 (relocated in 1943)
2 x .50 caliber M2 machine guns
2 x .30 caliber M1919 machine guns

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

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

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.

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Warship Wednesday, Mar. 23, 2022: Mines, Yes, but also U-Boats!

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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, Mar. 23, 2022: Mines, Yes, but also U-Boats!

Photograph FL 18955 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums

Here we see the Royal Navy Halcyon-class “sloop minesweeper” HMS Sharpshooter (N68/J68) in September 1938, at around the time Hitler sent troops into the Sudetenland and a year before he was to send them into Poland, sparking WWII. Not a very imposing ship, some 80 years ago this week she would single-handedly send a Jerry U-boat to the bottom of the Barents Sea.

Based on the Grimsby-class sloops-of-war– a baker’s dozen 1,500-ton, 266-foot slow-moving (16 knots) sub chasers built in the early 1930s and capable of hauling almost 100 depth charges along with some light guns– the 21-unit Halcyon-class were slightly smaller, running 245-feet overall, and logically lighter at 1,400-tons. Outfitted with two QF MK V 4″/45 singles and a smattering of machine guns (both .50 cal Vickers and .303 Lewis guns), they shipped with manual sweep gear rather than ASW equipment.

The first five Halcyons (ordered 1933-35) were fitted with forced lubricating compound engines, and the next two with reciprocating steam (VTE) engines, while the latter 14 (ordered 1936-37 as Europe was ramping up for war) used Parsons steam turbines, with all versions being able to hit at least 16.5 knot-ish while the latter upgrades able to touch 17. All were named for Great War-era destroyers or minesweepers. 

Our little sweeper, Sharpshooter, was of the latter “turbine” type and was laid down at HM Dockyard Devonport on 8 June 1936, the fifth (and as of 2022, the last) RN warship to carry the name dating back to a 12-gun Archer-class gunbrig of the Napoleonic era. Commissioned 17 December 1937 with pennant N68, this later shifted to J68.

Assigned to the 1st Minesweeping Flotilla based at Portland (soon shifting to Scapa) her pre-war service included searching for the lost T-class submarine HMS Thetis (N25), which sank during sea trials in Liverpool Bay in the summer of 1939.

War!

Once the war began (see U-boat.net and Halcyon-class.co.uk for an extensive chronicle of her WWII service) Sharpshooter worked mine sweeping assignments in the North Sea and off Scotland, then in November transferred to Stornoway for Atlantic convoy escort duties with her Flotilla, then transferred to the 6th MS Flotilla in April 1940.

The seven sweepers of the 6th MSF, Sharpshooter included, moved to the Dover area in May, where, in response to the Blitzkrieg of the Lowlands, conducted sweeps of the coastal shipping routes off Holland. Often under German air attack on this detail, two units of the Flotilla (sisterships Hussar and Harrier) were damaged by Luftwaffe bombs before the month was up.

Called close to the beaches of Dunkirk on 28 May to help pull off members of the BEF desperate to escape the Fall of France, Sharpshooter arrived off the beaches at 0115 on 29 May and began putting boats in the water to fight the inshore surf and remove men directly from the sand—after all, she and her sisters could float in just 9-feet of water.

Dunkirk 26-29 May 1940 British troops line up on the beach at Dunkirk to await evacuation IWM

By noon on the 29th, she landed 100 soggy but safe soldiers at Dover.

On the 30th, she disembarked 273 troops at Dover, then, headed back to the beaches late that night, had a collision with the French steamer St. Helier which was pulling off French troops. This forced her to be towed back to Dover sans any more Tommys, facing a repair that would put her out of the war until mid-September.

Sharpshooter finished 1940 based at Scapa conducting fleet minesweeping/route clearance duties.

In January 1941, she was part of the sweeping screen to the north of Rockall for the battleship HMS King George V, which was taking Lord Halifax across the Atlantic to his post as the new British Ambassador at Washington.

LORD HALIFAX LEAVES FOR THE USA IN HMS KING GEORGE V TO TAKE UP HIS POST AS AMBASSADOR. JANUARY 1941. (A 2702) Two Minesweepers at a northern base. HMS SHARPSHOOTER is on the left. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205137059

Following that, Sharpshooter became a facet on North Atlantic convoy work, clocking on with HX 125, OB 334, PQ 8, PQ 9/10, PQ 12, PQ 13, QP 8, QP 9, PQ 18, QP 14, and QP 15 across 1941 and 1942, alternating with minesweeping operations in North Russian waters and off Allied-occupied Iceland. This duty usually consisted of riding shotgun on slow-moving Russia-bound convoys from Reykjavik to Murmansk/Archangel and back, being targets in the massive Barents Sea shooting gallery off German-occupied Norway which meant deadly threats from shore-based bombers, U-boats, and the bulk of the Kriegsmarine’s surface assets.

This brings us to Sharpshooter’s encounter with the Type VIIC submarine U-655 (KrvKpt. Adolf Dumrese) of Wolfpack Ziethen. Our minesweeper, part of Convoy QP 9 on a return run from Murmansk to Reykjavik, spotted Dumrese’s surfaced U-boat at very close range on the morning of 24 March 1942 south-east of Bear Island– and promptly rammed it.

U-655 turned over and sank without survivors while the minesweeper suffered no losses.

This required Sharpshooter to return to the dockyard for 10 weeks of repairs to her bow and post refit trials. Meanwhile, her skipper, LCDR David Lampen received the DSO on 25 August “awarded for skill and coolness in successful actions against enemy submarines while serving in HMS Sharpshooter.”

By April 1943, Sharpshooter was dispatched to the Mediterranean for minesweeping off the North African coast then, as summer went on, for the Operation Husky Sicily landings. She remained in the Med through most of 1944, where she reportedly suffered a partial (?) torpedo hit in April.

Arriving back in the UK in September 1944, she conducted sweeping off the coast of France and Belgium before switching to North Sea operations into early 1945.

A second career

With no shortage of minesweepers and proper sloops, and the war in Europe over, the Admiralty in April 1945 made the call to disarm Sharpshooter (along with her sister ships HMS Seagull, Franklin, and Scott) then convert them to survey ships. 

The 1946 Jane’s listing for the Halcyon class survey ship conversions, including HMS Sharpshooter

Sharpshooter emerged with a white scheme in May 1946 and was soon dispatched for hydrographic duties in the shipwreck-plagued South Pacific, based in Singapore, later picking up the auxiliary pennant A310.

Returning to the UK in December 1948, she spent the next several years on surveys of the Home Islands’ West coast and, just in time for the 1953 Coronation Review, was renamed HMS Shackleton after the famed British explorer. She and her two sisters located and logged many war-time wrecks while re-surveying coastal Great Britain.

A familiar sight from Portsmouth to the Irish Sea, Sharpshooter/Shackleton was reduced to reserve status in 1961 and laid up at Devonport.

On the disposal list in 1965, she was sold to BISCO on 3 November for breaking up at Troon by the West of Scotland Shipbreaking Co. Ltd.

Epilogue

The Halcyons suffered terribly during WWII. Sphinx, Skipjack, Gossamer, Niger, Leda, Bramble, Hebe, Hussar, and Britomart were all sunk in enemy (or blue-on-blue) action off Iceland, Dunkirk, Normandy, the Barents Sea, and in Russia’s Kola Bay– all the same waters where Sharpshooter narrowly avoided destruction herself.

As peace settled into a frigid Cold War, these slow and well-worn sweeper sloops were not needed, and most were immediately laid up.

Just four Halcyons were listed as active in the 1946 edition of Jane’s, the rest lost during the war or converted to survey ships.

The Royal Navy sold almost all of Sharpshooter/Shackleton’s remaining sisters by the mid-1950s. The only outlier to this was HMS Scott, which had likewise been tasked with survey work, and was sold for scrap in 1965 along with Sharpshooter.

Sharpshooter, her name not since reused by the Admiralty, is at least remembered by a Displate.

While Shackleton, his name recently very much in the news, gets much more attention and maritime art exists of Sharpshooter in this post-war survey guise.

Specs: 

Displacement: 815 long tons std; 1,394 tons, full load
Length 245 ft 3 in
Beam 33 ft 6 in
Draught 9 ft
Propulsion: Two Admiralty 3-drum water-tube boilers, two Parsons steam turbines, 1770 shp, two shafts
Speed 17 knots
Range 7,200 nmi at 10 knots on 264 tons oil
Sensors (1944): Type 123 ASDIC, Type 271 RDF
Complement: 80
Armament:


(1938)
2 x QF 4 in Mk. V guns, single mounts HA Mk.III
One quad QF 0.5 in Mk.III Vickers machine gun, HA Mk. I
Assorted .303 Lewis guns


(1944)
1 x QF 4 in Mk.V guns, single mounts HA Mk.III
2 x 2 and 2 x 1 20mm/80 Oerlikon AAA cannons
Depth charges– two double depth charge chutes with two depth charges each, two single chutes with one depth charge each, and two throwers with 40 depth charges.

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!

Happy 100 For U.S. Navy Carrier Air and what it Brings

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While the Centennial of U.S. Naval Aviation — traditionally recognized as the moment Eugene B. Ely’s Curtiss pusher lifted off from USS Birmingham (Scout Cruiser # 2) in 1910– is a historic milestone that was passed over a decade ago, we are now in the Centennial of United States Navy Aircraft Carriers.

On 20 March 1922, following a two-year conversion at Norfolk Naval Shipyard, the former USS Jupiter (Navy Fleet Collier No. 3) was recommissioned as the United States Navy’s first aircraft carrier USS Langley (CV 1). 

1931 Jane’s, showing a plan for the carrier Langley

Named in honor of Samuel Pierpont Langley, an American aircraft pioneer, and engineer, “The Covered Wagon” started as an experimental platform but was quickly proven an invaluable weapons system that changed how the U.S. Navy fought at sea.

As noted by the Navy:

In the nearly 100 years since, from CV 1 to CVN 78, aircraft carriers have been the Navy’s preeminent power projection platform and have served the nation’s interest in times of war and peace. With an unequaled ability to provide warfighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict, and to adapt in an ever-changing world, aircraft carriers, their air wings, and associated strike groups are the foundation of US maritime strategy.

SECNAV Carlos Del Toro’s official message celebrating 100 years of U.S. Navy Carrier Aviation.

About those big decks…

Today, the U.S. Navy has more big deck flattops than any other fleet in the world– a title it has held since about 1943 or so without exception– including 10 beautiful Nimitz-class supercarriers (all of which have conducted combat operations) plus one Gerald R. Ford-class carrier in commission (and finally nearing her first deployment) and two more Fords building.

It is expected the Fords will replace the Nimitz class on a one-per-one basis. Of the current 10, five are in PIA, DPIA, or RCOH phases of deep maintenance, leaving just five capable of deployment. Still, even with half these big carriers tied down, the five large-deck CVNs on tap are capable of more combat sorties than every other non-U.S. flattop currently afloat combined.

For reference, check out this great series of top-down shots by MC3 Bela Chambers of the eighth Nimitz-class supercarrier USS Harry S Truman (CVN-75), the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle (R 91), and the Italian aircraft carrier ITS Cavour (C 550) transiting the Ionian Sea during recent NATO tri-carrier operations.

Commissioned in 1998, HST, like her sisters, is over 100,000-tons full load and is capable of carrying 90 fixed and rotary-wing aircraft. Currently embarked with CVW-1 aboard, you can see her deck filled with over 30 F-18E/Fs from VFA-11 (Red Rippers), VFA-211 (Fighting Checkmates), VFA-34 (Blue Blasters), VFA-81 (Sunliners), and EA-18Gs of VAQ-137 (Rooks) along with MH-60S/Rs of HSC-11 (Dragonslayers) and HMS-72 (Proud Warriors) and E-2D “Advanced” Hawkeyes of VAW-126 (Seahawks). The current wing is deployed with 46 F-18E/F, 5 EA-18G, 5 E-2Ds, 8 MH-60Ss and 11 MH-60Rs. Once an F-35C squadron gets integrated with CVW-1, replacing one of the Rhino units, it makes all sorts of other changes. Add to this MQ-25 Stingray drone refuelers and you see big things on the horizon.

For comparison, Charles de Gaulle, commissioned in 2001, is the only nuclear-powered carrier not operated by the U.S. Navy. At 42,000 tons she is smaller than the conventionally-powered Chinese carriers or the new Royal Navy QE2 class vessels, but the French have been operating her for two decades (off and on), including combat operations, and she is probably at this point the most capable foreign carrier afloat. However, she typically deploys with only around 30 aircraft, including the navalised Dassault Rafale (M model), American-built E-2C Hawkeyes, and a mix of a half-dozen light and medium helicopters. Her current “Clemenceau 22” deployment includes just 20 F3R Rafales of 12F and 17F.

The newest of the three vessels seen here, is the Italian aircraft carrier ITS Cavour (C 550), commissioned in 2008. Some 30,000-tons full load, she was built with lessons learned by the Italians after operating their much smaller (14,000-ton) “Harrier Carrier” Giuseppe Garibaldi, which joined the Marina Militare in 1985. Whereas Garibaldi was able to carry up to 18 aircraft, a mix of helicopters and Harriers, Cavour was designed for STOVL fixed-wing use with 10 F-35Bs (which Italy is slowly fielding) and a dozen big Agusta AW101 (Merlins). She is seen above with a quartet of aging Italian AV-8Bs, which explains why Garibaldi, currently in Norway on a NATO exercise there, is there sans Harriers.

It should be noted that, when talking about smaller but capable carriers such as Charles de Gaulle and Cavour, the U.S. Navy also has a fleet of “non-carriers” that can clock in for such power projection as well.

Further, there are seven remaining Wasp-class and two America-class amphibious assault ships, which can be used as a light carrier of sorts, filled with up to 20 AV-8Bs or F-35Bs (after updates), with the latter concept termed a “Lightning Carrier.” A slow vessel, these ‘phibs are not main battle force ships, and they cannot generate triple digits of sorties per day, but they are a powerful force multiplier, especially if they free up a big deck carrier for heavier work. While not as beefy or well-rounded an airwing as a Nimitz or (hopefully) Ford-class supercarrier, these LHD/LHA sea control ships can provide a lot of projection if needed– providing there are enough F-35Bs to fill their decks.

Thirteen U.S. Marine Corps F-35B Lightning II with Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 122, Marine Aircraft Group 13, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing (MAW), are staged aboard the amphibious assault ship USS America (LHA 6) as part of routine training in the eastern Pacific, Oct. 8, 2019. (U.S. Marine Corps photo illustration by Lance Cpl. Juan Anaya)

Speaking of which, USS Tripoli (LHA-7), is set to fully test the Lightning Carrier concept next month, drawing 20 F-35Bs from VMX-1, VMFA-211, and VMFA-225. 

Last All-Gun Cruiser Could Get Hail Mary Save

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The beautiful De Zeven Provinciën-class light cruiser Hr.Ms. De Ruyter (C 801), who went on to serve the Peruvian Navy as BAP Almirante Grau (CLM-81) until she was retired in 2017, was to be saved as a floating museum, perhaps at the Naval Museum in Callao but lack of funding and interest has derailed that.

The Peruvians now have the vessel up for sale with the asking price starting at about $1.07 million. 

Of course, that figure is to scrap the ship but concerns about asbestos, chemicals dating back to the 1930s, and lead paint probably make that a non-starter as it would likely cost more to safely dispose of all the bad stuff than her value in recycled materials. This leaves the prospect that she may just be scuttled at sea or, possibly, sent to Alang where such things don’t matter as much.

However, there is a slight possibility the ship could go back “home” with some Dutch groups reportedly making a move to acquire and preserve the old girl. 

Of course, see “concerns about asbestos, chemicals dating back to the 1930s, and lead paint ” as well as “lack of funding and interest” to see how that will likely turn out.

Either way, it is a shame.

BAP Almirante Grau of the Peruvian Navy, was decommissioned on Sep 26, 2017

Warship Wednesday, Mar. 9, 2022: The Chart Maker

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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, Mar. 9, 2022: The Chart Maker

National Archives Photo 19-N-34392

Here we see the white-hulled seagull that was the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey’s vessel Pathfinder being converted to a naval vessel, at the Lake Washington Shipyard, Houghton, Washington, on 9 March 1942, 80 years ago today. Note the barge alongside, full of wood paneling torn from the vessel to make it more battle-ready. While this is not a traditional “warship,” it was said that, “The road to Tokyo was paved with Pathfinder’s charts,” which I think deserves some recognition.

Carrying on the name of the Lewis Nixon-designed clipper-bowed yacht that was taken into Naval service for the Spanish-American War then went on to serve the USC&GS for forty years, mapping most of the Philippines for the first time, the above Pathfinder was purpose-built for her survey work.

Laid down at Lake Washington in peacetime– February 1941– she was 229-feet overall, with a DeLaval steam turbine fed by twin Babcock and Wilcox header-type boilers. Just 2,175-tons, this 2,000shp engineering suite allowed the vessel to touch a paint-peeling 14.7 knots on her builder’s trials.

Pathfinder being converted to a naval vessel, at the Lake Washington Shipyard, Houghton, Washington, on 9 March 1942, showing white being replaced with grey. 19-N-34393

Same day as the above. Note her relatively fine stern lines and empty survey boat davits. 19-N-34391

Acquired by the Navy after Pearl Harbor, she was converted and commissioned 31 August 1942, as the haze-grey USS Pathfinder (AGS-1). She picked up a pair of 3-inch guns forward, another pair of 20mm cannons aft, depth charge racks, and two old Colt M1895 “potato digger” machine guns. 

With her warpaint on and teeth put in! USS Pathfinder (AGS-1) off the Puget Sound Navy Yard, 31 August 1942. 19-N-34396

Same day as the above, showing her stern depth charge racks and 20mm Oerlikons. 19-N-34395

Following a short shakedown, she arrived at Funa Futi in the Ellice Islands (today’s Tuvalu) on the day after Christmas 1942.

As noted by DANFS:

For nearly two years Pathfinder operated along the dangerous New Guinea-New Britain-Solomon Islands are as allied land-air-sea forces fought to break the Japanese grip on the area. An isolated reef, an uncharted harbor, a lonely stretch of enemy hold coastline-each presented a different problem. At Bougainville, Treasury Island, Green Island, Emirau, and Guam, advance Pathfinder parties were sent ashore under the noses of the Japanese to work in close cooperation with Allied amphibious elements in laying out harbor charts or surveying inland channels.

She survived no less than 50 bombing raids while in the Solomons in 1943, including at least one in which her gunners bagged enemy aircraft.

On 7 April, while off Guadalcanal, she was attacked by 18 Japanese fighters and dive bombers coming in high and fast. Responding with 11 rounds from her two 3″/50s, 597 rounds from her 20mm Oerlikon, and 202 from her ancient Colt .30-06s, she downed two planes in two minutes. Her only damage was some 7.7-caliber holes in her survey launch.

From her April 1943 War Diary, in the National Archives.

Following charting efforts around New Guinea, Pathfinder was sent back home to California at the end of September 1944 for a three-month refit in which she would pick up even more guns.

Her late-war look. Bow-on shot of USS Pathfinder (AGS-1) off San Francisco, California, 9 December 1944 after her late-war stint at Mare Island. #: 19-N-79507

The same day, stern shot. Note the depth charge racks. 19-N-79508

The same day, 19-N-79505

Same day. Note her twin 40mm singles over her stern, replacing two 20mm Oerlikon. 19-N-79506

Pathfinder was part of the push to liberate the Philippines, assisting with the landings in Casiguran Bay, Luzon in March 1945, where she withstood other air attacks.

Her luck ran out on 6 May 1945 while in “Suicide Slot” off Okinawa. A Japanese kamikaze plane crash-dived into the survey ship’s after gun platform killing one man, starting fires, and setting off ready ammunition. Emergency parties quickly brought the flames under control.

The action resulted in two Silver Stars.

Licking her wounds, Pathfinder remained off Okinawa and by August 1945 was at General Quarters 170 times in four months. She ended her war in a series of surveys among Japan’s home islands posy VJ-Day to assist the Allied occupation.

USC&GSS Pathfinder leading a line of four coast survey ships, circa 1945-46. The next ship astern is unidentified, but third, in a row is the survey ship Hydrographer. Description: Courtesy of Ted Stone, 1977.NH 82197-A

Her 1942-45 Pacific journey, via her War Diary

Epilogue

Arriving at Seattle on Christmas Eve 1945, Pathfinder decommissioned on 31 January 1946 and was transferred to the Commerce Department, being struck from the Navy List on 13 November 1946.

She received two battle stars (Solomons and Okinawa Gunto) for her World War II service. For more information on that period, her war diaries and history are digitized in the National Archives. 

USC&GSS Pathfinder (OSS-30), her guns hung up and her original white scheme reapplied, continued her survey work, only without as much threat from kamikazes, mines, and enemy submarines– although she still had her gun tubs well into the late 1950s!

Pathfinder at anchor, Photographer: Rear Admiral Harley D. Nygren, May 1958 Skowl Arm, Alaska. Note her empty gun tubs aft. (NOAA photo)

Pathfinder in Seattle ca. 1961. Her old WWII gun tubs have finally been removed. (NOAA photo)

Retired from NOAA service in 1971, the year after the new organization absorbed the USC&GS, Pathfinder was sold for scrapping to General Auto Wrecking Company, Ballard, WA. in 1972.

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

Specs:

Displacement 2,175 t.
Length 229′ 4″
Beam 39′
Draft 16′
Speed 14.7 kts (trial)
Propulsion: one DeLaval steam turbine, two Babcock and Wilcox header-type boilers, 310psi 625°, double DeLaval Main Reduction Gears 2000shp
Complement: (Navy 1942) 13 Officers, 145 Enlisted
Armament (1944)
2 x 3″/50 dual-purpose gun mounts
4 x 1 40mm gun mounts
two depth charge tracks
two depth charge projectors

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Warship Wednesday, March 2, 2022: Burnt Java

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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, March 2, 2022: Burnt Java

NIMH photo

Here we see the Koninklijke Marine naval docks at Soerabaja (Surabaya), on the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies. The photo was taken 80 years ago today, 2 March 1942, from the coal jetty towards the West. With the Japanese fast approaching, the Dutch started the destruction of the yard at 11:30 am and you can make out the 1,500-ton dry dock sunk along with the patrol boats P19 and P20. The new 2,500-ton drydock is listing to the right with a cloud of smoke from the Perak oil tanks in the background.

While the scuttling of the Vichy French fleet at Toulon in 1942, and the self-destruction of the Royal Danish Navy at its docks in Copenhagen in 1943 to keep them out of German hands are well-remembered and often spoken about in maritime lore, the Dutch wrecking crew on Java at Soerabaja and Tjilatjap gets little more than a footnote.

Dominated by the Dutch for some 125 years before the Japanese effort to uproot them, Java was one of the centerpieces of the Indonesian archipelago in 1942 and a principal base for the colonial forces. While Borneo, Sumatra, and other islands may have had more resources– including natural rubber and pumping 20 million barrels a year of oil– Java was the strategic lynchpin. Defended by the (nominally) 85,000-man Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) along with their own air force, the ML-KNIL, it was the Dutch Navy and its shore-based long-range patrol craft of the MLD naval air service that was the colony’s first line of defense.

Japanese invasion map of the Netherlands East Indies cropped to show the landings and attack on Java. Note the location of the Dutch naval bases and how far the island is from Darwin. (OSS Collection Stanford University)

However, with the ML-KNIL/MLD’s aircraft swatted from the sky, and the Dutch navy’s largest units– the cruisers Hr.Ms. De Ruyter and Java— sunk at the Battle of the Java Sea on the night of 28 February along with following on Battle of Sunda Strait on 1 March that saw two Allied cruisers sent to the bottom, Java was wide open, and future war criminal Gen. Hitoshi Imamura’s 16th Army started landing on the island at three points directly after.

While Dutch Lt. Gen. Hein Ter Poorten’s force of three KNIL divisions and a mixed brigade worth of British/Australian/American reinforcements would seem on paper to be an even match for Imamura’s troops, the Japanese had the momentum from the start and by 8 March, the Dutch radio station at Ciumbuluit signed off with “Wij sluiten nu. Vaarwel tot betere tijden. Leve de Koningin!” (We are closing now. Farewell till better times. Long live the Queen!)

This effectively ended the short-lived ABDACOM command, severed the Malay-Timor barrier protecting Australia, and was the near-height of the Japanese success in the South Pacific. In March 1942, the Japanese would mount no less than 17 air raids on Western and Northern Australia.

Unescapable

The noose around Java was tight and several vessels that tried to break out failed.

The Japanese cruisers Takao and Atago found the old destroyer USS Pillsbury (DD-227) near nightfall on 2 March and sent her to the bottom with all hands.

At roughly the same time, the Japanese heavy cruiser Maya, accompanied by destroyers Arashi and Nowaki, found the British destroyer HMS Stronghold (H50) trying to escape from Tjilatjap to Australia and sank her, recovering 50 survivors.

The Australian Grimsby-class sloop HMAS Yarra (U77) was escorting a convoy of three British ships (the depot ship HMS Anking, the British tanker Francol, and the motor minesweeper HMS MMS 51) and survivors from the Dutch ship Parigi, from the fighting in Java to Fremantle when they were attacked on 4 March by three Japanese heavy cruisers– Atago, Takao and Maya, each armed with ten 8-inch guns– and two destroyers. The 1,080-ton sloop gave her last full measure but was unable to stop the massacre of the convoy and the Japanese were especially brutal, with reports of close-range shelling by the two Japanese destroyers, witnessed by 34 survivors on two rafts. The blockade-running Dutch freighter Tawali, rescued 57 officers and men from Anking that night, while the escaping Dutch steamer Tjimanjoek found 14 further survivors of the convoy on 7 March, and two days later 13 of the sloop’s ratings were picked up by the Dutch submarine K XI (a vessel that would go on to serve with the British in the Indian Ocean through 1945).

Persian Gulf, August 1941. Aerial port side view of the sloop HMAS Yarra II. She would be sunk along with her three-ship convoy while trying to escape Java on 4 March 1942. (AWM C236282)

Survivors

To be sure, the last large Dutch surface ship in the Pacific, the cruiser Hr.Ms. Tromp had escaped destruction and would serve alongside the Allies for the rest of the war, while her sister Jacob van Heemskerck, arriving too late to be sunk in the Java Sea, would duplicate her efforts.

Likewise, several Dutch submarines had managed to evade the Japanese dragnet and make for Australia, where they would continue their war.

Others, under an order of the Dutch navy commander on Java, RADM (acting) Pieter Koenraad, were ordered to attempt to escape after receiving the code KPX. (Koenraad and his staff embarked on the submarine Hr.Ms. K-XII, which made it to Australia safely, and from there he left for England, returning to Java in 1945 with the Free Dutch forces)

The 500-ton net-tender/minesweeper Hr.Ms. Abraham Crijnssen, capable of just 15 knots and laughably armed, famously decided to try for Australia camouflaged as a small island, leaving Java on 6 March with a volunteer crew and making it to safety on 20 March.

Personnel covered the ship in foliage and painted the hull to resemble rocks. The ship remained close to shore during the day and only sailed after sunset, sometimes traveling less than 50 miles a night. “Mijnenveger Hr.Ms. Abraham Crijnssen (1937-1961) gecamoufleerd in een baai (Soembawa) in Indische wateren in 1942.” (NIMH 2158_000014 and 2158_028298)

The scuttling itself

This left all the vessels too broken, under-armed, or small to break through the Japanese blockade and make it 1,200 miles across dangerous waters to Australia. Not wanting them to fall into the hands of the Japanese, the Dutch, and their Allies took the wrecking ball to over 120 vessels on Java at Soerabaja, Tanjon Priok, at Tjilatjap on 2 March.

The largest of these under Dutch naval control, Hr.Ms. Koning der Nederlanden was a 70-year-old 5,300-ton ramtorenschip ironclad that had been disarmed and turned into a barracks ship in 1920. She hadn’t left the harbor in generations under her own steam, so this was a no-brainer.

The Hr.Ms. Koning der Nederlanden originally mounted a pair of Armstrong 11-inch rifled muzzle-loading guns in each of her two turrets and was protected by 8 inches of iron plate. Used as an accommodation ship for the flotilla of Dutch submarines in the islands, she was set on fire and sunk at Soerabaja on March 2. (Photo NIMH)

Other large ships sent to the bottom were a group of Allied merchantmen trapped in the harbors including three 7,000-9,000-ton Dutch Java-China-Japan Lijn line cargo ships– Tjikandi, Tjikarang, and Toendjoek— scuttled as blockships. In all, 39 merchantmen were torched, mostly small Dutch coasters and empty tankers, but including three British Malay vessels (SS Giang Seng, Sisunthon Nawa, and Taiyuan) that had escaped Singapore, the 1,600-ton Canadian freighter Shinyu, and the small Norwegian tramps, Proteus and Tunni.

The two most potent Dutch combat vessels left in Java, the Admiralen-class destroyers (torpedobootjagers) Hr.Ms. Banckert and Witte de With did not survive the day. These 1,650-ton Yarrow-designed boats were built in the late 1920s and, capable of 36 knots, carried four 4.7-inch guns and a half-dozen torpedo tubes. Both had been severely mauled in surface actions with the Japanese and were unable to evacuate to Australia. The Dutch built eight of these destroyers and lost all eight in combat with the Germans and Japanese within 22 months of Holland entering the war.

Hr.Ms. Banckert seen in better days (Photo NIMH)

Hr.Ms. Witte de With (Photo NIMH)

Marine docks in Soerabaja. The photo was taken from the warehouse towards the East. Start of the destruction 11:30 am. The 3,000-ton dry dock with the destroyer Hr.Ms. Banckert is seen sinking. The dock had been torpedoed by Hr.Ms. K XVII before the submarine was able to submerge and make for Freemantle with the port’s commanding admiral aboard. On the right is the 227-ton tug/coastal minelayer Hr.Ms. Soemenep.

Speaking of destroyers, the old four-piper Clemson-class destroyer USS Stewart (DD-224) had been severely damaged at Badung Strait, only making it to Soerabaja with her engine room still operating while submerged. Written off, her crew was evacuated to Australia on 22 February and the ship, stricken from the Navy List, was left to the Dutch to scuttle.

USS Stewart (DD-224) steaming at high speed, circa the 1920s or 1930s. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 61898

The Dutch, who had a huge submarine fleet in the region, had three small “K” (for Koloniën or Colonial) subs scuttled at Soerabaja, the 583-ton circa 1923 KVII-class Hr.Ms. K X, the 828-ton circa 1926 K XI-class Hr.Ms. K XIII, and the 1,045-ton circa 1934 K XIV-class Hr.Ms. K VIII.

Colonial Submarine Hr.Ms. K X seen here upon arrival at Surabaya. In the background both the Java class light cruisers (Java and Sumatra) and on the far right a Wolf-class destroyer. 25 December 1924. Fast forward over 17 years later and the little sub was in repair at the same port and unable to get underway for Australia

Onderzeeboot Hr.Ms. K X

Onderzeeboot Hr.Ms. K VIII in drydock

De onderzeeboot Hr.Ms. K XIII op zee

The Hr.Ms. Rigel, a 1,600-ton unarmed local government-owned (gouvernementsvaartuig) yacht used by the Dutch governor-general that had been converted to a minelayer, was too fine to let the Japanese have but too slow to make run the blockade. She ended her career on 2 March as a blockship at Tanjong Priok.

Hr.Ms. Rigel in her prewar livery (Photo NIMH)

When referencing mine craft, the ten Djember (DEFG)-class auxiliary mijnenvegers (minesweepers), small 100-foot vessels of just 175 tons constructed specifically for work in the islands, were all either scuttled or left wrecked on the builders’ ways in Java. Similarly, the five even smaller 74-ton Ardjoeno-class auxiliary minesweepers, the twin 150-ton Alor and Aroe, and the twin 145-ton Ceram and Cheribon, were in the same lot, with the Dutch sinking these as well.

Minesweepers of the 3rd Division, auxiliary minesweepers of the Alor-class in action in the Dutch East Indies in 1941. These were all sunk by their crews on 2 March 1942. Small vessels like these had no hope of storing enough fuel to make it 1,200 miles to Allied lines. (Photo NIMH)

The Alors were built as regional police vessels (politiekruisers) for use in coast guard roles and were outfitted as sweepers in 1939 under naval command. (Photo NIMH)

One great unrealized hope that could have spoiled the Japanese landings was the 17 TM-4 class of motor torpedo boats. Begun at Navy Yard Soerabaja in 1940, they were small and quick vessels, just 63 feet long with a 5-foot draft, they could make 36 knots.

TM-4 klasse motortorpedoboot Hr.Ms. TM 8 portside. Note her two stern torpedo tubes and two forward light machine guns.

Motortorpedoboot Hr.Ms. TM 5 Hr.Ms. TM 8 en Hr.Ms. TM 6. Note the exhaust pipes for their three gasoline aviation engines, salvaged from old seaplanes

Motortorpedoboot Hr.Ms. TM 5 op hoge vaart met op achtergrond Hr.Ms. TM 8

TM8 getting on the plane

As the islands were cut off from Europe due to the German occupation of their homeland, much use of surplus parts was made. This included Lorraine Dietrich gasoline engines from condemned 1920s Dornier Wal and Fokker T-4 aircraft as well as Great War-vintage 17.7-inch torpedo tubes from scrapped Roofdier-class destroyers and Z-class torpedo boats.

Their only other armament was twin Lewis guns. “Motortorpedoboot Hr.Ms. TM 5 (1940-1942), Hr.Ms. TM 8 (1940-1942) en Hr.Ms. TM 6 (1940-1942) afgemeerd.”

Just 12 TM-4s were completed by March 1942, and they were all scuttled, while the other half-dozen were left unfinished onshore.

In the same vein as the TM-4s, the Dutch had planned to build at least 16 130-ton B-1-class subchasers at three different yards around the colony. These 150-foot motor launches, armed with a 3-inch popgun, some AAA pieces, and 20-depth charges, would have gone a long way towards providing the Dutch some decent coastal ASW. However, none were completed in March 1942 and the work done by the time of the fall of Java was disrupted as much as possible.

As a stopgap before the B-1s were complete, the Dutch had ordered eight small wooden-hulled mosquito boats from Higgins in New Orleans.

The Dutch Higgins boats substituted 16 depth charges for the more familiar torpedo tubes used on these vessels’ follow-on brothers as the Navy’s PT boats. They also had a 20mm gun and four .50 cals, in twin mounts with plexiglass hoods. Classed as OJR (Onderzeebootjager= Submarine hunter), the first six arrived as deck cargo in December 1941 and February 1942 but saw little service.

Onderzeebootjager Hr.Ms. OJR 4 (1941-1942) wordt te New Orleans a/b van het ms Poelau Tello gehesen voor verscheping naar Ned. Indië

Two had been lost in gasoline explosions and the Dutch scuttled the remaining four in Java (OJR-1, OJR-4, OJR-5, and OJR-6) on 2 March.

Incidentally, the two undelivered Higgins boats (H-7 and H-8) were delivered after the fall of the Dutch East Indies to the Dutch West Indies where they patrolled around Curacao.

Onderzeebootjager Hr.Ms. H 8 (1942-1946) op weg van New Orleans naar Curaçao

The local Dutch government had several small patrouillevaartuigen gunboats at their disposal outside of naval control, dubbed literally the Gouvernementsmarine or Government’s Navy. Dubbed opium jager (opium hunters), they engaged in counter-smuggling and interdiction efforts around the archipelago as well as tending aids to navigation, coastal survey, and search and rescue work. Once the war began, they were up-armed and taken under navy control and switched from being gouvernementsvaartuig vessels.

Small patrol boats scuttled in Java on 2 March 1942 included Hr.Ms. Albatros (807 tons), Aldebaran (892 tons), Biaro (700 tons), Eridanus (996 tons), Farmalhout (1,000 tons), Fomalhaut (1,000 tons), Gemma (845 tons), Pollux (1,012 tons), and Valk (850 tons).

Flotilla vessel (opium hunter of the Gouvernements-navy) Valk

The arrival of the submarine Hr.Ms. K XIII in the Emmahaven. In the background is the survey ship Eridanus of the Gouvernementsmarine (GM). Taken over by the Navy in September 1939, Eridanus was converted to a gunboat and later scuttled at Soerabaja on 2 March 1942, along with the submarine shown.

Epilogue 

In all, of the more than 120 ships destroyed by the Dutch on Java, almost 90 were small vessels under 1,000 tons such as the Djembers, the TM torpedo boats, and the assorted coastal patrol, subchasers, and minelayers. Many of their crews were marched into Japanese POW camps to spend the next four years in hell, while a small trickle was able to escape on their own either into the interior– keep in mind that about half of the rank and file in the Dutch Far East fleet were local Indonesians– or manage somehow to make for Allied-controlled areas.

The Japanese were able, as the war dragged on, to raise and salvage many of the scuttled vessels and return them to service in the IJN. Likewise, several of the TMs and B-1s that were left unfinished were eventually launched under the Rising Sun flag.

Imperial Japanese Navy Type-101 MTB, ex-Dutch TM4 ,1943, under attack by USAAF aircraft

Of the larger ships, the destroyer Hr.Ms. Banckert was raised by the escort-poor Japanese in 1944, partially repaired, and put in service as the patrol craft PB-106. On 23 October 1945, VADM Shibata Yaichiro, CINC, Second Southern Expeditionary Fleet, surrendered Java to Free Dutch Forces, and Banckert/PB-106 was returned to the Dutch, who promptly sank her in gunnery exercises.

The stricken Asiatic Fleet destroyer, ex-USS Stewart, whose hull had been broken and her crew had left her scuttling to the Dutch, was also salvaged by the Imperial Japanese Navy, and entered service as Patrol Boat No. 102 in 1943, rearmed with a variety of Dutch and Japanese weapons and her funnels retrunked into a more Japanese fashion. Found at Kure after the war, she was taken over by a U.S. Navy prize crew in October 1945 and steamed under her own power (making 20 knots no less!) across the Pacific to Oakland.

Her old hull number was repainted and a Japanese meatball was placed on her superstructure, she was sunk by the Navy in deep water in May 1946.

Ex-USS Stewart (DD-224) under attack while being sunk as a target on 24 May 1946. Airplanes seen include an F4U Corsair in the lead, followed by two F6F Hellcats. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-702830.

When the Dutch returned to Java in 1945, besides resuming control of the few vessels still around that had been refloated by the Japanese– craft which was soon discarded– they embarked on a campaign to salvage many of the rest, with hulks shipped off to Australia where they were broken into the 1950s. 

Remains of former Dutch submarine K VIII, Jervoise Bay, Cockburn Sound, Western Australia in 1956 after being blowup for scrapping.

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Warship Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2022: The Troublesome Chicago Piano

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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, Feb. 23, 2022: The Troublesome Chicago Piano

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

Here we see the crew on a four-barreled 1.1-inch/75cal anti-aircraft gun located on the flight deck of the famed Yorktown-class aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CV 6), ready for the moment when the word “Commence Firing” is passed. The photograph was released 3 April 1942, just a few months after the much-disliked “Chicago Piano” had its baptism of fire.

The Navy in the 1910s, rushing into the Great War, one in which floatplanes and Zeppelins were a real (even if not perceived great) threat to warships at sea and nearshore, began adding a handful of “balloon guns” and anti-aeroplane pieces to their vessels which extra deck space. This boiled down to stubby 3″/23 mounts placed on higher-angle AA mountings as well as, after 1916, Maxim/Hotchkiss Mark 10 37mm “1-pounder” Pom-Pom automatics of the type which was already in use in the Royal Navy at the time.

The Mark 10 1-pounder Pom Pom (Model E Hotchkiss), seen at Watertown Arsenal in 1916 with its deck penetrating naval mount. Note its water jacket and ability to go almost max vertical. The gun itself, in earlier formats with a more limited mounting, had been used by the Navy as far back as the Spanish-American War.

The Hotchkiss pom pom, seen in a period postcard, left, and fitted on the flush deck destroyer USS Israel in 1918, NH 102923. While these guns served in the U.S. Navy only briefly and were withdrawn soon after the war, other European powers continued to use them well into WWII.

Although the 37mm pom pom gun could be manned by a single bluejacket in a pinch, and it was capable of firing 25 shells in a minute before it needed reloading, its short-cased ammunition was limited to a range of just 3,500 yards.

Something better…

By the late 1920s, directly after Billy Mitchell’s antics, while the Navy shrugged off the possibility that land-based bombers could destroy capital ships underway, they quietly began upping their AAA capabilities with a trio of weapons.

This trifecta included the M1921 and later M2 water-cooled .50-caliber Browning heavy machine gun on pedestal mounts with “tombstone” magazine boxes. Capable of running through a 110-round belt in about a minute, it had a higher rate of fire but an even smaller round than the old 1-pounder pom pom with an engagement range of under 2,000 yards.

It was the water-cooled .50 cal that Dorie Miller became famous on at Pearl Harbor.

USS Enterprise (CV-6), view of part of the .50 caliber anti-aircraft guns gallery in action against attacking Japanese planes during the raid on the Japanese-held Marshall Islands, 1 February 1942. The wing in the background is from one of the Douglass SBD-3 Dauntless aircraft in the carrier’s air group. NH 50935

While the .50-cal was the low end of the USN’s interbellum AAA, the high end was the newly developed 5″/38 DP Mark 12 gun on Mark 21 mounts, which began reaching the fleet’s destroyers in 1934 with USS Farragut (DD-348), could fire AAC shells out to 17,270 yards with a ceiling of 37,200 feet. Early Mk 33 directors could concentrate this fire with great accuracy– for the early 1930s– and better, faster versions of the 5″/38, augmented by late 1942 with radio proximity fuses (VT fuses) would make the guns much more effective against aircraft.

This left the mid-range between the big 5-inchers and the puny .50 cals. This is the space the 1.1-inch gun filled.

Development

As detailed in “The Chicago Piano” by Konrad F. Schreier, Jr. in Naval History, July/August 1994, the gun took six years to hammer out from the prototype to a (semi) working example:

The 1.1 gun was designed as a weapon to be used against dive and horizontal bombers and as such supplement the defensive characteristics of the caliber .50 machine gun. The first definite action in this direction took place on October 11, 1928, when the Chief of the Bureau announced a meeting of a Special Board on Naval Ordnance for October 17 to consider and submit a plan for the development and test of a machine gun of 1″ or greater. As a result of this and successive meetings, the decision was made to develop a 1.1″ machine gun.

On December 13, 1928, Mr. C.F. Jeansen, a Bureau Engineer, began an investigation of the weight of ammunition for the gun and in March 1929 Mr. Burk and Mr. Chadwick, likewise Bureau Engineers, were designated to design the gun mechanism. The round as finally adopted weighed 2 pounds and employed a .92 pound percussion-fuzed projectile. The design of the gun mechanism was completed in 1930 and tests on the initial models were carried out in March, April and May 1931. The tests, which demonstrated a cyclic rate of 90 r.p.m., were characterized by primer blow backs, misfires, and stuck cases—as well as magazine and cradle difficulties. During the next two years, designers corrected these faults and the cyclic rate increased to 140. The design was turned over to the Naval Gun Factory for production in 1934.

The shell used, spec’d out as 28x199mmSR, was a handful, no doubt.

1.1 shell OP4 plate 16

For reference, the closest thing in the Navy’s arsenal today is the 25x137mm Bushmaster as used by the Mk38 chain gun system or its follow-on 30×173 mm Bushmaster II as used in the Mk 46 gun system.

From my own collection: a .30-06 M2 ball round as used in the M1917/M1903/M1, the .50 cal BMG as used in the M2 machine gun, and a 25x137mm Bushmaster dummy. Keep in mind that the 28×199 as used by the 1.1-inch gun is about 2.45-inches longer. (Photo: Chris Eger)

Ordnance Pamphlet No. 4 (May 1943) mentions the following about the fuzing of the 1.1-inch shell, “For AA projectiles in the 1.1-inch caliber, supersensitive nose fuzes are provided to ensure bursting action immediately in the rear of very light plate or fabric, while, for common and high capacity projectiles of 3-inch and up, time fuzes are furnished to burst the projectile at the point desired in the air.”

As noted by Tony DiGiulian at NavWeaps, “A 1934 report to the Navy General Board concluded that a single 1.1″ (28 mm) hit on any part of an aircraft would probably result in a forced landing.”

The following range table from Ordnance Pamphlet 1188 (June 1944), giving a range of 7,000 yards, although its best hope of hitting something was closer to 2,000 yards. The ceiling for the gun was 19,000 feet.

When it came to utilizing the weapon in the fleet, which took until 1938 before it reached what could be termed IOC today, the “one-point-one” was used in a four-gun side-by-side water-cooled mounting that weighed 5-tons, later ballooning to almost 9-tons in its final Mark 2 Mod 6 mount.

Quad 1.1″ (28 mm) mounting. Sketch from OP-1112. Image courtesy of HNSA, via Navweaps.

Clip-fed via four hoppers, one for each gun, the mount had a theoretical rate of fire of about 550 rounds per minute. Between all the loaders, the gun mount captain, slewers, and elevators, it required upwards of 15 men to make one of these work, and that isn’t counting clippers in clipping rooms and humpers in the magazines sending up rounds from down in the bilges.

Each 8-round clip weighed 34 pounds when loaded and empty clips can be seen being manually removed by gun crew members in this great action shot.

1.1 Chicago Piano AA gun USS Philadelphia CL-41 Operation Torch, LIFE Eliot Elisofon

USS PENNSYLVANIA (BB-38) 1.1 Chicago Piano clip hoist inside the kingpost 19-N-28408

USS PENNSYLVANIA (BB-38) kingpost. Note the two 1.1 Chicago Pianos under the tripod pagoda. 19-N-28416

USS PENNSYLVANIA (BB-38) eight-round 1.1 ready service clips, essentially the M1 Garand’s en-bloc clip on steroids

The guns were soon fitted to a range of new-construction destroyers, cruisers, and aircraft carriers in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and fitted to older battleships and carriers. 

USS Maryland BB-46 off Hawaii August 1941 showing one of her 1.1-inch guns, complete with canvas cover. LIFE Peter Stackpole

1.1″ Quadruple Anti-Aircraft Machine Gun Mounting on the new carrier USS Wasp (CV-7), 26 February 1941. 80-G-464857

War!

On the morning of 7 December 1941, the Piano had its first recital and was credited, at least in initial reports, with its first kill, that from the new Porter-class destroyer USS Selfridge (DD-357). Commissioned on 25 November 1936, she had four twin 5″38s, two quad 1.1s, and some .50 cals. Only the latter two got into play against the Japanese that day.

From Selfridge’s report:

This vessel participated in the defense of Pearl Harbor and the ships based therein during the air raid of 7 December 1941.

Berth occupied was X-0 on heading approximately north-east, outboard and starboard side to U.S.S. Case, Reid, Tucker, Cummings and Whitney.

Service .50 caliber and 1.1″ caliber ammunition was clipped and in ready boxes at all machine guns prior to the action. Guns were ready for instant use except for being manned and loaded.

Nine officers and ninety-nine percent of the crew were on board.

Approximately four minutes before morning colors the Officer of the Deck witnessed the launching of a torpedo against the U.S.S. Raleigh by a Japanese plane. Almost simultaneously came a report from the signal bridge that the Naval Air Station was on fire.

The Officer of the Deck sounded the alarm for general quarters, set condition affirm and directed the engineering department to light off boilers and make preparations to get underway.

At about 0758 Selfridge .50 caliber machine guns were firing on Japanese planes, shortly followed by the 1.1″ machine guns. It is believed that these guns were the first to fire in this area.

Two enemy planes fired upon were seen to crash. One was hit by the after 1.1″ while diving on the Curtiss. The wing was sheared off causing the plane to crash near the beach at Beckoning Point. Another plane flying low on a southerly course to westward of the Selfridge released a bomb in the North Channel opposite the U.S.S. Raleigh and crashed in flames in the vicinity of the U.S.S. Curtiss while being fired on by the forward 1.1″ machine gun. A third plane, under fire by the forward 1.1″, was seen to disappear behind a hedge halfway up a hill at a location bearing about 045 True from the Selfridge. A fourth plane, hit in the underpart of the fuselage by the port .50 caliber machine gun, started smoking and when last seen was headed toward a cane field to the northward of the Selfridge. It is now known definitely however that this plane crashed.

850 rounds of 1.1″ and 2,340 rounds of .50 caliber were expended during the action. There were no personnel casualties. The only evidence of material casualty is a small conical shaped dent in the starboard side of the director which appears to have been made by a small caliber machine gun bullet.

The performance of the ship’s equipment was excellent, as was that of the crew. At no time during the raid was there a lull in firing caused by an interruption of ammunition supply. Men not engaged at the guns broke out and clipped ammunition in a most efficient and expeditious manner. The conduct of no one officer or man can be considered outstanding because the conduct, cooperation, coolness, and morale of the crew as a fighting unit was superb.

According to an October 1945 report, an estimated 43 planes (actually just 29 by all sources) were shot down on that Day of Infamy, an amazing 27 of them with .50-caliber machine guns, 8 with 5-inch, six with 3″/50, and just two with 1.1s– the latter by Selfridge.

However, the rest of the war proved the 1.1 was lacking and, unliked by almost everyone involved with it and prone to jams, its days were numbered.

Still, it went forward with the fleet throughout 1942, seeing action in all theatres. In all, the Navy assessed the 1.1 fired 57,131 rounds that year, accounting for 38 enemy aircraft, a rate of 1,503 rounds per kill.

Mail transfer at sea, circa 1942. The mailbag is high-lined between the photographer’s ship and a Benson (DD-421) class destroyer, whose after deckhouse is seen. Note Two-tone paint; 1.1″ quad anti-aircraft gun; life rafts; stub mainmast, ensign, and comm. pennant; searchlight; depth charge throwers. 80-G-K-15338.

North African Invasion, 1942. Crewmembers of one of the Northampton-class heavy cruiser USS Augusta (CA-31)’s 1.1″ anti-aircraft guns eat sandwiches at their battle station, during operations off North Africa in November 1942. Note breech of their gun at left, with ready-service ammunition stowed along with the splinter shield. 80-G-30439.

North African Invasion, 1942. A 1.1″ anti-aircraft gun on alert aboard the carrier USS Ranger (CV-4) during the Torch landings, November 1942. Note the loading hoppers and crew waiting with fresh clips. 80-G-30334.

The Lassen-class ammunition ship USS Rainer (AE-5), view of the ship’s bridge, taken at the Mare Island Navy Yard, 15 April 1942. Note 1.1″ anti-aircraft guns on each bridge wing. 19-N-29183.

Omaha-class light cruiser USS Milwaukee (CL-5) at New York Navy Yard, 7 January 1942. Note the 1.1″ anti-aircraft gun and its Mk44 director. 19-N-27090.

1.1 Chicago Piano AA gun, USS Philadelphia CL-41, Operation Torch, LIFE Eliot Elisofon

Seydisfjord Seyðisfjörður fjord Iceland June 1942, PQ-17 convoy, USS Wichita CA-45 with 5in/51 and 1.1-inch Chicago piano next to USS Wainwright DD-419. HMS Somali (F33) is in the background. LIFE Scherschel 

Another image of the above, showing the 1.1 to the top left

A Vought OS2U Kingfisher hoisted on the battleship USS New York BB-34 while on North Atlantic Convoy Escort Duty in 1942. Note 3”/50 and (cased) 1.1” Quad AA Gun Mounts, signal flags at ready, and what seems to be a gas mask drill going on below. Also note the troopship (liner) on the horizon. LIFE Magazine Archives – Frank Scherschel Photographer

One was also used ashore in the Philippines that year, manned by the Army against the Japanese invasion.

Via the Moore Report: 

Also, late in January 1941 a 1.1-in quadruple mounted automatic weapon intended for shipboard service, together with several thousand rounds of ammunition, was turned over to the Defense by the local Naval authorities. Under supervision of the Machine Gun Defense Commander that weapon was emplaced on an especially constructed concrete base atop Malinta Hill. A small Crossley automobile motor, a tank and a small boat pump, all salvaged, were used in the water cooling system.

Manned by a detachment of men selected from the 3d Battalion, 60th Coast Artillery (AA) and trained by a Naval gunner, it was assigned to Mobile for tactical control and first got into action on or about 11 February. Although its effectiveness was reduced because there was no director available, the “one-point-one” rendered good service-mainly through its apparent effect on enemy morale, and particularly in the zone lying between the minimum and maximum effective ranges respectively of 3-in guns and .50-caliber machine guns-until it was destroyed by enemy artillery fire a few days prior to the capitulation.

Fading away, 1943-45

The Piano soon gave way to the much more effective 20mm/80 Oerlikon, 40mm/60 Bofors, and various marks of updated DP 5-inch high-angle guns, the new trifecta.

Kodachrome showing 5″/38 guns firing in gunnery practice, on board an Essex class aircraft carrier in the Pacific, circa 1944-1945. Note 40mm gun barrels in the foreground, also firing, and manned 20mm flight deck gallery beyond. 80-G-K-15382

Nonetheless, the 1.1 was still seeing combat into 1943 and later as many of the old mounts were still afloat and on ships forward-deployed in combat zones.

A 1.1-inch quad anti-aircraft machinegun mounting located on the starboard side amidships of the Brooklyn-class light cruiser USS Nashville (CL-43). Photographed 11-13 May 1943, before or just after the 13 May bombardment of Japanese positions on Kolombangara and New Georgia islands. Note the metal shroud installed around the barrels of this gun mount. NH 97963 cropped

80-G-54554: Battle of the Kula Gulf, July 5-6, 1943. Aboard USS Honolulu (CL 48). Shown is the night gunnery by the 1.1 gun crew on superstructure lit by gunfire.

Check out this rare color footage, from the light cruisers USS Helena (CL-50) and the USS St. Louis (CL-49) in June 1943, showing a 1.1 gun crew in action against Japanese aircraft.

For 1943, the Navy assessed 10,727 1.1-inch shells that had been fired in anger, accounting for four enemy aircraft. Although a further 18,138 shells were fired in 1944 and 45, the system would claim just two additional kills in the last 20 months of the war. In all, the 1.1 fired 85,996 rounds during the conflict for 44.5 kills, just two percent of all enemy aircraft downed, at a rate of 1,932 rounds per hashmark.

By comparison, during World War II, the Navy experience was that it required an average of 11,143 rounds for a .50 caliber machine gun to bring down an aircraft. The .50 caliber weapons on ships were credited with 65.5 aircraft kills for 729,836 rounds expended. This, at least, shows that round-per-round, at least the 1.1 was more effective than the .50 cal.

It was also more effective than the 20mm Oerlikon, which although it downed 617.5 aircraft (28 percent of those on the balance sheet) during WWII, it needed a mean of 5,287 rounds for each of those kills. Ironic.

Only the larger caliber 40mm, 3-inch, and 5-inch mounts were able to best the rounds-to-kill ratio of the 1.1.

Thus:

Epilogue

At least one was recycled for use by the Japanese during WWII, perhaps the one mentioned in the Moore report.

Dismounted and wrecked U.S. Navy 1.1″ anti-aircraft gun mount, photographed on Corregidor after its capture by the Japanese in May 1942. Copied from the Japanese book: “Philippine Expeditionary Force,” published in 1943. Courtesy of Dr. Diosdado M. Yap, Editor-Publisher, Bataan Magazine, Washington, D.C., 1971. NH 73589

Others still stand guard on the doomed American wrecks on the bottom of the Pacific, especially those from 1942.

These are the two quad guns just aft of the exhaust. USS Lexington, via RV Petrel

USS Astoria CA-34’s 1.1-inch guns. , RV Petrel

USS Hornet CV-8’s 1.1 inch 75 cal Mark 1 anti-aircraft guns. Note how good the waterlines look, even after 80 years underwater. RV Petrel

USS Wasp (CV-7)’s quad 1.1 Chicago Piano. RV Petrel

Few remain in museums, with the 1.1 retained in a few battleship parks, the last fans of the sad Chicago Piano.

1.1 Chicago Piano AA gun on museum ship USS North Carolina

Lastly, the guns showed up in CGI format in the recent film, Midway. 

 

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

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Warship Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2022: Long Lance in the Night

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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, Feb. 16, 2022: Long Lance in the Night

Australian War Memorial photo 305183

Here we see Hr.Ms. Java was under attack by Japanese Nakajima B5N “Kate” high altitude bombers from the light carrier Ryujo in the Gaspar Straits of what is today Indonesia, some 80 years ago this week, 15 February 1942. Remarkably, the Dutch light cruiser would come through this hail without a scratch, however, her days were numbered, and she would be on the bottom of the Pacific within a fortnight of the above image.

Designed by Germaniawerft in Kiel on the cusp of the Great War, the three planned Java class cruisers were to meet the threat posed by the new Chikuma-class protected cruisers (5,000-tons, 440 ft oal, 8x 6″/45, 26 knots) of the Japanese Navy.

The response, originally an update of the German Navy’s Karlsruhe class, was a 6,670-ton (full load) 509.5-foot cruiser that could make 30+ knots on a trio of Krupp-Germania steam turbines fed by eight oil-fired Schulz-Thornycroft boilers (keep in mind one of the largest oil fields in the world was in the Dutch East Indies). Using 18 watertight bulkheads, they were fairly well protected for a circa 1913 cruiser design carrying a 3-inch belt, 4-inches on the gun shields, and 5-inches of Krupp armor on the conning tower.

Jane’s 1931 entry on the class, noting that “The German design of these ships is evident in their appearance.”

Their main battery consisted of ten Mark 6 5.9-inch/50 cal guns made by Bofors in Sweden, mounted in ten single mounts, two forward, two aft, and three along each center beam, giving the cruisers a seven-gun broadside.

Cruiser Java model by Oliemans

Unless noted, all images are from the Dutch Fotoafdrukken Koninklijke Marine collection via the NIMH, which has a ton of photos digitized.

Dutch cruiser Hr. Ms. Java, note her shielded 5.9-inch guns

The 5.9/50 Bofors mounts had a decent 29-degree elevation for their period, used electric hoists, and a well-trained crew could fire five 101-pound shells per minute per mount, giving the Java class a theoretical rate of fire of 50 5.9-inch shells every 60 seconds. Holland would go on to use the same guns on the Flores and Johan Maurits van Nassau-class gunboats.

Java delivering a broadside, 1938

Gunnery exercise aboard the Light Cruiser Hr.Ms. Java somewhere near Tanjungpriok, 1928.

The 5.9/50s used an advanced fire control system with three large 4m rangefinders that made them exactly accurate in bombarding shore targets.

Night firing on Java. These ships carried six 47-inch searchlights and the Dutch trained extensively in fighting at night.

The cruisers’ secondary armament consisted of four 13-pounder 3″/55 Bofors/Wilton-Fijenoord Mark 4 AAA guns, one on either side of each mast, directed by a dedicated 2m AA rangefinder. While– unusually for a cruiser type in the first half of the 20th century– they did not carry torpedo tubes, the Java-class vessels did have weight and space available for 48 sea mines (12 in a belowdecks hold, 36 on deck tracks), defensive weapons that the Dutch were very fond of.

Designed to carry and support two floatplanes, the class originally used British Fairey IIIFs then switched to Fokker C. VIIWs and Fokker C. XIWs by 1939.

Note one of Java’s Fokker floatplanes and the straw hat on the sentry

While the Dutch planned three of these cruisers– named after three Dutch East Indies islands (Java, Sumatra, and Celebes) — the Great War intervened and construction slowed, with the first two laid down in 1916 and Celebes in 1917, they languished and were redesigned with the knowledge gleaned from WWI naval lessons. Celebes would be canceled and only the first two vessels would see completion.

Java— ironically laid down at Koninklijke Maatschappij de Schelde (today Damen) in Flushing on 31 May 1916, the first day of the Battle of Jutland– would not be launched until 1921 and would spend the next four years fitting out.

Dutch Light Cruiser HNLMS Java pictured at Vlissingen in 1924. Note her triple screws

Dutch Light Cruiser HNLMS Java pictured at Vlissingen in 1924

Dutch Netherlands Light Cruiser HNLMS Java pictured at Vlissingen in 1924

Java Vlissingen, Zeeland, Nederland 1924

The crew of Java in Amsterdam, 1925, complete with European wool uniforms. Queen Wilhelmina and Princess Juliana of the royal family visit the ship. Sitting from left to right are: Commander M.J. Verloop (aide-de-camp of Queen Wilhelmina?), Captain L.J. Quant (commanding officer of Java), Queen Wilhelmina, Princess Juliana, Vice-Admiral C. Fock (Commanding Officer of Den Helder naval base), and Acting Vice-Admiral F. Bauduin (retired, aide-de-camp “in special service” of Queen Wilhelmina). Standing behind Captain Quant and Queen Wilhelmina is (then) Lieutenant-Commander J.Th. Furstner, executive officer and/or gunnery officer. (Collection Robert de Rooij)

A happy peace

Making 31.5-knots on her trials, Java commissioned 1 May 1925 and sailed for Asia by the end of the year. Her sistership Sumatra, built at NSM in Amsterdam, would join her in 1926.

Java at Christiania-fjord, Norway, during shakedown, circa 1925

The two sisters would spend the next decade cruising around the Pacific, calling at Japan and Australia, Hawaii, and China, showing the Dutch flag from San Francisco to Saigon to Singapore. Interestingly, she took place in the International Fleet Review at Yokohama to celebrate the coronation of Japan’s Showa emperor, Hirohito, in 1928.

In a practice shared by the Royal Navy and U.S. fleet in the same waters, the crew of the Dutch cruisers over these years took on a very local flavor, with many lower rates being filled by recruits drawn heavily from the islands’ Christian Manadonese and Ambonese minorities.

The Bataviasche Yacht Club in Tandjong Priok, Batavia. Fishing prahu under sail in the harbor of Tandjong Priok. In the background the cruiser Hr.Ms. Java. Remembrance book of the Bataviasche Yacht Club, Tandjong Priok, presented to its patron, VADM A.F. Gooszen, October 19, 1927.

S1c (Matroos 1e Klasse) J.G. Rozendal and friends of cruiser Hr.Ms. Java during an amphibious landing (Amfibische operaties) exercises with the ship’s landing division (landingsdivisie) at Madoera, 1927. Note the anchor on their cartridge belts, infantry uniforms with puttees and naval straw caps, and 6.5x53mm Geweer M. 95 Dutch Mannlichers. A really great study.

Dutch Navy tropical uniforms via ONI JAN 1 Oct 1943

Java Tandjong Priok, Batavia, Java, Nederlands-Indië 8.27

Kruiser Hr.Ms. Java crew via NIMH

Note the extensive awnings, essential for peacetime cruising in the Pacific

Kruiser Hr.Ms. Java met een Dornier Do-24K maritieme patrouillevliegboot op de voorgrond

The Koninklijke Marine East Indies Squadron including Java and the destroyers De Ruyter and Eversten arrived in Sydney on 3 October 1930 and remained there for a week. The ships berthed at the Oceanic Steamship Company wharf and Burns Philp & Company Wharf in West Circular Quay. The Sydney Morning Herald reported on the “unfamiliar spectacle” of the Dutch squadron’s arrival.

Night scene with HNLMS Java berthed at West Circular Quay wharf, October 1930. Eversten is tied up next to her. Samuel J. Hood Studio Collection. Australian National Maritime Museum Object no. 00034761.

Day scene of the above, without the destroyer

Dutch light cruiser Hr.Ms Java, Sydney, Octo 1930. Note the 5.9-inch gun with the sub-caliber spotting gun on the barrel. The individuals are the Dutch Consul and his wife along with RADM CC Kayser. Australian National Maritime Museum.

Dutch cruiser HNLMS Java, berthing with the unfinished Sydney Harbour Bridge as a background, circa 1930

Java Tandjong Priok, Batavia, Java, Nederlands-Indië 8.31.32. Note she is still in her original scheme with tall masts and more rounded funnel caps.

Hr.Ms. Java Dutch cruiser before reconstruction. Colorized photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/

During the early 1930s, both Java and Sumatra were slowly refitted in Surabaya, a move that upgraded the engineering suite, deleted the deck mine racks and saw the old manually-loaded 3″/55 Bofors quartet landed, the latter replaced by a half-dozen automatic 40mm Vickers Maxim QF 2-pounders on pedestal mounts in a Luchtdoelbatterij. 

Water-cooled and fed via 25-round cloth belts, the guns had been designed in 1915 as balloon-busters and could fire 50-75 rounds per minute.

Note the sunglasses of the operator closest to the camera

Note the range finder

With problems in Europe and the Dutch home fleet being cruiser poor– only able to count on the new 7,700-ton HNLMS De Ruyter still essentially on shakedown while a pair of Tromp-class “flotilla leaders” were still under construction– Java and Sumatra were recalled home to flex the country’s muscles in the waters off Spain during the early and most hectic days of the Spanish Civil War, clocking in there for much of 1936-37.

They also took a sideshow to Spithead for the fleet review there.

Groepsfoto van de bemanning van kruiser Hr.Ms. Java, 1937

By 1938, Java was modernized at the Naval Dockyard in Den Helder. This dropped her Vickers balloon guns for four twin 40/56 Bofors No.3 guns, soon to be famous in U.S. Navy service, as well as six .50 cal water-cooled Browning model machine guns. Also added was a Hazemeyer (Thales) fire control set of the type later adopted by the USN, coupled with stabilized mounts for the Bofors, a deadly combination.

Talk about an epic photo, check out these Bofors 40mm gunners aboard Java, circa 1938. Note the shades.

With Franco in solid control of Spain and tensions with the Japanese heating up, our two Dutch cruisers returned to Indonesian waters, with the new De Ruyter accompanying them, while the Admiralty ordered two immense 12,000-ton De Zeven Provinciën-class cruisers laid down (that would not be completed until 1953.)

Java 7.16.38 Colombo, Ceylon, on her way back to the Dutch East Indies

Kruiser Hr.Ms. Java stern

Kruiser Hr.Ms. Java manning rails coming into Soerabaja, returning from her two-year trip back to Holland

Kruiser Hr.Ms. Java (1925-1942) te Soerabaja 1938

Java. Port side view, moored, circa 1939. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command. NH 80902

Java moving at high speed circa 1939 with a bone in her teeth. NH 80903

War!

De kruiser Hr.Ms. Java in Nederlands-Indië. at anchor after her major reconstruction. Note she has shorter masts and additional AAA batteries, among some of the most modern in the world at the time.

Of note, U-Boat.net has a great detailed account of Java’s war service. 

When Hiter marched into Poland in September 1939, most of Europe broke out in war, but Holland, who had remained a staunch neutral during that conflict and still hosted deposed Kaiser Wilhelm in quiet exile, reaffirmed its neutrality in the new clash as well. However, that was not to be in the cards and, once the Germans marched into the Netherlands on 10 May 1940– the same day they crossed into Luxembourg and Belgium in a sweep through the Low Countries and into Northern France, the Dutch were in a major European war for the first time since Napolean was sent to St. Helena, whether they wanted it or not.

At that, Java dispatched boarding parties to capture the German Hapag-freighters Bitterfeld (7659 gt), Wuppertal (6737 gt), and Rhineland (6622 gt), which had been hiding from French and British warships in neutral Dutch East Indies waters at Padang.

Post-modernized Kruiser Hr.Ms. Java with Fokkers overhead. The Dutch Navy had 23 Fokker CXIV-W floatplanes in the Pacific in 1941

Cooperating with the British and Australians, Java was engaged in a series of convoys between the Dutch islands, Fiji, Singapore, and Brisbane, briefly mobilizing to keep an eye peeled in the summer of 1941 for the German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer, which was incorrectly thought to be in the Indian Ocean headed for the Pacific.

One interesting interaction Java had in this period was to escort the Dutch transport ship Jagersfontein to Burma, which was carrying members of the American Volunteer Group, Claire Chennault’s soon-to-be-famous Flying Tigers.

While working with the Allies, a U.S. Navy spotter plane captured some of the best, last, images of the Dutch man-o-war.

Java (Dutch Light Cruiser, 1921) Aerial view from astern of the starboard side, August 1941. NH 80906

Java. Aerial view starboard side, circa August 1941. NH 80904

Java. Aerial view starboard side, circa August 1941 NH 80905

Once the Japanese started to push into the Dutch colony, simultaneously with the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and the Philippines, Java found herself in a whole new shooting war.

Escorting troopship Convoy BM 12 from Bombay to Singapore from 23 January to 4 February 1942, Java then joined an Allied task force under the command of Dutch RADM Karl W.F.M. Doorman consisting of the cruiser De Ruyter (Doorman’s flagship), the new destroyer leader Tromp, the British heavy cruiser HMS Exeter, the Australian light cruiser HMAS Hobart, and ten American and Dutch destroyers. The mission, from 14 February: a hit and run raid to the north of the Gaspar Straits to attack a reported Japanese convoy.

As shown in the first image of this post, the little surface action group was subjected to repeated Japanese air attacks in five waves, and in the predawn hours of 15 February, the Dutch destroyer HrMs Van Ghent ripped her hull out on a reef, dooming the vessel. Cutting their losses, Doorman split up his group, sending half to Batavia and half to Ratai Bay to refuel.

Four days later, essentially the same force, augmented by a flotilla of Dutch motor torpedo boats and two submarines, were thrown by Doorman into the mouth of the Japanese invasion fleet on the night of 19/20 February 1942 in the Badoeng Strait on the south-east coast of Bali. The outnumbered Japanese force, however, excelled in night combat tactics and were armed with the Long Lance torpedo, a fact that left Doorman’s fleet down another destroyer (HrMs Piet Hein) and the Tromp badly mauled and sent to Sydney for emergency repairs.

Then, on 27 February, Doorman’s Allied ABDACOM force, reinforced with the Australian light cruiser HMAS Perth and the heavy cruiser USS Houston, sailed from Surabaya to challenge the Japanese invasion fleet in the Java Sea.

While that immense nightmare is beyond the scope of this piece, Java and De Ruyter‘s portion of it, as related in the 1943 U.S. Navy Combat Narrative of the Java Sea Campaign, is below:

Immediately after the loss of the (destroyer) Jupiter our striking force turned north. At 2217 it again passed the spot where the Kortenaer had gone down that afternoon, and survivors of the Dutch destroyer saw our cruisers foam past at high speed. Encounter was ordered to stop and picked up 113 men of the Kortenaer’s crew of 153. It was at first intended to take them to Batavia, but upon learning of a strong Japanese force to the west the captain returned to Surabaya.

The cruisers of our striking force were now left without any destroyer protection whatever. This dangerous situation was aggravated by the fact that enemy planes continued to light their course with flares. But Admiral Doorman’s orders were, “You must continue attacks until the enemy is destroyed,” and he pressed on north with a grim determination to reach the enemy convoy.

It is doubtful if he ever knew how close he did come to reaching it in this last magnificent attempt. The convoy had in fact remained in the area west or southwest of Bawean. At 1850 a PBY from Patrol Wing TEN had taken off to shadow it in the bright moonlight. At 1955 this plane saw star shells above 3 cruisers and 8 destroyers on a northerly course about 30 miles southwest of Bawean. As these appeared to be our own striking force no contact report was made.69 At 2235 our PBY found the convoy southwest of Bawean. Twenty-eight ships were counted in two groups, escorted by a cruiser and a destroyer. At this moment Admiral Doorman was headed toward this very spot, but it is doubtful if he ever received our plane’s report. It reached the Commander of the Naval Forces at Soerabaja at 2352, after which it was sent on to the commander of our striking force; but by that time both the De Ruyter and Java were already beneath the waters of the Java Sea. At 2315 the De Ruyter signaled, “Target at port four points.” In that direction were seen two cruisers which opened fire from a distance of about 9,000 yards. Perth replied with two or three salvos which landed on one of the enemy cruisers for several hits. The Japanese thereupon fired star shells which exploded between their ships and ours so that we could no longer see them.

Shortly afterward the De Ruyter received a hit aft and turned to starboard away from the enemy, followed by our other cruisers. As the Java, which had not been under enemy fire, turned to follow there was a tremendous explosion aft, evidently caused by a torpedo coming from port. Within a few seconds the whole after part of the ship was enveloped in flames.

The De Ruyter had continued her turn onto a southeasterly course when, very closely after the Java, she too was caught by a torpedo. United States Signalman Sholar, who was on board and was subsequently rescued, reported having seen a torpedo track on relative bearing 135°. There was an extraordinarily heavy explosion followed by fire. Perth, behind the flagship, swung sharply to the left to avoid a collision, while the Houston turned out of column to starboard. The crew of the De Ruyter assembled forward, as the after part of the ship up to the catapult was in flames. In a moment, the 40-mm. ammunition began to explode, causing many casualties, and the ship had to be abandoned. She sank within a few minutes. For some time, her foremast structure remained above the water, until a heavy explosion took the ship completely out of sight.70

The torpedoes which sank the two Dutch cruisers apparently came from the direction of the enemy cruisers and were probably fired by them. Both Sendai and Nati class cruisers are equipped with eight torpedo tubes.

Of our entire striking force, only the Houston and Perth now remained. They had expended most of their ammunition and were still followed by enemy aircraft. There seemed no possibility of reaching the enemy convoy, and about 0100 (February 28th) the two cruisers set course for Tandjong Priok in accordance with the original plan for retirement after the battle. On the way Perth informed Admiral Koenraad at Soerabaja of their destination and reported that the De Ruyter and Java had been disabled by heavy explosions at latitude 06°00′ S., longitude 112°00′ E.71 The hospital ship Op ten Noort was immediately dispatched toward the scene of their loss, but it is doubtful if she ever reached it. Sometime later Admiral Helfrich lost radio contact with the ship, and a plane reported seeing her in the custody of two Japanese destroyers.

Epilogue

The post-war analysis is certain that Java was struck by a Long Lance torpedo fired from the Japanese cruiser Nachi. The torpedo detonated an aft magazine and blew the stern off the ship, sending her to the bottom in 15 minutes with 512 of her crew. The Japanese captured 16 survivors.

Nachi would be destroyed by U.S. Navy carrier aircraft in the Philippines in 1944, avenging Java’s loss.

Japanese cruiser Nachi dead in the water after air attacks in Manila Bay, 5 November 1944. Taken by a USS Lexington plane. National Archives photograph, 80-G-288866. Note, Nachi also took part in the Battle of the Java Sea and played a major role in sinking the Dutch light cruiser Java.

Sistership Sumatra, who had escaped Java Sea as she was under refit in Ceylon, was later sent to the ETO and, in poor shape, was sunk as a blockship off Normandy in June 1944, her guns recycled to other Dutch ships.

In December 2002, a group from the MV Empress, searching for the wreck of HMS Exeter, found that of Java and De Ruyter, with the former at a depth of 69 meters on her starboard side. Shortly afterward, the looted ship’s bell surfaced for sale in Indonesia. It was later obtained by the Dutch government and is now on display in the National Military Museum in Soesterberg.

The names of the 915 Dutch sailors and marines killed at the Battle of the Java Sea at installed at the Kembang Kuning, the Dutch Memorial Cemetery in Surabaya, Indonesia, while in Holland the Dutch Naval Museum has a similar memorial that includes the recovered bell from De Ruyter and other artifacts.

In 2016, the Dutch government reported that the hulks of both Java and De Ruyter had been illegally salvaged to the point that the war graves had virtually ceased to exist.

Now more than ever, the expression “On a sailor’s grave, there are no roses blooming (Auf einem Seemannsgrab, da blühen keine Rosen)” remains valid.

Drawing Afbeelding van kruiser Hr.Ms. Java en onderzeeboot Hr.Ms. K IX

Java cruiser Fotoafdrukken Koninklijke Marine postcard

Koninklijke Nederlandse Kruiser Hr.Ms. Java, Marinemuseum Den Helder A003a 789.2

Specs.

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Warship Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022: Banana Sub-Buster

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 time 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, Feb. 9, 2022: Banana Sub-Buster

U.S. Navy Photo 19-LCM-70554.

Here we see, proudly flying her Tricolor, the Free French Navy’s (FNFL) croiseur auxiliaire/Q-ship Cap des Palmes while off Mare Island, California, 21 July 1944. Seen above in her most powerful final form as a fighting ship, her war was already largely over.

Built by Helsingör Vaerft (Burmeister & Wain) in Denmark, she was designed from the keel up as a partially refrigerated “bananier” fruit carrier, ordered by the French shipping firm, Compagnie Fraissinet.

Compagnie Fraissinet – Navire Bananier Cap des Palmes

The 2,900-ton (4,200 full-load) freighter, some 330-feet in overall length, was capable of sustaining 17 knots for a 10,000-mile voyage– fast enough to get a load of bananas from French Equatorial Africa to Europe in less than a week, without stopping, then head back as soon as she was unloaded. Her specialty was a twice-a-month Libreville to Algiers/Marseilles run.

War!

This speed and range, in 1939, made her ideal for conversion to a fast troop carrier/auxiliary cruiser, and she was taken up from trade that year by the French Navy, requisitioned in Libreville. Her initial conversion amounted to a fast coat of grey paint, the addition of some codebooks and an extra radio, and two elderly 90mm/50 cal Mle1877 De Bang pattern field guns on M1916 carriages. Strapped down fore and aft of the wheelhouse, each gun had but 24 shells. A pair of 13.2mm machine guns were also added.

Used to escort coastwise and South Atlantic convoys until the Fall of France, she was in European waters when the Republic made peace with the Axis in June 1940. She was dispatched by the Vichy government to carry troops from Dakar in Senegal to Libreville in Gabon along with the submarine Ponceletin in September 1940 to beef up security in that colony (and help disperse French naval assets even further out of German reach). Locked into that latter port by an Allied blockade, the armed freighter was boarded by marins from the 800-ton Free French aviso (sloop) Commandant Dominé (A15) in November and was captured without a fight, by what seems to be a mutual agreement.

Joining De Gaulle

Call to action for the FNFL

One of the larger vessels under the 4,500-strong FNFL’s control (besides the disarmed old battleships Paris and Courbet), De Gaul and company sought to have Cap Des Palmes upgraded and up-armed by the British, who didn’t have time and space for such foolishness.

Dispatched to the Pacific, where the French colonies of Polynesia and New Caledonia had declared for De Gaulle and whose officials were concerned about an increasingly aggressive Japan, she cruised through the Caribbean and the Panama Canal in July-August 1941, accompanied by the 900-ton minesweeping sloop (avisos dragueur de mines) Chevreuil (A10).

These two ships, in addition to the cruiser submarine Surcourf, which was lost on the way to the Far East, and the “super destroyer” (which the FNFL referred to as a light cruiser) Le Triomphant, were the only Free French warships in the Pacific at the time. Notably, Le Triomphant would be recalled to the Atlantic by 1943 after spending most of 1942 being essentially rebuilt in Australia, leaving Cap Des Palmes and the little Chevreuil holding the bag.

Cap Des Palmes was the first FNFL ship to reach the New Caledonian port of Noumea, arriving there on 5 November 1941 with a team of De Gaullist officers aboard. It was a big boost for the locals, a sign they hadn’t been forgotten. For example, before the vessel arrived, the port’s main garrison consisted of just 30 French soldiers besides local troops. 

November 5, 1941, Cap des Palmes arrived in Noumea

Bigger, stronger, better…

Once in the Pacific, the British had made some sort of half-hearted promise to upgrade Cap Des Palmes at Singapore, but she spent the rest of 1941 shuttling military supplies, troops, and workers between the French Pacific colonies, New Hebrides, and Australia. Meanwhile, once Japan entered the war in December, Singapore soon fell and the little French banana boat never did get her Royal Navy overhaul. The closest she got was a quick refit in Australia, which saw depth charges and more machine guns added.

Recognizing the change in the winds of war, Cap Des Palmes was briefly turned into a prison ship, transporting over 300 Japanese citizens who were found in the French colonies to Australia post-Pearl Harbor.

The vessel was then very active throughout 1942 in a series of yeoman services, used on a regular Nouma to Sydney run supporting Allied interests. In addition, she was used to installing coastwatcher assets throughout the islands– men whose work would become vital with the Japanese push into the Solomons and New Guinea.

In November 1942, she was sent to Mare Island for a refit and conversion to a Q-ship with her profile changed to mimic a Soviet freighter.

The Free-French “cargo ship” Cap des Palmes of the cie. de Nav Fraissinet, Marseilles, at San Francisco, California. About 1942. Note that you can see at least six skyward 20mm AAA guns. She also had several larger guns and six torpedo tubes hidden by false bulkheads and crates. NH 89860

She picked up a new radio set, a pair of 6″/50 (15.2 cm) Mark 6/8s leftover from the 1900s, as well as two 3″/50s, eight Oerlikons, six 21-inch torpedo tubes (in twin 3-tube launchers), and well as four depth charge throwers. She was also fitted with seaplane support facilities, although she never carried one. To her crew were added a U.S. Navy technical team consisting of an officer, four petty officers, and four sailors, who “all spoke French, being of Canadian origin or Acadian.”

She also had been given new accommodations for her 140-man crew, with an account saying, “The interior fittings for the crew have been completely modified, making the facilities very comfortable. The hammocks had been replaced by berths, refectories, and canteens were installed, and the Cap des Palmes was the first ship in the French Navy to be equipped with individual meal trays.”

Her new skipper was Capt. Georges Cabanier, late of the famed Free French submarine Rubis.

As noted by a former tankerman, whose oiler came across the French Q-ship in 1943:

At Suva, we fueled the French cruiser Cap des Palmes, which we were supposed to meet, and she escorted us up the coast. She had nothing but 20-millimeter guns visible. However, her foredeck, which was built up to look like lifeboats and rafts, concealed cleverly disguised 6-inch guns. On closer inspection, we also found that more ‘lifeboats’ on her afterdeck were 6-inch guns.

Operational from April 1943 onward, she worked on the periphery of the U.S. Third Fleet in the South Pacific around Guadalcanal, frequently part of Task Unit 35-1-8, and, on 16 May 1943, she is believed by some to have sunk a Japanese submarine although this was never officially vetted by post-war commissions. The engagement consisted of seven depth charges tossed on a persistent sonar contact, roughly at 17° 34 South and 169° West, about midway between Samoa and Fiji. Certainly not very convincing, but a possible engagement.

The only Japanese submarine reported missing around the time and in the area Cap Des Palmes was active, RO-102, believed lost somewhere Southeast of New Guinea– several hundred miles away. That boat’s end is listed by the scholars over at Combined Fleet as follows:

RO-102 is often listed as lost in action against PT-150 and PT-152 off Lae on 13/14 May 1943. In reality, the PT-boats’ adversary was I-6, who survived the encounter. Some sources confuse her with I-18, sunk by USS Fletcher (DD-445) off San Cristobal on 11 February 1943. The circumstances surrounding the loss of RO-102 remain unknown.

On 2 June 1943, the Imperial Japanese Navy declared Ro-102 to be presumed lost south of Rabi, with all 42 men on board, and struck her name from their Navy List the next month. Her wreck has thus far never been found.

In August, Cap Des Palms again engaged a suspected submarine, at 21° 40 South and 164° 08 East, then worked in conjunction with aircraft to bird-dog (but didn’t get any hits on) what later turned out to be IJN I-17, sunk on 19 August 1943 by HMNZS Tui (T234) and American Kingfisher float-planes of VS-57.

Nonetheless, our banana boat survived her time in some of the hairiest parts of the Pacific in 1943, typically sailing alone, and was sent back to Mare Island in April 1944 for a further update.

She emerged in July with a snazzy new camo scheme, a surface search radar, and yet another different profile.

French ship Cap Des Palmes, broadside, port, while off Mare Island, California, 21 July 1944. 19-LCM-70555.

Bow-on view, same day. 19-LCM-70558

French ship Cap Des Palmes, stern view, while at Mare Island, California, 21 July 1944. 19-LCM-70559.

Get a look at that big 6-incher

A great view of her aft gun tubs

Note her masts and radar

For more information about Cap Des Palmes and the Free French Navy in the Pacific during WWII, check out Peter Igman’s article in Apr. 2009 issue of The Navy. 

In May 1945, it was decided to send Cap des Palmes back home for a refit at Brest, in preparation for the big push against Japan. Her cruise home found her stopping at Sydney, Melbourne, Freemantle, Tamatave (Madagascar), Diego Suarez, Aden, Suez, and Port Said, arriving in Saint-Nazaire three weeks after VJ-Day.

From 8 August 1941 to 26 September 1945, Cap des Palmes was underway for 984 days under FNFL’s banner and was recommended for the Ordre de la Division by VADM Lemonnier, Chief of the General Staff of the Navy.

Still under naval orders, she returned to the Pacific and, from 13 February to 15 March 1946, Cap des Palmes sailed from Toulon to Saigon as a troopship, carrying troops to fight in Indochina, then made the return trip to Toulon, arriving there in June.

She was disarmed, stripped of her military equipment, and returned to her owners on 19 July.

Epilogue

The U.S. National Archives has a few documents from the wartime service of Cap Des Palmes, mostly from her stints at Mare Island.

The French Navy, meanwhile, has maintained an enduring series of guard boats, patrol ships, and surveillance frigates in the Pacific, including one stationed in Noumea itself, since WWII.

Sold by Fraissinet to the Compagnie Maritime de Navigation Fruitièr (which still exists), she was renamed Banfora in 1957, later transferring to a Moroccan registry under the same name.

Banora

While shipping a load of oranges from Africa to West Germany, she sprang a leak and sank under tow off Spain’s Cape Villano, 17 November 1965. A total loss, her crew was saved.

She is, however, remembered in a variety of maritime art. 

The ex-banana boat Cap Des Palmes, arrives in Nouméa Harbor, On 5 November 1941, the first Free French vessel to arrive in the isolated colony. By Roberto Lunardo

Another by Roberto Lunardo, showing her wartime colors

Specs:

Displacement: 2983 grt (Lloyds) over 4,150 as a cruiser
Length: 330 feet
Beam: 44 feet
Draft: 17 feet
Propulsion: 1 x 9 cyl. B&W 2SCSA diesel engine, 4500shp, 3 Auxiliaries of 450 HP, 1 shaft, 1 screw, cruiser stern
Speed: 18 knots maximum (decreased to 14.5 during the war)
Merchant crew: ~36
Wartime complement (FNFL): 2 officers, 20 petty officers, 120 quartermasters, and sailors.
Armarment:
(1940)
2 x 1 – 90mm field guns
2 x 1 – 13.2mm MGs

(after 1942)
2 x 1 – 152/50 Mark 6/8 (ex USN)
2 x 1 – 3″/50 (ex USN)
8 x 1 – 20/70 Oerlikon (ex USN)
2 x 3 – 533 TT (ex USN)
4 DCT

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.

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Bay Area Ranger, Ranger, and Ranger

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Here we see the old ferry house across from Vallejo at Mare Island, California, about 1892. The Alert-class gunboat USS Ranger (PG-23) is in the right background, with the crew’s hammocks and washing hung out to dry. Authorized by the 42nd Congress the bark-rigged iron-hulled steamer would have an exceptionally long life that would see her serve multiple generations of bluejackets of all stripes.

Photograph from the William H. Topley Collection. Courtesy of Mr. Charles M. Loring, Napa, California, 1969. Catalog #: NH 68678

Next, we see the unique USS Ranger (CV-4), the first American aircraft carrier built from the keel-up Entering Hunter’s Point drydock, San Francisco, California, on 2 March 1937.

Note .50 caliber AA machine guns (uncovered) along the flight deck, forward. Note also” 5″ guns and saluting guns at the bow (port and starboard). At the time, she was the first carrier to be docked with planes aboard. NH 51826

Finally, we have the Forrestal-class supercarrier USS Ranger (CVA-61) passing under the San Francisco Bay Bridge on her return to the States on 17 June 1971.

This is from the 1970–71 Cruise Book. Via Navsource/ John Slaughter, Webmaster USS Ranger History & Memorial site

Have a great weekend, guys!

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