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Warship Wednesday, May 28, 2025: Part Eagle, Part Phoenix

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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

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Warship Wednesday, May 28, 2025: Part Eagle, Part Phoenix

Photo received from the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence. Naval History and Heritage Command Catalog #: NH 45853

Above we see a port bow view of the Tsar’s brand-new Borodino-class squadron battleship Orel (also seen transliterated in some Western sources as “Oryol” and “Ariol”), taken in the Baltic soon after her completion in September 1904.

She had a curious history that saw her rushed to the losing side of one of the worst naval defeats of the 20th Century, some 120 years ago this week, after an 18,000-mile shakedown cruise. She would then be reborn to fight the Germans in China (!) while under a Japanese flag, return to her homeland under very different circumstances, and meet her ultimate fate at the hands of budding technology that would echo into another Pacific war.

The Borodinos

In the 1900s, the Imperial Russian Navy was full speed ahead to create three top-notch fleets: one in the Baltic to defend against the Germans (or attack Swedes, who knows); a second in the Black Sea to take on the Turks who were rapidly rearming with new vessels from America and Britain; and a third in the Pacific to be able to hold on to its Manchurian possessions which had been essentially stolen from Japan after the latter’s cakewalk victory against China in 1895.

A key acquisition during this period was the one-off 388-foot tumblehome hulled battleship Tsesarevich, which had been built in France at Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée, La Seyne-sur-Mer. The same yard had produced a series of 12,000-ton leviathans for the French Navy (Jauréguiberry et. al.) and patterned the new Russian ship along those lines.

Tsesarevich. Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée, La Seyne-Sur-Mer brochure published by the society for its fiftieth anniversary, Imprimerie Chaix, Paris, July 1906, p. 40.

Weighing in at 13,000 tons due to her thicker armor (up to 10 inches of good German Krupp plate), Tsarevich was powered by 20 Belleville water-tube boilers that ate coal like it was going out of style. Armament was in two pairs of impressive Russian-built (Obukhov) French-designed (Canet) 12″/40 (30.5 cm) Pattern 1895 guns mounted in double turrets fore and aft, with six French-made Canet Model 1892 6-inch guns in double turrets arrayed along the hull of the ship. Capable of 18 knots and able to steam over 6,000nm before needing more coal, she was capable of deploying to the Pacific, which was to be her homeport at Port Arthur.

With Tsesarevich as a cue, the Russians embarked on a campaign to build at least five (with potential for up to ten) new ships in the St. Petersburg area for their Baltic fleet. Just nine feet longer than their inspiration but with heavier engines, thicker armor, and larger turrets (but with the same general armament), the Russian admiralty packed another 1,400 tons onto essentially the same hull. This gave them a draft pushing 30 feet– on a hull just 397 feet long!

profile Borodino class

The new ships, the Borodino class, would have significantly less coal bunkerage, cutting their range in half, which was not seen as a hindrance, as their Baltic role would ensure they never operated very far from a Russian port. When loaded with more coal than designed, their protective armor belt submerged, and their 6-inch guns rode so low and close to the waves as to be useless at all but point-blank range.

armor plan Borodino class, with thickness in mm

Equipped with old-style (1880s-designed) French Lugeol stadiametric rangefinders, which typically maxed out after 4,000m, their guns were handicapped when it came to fire control. The Russians made a move to change these out for more modern British Barr and Stroud coincidence rangefinders, but training in their use was minimal before the class was rushed to war with Japan.

The five ships of the class were all ordered within months of each other from yards around Saint Petersburg, with Borodino constructed at the New Admiralty Shipyard; Imperator Aleksandr III, Knyaz Suvorov, and Slava contracted at the Baltic Works (now OJSC Baltic); and our subject, Orel, ordered from the Galernyi Island Shipyard (now JSC Admiralty Yard). The cost for each ran between 13.4 and 14.5 million rubles, with Orel being the cheapest.

Meet Orel

Our subject was at least the fifth ship to carry the Russian name for “Eagle” in the history of the Imperial Navy. The first was the first sea-going warship of the Russian Empire, a Dutch-style three-mast pinnace ordered by Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in 1667 to protect Russian merchant ships on the Caspian Sea from pirates. Of note, the ship’s crew consisted of 20 Dutch sailors and officers and 35 Russian musketeers.

The original three-master Orel, a frigate in Russian parlance, was the first sea-going Russian warship. Today, the ship’s profile is the emblem of St. Petersburg. Likewise, her contracting date, 29 June, is celebrated annually as “Shipbuilder’s Day” (Den’ sudostroitelya) in Russia.

Our Orel was laid down on 20 May 1900, launched 6 July 1902, and– despite sinking to the bottom of Kronstadt during a storm while fitting out on 7 May 1904 and settling with a 24-degree list– was commissioned on 1 October 1904 following three weeks of builder’s trials.

Orel under construction, c. 1903

Her construction was overseen by Russian Maj. Gen. Mikhail Karlovich Yakovlev, the senior shipbuilder of the Admiralty.

Those who are savvy with military history will realize that Orel entered the fleet eight months into the Russo-Japanese War, at a time when the bulk of the Russian Pacific Fleet was bottled up by the Japanese in their besieged homeport at Port Arthur.

Orel was photographed in 1904. NH 92419

The bad news for Orel was that, with her three other finished sisters (Slava was still under construction), and almost everything in the Baltic fleet that could float, would be rushed to the Pacific to clock in against the Japanese, changing the course of the war.

At least that was the plan.

War!

Covering the nightmarish 7-month, 18,000-mile voyage of the Russian Baltic Fleet (renamed the 2nd Pacific Squadron) to reach the Tsushima Straits from St. Petersburg is a bit beyond the scope of this post. We will be more narrow in our focus, relying on Orel’s part in the trip– which she began on 15 October, just two weeks after she was commissioned.

Not a misprint. She sailed to war a fortnight after hoisting her colors for the first time, and just six months after she sank pierside while fitting out.

Borodino class battleship of the 2nd Pacific Squadron getting ready to leave the Baltic in 1904.

With so many battleships rushed to completion in a country without a huge maritime tradition, the Russians were scraping the barrel to crew Orel. Many were pulled from shoreside assignments and the far-away Caspian Sea flotilla and Black Sea fleet. As the standard term of service for new Russian recruits was seven years active and four reserve, many of the men aboard were of the latter category and less than enthusiastic when it came to returning to the colors amid a war they did not understand.

Her skipper, Capt. (1st rate) Nikolay Viktorovich Jung (Naval Cadet Corps 1876), had dallied with the Narodnaya Volya revolutionary movement as a young officer, for which he had been arrested and blackballed for a time. Despite nearly 30 years of service, his largest command before Orel was a 4,600-ton cruiser, having spent most of his career on training ships.

Her XO, Capt. (2nd rate) Konstantin Leopoldovich Shvede, had entered the Navy in 1884 but had never held a seagoing command and had spent most of his career in shoreside service as a functionary. His last assignment before Orel was as the officer in charge of the mess hall at the Kryukov barracks.

A few capable young officers, such as LT (future RADM and polar explorer) Nikolay Nikolaevich Zubov, quickly sought transfer to other vessels. Zubov, reassigned to the destroyer Blestyashchy, fought his ship at Tsushima until it sank under his feet and made it to internment in Shanghai for the rest of the war.

47mm Hotchkiss with gunnery officer, LT Fedor Petrovich Shamshev on Orel, headed to the Far East in 1904. After graduating from the Naval Corps in 1891, he served in several posts until joining Orel in 1903. Wounded at his post in the ship’s burning conning tower, he spent much of his time as a POW in Japan in 1905 in the hospital. After the war, he returned to service, commanded the gunboat Gilyak, and the destroyer Storozhevoy. During the Great War, he was the skipper of the old monitor training ship Pyotr Velikiy and commanded the coastal artillery on Nargen Island off Tallinn. After the Revolution, he left Russia for exile in Denmark, where he died in 1959, aged 90.

Some among her enlisted only narrowly missed the brig, or worse. This included one of her senior sailors, Alexey Silych Novikov-Priboy, who had been cashiered as an “unreliable person” for spreading revolutionary propaganda while on the old cruiser Minin, but, with the fleet in need of bodies, was reassigned to Orel. Soon, with the help of a like-minded engineering officer, he maintained a full-blown revolutionary library aboard. As he was paymaster steward, Novikov-Priboy had contact with every member of the crew.

Orel suffered from numerous incidents of sabotage on the way to the Pacific, with steel shavings found in her engines, a propeller shaft nearly ruined on the outbound cruise, a grounding, a rudder cable incident that forced her to stop briefly at Tangier, and one good-sized fire reported. Still, she pressed on to meet her destiny, albeit punctuated by breakdowns.

Orel and her three sisters formed the Russian First Division, with Squadron commander, VADM Zinovy Rozhestvensky, flying his flag from Orel’s sister, Knyaz Suvorov. The Second and Third Divisions, respectively, were formed of increasingly older battlewagons. Of note, the Second Division commander, RADM Baron Dmitry Gustavovich von Folkersahm, who had previously been the naval gunnery school commander, was ill with cancer. He was pulled out of convalescence for his seagoing billet and would perish in his cabin while on the cruise, well before the force met the Japanese.

The morning of 27 May 1905, the end came as the Russian battleline was crossed by that of ADM Togo’s Japanese Combined Fleet. The revolutionary Novikov-Priboy recalled that, with the straits approaching, Orel’s crew held a mass on deck just before the battle, “crossing themselves furiously as if swatting away flies.”

Our subject fired the first shots of the battle at 11:42, hurling 30 12-inch shells unsuccessfully at a distant Japanese cruiser that was shadowing on the horizon some 9,000 yards out. Rozhestvensky’s flagship, Knyaz Suvorov, the lead ship in the Russian battle line, later opened fire at the Japanese battleship Mikasa, Togo’s flagship, at 14:05. Over the next five hours, the battle went very badly for the Borodino class.

Imperator Aleksandr III turned turtle and sank at 18:50, leaving but four survivors.

Knyaz Suvorov, with Rozhestvensky switching his flag to a destroyer, sank with all hands at 19:20.

Borodino went up in a flash when a shell from the battleship Fuji ignited her magazine at 19:30, leaving just one survivor. Gunlayer Semyon Semyonovich Yushchin swam out of a flooded casemate, held onto a floating debris, and was picked up by the Japanese destroyer Oboro later that night.

Orel was the only battleship of the First Division to survive the maelstrom; her three other sisters were sent to the bottom with just five men living to tell the tale. She limped off into the night, riddled with holes and her decks filled with mangled bodies. Her skipper was mortally wounded.

“Broken hell” Russian Battleship Orel leading 2nd Pacific Squadron last daylight hours during the battle of Tsushima by Alexander Zyakin.

The next morning, falling in with RADM Nebogatov’s Third Division, including the old battleship Imperator Nikolai I (his flag) and the two small coastal battleships General-Admiral Apraksin and Admiral Seniavin, the badly damaged Orel, under the command of her XO, surrendered to the Japanese just after 1300 on 28 May, the group’s withdrawal to Vladivostok cut off by the Japanese.

Capt. Jung, who succumbed to his wounds, was buried at sea as the group sailed toward captivity.

Fortunio Matanya. Drawing 1905. Burial at sea of the commander of the battleship Orel

Taken under escort by the battleship Asahi and the armored cruiser Asama to Maizuru Navy Yard in Japan, Orel’s crew was moved ashore, politely, and would spend the rest of the war under a very gentlemanly confinement, a stark contrast to how enemy POWs were treated by the Emperor’s forces in WWII. They were repatriated in February 1906.

Russian battleship Orel officers on Asahi, 28 May 1905, after Tshumia

Orel lost 43 killed in addition to Jung and had over 80 seriously wounded, casualties that amounted to about 15 percent of her complement.

One of those nursing a life-changing injury was LT Leonid Vasilyevich Larionov, the battleship’s junior navigator. Entering the service in 1901 and cutting his teeth on the cruisers Africa and Abrek, Larionov was at his battle station in the conning tower of Orel during the fight. Wounded seriously in the head, he persevered. He had managed to destroy the battleship’s sensitive papers before reaching Japan, keeping one of her logbooks hidden on his person. In captivity, he carefully began the task of reconstructing the ship’s brief history.

Knocked out by Japanese shrapnel while in command of the left bow 6-inch turret, LT Konstantin Petrovich Slavinsky later reported:

At about 3 o’clock I felt a strong blow to the tower, my eyes were blinded by the explosion on the roof, I was thrown from the command platform and lost consciousness. When I came to, I saw that I was lying on the floor of the tower, there was blood all around, a stream of which was flowing from my forehead, the gunners were trying to lift me up and arguing whether I was killed or just wounded. Having forbidden them to see me off, I got to the operations point with the help of the porters, where they bandaged two deep wounds to my head and a knocked out left eye, after which I was placed in a room in front of the operations point, where I again lost consciousness from severe pain.

Slavinsky recovered enough to help lead firefighting efforts until knocked unconscious by another shell. He spent three months in a Japanese hospital in Maizuru, wearing an eyepatch for the rest of his life.

Orel survived some serious damage. Some reports contend she had 76 hits (five from 12-inch shells, two from 10-inch, nine from 8-inch, 39 from 6-inch, and 21 from smaller shells). Russian sources, namely from engineer Vladimir Polievktovich Kostenko of Orel (who helped Novikov-Priboy store his library), cited that the ship suffered more than 140 hits.

New Jersey-born Lloyd Carpenter Griscom, the 33-year-old U.S. Minister to Japan, was able to almost immediately obtain several very detailed images of the captured Russian battlewagon, a vessel considered well-protected at the time. It is known that he passed them on to Teddy Roosevelt personally.

As they showed Russian/German armor (on ships largely designed with help by the French) under the effects of Japanese/British weapons (especally the Shimose powder/cordite filled shells and the new Barr and Stroud FA3 coincidence rangefinders and the Dumaresq, the latter an early mechanical fire control computer), the snaps were surely of great interest to the man who was readying his “Great White Fleet” to circle the globe.

Orel, shortly after her capture by the Japanese in the Battle of Tsushima, 28 May 1905. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66272

Orel photographed at Maizuru Navy Yard Japan, on 3 June 1905, following her surrender at the Battle of Tsushima on 28 May 1905. Courtesy of J. Meister collection, 1976. NH 84789

Same as above, NH 84788.

The Russian battleship Orel, shortly after her capture by the Japanese in the Battle of Tsushima, 28 May 1905. Fragment of ship’s forward left twelve-inch gun, which lodged in a signal locker on the starboard side of the bridge. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66267

Orel shortly after her capture by the Japanese in the Battle of Tsushima, 28 May 1905. Damages to the shelter deck and boats (overhead). Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66263

Orel, view of port side, looking forward from the after bridge, showing damage to superstructure and boats. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66264

Orel, view taken looking into a damaged searchlight on the after bridge. The reflector reverses the view. Notice that the photographer has photographed himself and a Japanese officer. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66261

Orel, damage near the port center six-inch turret. Looks like a shell exploded immediately upon impact with this bulkhead. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66262

Orel, note the shot holes around the 6-inch gun turret. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66270

Orel, damage near 47mm (3-pounder) quick-firing gun, port side of the fore bridge. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66265

Orel, fore 12-inch turret of the Russian battleship OREL, shortly after she was captured by the Japanese in the Battle of Tsushima, 28 May 1905. The muzzle of the damaged twelve-inch gun was carried bodily to the starboard side of the bridge, and lodged in a signal locker. A Japanese sailor is in the foreground, standing guard. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66269

Orel, damaged 12-inch gun of the fore turret of the Russian battleship OREL, shortly after she was captured by the Japanese in the Battle of Tsushima, 28 May 1905. This photograph graphically illustrates the construction of a “built up” gun. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66268

Orel, damage to fore port 6-inch turret and the deck. A 12-inch shell exploded on impact at the turret base. Notice the immense force of this Japanese shell, which exploded on impact, without penetration. The downward explosive force burst in the deck, and the upward force cut a wide piece out of the turret from top to bottom. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66266

The photos were likely widespread in Japan at the time, as one of Orel’s senior signalmen, one V.P. Zefirov, who filled at least three journals with drawings during his captivity in Japan (preserved in Russian archives), depicted several in his work.

Rebirth

By far the most powerful Russian warship captured at Tsushima, Orel was an important trophy. Further, unlike the Tsar’s ships salvaged from the mud of Port Arthur, her crew did not have extensive opportunity (and will) to wreck her.

Renamed Iwami on 6 June 1905 after a traditional feudal province, now the western part of Shimane Prefecture, the former Russian battlewagon was presented a statue of Umashimachi as the guardian deity of the ship by Mononobe Shrine in Oda City. The Japanese also renamed the other four captured Russian warships from Tsushima on the same day, with Imperator Nikolai I renamed the battleship Iki, Admiral Senyavin renamed the coastal defense ship Mishima, General Admiral Apraksin dubbed the coastal defense ship Okishima, and the destroyer Bedovy renamed the destroyer Satsuki.

This set up Orel for an extensive 29-month reconstruction which saw her French Bellville boilers replaced by Japanese-built Miyabara boilers, her superstructure and funnels rebuilt lower to help change her overloading, and her armament greatly modified. Retaining her Russian 12-inchers (the Japanese had a quantity of shells and replacement guns captured at Port Arthur), new gun tubes were later ordered from the Muroran Works of the Japan Steel Works.

Her heavy twin 6-inch turrets were placed by single 8″/45 Armstrong guns in deck mounts as used in the cruiser Takasago, further saving weight. Her 3″/48 Canet guns were landed, replaced by fewer Japanese Type 41 guns of the same caliber. Likewise, her 47/40 Hotchkiss and 37/20 Hotchkiss light guns were removed, replaced by a smaller number of Yamauchi-type 47mm guns. Even two of her four torpedo tubes were removed, saving only her twin submerged beam tubes, which were upgraded from 381mm to 450mm. The above-water torpedo tubes at the bow and stern were eliminated.

Emerging from the Kure Naval Arsenal on 26 November 1907, at the time, Iwami was the newest battleship in the Imperial Japanese Navy’s fleet at the time, excluding the two new Vickers-built Katori-class battleships, which were only slightly larger and only delivered in May 1906.

Battleship Iwami, 2 November 190,7 Kure via Kure Maritime Museum

Assigned to the 1st Fleet, Iwami was rated a first-class battleship and saw serious service with the Japanese fleet for the next five years, only re-rated to a second-class coastal defense ship in 1912 after the two 20,000-ton Satsuma-class and two 21,000-ton Kawachi-class dreadnoughts were completed under the 1907 Warship Supplement Program.

The U.S. Navy, keeping tabs on the Emperors’ increasingly suspect fleet from 1905 onward, dutifully photographed every Japanese warship when encountered in the region. Cataloged by the Office of Naval Intelligence, this left a ton of photos in the NHHC’s files.

Iwami. Starboard beam view taken between 1907 and 1914. Received in archives from ONI, 1935. NH 45832

Iwami photographed in a Japanese port, probably shortly before 1914. The battleship Settsu (1911-1947) is partly visible in left background. Courtesy of Mr. Tom Stribling, 1987. NH 101762

Another War

When the Great War began, Japan, an ally of Britain, jumped at the chance to gobble up German colonies in the Pacific. Iwami helped in this task, joining in the reduction and capture of the Kaiser’s treaty port in China.

Added to the VADM Kato Sadakichi’s Second Fleet, from September to November 1914, Iwami was exclusively engaged in bombardment of the artillery batteries in the Tsingtao (Qingdao) area, adding her 12- and 8-inch shells to the more than 43,000 fired into the German positions during the siege. As Sadakichi’s force was made up primarily of cruisers (Tokiwa, Tone, Chitose, Akashi, Niitaka, Otoha, Kasagi, and Yakumo) and destroyers, Iwami was an important asset.

British Major-General Nathaniel Barnardiston next to a wrecked gun at Fort C, Tsingtao, November 1914. Barnardiston commanded the 1,500 British troops (2nd Battalion The South Wales Borderers and a detachment of the 36th Sikhs) sent to assist the 20,000 Japanese soldiers under General Kamio Mitsuomi in capturing Germany’s naval base at Tsingtao (Qingdao) in China. The port fell to the Allies on 7 November 1914. NAM. 1969-06-31-53

Allied troops inside one of Tsingtao’s forts, November 1914. The German naval base of Tsingtao (Qingdao) in China was captured by the Allies on 7 November 1914 following a two-month siege. Around 4,700 Germans were captured and sent to Japan for internment. NAM. 1992-08-139-21

Battleship Iwami, December 26 1915, Kure Arsenal

Spending the rest of the war on duty in Japanese home waters, Iwami was tapped for an ironic mission on 9 January 1918 when she received orders to leave Kure as part of the 5th Squadron, with the battleship Ashai under RADM Kato Kanji, bound for Vladivostok, where the newly-formed Bolshevik government was in charge.

Her marines and armed naval infantry spearheaded the seizure of the port on 6 April, and Iwami would remain in Russian waters for most of the next four years until the final Japanese withdrawal.

Japanese marines in a parade of Allied forces in Vladivostok before French and American sailors 1918

Japanese marines in a parade of Allied forces in Vladivostok before French and American sailors, 1918

Vladivostok, circa 1918-1919, during the Russian Intervention Operations. Ships in harbor include Suffolk (British cruiser, 1903); Iwami (Japanese Battleship, 1902); and Ashai (Japanese Battleship, 1902); NH 50290

Iwami Saihaku Incident 1918, with American officers aboard Iwami. National Diet Image 966644_0019

Battleship IJN Iwami anchored in Vladivostok, winter of 1921 22

With the Japanese evacuation from Russia, Iwami was removed from the fleet list in September 1922.

The following May, she was ordered disarmed and prepped, along with the old battleships Aki and Satsuma, the unfinished Tosa, and the Hizen (former Russian battleship Retvizan, salvaged from Port Arthur) for use as target ships in line with the naval limits of the Washington Conference of 1921–22.

Former Russian battleship Orel as Iwami floating target with a Tikuma-class light cruiser

In July 1924, the ships were used for the Japanese equivalent of Billy Mitchell’s Virginia Capes experiment in airpower, subjected to bomb runs from aircraft from the carrier Hosho, Navy H-450 and F-5 flying boats, and land-based Army T2 bombers. Heavily damaged over two days, Iwami slipped under the waves near Jogashima on 9 July.

Epilogue

Iwami’s armament outlived her, with her Armstrong guns emplaced in the coastal defenses around Tokyo Bay and on Iki Island in the Strait of Tsushima (what irony).

One of her Russian 12-inch guns was installed vertically in the schoolyard of Iwataki Elementary School in Yosano, Kyoto, in 1927, where it remains, surrounded by inert shells.

The statue of Umashimachi carried by Iwami from 1905 through 1922 was returned to the Mononobe Shrine in Oda City, where it remains today.

bronze statue of Umashide no Mikoto Mononobe Shrine Oda City. Photo by Professor Jun Kuno.

In Japanese service, her skippers included several officers who went on to lead the fleet in the 1920s and 30s, including Admiral Baron Sadakichi Kato, and vice admirals Kumazo Shirane, Ishibashi Hajime, and Yoshita Masaki. Kato had an outsized influence on Japanese naval thinking, advocating a “big-ship, big-gun doctrine” that ultimately led to the construction of the super battleships of the Yamato class.

As for Orel’s Russian crew that rode her into captivity, Capt. Shvede, the XO who was in command when she surrendered, was court-martialled when he returned to Russia in 1906. Acquitted as he was following RADM Nebogatov’s orders, he never did command another ship at sea, although he did continue in shoreside service until 1917. He passed in 1933.

The revolutionary Novikov-Priboy would become a noted writer under Soviet rule– after penning scathing essays on the loss of his ship and the Russian fleet at Tsushima, which sent him into exile in Western Europe until 1913. Serving on hospital trains along the Eastern Front during the Great War, his fame grew under Stalin with the publication of the rather spicy novel “Tsushima,” which saw seven printings. During WWII, he wrote numerous patriotic articles about the Red Banner fleet, having found his patriotism. He passed in 1944, aged 67.

The good LT Larionov, who saved Orel’s logs, recovered from his wounds while in Japanese custody, then returned home and served on the Naval Staff. Commanding the minelayer Neva during the Great War, he fell in with the Reds post-Revolution, then worked as a historian in the Central Naval Museum in Leningrad, compiling the official history of Tsushima and Orel. His shoulder straps that he wore in the battle are on display in the Peter the Great Naval History Museum.

Larionov died during the siege of Leningrad in WWII, aged 59, but his shoulder straps and compiled history of the Russo-Japanese War endure.

LT Slavinsky, who gave his eye to the service, returned to naval service and by early 1918 was a captain in the Volga-Caspian Flotilla. Post-war, he was tossed into a Red prison for three years. Released in 1923, he worked as an engineer in Soviet shipyard concerns until 1930, when he was arrested on charges of “espionage” during the Gulag Archipelago phase of Soviet history. Sentenced to 10 years at hard labor, he was released in 1940 and died in exile in remote Syktyvkar, some 500 miles north of Moscow.

Since 1905, the Russians have recycled the name Orel several times. This included an auxiliary cruiser in the Siberian Flotilla during the Great War and being attached to at least two CVN projects (Project 1153 and 1160) in the late 1960s – early 1970s that never left the drawing board.

Since 1993, a Project 949A Antey-class (NATO “Oscar II”) SSBN, (K-266) has carried the name Orel as part of the 11th Submarine Division of the Northern Fleet of the Russian Navy.

Orel, Murmansk, April 2017

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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

***

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Warship Wednesday, May 21, 2025:  Mess with the Goat, You Get the Horns

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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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday, May 21, 2025:  Mess with the Goat, You Get the Horns

Swedish Marinmuseum photo MM01624

Above, we see a trio of happy ratings (Besättningsmen) aboard the unique Flygplanskryssare (aircraft cruiser) HSwMS Gotland, likely in the late 1930s. One of the warship’s Bofors 6″/55 guns makes a cameo in the upper left corner. Behind the Swedish bluejackets are at least four Hawker Osprey S9 scout floatplanes with room on the rails to spare, showing that Gotland was no ordinary cruiser.

While Sweden often gets written off for its impact during WWII, the country, particularly this ship, made a key difference that made history some 84 years ago this week.

Meet Gotland

Our subject came about following the increased use of aircraft by the Swedish Navy in their summer maneuvers in 1925, which pointed to the dire need for a persistent seagoing aircraft carrier/tender of sorts.

From the 1926 report (mechanically translated):

The air forces assigned to an operating naval force now appear to be an indispensable, fully integrated part of the naval force, and numerous experiences from our fleet’s annually recurring exercises show that the air force’s participation in naval operations cannot be limited to sporadic engagements, but must be permanent and immediate.

As a stopgap, the old 3,600-ton coastal battleship Dristigheten was refitted as a seaplane carrier (flygmoderfaryget). With this conversion, she lost her big guns (two 210mm/44cal. Bofors M/1898s and six 152mm/44cal. Bofors M/98s) as well as her two torpedo tubes, trading them in for a few smaller caliber AAAs and the capability to handle as many as four floatplanes as well as tend small craft such as patrol boats and coastal gunboats. Her magazine space was largely converted to avgas bunkerage.

Dristigheten as seaplane tender

Dristigheten as seaplane tender

The Swedish Navy’s Marinens Flygväsende (MFV) at the time flew a host of early Friedrichshafen and Hansa models with Dristigheten lifting these reconnaissance seaplanes from her deck to take off on the water and retrieving them from the drink on their return. In her later years, she carried Heinkel HD 16/19s.

A more permanent fix would be preferable for two ships intended from the keel up to support aircraft. That’s where Gotland and her unrealized sister came in.

Gotland was designed to be a Swiss Army knife of sorts, carrying both a decent main battery, torpedo tubes, extensive aviation facilities meant to support a squadron of up to a dozen aircraft, as well as both minesweeping and minelaying gear. Her original plan was of a 5,600-ton, 460-foot hybrid aviation cruiser that included six 6-inch guns in three twin turrets, two forward and one rear, as well as two catapults and a rear hangar/aviation deck. It was also thought she would be able to run at up to 29 knots.

The original Gotland concept, as depicted in the 1929 Jane’s.

However, money being tight, the design was shortchanged, still with a six-gun main battery but with two of those carried in antiquated casemate mounts (this in the 1930s!). Also, she would not have a hangar, would only carry one catapult, and while able to carry 12 aircraft in theory, the government only allotted enough funds for six. She also shrank some 34 feet in length and lost a corresponding 340 tons in weight.

Correspondingly, using an upgraded form of the 24,000 shp machinery used by the Swedish 36-knot Ehrenskold-class destroyers (four oil-fired Penhoet boilers up from three Thornycroft boilers, in both cases supplying steam to two De Laval steam turbines), Gotland could make 27.5 knots on her 33,000 shp plant. Armor was just a slight smear over the machinery, turrets, and conning tower, generally just at or over 1 inch of steel.

Jane’s 1931. What a difference two years make.

A postcard of the new Gotland is seen in exceptionally clean condition with a single Osprey on her flight deck. D 14983:38

Postcard showing the new aircraft cruiser in fleet operations with a bone in her teeth. The three aircraft in tight formation look to be added to the photo. B132:8

Gotland showing off her Bofors 6″/55 with two guns shown left foreground in one of her high-angle turrets and one of her two casemated variants seen to the right background. She was the only non-American ship (Omaha class cruisers) of the age to have some of her main guns in casemates, with every other navy relegating the secondary guns to such use. Also note the paravane, one of at least four carried. I669

Her stern 6″/55 Bofors gun house. The crew is gathered on deck to celebrate the ship’s champion rowing team. D 15044:111

One of her twin 75mm /60 Bofors M/28 luftvärnskanon. She carried two such mounts in addition to a light battery of six 25mm Ivakan M/32 guns and four 8mm machine guns. D 15123:4

Like most cruisers of her era, she also carried a decent torpedo battery consisting of two trainable triple M/34 533mm tubes on turnstiles.

A set of Gotland’s torpedo tubes being fired during her long 1937-38 voyage. MM11659:28

She had a smoke generator (Dimbildning) equipment of the sort traditionally seen on smaller craft such as torpedo boats, seen her in action off her stern. MM01622

She was also equipped with extensive minesweeping gear, including four large paravanes, stored on the deck forward of the superstructure.

The crew of the aircraft cruiser Gotland runs around a windlass to pull up the ship’s anchors the old-fashioned way. Note a large paravane on deck. D 15044_70

When it came to her aviation operations, her aircraft were launched via an onboard catapult firing process (katapultskjutning) and recovered via crane. While her initial theory was that she would carry 12 aircraft in a hangar, this was deleted for cost reasons, and all storage and maintenance were done on an open deck, although a complicated canvas awning system could be installed if needed. It soon proved that she could only store five aircraft and use her catapult at the same time, which ironically made six aircraft the magic number anyway.

The aircraft of choice was a special version of the Hawker Osprey floatplane (the British Fleet Air Arm used 124 of the type), termed the Spaningsflygplan (reconnaissance aircraft) 9 in Swedish service. This made sense as the Swedes already had 42 Hawker Harts, which were essentially the same plane but without floats, used as light bombers. Sent to Stockholm in kits, they were outfitted with Swedish NOHAB (licensed-built Bristol Pegasus IM2) My VI 9-cylinder 600 hp engines rather than the standard 630 hp Rolls-Royce Kestrel.

Similarly, while British variants carried a synchronized forward-firing Vickers and a flexible Lewis gun for the observer, the S9 had a Swedish 8mm Flygplankulspruta ksp m/22Fh (Carl Gustaf made FN-licensed air-cooled M1919 Browning) fixed with 500 rounds while the back seater had a flex variant of the same gun, the ksp m/22R. Speed was about 140 knots while range was only about 400nm. In a pinch, 500 pounds of bombs could be carried underwing.

The Swedish Air Force ordered a grand total of six S9 Hawker Osprey, which were given reg no. 401 to 406; the picture shows machine no. 403 ashore on float dollies with her wings folded. The planes were delivered from 1934 and were mainly stationed at Hägernäs when not aboard the aircraft cruiser Gotland. Land-based after 1942, S9s served until 1947 when they were retired, seeing late life service as target tugs. Fo220033

Gotland in the summer of 1938, showing her deck full of Hawker Osprey S9s. MM01503

A Hawker Osprey S 9 seaplane aboard Gotland with its wings stowed, summer 1935. D 15044:62

An S9 ready to go on a crossbeam catapult (katapulten) in the summer of 1935. Note the stern 6″/55 guns are raised at the maximum elevation to allow a clear path. D 15044:63

Another great Hawker Osprey S 9 motif, showing one aircraft on the catapult with crew aboard, ready to go while a second aircraft is stowed to the left. D 15123:3

An engineering petty officer on Gotland’s catapult (katapulten) control stand. MM01623

Catapult in action with an S9 humming off for a sortie. MM01626

Boom! D 15044:66

Recovering an S9 via crane. Note the large ensign on her bow and her open second deck, which had rails and chutes for 100 sea mines. B133:3

The aircraft could be shuttled around the handling deck via a rail system that interfaced with the floats.

A good view in the summer of 1935 showing an S-9 being readied to catapult off Gotland, with the rail system on display in the foreground. D 15044:61

Gotland at quay with her crew’s hammocks (hängmattor) drying in the breeze, summer 1935. You also get an unobstructed view of her forward casemated 6″/55 Bofors. Of note, her enlisted and petty officers were housed in the aft of the ship while officers were housed in single and double cabins forward, the reverse of most warships. D 15044:58

The aircraft cruiser Gotland at the Mobiliseringskajen (mobilization quay) at the Karlskrona naval base. I668

Laid down at Lindholmen, Göteborg/Götaverken, in 1930, our subject launched on 14 September 1933, christened by Crown Prince Gustav Adolf (later King Gustav VI). She was only the second Swedish warship to carry the name, with the first being a circa 1682 50-gun ship of the line that fought at Rügen in 1715.

Swedish aviation cruiser Gotland launched on 14th September 1933

After fitting out and trials, she was commissioned on 14 December 1934.

Her wartime assignment was to lead the modern destroyers of the Kustflottans, or Coastal Fleet, a job well suited as her draft was 18 feet at maximum load but could go as shallow as 15 when light. She would drill with these forces each summer.

Swedish warships in color, 1937 Stockholm Sverige is lead, Drottning Victoria second, then Gotland

Gotland dressed for inspection, summer 1938 Fo87354C

Meanwhile, during peacetime, she was an envoy for the country and a training tool for its fleet, deploying on an annual winter cruise between December and April, to warmer climes down south while the rest of the Swedish Navy was locked into the Baltic by ice.

Equipped with four generators (two diesel and two running off the steam turbines), Gotland had a saltwater evaporator and extensive reefers to allow for overseas cruises. Her endurance at 12 knots was well over 4,000nm.

She completed seven winter cruises before WWII halted such operations.

Gotland visiting Hamburg, December 1935. MM01621

The aircraft cruiser Gotland in Dartmouth in 1936. Perkins, Richard. Maritime Museum Archives/SMTM

Gotland in Bordeaux, late 1930s. Note the S9 on her deck. MM01635

Gotland in glasslike coastal waters, likely in the Baltic during a summer cruise. D 15120:2

War!

When Germany invaded Poland and France and Britain soon joined in what became WWII in September 1939, Gotland was undergoing an overhaul between her summer maneuvers and a planned winter overseas cruise. Rushed to completion, she made ready for war and joined the Kustflottan instead.

It was while serving on Swedish neutrality patrol (neutralitetsvakten) that, just after noon on 20 May 1941, Gotland’s aircraft spotted the new German battlewagon KMS Bismarck and her consort the cruiser Prinz Eugen and a destroyer screen in the Kattegat between Sweden and Norway. Closing to within visual distance an hour later, Gotland shadowed the Teutonic force for two hours and transmitted a report to naval headquarters, stating: “Two large ships, three destroyers, five escort vessels, and 10–12 aircraft passed Marstrand, course 205/20′.”

This report soon made its way to one Captain Henry Mangles Denham, RN, the British naval attaché in Stockholm, who duly transmitted the information to the Admiralty, and thus kicked off the great Hunt for Bismarck. Denham, a gentleman of the first sort who saw service on the battlewagon HMS Agamemnon as a midshipman of 16 in the Dardanelles in the Great War, had been seconded to Naval Intelligence in 1940 and, as you can see, was soon able to establish very good relations with the Swedish secret service. Just a week later, Bismarck was sunk– as was HMS Hood in the process.

The intelligence tip was the highlight of Gotland’s wartime service.

By the winter of 1943-44, it was decided that Gotland would be better suited to continue service as an anti-aircraft cruiser (Luftvärnskryssare) due to the fact that her aircraft were considered obsolete and anything heavier, such as the Saab 17 dive bomber, would need a more advanced catapult as they weighed over 9,000 pounds, over twice as much as the S9 Osprey Hawker.

Removed was all the aviation gear. She then packed on the Bofors AAA guns to include eight 40mm/56 K/60 M32s (6 of them in advanced power-controlled gyrostabilized mounts) and four (2×2) 20mm/63 K/66 M40s.

Postcard of Gotland, post Luftvärnskryssare conversion. B132:10

Looking over Gotland’s stern, post AAA conversion. MM04940

Gotland seen post-AAA conversion in her warpaint. Note the white identifying band to keep Swedish coastal artillery or submarines from lighting her up. Friendly fire isn’t. D 11085:4:64

And another great late war camo shot, circa 1944, this time in profile. IV857

Cold War, and another rebuild

In 1946, Sweden flirted with the idea of a more full-fledged light aircraft carrier/cruiser (hangarkryssare) with a hangar and a flight deck. Running some 8,100 tons (full), the 465-foot craft would be able to carry 20 Vampires backed up by a gun armament of eight 120mm guns in four turrets, 16 40mm guns in eight twin mounts, and 26 20mm guns.

The Swedish 1946 aircraft carrier hangarkryssare concept never got off the drawing board

This never came to pass, and, in the meantime, with the Swedes building two new cruisers, Gotland was relegated to use as the command ship of the Swedish naval academy (Sjostridsskolan) during the summer and returned to her traditional long winter voyages, completing 10 additional cruises after the war.

Gotland pier side in Rotterdam 13 March 1949. Dutch Nationaal Archief Bestanddeelnummer 903-2666

“HM Kr. Gotland, which was my home during the trip around Africa in the winter of 1948-49,” as noted by the photographer, crewman, Ernst Holger Laarson. The picture shows three launches racing while the ship’s crew stands at the railing and watches. On the port side, a steamer is moored. D 15075:2

Crossing the Line, winter 1948-49 cruise. The crew has gathered on deck to await the arrival of King Neptune’s envoy – the running elf (löparnisse) – for the christening of the line aboard the cruiser Gotland. By Ernst Holger Laarson. D 15075:12

Crossing the Line ceremony MM01689

The entire court of King Neptune has gathered for a group photo aboard the cruiser Gotland, winter 1948-49 cruise. By Ernst Holger Laarson. D 15075:16

Crossing Line December 1948 Löjtnant E.B.V. Tornérhjelm MM 14924

Swedish cruiser Gotland, on a visit to Rotterdam in June 1950, in AAA cruiser layout. Dutch Nationaal Archief Bestanddeelnummer 934-7038

Period Kodachrome by David Ingvar. “At sea off Morocco in 1951 with the cruiser Gotland.” Note the casemated guns are still aboard, probably one of the last warships with such an installation. B 1664:90

Looking over her stern, with the ensign flying, circa 1951. Note the ship’s band. Period Kodachrome by David Ingvar. B 1664:63

Ship’s band (Militärmusiker) assembled aft while in port, 1951. Note the heavy winter blues and the snow present on the roofs ashore. Period Kodachrome by David Ingvar. B 1664:67

Armed quarterdeck guard while in Casablanca, 1951. Note the blue winter jumper and cap, white gaiters, and distinctive four-cell SMG magazine pouch for the Husqvarna m/37-39 9mm sub gun. Period Kodachrome by David Ingvar. B 1664:94

Over the winter of 1953-54, she was overhauled and rebuilt for the second time in her career. The refit included radar (a British-supplied Type 293 short-range aerial-search) and triple racks (raketstall) for 103mm Bofors illumination rockets on each side of the 6″/55 gun houses. She also finally lost her casemate guns.

Her 1955 layout, showing clearly her radar fit and 103mm rocket racks on her main gun turrets. KR 3003

Gotland at sea, circa 1955-56. D 15093:4

Gotland’s 1955-56 cruise. D 15093:2

Seen on the pier side, ablaze in electric lights, circa 1955-56. D 15093:50

With the new cruisers added to the fleet and the Swedish Navy strapped for cash and manpower to keep three such vessels active, Gotland, even though she was just overhauled, was laid up in material reserve (materielberedadstand) as the winter of 1956 approached.

Jane’s 1960 entry on the old girl.

On 1 July 1960, she was marked for disposal and sold for scrap two years later.

Epilogue

She is well remembered in her home country. While she was in commission, she carried an extensive art collection and accumulated a series of goodwill relics from overseas port calls during her 17 winter training cruises. These, along with a tremendous number of logs and informal cruise books and ship’s papers, are retained by the Swedish Marinmuseum.

The Marinmuseum also has a wooden 26-inch scale model (Fartygsmodell) of Gotland in her flight cruiser arrangement that was constructed by Arne Åkermark at Europafilm in the 1940s.

MM 20681

They also have a larger 34-inch model made in the 1960s.

MM 25196

Swedish maritime artist Carl Gustaf Ahremark created a great image of the S9 Osprey in domestic service.

The third HSwMS Gotland is the class leader (A19) of a series of advanced AIP diesel-electric subs that joined the fleet in 1996.

Her motto, borrowing from the province of Gotland’s goat coat of arms, is the Latin “Gothus sum, cave cornua, (I’m a Goth, beware of the horns.) Photo: Saab.

As for Captain Henry Mangles Denham, RN, the British naval attaché who passed along Gotland’s report on Bismarck leading to the “release of the hounds,” he remained at his post in Stockholm until 1947, when he retired, capping 32 years of service to the crown. His cloak-and-dagger work in Scandinavia earned him one of the very few CMGs (Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George) given to naval officers and was also decorated by numerous Allied governments.

After leaving the service, Sir Henry, a keen member of the Royal Cruising Club and the Royal Yacht Squadron, cruised the Mediterranean in his yacht and during this period wrote his many guides to the seas and coasts of the region as well as volumes covering his military service. He passed in 1993, aged 96, leaving behind one son and two daughters.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

 

***

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

***

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Warship Wednesday, May 14, 2025: Apogee

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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

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Warship Wednesday, May 14, 2025: Apogee

Department of the Navy Bureau of Ships photograph, National Archives Identifier 7577927

Above we see the brand new Worcester-class light cruiser USS Roanoke (CL-145) off the Philadelphia Navy Yard on 6 January 1950, the day she left for her first Mediterranean deployment.

Laid down some 80 years ago this week, she was the last American light cruiser commissioned, capping a legacy that started in 1908, and went on to be the next to last all-gun light cruiser decommissioned.

The Worcesters

The Worcester class stemmed from a May 1941 project for BuShips to develop a fast (33 knot) cruiser capable of keeping up with the new classes of fast battleships and aircraft carriers. Designed specifically to splash high-flying enemy bombers, they were to have little in the way of side armor in place of heavily armored decks to withstand bombs while carrying a dozen high-angle 6″/47 DP guns.

However, the long gestation period and wartime experience tweaked this concept a bit.

As detailed by Friedman: 

The Worcester class was designed almost as a platform for the 6-in/47 gun. BuOrd applied the same design concept to an 8-in/55 gun, and the Des Moines class resulted. Both types competed for the tail end of the wartime cruiser program, hull numbers originally scheduled for construction as Clevelands being reordered. Both designs also showed a degree of tactical obsolescence since the missions for which they had been designed were no longer valid at the time of their completion. The Worcester arose from a 1941 demand for a ship capable of defending the fleet against heavy bombers, a role that died as soon as it became obvious that conventional heavy bombers could not hit maneuvering ships from high altitude. The records are far from clear on this point, but it appears that the continuing 6-in/47-gun project kept the cruiser project alive in 1941-43. Ultimately, BuShips justified the very heavy antiaircraft gun as a counter to guided missiles, which the Germans introduced at Salerno in 1943; the old 5-in/25 gun was already obsolete, the 5-in/38 gun barely sufficient; surely something more would be needed for the future.

The Mark 16DP 6″/47s used on the Worcesters were unique.

Whereas the Mark 16 6″/47 was by no means a new gun– the 37 assorted Brooklyn, Cleveland, and Fargo class light cruisers carried them in a variety of triple turrets– the twin high-angle (+78 degree elevation) turrets on our subject class had faster training and elevation rates which, coupled with a 12 round per minute per gun rate of fire, could prove a real threat to high-flying aircraft of the 1940s at anything under 35,000 feet. Plus, there were plans afoot to double that rate of fire to 20-25 rounds per minute per gun by making their loading fully automatic.

The inner workings of the 6″/47 Mk 16 DP mount.

The 6″/47 Mk 16 DP was trialed on the old battlewagon USS Mississippi (AG-128) prior to installation on the Worcesters.

Worcester-class light cruiser USS Roanoke in 1954. Here the after 6″/47 Mk 16 DP main guns and the Mark 27 gun fire control are visible.

With 40mm and 20mm guns seen as outdated with jets on the horizon (the original plan was for 11 quadruple and two twin Bofors for a total of 48 guns, as well as 20 twin 20mm guns), the Worcesters were given 12 dual 3″/50 twin Mark 22 guns in Mark 33 mounts (with a tertiary battery of eight twin Oerlikons). Trainable to 85 degrees elevation, they were good for up to 30,000 feet and could fire 40-50 rounds per minute per gun, allowing the Worcesters to fill the air with 1,200 rounds of 24-pound 3-inch AA VT every 60 seconds.

Bluejackets on USS Roanoke (CL-145) cooling their heels on the starboard 3-inch 50 Mk 33 gun mount blister.

Fire control was via four Mk 56/35 GFCS and six Mk 27s, while they had a quartet of radars (SR-2, SPS-6 2-D air search, SG-6 surface search, and SP-2).

Mark 56 gun fire control system aboard the U.S. Navy light cruiser USS Roanoke (CL-145), in 1956

While the original plan was to concentrate the armor over the decks, this later morphed to a more comprehensive arrangement that ranged from a 1-inch armored box over the deck, 2 inches on the rear of the gun houses and 3 inches on the belt taper to 6.5 inches on the turret sides and 5 inch on the barbettes and the engineering belt. In all, they carried a massive 2,119.7 tons of armor. Compare this to the preceding Cleveland-class light cruisers that only had 1,199 tons of protection.

Although a “light” cruiser class, the Worcesters went 679 feet overall length and hit the scales at 18,300 tons when fully loaded. Compare that to the brooding and infamous Admiral Hipper-class cruisers of the Kriegsmarine that went 665 feet oal and 18,200 tons.

Rather than the 100,000 shp plant on the preceding Cleveland and Fargos, the Worcesters, using four high-pressure (620 psi) Westinghouse boilers and four General Electric geared steam turbines, was able to wring 120,000 shp, which still surpasses the 105,000 shp seen on today’s speedy Arleigh Burke-class destroyers on four gas turbines. The speed was 33 knots, and the range was 8,000 nm at 15.

Originally planned to carry 4 seaplanes with two catapults, this didn’t happen, as we shall see.

Ten Worcesters were planned (to start) with the first four (Worcester-Roanoke-Vallejo-Gary) ordered from New York Shipbuilding Corporation as Yard Nos. 465, 466, 467, and 468, respectively.

Meet Roanoke

Our subject is at least the fifth U.S. Navy warship named after the Virginia city and river system.

The first was a circa 1855 steam frigate that was converted to an oddball triple turret ironclad during the Civil War.

Steam frigate USS Roanoke, brig of war USS Dolphin, and new buildings at Charlestown Navy Yard, Massachusetts, possibly 1861. 80-G-424917

USS Roanoke (1857-1883). Lithograph depicting the ship during the final stages of her conversion from a steam frigate to a triple-turret ironclad, at Novelty Iron Works, New York City, circa the first half of 1863. The original drawing of the scene was done by G. Hayward for “Valentine’s Manual”, 1863. Note the large derrick on the left and the Novelty Works’ building on the right. LC-USZ62-24408

The second USS Roanoke (ID # 1695) was a civilian vessel taken up for service as a dazzle-painted mine layer in the Great War and disposed of shortly after.

U.S. Navy Mine Layers. Steaming in line abreast during the laying of the North Sea mine barrage, September 1918. Analysis of camouflage patterns indicates that these ships are (from front to rear): USS Roanoke (ID # 1695); USS Housatonic (ID # 1697); USS Shawmut (ID # 1255); USS Canandaigua (ID # 1694); USS Canonicus (ID # 1696); with USS Quinnebaug (ID # 1687) and USS Saranac (ID # 1702) in the left and right center distance. A four-stack British cruiser is in the distance. NHHC Photograph Collection: NH 61101.

The third and fourth Roanokes, a frigate (PF-93) and light cruiser (CL-114) respectively, never sailed under the name, with the escort joining the fleet briefly as USS Lorain while the cruiser was canceled before her first steel was cut.

Whereas late-war Cleveland-class light cruisers were constructed in as little as 16 months, it was immediately evident that the Worcesters were not going to be finished before Berlin and Tokyo fell, and their construction stretched out.

Worcester Class Light AA Cruiser USS Roanoke New York Shipbuilding Corp Shipyard July 1, 1948

Worcester Class Light AA Cruiser USS Roanoke New York Shipbuilding Corp July 1, 1948

USS Roanoke (CL-145) nearing completion, January 1949

Roanoke was laid down on 15 May 1945, just a week after VE-Day. She only launched on 16 June 1947 and, at the time, was NYSB’s last wartime vessel under construction, with sisters Vallejo and Gary canceled in 1945.

“The USS Roanoke, last naval vessel presently under contract at the New York Shipbuilding Corporation, was launched today. The 14,700-ton light cruiser went down the ways of the Camden yard at 12:18 P.M., after being christened by Miss Julia Ann Henebry, daughter of Leo P. Henebry, former mayor of Roanoke Va. Miss Henebry’s maid of honor was Miss Margaret Donnell Smith, daughter of R. H. Smith, president of the Norfolk & Western Railway.” Temple University Libraries, Special Collections Research Center P563088B

“Down the ways and into the Delaware River goes the USS Roanoke at the launching yesterday at the New York Shipbuilding Corp., Camden. Workmen watch as the cruiser nears the water.” George D. McDowell, Philadelphia Evening Bulletin Photographs. Temple University P563087B

Roanoke only completed fitting out and was commissioned on 4 April 1949, capping just under four years of construction. As it was, the brand new NYSB-built Fargo-class cruisers USS Fargo (CL-106) and Huntington (CL-107) were decommissioned just weeks after to balance the scales of the new Worcesters joining the fleet.

The future USS Roanoke (CL-145) “off the bow” at Philadelphia Naval Shipyard 29 March 1949, just prior to commissioning. NARA 19-NN-CL 145 Roanoke-1354877

Jane’s 1960 Worcester class listing. Some of the specifics are incorrect.

Cold War!

Following shakedown in the Caribbean, Roanoke conducted maneuvers in the Atlantic as a unit of the shrinking Battleship-Cruiser Force before she got underway to join the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean for her first deployment on 6 January 1950.

USS Roanoke (CL 145) January 6, 1950 NARA 19-NN-CL 145 Roanoke-1354889

USS Roanoke (CL 145) January 6, 1950 NARA 19-NN-CL 145 Roanoke-1354894

USS Roanoke (CL 145) January 6, 1950 NARA 19-NN-CL 145 Roanoke-1354890

USS Roanoke (CL-145) underway at slow speed, circa the early 1950s. Note the ship’s crew at quarters, her call sign NIQE flying at the port yardarm, a motor whaleboat off her port side amidships, and the lighthouse on the tip of the jetty in the background. NH 106501

USS Roanoke (CL-145) underway off the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, January 6, 1950. Note the automobiles and the Sikorsky HO3S helicopter on the fantail.

The U.S. Navy light cruiser USS Roanoke (CL-145) at anchor off Famagusta, Cyprus, on 22 February 1950. The ship is dressed for Washington’s Birthday.

She would continue this tempo, conducting six Med deployments with the 6th Fleet over the next five years.

USS Newport News (CA 148); USS Roanoke (CL 145), and USS Columbus (CA 74) at Naples, Italy. Mt. Vesuvius is in the background. Photograph released February 9, 1951. 80-G-426897

Same as above 80-G-426898

Same as above 80-G-426896

When not cruising the Med, Roanoke would continue to drill in exercises in the Western Atlantic and carry midshipmen on training cruises to the Caribbean.

Mids on USS Roanoke (CL-145) stand in formation, 1949-1958. Marquette University MUA_013485

An unidentified Navy ROTC student pets a cheetah, presumably while on a summer cruise with the USS Roanoke (CL-145), 1949-1958. Marquette University MUA_013496

In the fall of 1955, she landed her 20mm guns and older SG-6 and SP-2 radars, replaced by SPS-10 and SPS-8. They were also fitted for more extensive helicopter operations.

Her rigging arrangement post-refit:

On 22 September 1955, Roanoke departed Norfolk for her new homeport in Long Beach, via the Panama Canal. While in California, she conducted nine Naval Reserve cruises and deployed to the WestPac twice (May to December 1956 and September to October 1958).

Naval Reservists undergoing inspection with on active duty on deck of USS Roanoke (CL-145), 2 August 1956. Note the helicopter silhouette. 80-G-692014

A U.S. Navy Piasecki HUP Retriever landing aboard the light cruiser USS Roanoke (CL-145), in 1956.

USS Roanoke (CL-145) at Sasebo, Japan, circa 1956.

With the battleships gone and the cruisers going, the writing was on the wall for these obsolete all-gunned warships in the atomic era.

Roanoke was decommissioned on Halloween 1958. Her active career lasted just 9 years, 6 months, and 27 days.

Still new enough to be reactivated if needed, she was assigned to the Pacific Reserve Fleet at Mare Island, where, along with her sister, she was preserved and placed in mothballs.

It should be noted that she was only outlived by seven all-gun heavy cruisers: USS Des Moines, Salem, Newport News, Saint Paul, Toledo, Macon, and Bremerton, although it should be noted that the latter three were decommissioned shortly after the Worcesters in 1960-61.

USS Worcester (CL 144) arrives at Pier 23, Mare Island Naval Shipyard on 26 May 1959 for inactivation. The stern of the USS Roanoke (CL 145) is to the right. YTB 268 Red Cloud is on the cruiser’s starboard bow.

Sisters USS Worcester (CL-144) and USS Roanoke (CL-145) at Pier 23, Mare Island Naval Shipyard, 26 May 1959, with guns covered for mothball preservation.

Mare Island Naval Shipyard, California, view of Berths 21 through 24, looking northwest, 12 July 1960, showing Pacific Reserve Fleet and other ships. Those present include (from bottom): Two Cleveland-class light cruisers, USS Roanoke (CL-145), USS Worcester (CL-144), another Cleveland-class light cruiser, USS Lyman K. Swenson (DD-729) undergoing FRAM II modernization, two auxiliaries, and a destroyer receiving a FRAM I modernization. Courtesy of Stephen S. Roberts, 1978. NH 88082

Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. Ships laid up in reserve at Bremerton, 19 March 1970. They are, from left to right: USS Fort Marion (LSD-22), USS Missouri (BB-63), USS Roanoke (CL-145), and USS Worcester (CL-144). USN 1143678

Stricken 1 December 1970 after 12 years in reserve (a period longer than her active career), Roanoke was sold for scrap to Levin Metals Corporation of San Jose, California, on 22 February 1972.

Roanoke didn’t get to fire a shot in anger, coming too late for WWII and deployed to Europe to hold the line against the Russkis during Korea, but she did serve as the breeding ground for the Navy’s future admirals. Of her 11 skippers, seven would earn stars, including two who would reach VADM rank- John Louis Chew (USNA ’31) and Harold Thomas Deutermann (USNA ’27).

Epilogue

She is remembered in maritime art by Wayne Scarpaci.

A painting of USS Roanoke (CL 145) entering San Francisco Bay in 1957 by artist Wayne Scarpaci. The title of the painting is “Summer Fog,” via Navsource.

A surprising amount of Roanoke is preserved.

Her bell can be seen on display outside Elmwood Park at the Roanoke Public Library.

A large scale model of Roanoke is on display in the Virginia Museum of Transportation, Roanoke, Virginia

The National Archives holds an extensive collection of photographs as well as her deck logs.

As part of their scrapping process, at least 200 tons of armor plate from both Worcester and Roanoke were put to use at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, where some no doubt is still catching particles.

The Navy recycled her name for a 40,000-ton Wichita-class replenishment oiler, (AOR-7), which joined the fleet in 1976 and served for 19 years then was laid up at Suisun Bay with the thawing of the Cold War. She was scrapped in 2012.

A port bow view of the replenishment oiler USS Roanoke (AOR-7) participating in an underway replenishment operation with the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) during RIMPAC ’86, 17 June 1986. The Australian frigate HMAS Darwin (F-04) is on the starboard side of the Roanoke. PH2 Galaviz. NARA DN-SC-87-02027

It’s probably time that the Navy commissioned a seventh Roanoke.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

Ships are more than steel

and wood

And heart of burning coal,

For those who sail upon

them know

That some ships have a

soul.

***

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Warship Wednesday, May 7, 2025: Ray of Hope

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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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday, May 7, 2025: Ray of Hope

Photo by CDR Gerald Durbin of Shangri-La (CVA-38) via Bob Canchola, via Navsource.

Above we see the Gato-class fleet boat turned submarine radar-picket USS Ray (SSR-271) in Hong Kong Harbor while on her way home from her 1956 6th Fleet deployment. During WWII, she was a menace to the emperor’s fleet, running up a tally of 155,171 tons across eight war patrols.

However, she was also one of the most impressive lifesavers of the conflict.

The Gatos

The 77 Gatos were cranked out by four shipyards from 1940 to 1944 for the U.S. Navy. They were impressive 311-foot-long fleet boats, diesel-electric submarines capable of extended operations in the far reaches of the Pacific. Able to swim an impressive 11,000 nautical miles on their economical power plant while still having room for 24 (often cranky) torpedoes.

A 3-inch deck gun served for surface action in poking holes in vessels deemed not worth a torpedo while a few .50 and .30-cal machine guns provided the illusion of an anti-aircraft armament. Developed from the Tambor-class submarines, they were the first fleet boats able to plumb to 300 feet test depth, then the deepest that U.S. Navy submersibles were rated.

Meet Ray

Our subject is the first U.S. Navy warship named for the flat-bodied, whip-tailed marine cousin of the shark. She was one of the “Manitowoc 28” submarines (10 “thin-skinned” Gatos with a test depth of 300 feet and 18 thicker follow-on Balaos) constructed by the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company of (wait for it) Manitowoc, Wisconsin between 1942 and 1945.

With all 28, initial sea trials were done in Lake Michigan then the boats were sent down the Mississippi River (via the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, then the Des Plaines and Illinois Rivers to the “Mighty Miss”) to New Orleans, a freshwater trip of just over 2,000 miles, for completion and fitting out.

Gato-class submarine USS Peto (SS-265) side launched at Manitowoc

Laid down 20 July 1942, Ray launched 28 February 1943, just a month after sister USS Raton (SS-270) and a month before USS Redfin (SS-272). Ray’s sponsor was the wife of Capt. Sam Colby Loomis, Sr. (USNA ’02) and mother of then LCDR Sam Loomis, Jr. (USNA ’35), the latter one of the most decorated sub skippers of WWII.

Ray commissioned 27 July 1943 and her plank owner skipper was CDR Brooks Jared Harral (USNA ’32), a New Yorker by way of New Orleans who had learned his trade on the cramped “Sugar Boat” USS S-17 (SS-122) earlier in the war, carrying out seven short war patrols in the Panama and Caribbean area.

Ray on Great Lakes sea trials

After six weeks motoring around Lake Michigan in light conditions in the summer of 1943, she departed the Lakes on 15 August, bound for the Big Easy, where she arrived a short week later, propelled by the Mississippi. Loading stores and torpedoes there, she left for Coco Solo, Panama, on 26 August, then spent five weeks training in those tropical waters for her war in the Pacific.

Deemed ready for combat, she left Baltra Island in the Galapagos on 9 October, bound on a 7,800-mile direct trip for Brisbane.

War!

Arriving in Australia on 30 October 1943– just three months after her Manitowoc commissioning– a fortnight later, Ray departed from Milne Bay, New Guinea for her 1st War Patrol, ordered to stalk Japanese shipping north of the Bismarck Archipelago. For 60 percent of her crew, it was their first war patrol on any submarine.

On the early morning of 26 November, she sank the Japanese army Shinkyo Maru-class auxiliary transport Nikkai Maru (2562 GRT) south-west of Truk, with the vessel breaking apart into three pieces and sinking. For this, Ray suffered her first depth charging in return.

A few hours later, she pressed an attack on a ship of some 10,000 tons and reported a sinking. This could be the 2,700-ton auxiliary water carrier Wayo Maru, which was sailing with Nikkai Maru but arrived at Truk on 28 November with no damage.

In her attacks, Ray expended 10 torpedoes for seven claimed hits, which is rather good for American fish at this stage of the war. Recalled for operational reasons, Ray completed her 1st patrol on 7 December 1943, returning to Milne Bay after covering 7,479 miles in 24 days. She was credited with sinking two freighters of 9,800 tons and 4,500 tons, respectively.

Ray departed Milne Bay on her 2nd War Patrol on 11 December after a three-day turnaround alongside the tender USS Fulton, ordered to patrol in the Banda Sea.

On the overnight of 26/27 December, she stalked, then torpedoed and sank the Japanese fleet tanker Kyoko Maru (5800 GRT, former Dutch Semiramis) in the Tioro Strait 14 miles northwest of Kabaena Island. She broke in two and sank, carrying 41 passengers and crew to the bottom along with 7,500 tons of crude oil cargo.

The six-torpedo attack left a “huge billowing column of orange flames” some 75 feet wide that “mushroomed out like a thunderhead as it rose hundreds of feet in the air.”

From Ray’s patrol report:

On New Year’s Day 1944, Ray celebrated by sinking the Japanese auxiliary gunboat Okuyo Maru (2904 GRT), towing a landing craft some five miles from the mouth of Ambon Bay, with three torpedoes, killing 135 passengers and crew.

Three days later, she attacked two Japanese cargo ships in the Savu Sea just off Timor with four torpedoes, reportedly damaging one of them.

On 12 January, Ray ended her 2nd war patrol at the big Allied sub base at Fremantle, completing 7,007 miles in 46 days. She was given credit for sinking a 10,020-ton AO (Sinkoku type) and a 7,886-ton auxiliary.

Having steamed over 25,000 miles since leaving her builders six months prior, Ray was allowed a full three-week turnaround time before she left on her 3rd War Patrol on 6 February 1944.

Ordered to patrol in the Java and South China Seas, she also carried a cargo of mines to sow off Japanese-occupied Saigon, French Indochina.

Working close to shore, she grounded in the shallows on 17 February but was able to float free with the tide and the next day shrugged off two near-miss bombs dropped from a Japanese Rufe (Nakajima A6M2-N) floatplane. She dodged three more on 24 February.

Coming across a nine-ship convoy on the night of 2/3 March in the South China Sea, she fired four torpedoes, claiming a damaging hit on a 10,000-ton tanker and suffering a “severe” depth-charging in the process.

She ended her patrol back at Fremantle on 27 March after 51 days, covering 10,688 miles.

Her 4th War Patrol started on 23 April, ordered to range south off the Davao Gulf in the Philippines.

Haunted by Japanese land-based Betty bombers (Ray logged 71 aircraft contacts on the patrol), she birddogged several small enemy convoys but couldn’t line up an attack– that was until she found a “well disciplined” large convoy (Convoy H-26) of six escorts (with some emitting radar signals) covering eight Marus and a tanker on the afternoon of 21 May. Just after midnight on 22 May, she had lined up on the largest targets, the Japanese army tanker Kenwa Maru (6384 GRT) and the cargo ship Tempei Maru (6097 GRT), firing six torpedoes that damaged the former and sank the latter. Tempei Maru blew up and went to the bottom with a cargo of rice and gasoline, along with 35 crew and passengers.

The next day, teaming up with sister USS Cero, she sank the freighter Taijun Maru (2825 GRT) carrying a cargo of Daihatsu landing barges.

She made four radar-assisted night attacks on the convoy in all, firing 18 torpedoes in two successful runs, and claimed six kills.

Then she came across a Japanese cruiser task force on the afternoon of 31 May that she continued to track but could not attack for the next two days. However, she did get ineffectively strafed by one of the cruiser’s floatplanes for her efforts.

Wrapping up her 4th War Patrol at Fremantle on 14 June, she was credited with 42,000 tons of shipping, roughly three times what she bagged, but hey, it’s war.

With that, LCDR Harral was pulled from Ray and bumped upstairs to COMSUBPAC staff. In his four patrols on our boat, he had earned the Navy Cross, two Silver Stars, and two Bronze Stars, so it’s safe to say he deserved the promotion.

His replacement was Keystone stater LCDR William Thomas Kinsella (USNA 1935), late of the old (had been laid up in 1931) USS O-8 (SS-69), a training boat out of New London.

Kinsella took the repaired Ray out on her 5th War Patrol (his first) from Fremantle on 9 July, headed to patrol in the South China Sea.

He proved a fast study and sank three Japanese tankers– Jambi Maru (a.k.a. Janbi Maru and Jinbi Maru) (5244 GRT, former Dutch Djambi), Nansei Maru (5878 GRT, former British Pleiodon), and Taketoyo Maru (6964 GRT)– as well as two cargo ships– Koshu Maru (2812 GRT) and Zuisho Maru (5286 GRT) over the next month. The Koshu Maru was a particularly sad footnote, as she was packed with 1,500 Javanese laborers destined to repair the Japanese airfield at Makassar, and 540 other passengers, with most perishing as she disappeared below the surface in just two minutes.

The chase for the unescorted Jambi Maru was almost pyrrhic, with Ray firing 22 torpedoes (!) in six attacks to get eight hits on the tanker– a move that forced the sub to return to Australia mid-patrol to quickly grab more fish and head out for more havoc.

She ended her extraordinarily successful 5th War Patrol at Fremantle on 31 August 1944, completely out of torpedoes (going through 46!), capping 14,237 miles underway in 67 days.

She was credited with four “kills” totaling 36,400 tons.

On 23 September 1944, Ray departed Fremantle to begin her 6th War Patrol, ordered again to the South China Sea where she had been so busy the month before. Setting off for the waters around the Japanese-occupied Philippines with 16 Mk 14-3A torpedoes loaded forward and eight newer Mk 18 electric fish loaded aft, it would be one of her most historic sorties.

On 12 October, she sank the Japanese troop transport Toko Maru (4180 GRT) near Cape Cavalite, Mindoro, and ate 30 depth charges in return.

Two days later, a hatch inadvertently left open while submerging ended up flooding two-thirds of the control room. While she suffered mechanically from this– and was forced to call on the services of the tender USS Orion at Mios Woendi for five days of emergency repairs– she had no casualties.

On 1 November, Ray sank the Japanese coastal tanker Horai Maru No.7 (834 GRT) west of Mindoro, then completed a “special mission,” typically code for landing agents or supplies to resistance groups. Post-war, it was known that this mission saw a landing party sent ashore on the west coast of Mindoro to recover two Naval Aviators that had been shot down during carrier raids and rescued by Filipino insurgents, along with two U.S. Army officers that had been fighting with the guerillas since 1942, and a local escaped political prisoner.

Three days later, operating in a Yankee wolf pack with USS Bream, Guitarro, and Raton, the pack came across Convoy TAMA-31A and shared in sending the big Japanese transport ship Kagu Maru (6806 GRT) to the bottom off Dasol Bay, Philippines, with Ray delivering the coup de grace by blowing off the damaged ship’s bow with two torpedoes.

On 5 November, lookouts from the submarine USS Batfish spotted Japanese Convoy MATA-31, some 15 ships with air cover, heading from Manila to Formosa. The convoy included six freighters, two kaibokan frigates, and five subchasers, while the heavy cruiser Aoba and famed Mogami-class heavy cruiser Kumano were riding along for good measure. Batfish tried to get in an attack on Aoba but came up short. She nonetheless passed on the contact, and Ray’s wolfpack made ready to receive.

Cruiser Kumano, circa Oct 1938, as seen in the U.S. Navy Division of Naval Intelligence’s A503 FM30-50 booklet for identification of ships

The next day, while off Cape Bolinao, Luzon, the four waiting American submarines concentrated on Kumano and would fire an amazing 23 fish at the big 14,000-ton bruiser.

Two hits– one blowing off her bow section and the second flooding her engine rooms– left Kumano dead in the water with an 11-degree list. However, with the swarm of aircraft keeping Ray deep during daylight hours, and the swarm of escorts too tight once she surfaced after dark, Kinsella found himself presented with a dream target– but one he could not claim. Kumano, towed to Dasol Bay by the freighter Doryo Maru, would be finished off in Santa Cruz harbor less than three weeks later by carrier aircraft from USS Ticonderoga.

Operating independently, on 14 November, Ray sank the Japanese corvette Kaibokan CD-7 (745 tons) about 65 nautical miles north-west of Cape Bolinao while the vessel was escorting Convoy MATA-32. She was sent to the bottom with 156 men. The sub followed up on this by sinking the transport Unkai Maru No. 5 (2,841 GRT) from the convoy seven minutes later.

On 19 November, Ray performed lifeguard missions, scooping up Lt. James Arthur Bryce, USNR, of VF-22, from the drink off Cape Bolinao. A young fighter pilot flying from USS Cowpens (CVL-25), his F6F-5 was damaged by anti-aircraft fire while attacking a Japanese convoy. Bryce would pick up a DFC for his actions that day, adding a second one to his salad bar in January 1945 for downing three enemy aircraft in the same sortie. Sadly, this ace (he ended up with 5.25 victories) was killed in an accident soon after.

Ending her 6th War Patrol on 8 December at Pearl Harbor via Midway with a waterlogged Lt. Bryce aboard, Ray covered a lucky 17,777 miles in an exceedingly long 98 days, firing all 16 of her Mk 14-3A torpedoes. She was given credit for 6.5 kills (sharing Kumano) for a total of 35,100 tons.

This brought her running tally sheet to 20.5 kills for 146,206 tons.

Following a much-needed refit and overhaul at Mare Island Navy Yard– which allowed her crew to spend Christmas stateside, Ray only made it back to “the line” in April 1945, at which point she was in a quite different war.

USS Ray, Mare Island 9 March 1945

With Japanese convoys no longer abundant on the high seas, her 7th War Patrol, off Kyushu in Japanese home waters and in the Yellow Sea, would be one of surface engagements against small craft that didn’t rate a torpedo.

Departing Guam on 30 April 1945, she capped this patrol at Midway on 16 June, having traveled 14,463 miles. In that interval, she had made 46 surface contacts in the Yellow Sea, with about a quarter of those being other American submarines patrolling the same area.

The rest were small coasters and trawlers– which she was determined to destroy.

Throughout 21 gun attacks, most at night, she expended 815 rounds of 40mm and 137 rounds of 5-inch, accounting for 19 small craft (two sea trucks, two small patrol boats, 15 four-masted rice schooners) carrying supplies between Japan and Korea for a total of 6,000 tons. She also encountered 24 mines, exploding or sinking most via gunfire.

However, her most important piece of work during this patrol was in two large rescues while spending 11 days on a lifeguard station off Japan. In one week, she pulled aboard 20 aviators, 10 from an Army B-29 and 10 from a Navy PBM Mariner. As noted by COMSUBDIV 141, “This second rescue was a particularly beautiful piece of work, being conducted at night in heavy seas and in close proximity to rocks and shoals.” Ray transferred the rescued crews to USS Lionfish and Pompon and continued her patrol.

In all, 86 American submarines spent 3,272 days on life guard duty during the war, with the bulk of that time (2,739 days) in 1945 when the conflict moved to the Japanese home islands. They rescued 504 men from the sea. Ray was the second most prolific life guard sub with 23 recoveries, just behind USS Tigrone, which had an impressive 52, the latter largely due to spending most of two patrols on such duty.

Ray’s 8th War Patrol, beginning on 11 July 1945, saw the boat leave Subic Bay headed south to the Gulf of Siam, one of the few areas that still had enemy shipping traffic, albeit of the shallow draft kind.

Arriving in the patrol zone, by 2 August, she fought her first surface action in the region– against two junks– with Kinsella noting in his log, “We now have 3 fathoms of water under us. This is indeed poor employment for as valuable a fighting unit as a U.S. submarine, but this is the way we must get our targets nowadays.”

She continued her rampage against the lilliputian shipping on an epic scale. It was a necessary war, as the craft, under Japanese orders, were carrying salt, fish, rice, and sugar to enemy units, all inside the 10-fathom curve.

Case in point: On the morning of 7 August, while patrolling off Lem Chong Pra, she encountered a coaster and, stopping it by ramming, found the vessel with contraband and sank it via boarding party.

Pursuing another small coaster, which beached itself, Ray spotted seven two-masted cargo junks in a hidden cove as well as masts for another 16 vessels (six 250-ton schooners, a 180-ton schooner, 5 75-ton junks, a 50-ton junk, and three 30-ton junks) further down the anchorage. At 1950, on all four engines running on the surface and all deck guns loaded, “With range 2,000 yards and 1 fathom of water under keel, turned right to bring 5-inch gun to bear.” An hour later, after 64 rounds of 5-inch, all 16 of the vessels at the anchorage were sunk or sinking.

To destroy the junks in the hidden cove, just after dusk, a boarding party consisting of a JG and two gunners mates in the sub’s No. 1 rubber boat, loaded with small arms, covered No. 2 rubber boat with the ship’s XO and two torpedo mates with demo gear.

By midnight, all seven junks, floating in just four feet of water, were “burning furiously,” and the away team had been recovered with no casualties, with 40 rounds of 40mm pumped into the illuminated targets for good measure. The sub had destroyed 24 vessels in 24 hours.

On 9 August, having expended almost all of her 5-inch rounds in sinking 35 small craft (totaling 2,915 tons), she was ordered back to Subic Bay.

She covered 12,165 miles in what turned out to be her final war patrol. Ordered stateside with the outbreak of peace, she made Pearl Harbor on 15 September 1945, celebrating VJ Day underway, and left for New London five days later, arriving in Connecticut on 5 October.

She ended the war with an unofficial tally of 75.5 enemy ships sunk (including all the coastal vessels) for a sum of 155,171 claimed tons, later adjusted post-war to a more correct 49,185. She also rescued no less than 23 aviators, laid at least one minefield with unknown results, and conducted two special missions.

USS Ray earned eight Battle Stars across her WWII patrols, along with the Navy Unit Citation and the Philippine Republic Presidential Citation.

Her Jolly Roger, complete with eight battle stars under the submarine insignia, dozens of warships and maru tallies and parachutes for her 13 Naval aviators and 10 Army aircrew rescued

Ray served in a training capacity at New London until 12 February 1947, when she was placed out of commission in reserve.

SSR conversion

The Navy embarked on a series of radar picket conversions to fleet submarines starting just after WWII. This carried across three Project “Migraine” series conversions that saw 10 veteran boats land their guns and torpedoes in exchange for large surface search and height-finding radars.

Of course, this kneecapped the subs for operations as…subs… since they had to lock their radar arrays parallel with the axis of the boat before diving, and they were relegated to 6 knots or less while submerged.

Migraine I: (pre-SCB number) two Tench-class submarines, USS Requin (SS-481) and USS Spinax (SS-489), in which radar panels and electronics took up the space of the rear torpedo room, originally intended to serve in the invasion of Japan in 1946. They still had their forward torpedo room, and the stern tubes could be loaded/reloaded externally and retained their forward deck guns.

Migraine II (SCB 12): belowdecks radar equipment moved to aft battery room, radars moved to masts, and rear torpedo room and two forward torpedo tubes converted to berthing for operators. This limited these boats to just four forward tubes and eight torpedoes. Four subs were converted: Balao-class boat USS Burrfish (SS-312), Tench class USS Tigrone (SS-419), while Spinax and Requin were upgraded. These boats were all redesignated SSR (submarine, radar).

Migraine III (SCB 12A): All six of the boats in this program were “stretched” Manitowoc-built Gatos: USS Pompon (SSR-267), Rasher (SSR-269), Raton (SSR-270), Ray (SSR-271), Redfin (SSR-272), and Rock (SSR-274), with each given a 29-foot hull insert amidships ahead of the main control room to allow a dedicated CIC compartment for the radars. This grew these 312-footers to 341 feet oal and saw the entire sail replaced with an enlarged, more streamlined version. It was also the first SSR conversion to delete all installed deck guns. However, the addition of the CIC “plug” allowed these boats to retain all six of their forward torpedo tubes. They carried a sail-mounted BPS-2 search radar mounted aft of the periscopes, a BPS-3 height finding radar on a pedestal behind the sail, and an AN/URN-3 TACAN beacon on the afterdeck.

The profiles of the three Migraine project generations from the Navy’s ONI 31 sighting guide from 1955:

Redfin (SSR-272) as a radar picket submarine, Migraine III (aka SCB 12A)

In December 1950, Ray was towed from mothballs to the Philadelphia Navy Yard for her Migraine III conversion, and she was recommissioned on 13 August 1952.

She was one of ultimately eight SSR/SSRNs in the Atlantic fleet in the 1950s and made two deployments (1 March to 26 May 1954 and 5 March to 4 June 1956) to the Med under 6th Fleet orders, the rest of her short second career was occupied in a series of fleet exercises and type training.

30 April 1954. USS Ray (SSR-271) acting as a radar picket submarine for USS Randolph (CV-15) during operation “Italic Sky One” in the Mediterranean. 80-G-639551

The SSR was made obsolete by the one-two deployment of the new land-based EC-121 Warning Star in 1954 and the carrier-borne E-1 Tracer in 1958, which could operate from even older Essex-class flattops. 

USS Mauna Kea (AE-22) highlines ammunition to the USS Bennington (CVS-20) in the Gulf of Tonkin the 10 September 1968. Our carrier has nine S-2E Trackers, two E-1B Tracer “Stoof with a Roof” models, and at least four SH-3A Sea Kings on deck. This would be Bennington’s final deployment and would end on 9 November. USN 1137061

With the nature of their conversion rendering them less than ideal for retention as traditional fleet subs, the end of the road was reached.

Ray departed Norfolk on 30 June 1958 and entered the Charleston Navy Yard for inactivation. Placed out of commission in reserve on 30 September 1958, she was struck from the Navy list on 1 April 1960, stripped of anything useful to keep her sisters in service, and her hulk was sold for scrap.

Her unconverted sisters lingered on for a few more years as USNR training boats.

Gato-class submarines Jane’s, 1960

The salvage price for most of the WWII fleet subs sold for scrap during this period was about $35,000 per hull, versus a $4.6 million construction cost.

Epilogue

Ray has a detailed marker as part of the Manitowoc “28 Boat Memorial Walk” at USS Cobia.

U.S.S. Ray (SS 271) Marker

She also has her war history, war patrols, and 1950s deck logs in the National Archives.

As for her two wartime skippers, plank owner Brooks Harral was a submarine division and squadron commander in Panama, Key West, and San Diego before returning to Annapolis, where he served as head of English, history, and government until 1957. Retiring as a rear admiral in 1959, he later penned “Service Etiquette” for all military academies.

He passed in 1999 and is buried in the Naval Academy Cemetery.

Ray’s second wartime skipper, Bill Kinsella, also retired from the Navy as a rear admiral after a stint teaching at the Naval Academy. During his time on SS-271, he earned two Navy Crosses and the Legion of Merit. He passed in 2003 at age 89.

In the early 1980s, he wrote a pamphlet about the boat, “The History of a Fighting Ship U.S.S. RAY (SS271)” by Rear Admiral William T. Kinsella, USN (Ret.), which is long since out of publication.

The Navy soon recycled Ray’s fine name for a Sturgeon-class submarine (SSN-653) commissioned in 1967. Notably, she was the first of her class to become Tomahawk certified in 1985, capable of shooting both TLAM and TLAM-N cruise missiles through her torpedo tubes, a game changer for SSN ops.

A port bow view of the nuclear-powered attack submarine USS Ray (SSN-653) underway near Naval Station, Norfolk, Virginia, February 1991. DNST9105698

This latter Ray earned five Navy Unit Commendations, six Meritorious Unit Commendations, six Navy Expeditionary Medals, and at least three Arctic Service ribbons across her 26-year career.

USS Ray (SSN-653), USS Hawkbill (SSN-666) USS Archerfish (SSN-678) surfaced at geographic North Pole, 6 May 1986 330-CFD-DN-SC-86-07408

Tell me again why we aren’t recycling these great old submarine names?

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

If you like this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International. They are one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find.

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

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO, has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject. PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships, you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, April 30, 2025: Pride of Puget Sound

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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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday, April 30, 2025: Pride of Puget Sound

Official U.S. Navy Photograph, from the Naval History and Heritage Command collections. Catalog: L45-35.04.01

Above we see the Baltimore-class heavy cruiser USS Bremerton (CA-130) all aglow in Sydney, in town to celebrate the 17th anniversary of the historic Battle of the Coral Sea in December 1959. While she didn’t get any licks during WWII, Bremerton was nonetheless a “war baby,” commissioned some 80 years ago this week. And she did manage to get some serious combat time during another conflict.

The Baltimores

When the early shitstorm of 1939 World War II broke out, the U.S. Navy, realized that in the likely coming involvement with Germany in said war– and that country’s huge new 18,000-ton, 8x8inch gunned, 4.1-inches of armor Hipper-class super cruisers– it was outclassed in the big assed heavy cruiser department. When you add to the fire the fact that the Japanese had left all of the Washington and London Naval treaties behind and were building giant Mogami-class vessels (15,000 tons, 3.9 inches of armor), the writing was on the wall. That’s where the Baltimore class came in.

These 24 envisioned ships of the class looked like an Iowa-class battleship in miniature with three triple turrets, twin stacks, a high central bridge, and two masts– and they were (almost) as powerful. Sheathed in a hefty 6 inches of armor belt (and 3 inches of deck armor), they could take a beating if they had to.

They were fast, capable of over 30 knots, which meant they could keep pace with the fast new battlewagons they looked so much like, as well as the new fleet carriers that were on the drawing board.

Baltimore class ONI2 listing

While they were more heavily armored than Hipper and Mogami, they also had an extra 8-inch tube, mounting nine new model 8-inch/55 caliber guns, whereas the German and Japanese only had 155mm guns (though the Mogamis later picked up 10×8-inchers). A larger suite of AAA guns that included a dozen 5-inch/38 caliber guns in twin mounts and 70+ 40mm and 20mm guns rounded this out.

In short, these ships were deadly to incoming aircraft, could close to the shore as long as there were at least 27 feet of seawater for them to float in and hammer coastal beaches and emplacements for amphibious landings, then take out any enemy surface combatant short of a modern battleship in a one-on-one fight.

They were tough nuts to crack, and of the 14 hulls that took to the sea, none were lost in combat.

Meet Bremerton

Our subject is the first warship named for the Washington city home to Puget Sound Navy Yard, which dates back to 1891. As explained by the Puget Sound Navy Museum, the Navy held a war bond competition in 1943 between the workers at Puget and those at California’s Mare Island NSY with the winner earning the naming rights to a new heavy cruiser whose keel had been laid on 1 February (as Yard No. 449) at New York Shipbuilding Corps. in Camden, New Jersey.

Puget won the competition– with the yard’s workers pledging an amazing 15 percent of their wages for six months– and earned the right to send a delegate to the East Coast to sponsor the vessel. The worker sent had been with the yard since 1917. As detailed by the museum:

Betty McGowan, representing the Rigger and Shipwright Shop, was chosen to christen the cruiser in New Jersey on July 2, 1944. She broke the ceremonial bottle of champagne across the ship’s bow with a single swing. In Bremerton, residents marked the occasion with a baseball game, a flag raising ceremony, and the sale of more than $11,000 in war bonds.

Bremerton was commissioned on 29 April 1945, with her first of 15 skippers being Capt. (later RADM) John Boyd Mallard (USNA 1920) of Savannah, Georgia. Mallard had seen the elephant previously as skipper of the oiler USS Rapidan (AO 18), dodging U-boats in the Atlantic, and earned the Legion of Merit as commander of a task group of LSTs during the assaults on Lae and Finschhafen in September 1943.

USS Bremerton (CA-130) off Portland, Maine, 6 August 1945, just nine days before the Empire of Japan would signal that they were quitting the war. 80-G-332946

Bremerton’s WWII service was brief, with her Official War History encompassing a half-dozen short paragraphs. The new cruiser left Norfolk for her shakedown cruise in the waters off  Cuba on 29 May 1945.

Three weeks later, having wrapped up gunnery trials off Culebra Island, she sailed for Rio de Janeiro to serve as flagship for Admiral Jonas Ingram, Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet, during his South American inspection tour. Bremerton returned to the States and engaged in early July, arriving at Boston Navy Yard on 18 July, then became part of TF 69 for experimental work at Casco Bay, Maine, until 2 October.

Spending the next five weeks in post-shakedown overhauls at Philadelphia, she cleared that port on 7 November for Guantanamo and, after passing inspection, sailed through the Panama Canal to join the Pacific Fleet on 29 November 1945 with orders to report to Shanghai via Pearl Harbor under the 7th Fleet for occupation duties.

Arriving at Inchon, Korea on 4 January 1946, she would spend the next 11 months in the Far East– earning an Occupation Medal and China Service Medal– before making for San Pedro, California.

Homeported there, Bremerton managed to get in a training cruise along the West Coast in 1947 before her discharge papers hit.

13 February 1948. “USS Bremerton (CA-130) (foreground) and USS Los Angeles (CA-135) are towed from the Nation’s largest drydock, at San Francisco Naval Shipyard, while being prepared for inactivation and addition to the Pacific Reserve Fleet. Constructed during the war, the 1100-foot drydock is capable of handling the largest ships afloat. Besides handling these two cruisers at one time, the huge dock has accommodated four attack transports in one operation. World’s largest crane at right.” Note that many other laid-up ships are in the area. Among them, on the right, are USS Rockwall (APA-230) and USS Bottineau (APA-235). NH 97453

Bremerton was placed out of commission, in reserve, at San Francisco on 9 April 1948, capping just under three years of service.

No less than nine of 14 Baltimore-class heavy cruisers were mothballed after WWII as the Navy’s budget nosedived. With each needing a 1,100+ member crew (not counting the Marine det), they had an almost prohibitive cost to keep them in service even if they were pierside. A deployment, requiring 2,250 tons of fuel oil and a trainload of provisions just to get started, could be better spent on a half-squadron of 3-4 destroyers that could make triple the port calls– and in more diverse locations.

The Baltimores were seen as quaint in the new Atomic Age, and, with a couple of battlewagons and newer heavy cruisers (of the Oregon City and Des Moines class) on tap for fire support missions should they ever be needed (and nobody thought they would), the six remaining class members on active service were mostly used as flagships and high-profile training vessels for midshipmen’s and reservist cruises.

War!

With the Soviet-backed North Korean Army rushing over the 38th Parallel to invade their neighbors to the south on 25 June 1950, the Navy rushed units from Japan to the embattled peninsula and things soon got very old school in a conflict heavy with minefields, amphibious landings and raids, and an active naval gunline just off shore.

This, naturally, led to a call for more naval fire support. Ultimately, 10 of 14 Baltimores (all except USS Boston, Canberra, Chicago, and Fall River) were in commission or reactivated for the Korean War.

Bremerton was pulled from mothballs at San Francisco and, after a short overhaul at Hunters Point and giving her crew some refresher training, she was bound for the gunline, arriving in theatre under 7th Fleet command on 7 May 1952.

USS Bremerton (CA-130) at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, San Francisco, California, on 21 November 1951. She was recommissioned for Korean War service on 23 November after having been in reserve since April 1948. 80-G-436084

USS Bremerton (CA-130) underway on 14 February 1952. 80-G-439986

Same as the above, 80-G-439985

Her first tour off Korea, which wrapped up in September 1952, and she let her 8-inchers sing at Wonsan, Kojo, Chongjin, and Changjon Hang.

USS Bremerton (CA-130) loading ammunition at Mare Island Ammunition Depot. October 1952

USS Bremerton (CA-130) in San Diego harbor, California, circa 1951-52, with her crew manning the rails. NH 97454

After an overhaul, she returned to Korea in April 1953, remaining through November.

Forecastle of the heavy cruiser USS Bremerton (CA-130) in heavy seas, in 1953, likely during her second Korean tour. Note the awash gun tub forward.

On this second tour, she repeatedly dueled with Nork/ChiCom coastal artillery batteries.

From Korean War: Chronology of U.S. Pacific Fleet Operations: 

  • 5 May 1953: During a heavy gun strike in the Wonsan Harbor area, USS Bremerton (CA 130) was fired upon by 18 rounds of 76 to 105 mm shells. One near miss caused two minor personnel casualties and superficial top-side damage.
  • 24 May 1953: During a heavy gun strike in Wonsan Harbor, USS Bremerton (CA 130) received 10 rounds of well-directed enemy artillery fire. Although all shells landed close aboard, Bremerton escaped unscathed.
  • 14 June 1953: USS Bremerton (CA 130) received four rounds of 90 mm counterbattery fire while blasting the enemy shore gun positions on the Wonsan perimeter. The enemy fire was ineffective.
  • 19 June 1953: In Wonsan Harbor, USS Bremerton (CA 130) was the target for four rounds of 90 mm shore fire but was not hit.

USS Bremerton (CA-130) under fire from North Korean shore batteries, in 1953

Besides Bremerton, the Navy deployed no less than six Baltimores for escort missions and coastal bombardment in Korea.

Heavy cruisers USS Saint Paul (CA-73) and USS Bremerton (CA-130) and the light cruiser USS Manchester (CL-83) are underway off Korea. Saint Paul and Bremerton were deployed to Korea and the Western Pacific between April and September 1953.

While I cannot find how many shells our girl let fly off Korea, all told, the Navy expended over 414,000 rounds and 24,000 missions against shore targets between just May 1951 and March 1952. While most of those rounds (381,750) were from 5-inch guns, at least 22,538 came from 8-inch pipes on heavy cruisers, so distill from that what you will.

In all, Bremerton was authorized two (of a possible 10) Korean Service Medals (battle stars), with the breaks in dates often due to leaving the gun line to get more shells:

  • K8 – Korean Defense Summer-Fall 1952: 12-28 May 52, 11-26 Jun 52, 9 Jul-6 Aug 52, and 20 Aug-6 Sep 52.
  • K10 – Korea, Summer-Fall 1953: 1-30 May 53, 13 Jun-8 Jul 53, 23-27 Jul 53.

She also served in Korean waters post-cease fire on two stints, 26 Sep-8 Nov 53 and 8 Jun-27 Jul 54, the latter on a May-October West Pac cruise. On top of her two battle stars, she also earned a Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation, the United Nations Korea Service Medal, and the Republic of Korea War Service Medal.

USS Bremerton (CA-130) In Drydock Number 5 at Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, in July 1954 during a West Pac deployment. Note her side armor, and men painting her hull. 80-G-644556

Cold War swan song

She would spend the first half of 1955 at Mare Island undergoing an overhaul and modernization. Her armament and fire control were updated. Importantly, she shipped her 40mm guns ashore for 10 twin 3″/50 (7.62 cm) Mark 33 Mounts and new Mk 56 FC radar fits.

April 1955. San Francisco. Port bow view of the heavy cruiser USS Bremerton (CA 130). Her original close-range armament of 20 mm and 40 mm guns has been replaced by twin 3-inch/50 Mark 26 guns controlled by Mark 56 directors, two of which may be seen abreast the forward superstructure. Her catapults have been removed, although the crane for handling aircraft remains for use with the boats now stowed in the former aircraft hangar under the quarterdeck. Note the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. Period caption: “The USS Bremerton, heavy cruiser, which will be berthed at Pier 46-B Saturday, April 21 and 22, will be open for public inspection from 1 to 4 p. m. each day, as a part of the civic observance of the 50th anniversary of the 1906 fire. The U. S. Navy played a vitally important role in bringing aid to the stricken city.” (Naval Historical Collection)

Then came a second post-Korea West Pac cruise, from July 1955 to February 1956, during which she earned a second China Service Medal for operations off Chinese-threatened Formosa/Taiwan.

Great period Kodachrome by of USS Bremerton by Charles W. Cushman showing the cruiser steaming into San Francisco Bay under the Golden Gate Bridge, 8 May 1956. Bloomington – University Archives P08766

Her third post-Korea West Pac deployment, from November 1956 to May 1957, saw her make port calls from Vancouver to Yokosuka to Manila, Hong Kong, and Melbourne, where her crew was on hand to support the XVI Olympiad.

USS Bremerton (CA-130) photographed on 4 November 1957 while at Puget Sound before heading to Bangor. 80-G-1027859

Same as the above 80-G-1027857

Same as the above 80-G-1027858

USS Bremerton (CA-130) at Pearl Harbor while en route to Asia, circa 1957. The original photograph bears the rubber-stamp date 3 December 1957. NH 97455

Around this time, the Navy decided to reconstruct Bremerton into an Albany-class guided missile cruiser.

This extensive (three-to-four year) SCB 172 conversion involved removing almost everything topside including all armament and superstructure, then installing a huge SPS-48 3D air search radar, a twin Mk 12 Talos launcher (with its magazine, Mk 77 missile fire-control system, and SPG-49 fire control radars), a twin Mk 11 Tartar launcher (along with its magazine, Mk 74 missile fire-control system, and SPG-51 fire control radars), a huge CIC and tall navigation bridge, a bow mounted sonar, a helicopter deck, etc. et. al.

Only three CAs (USS Albany, Chicago, and Columbus) completed the conversion, and it left them unrecognizable from their original form.

Two views of the U.S. Navy cruiser USS Chicago, as built and after her conversion to a guided missile cruiser. Upper view: USS Chicago (CA-136) as a Baltimore-class heavy cruiser off the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, Pennsylvania (USA), on 7 May 1945. Between 1959 and 1964, Chicago was rebuilt at the San Francisco Naval Shipyard, California (USA), leaving virtually only the hull. The complete superstructure and armament were replaced. Lower view: USS Chicago (CG-11) as an Albany-class guided missile cruiser underway in the Pacific Ocean during exercise “Valiant Heritage” on 2 February 1976. NH 95867 and K-112891

However, as the Albany class conversion still required a massive nearly 1,300 man crew to run the 17,000 ton CG with 180 assorted missiles aboard, and the bean counters realized the new 8,000-ton Leahy-class DLGs (later re-rated as cruisers in 1975) could carry 80 missiles on a hull optimized to run with a 400-man crew, the choice was clear.

With that, Bremerton never did get that conversion, instead being used increasingly to hold the line in the Far East for the next couple of years.

She started 1958 at anchor in Long Beach, preparing for yet another Westpac deployment (from March to August) under TF 77 orders that would take her to the Philippines, Singapore, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and the like.

From her log:

She repeated another Westpac cruise from January to May 1959 and yet another abbreviated sortie from November 1959 to February 1960. It was on New Year’s Day 1960, while deployed, that her mournful log entry told her looming fate– that of an early (second) decommissioning at the ripe old age of 15, bound once again for mothballs.

Assigned to the Pacific Reserve Fleet, while moored at Naval Station Long Beach’s Pier 15, at 0900 on 29 July 1960, USS Bremerton was decommissioned and then towed to the reserve basin first at Mare Island and then, fittingly, at Puget Sound.

1960 Jane’s entry for the Baltimore class.

USS Bremerton (CA-130) and USS Baltimore (CA-68) lay up at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, early 1970s. Photograph by Melvin Fredeen of Seattle. This picture was likely taken shortly before the two cruisers were sold for scrap in 1973. At the right of the picture, one will note several civilians on the pier, next to the gangplank leading to USS Missouri (BB-63), which is moored just outside the frame. During the three decades the battleship spent laid up at Bremerton before her 1980s reactivation, she would often be opened to the public for walking tours of her weather decks, particularly of the spot where the surrender of Japan took place. Several other decommissioned ships are visible, including a destroyer, a carrier, and in the far background, a third Baltimore-class heavy cruiser out in Sinclair Inlet. NH89317

Bremerton languished for 13 years in mothballs, and, once the war in Vietnam had drawn down, was stricken from the Naval List on 1 October 1973. She was subsequently sold for scrap to the Zidell Explorations Corporation of Portland, Oregon, and broken up.

Epilogue

Several relics of the cruiser remain in the Kitsap area.

Her bell, presented to the city of Bremerton in 1974, is on display at the Norm Dicks Government Center building downtown.

Her anchor and part of her mast are also preserved in the region, with the hook at Hal’s Corner (guarded by 40mm guns from the old battlewagon USS West Virginia) and the yardarm at Miller-Woodlawn Memorial Park.

Both are often visited by Navy working parties to keep them in good shape.

The Navy recycled the name for an early Los Angeles-class hunter-killer, SSN-698, which was in commission from 1981 to 2021.

Los Angeles-class hunter-killer USS Bremerton (SSN-698) underway 1 February 1991. DN-ST-91-05712

A veterans’ group for the latter Bremerton, which also keeps CA-130’s memory alive, is active. 

x

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

 

Ships are more than steel

and wood

And heart of burning coal,

For those who sail upon

them know

That some ships have a

soul.

 

***

 

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

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

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

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships, you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, April 23, 2025: The Seas are Alive…with the sound of Torpedoes

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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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says, “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday, April 23, 2025: The Seas are Alive…with the sound of Torpedoes

Above we see le croiseur cuirasse Leon Gambetta.

She was a beautifully obsolete ship that intersected history in several unusual ways and was lost to an infamous Austrian submarine skipper some 110 years ago this week.

French armored cruiser Amore

The French invented the concept of the true armored cruiser when Dupuy de Lome was ordered in 1888. A 6,300-ton steel-clad iron-hulled steamer, Dupuy de Lome could make 20 knots on her 11 Amirauté fire-tube boilers and three engines and had no auxiliary sail scheme.

The French armored cruiser Dupuy de Lome

Swathed in as much as 5 inches of plate armor, she carried eight large (7.6 and 6.4-inch guns) as well as 18 smaller pieces (37mm, 47mm, and 65mm) while also carrying four small (17.7-inch) torpedo tubes.

Able to operate alone and far from home if needed (Dupuy de Lome could steam at 12.5 knots for 4,000 nm), she was capable of defeating anything smaller than a genuine battleship, which she could outrun.

The concept ship was followed by the four-ship Amiral Charner class, the one-off cruisers Pothuau and Jeanne d’Arc, the trio of Gueydon-class cruisers, the three ships of the Dupleix class, and the five-unit Gloire-class. In all, in the 13 years between 1888 and 1901, the French had ordered 18 armored cruisers, with each class learning from the preceding one.

The result, the Gloire and her sisters, ran 9,996 tons, had an amazing 28 boilers (!) to drive three engines to obtain a 21-knot speed, and could steam 6,500 miles ecumenically. They carried 10 large guns (2x 7.64″/40, 8x 6.5″/45) as well as six 3.9″/50s, 18 x 45mm guns, and 4 x 37mm guns, plus five 17.7-inch torpedo tubes. All of this was protected by as much as 6.9 inches of armor.

Gloire-class armored cruiser Conde is pictured at Arsenal de Brest, c1918. A true floating castle with four funnels and a curious mix of armor and armament.

The three follow-on Gambetta class armored cruisers (class leader Leon Gambetta and Jules Ferry, followed by half-sister Victor Hugo) were up-sized Gloires, displacing 11,959 tons on a hull some 30 feet longer (489 feet vs 458 feet) and four feet beamier.

All three ships used different boiler arrangements (Gambetta 28 Niclausse boilers, Ferry 20 Guyot du Temple boilers, and Hugo 28 Belleville boilers) with triple engines that produced roughly 28,500 shp to make about 22 knots and steam 6,600nm at 10 knots.

Armament on the Gambettas was a repeat of the Gloires, albeit with two fewer 6.5-inch guns and a third more 47mm mounts (24 up from 18). Likewise, they only had two torpedo tubes. The armor plan was also similar to that of the Gloire.

To speed things up, the trio was laid down at three different naval yards, with Gambetta constructed at Brest, Ferry at Cherbourg, and Hugo at Lorient, with all constructed between January 1901 and April 1907.

A heavier update to the class with more guns and armor, the 13,000-ton Jules Michelet, was constructed soon after joining the fleet in 1908.

French cruiser Jules Michilet, American cruiser USS Huron, and Japanese Cruiser Yakumo in the Whangpoo River, Shanghai, 1925

Naval architect Emile Bertin kept tinkering with the Gambetta design to produce the 13,644-ton cruiser Ernest Renan in 1909 and her half-sisters Edgar Quinet and Waldeck-Rousseau, which were the most powerful (and last) armored cruisers built in France, commissioned in 1911.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Meet Gambetta

Our subject is the first French warship named after the 1870s political and cultural juggernaut, Leon Gambetta, who was key to the formation of the Third Republic and served at various times as the country’s minister of the interior, Président du Conseil, and Président de la Chambre des deputes before his young death at age 44 in 1882. Something like 200 towns have a Rue Gambetta in France to this day, and his likeness remains borne in numerous statues throughout the Republic.

Odds are, if you have been to France in the past 140 years, you have either walked upon a street named for Leon Gambetta or gazed on his face. He is right up there with Leclerc, Ferry, Foch, and Clemenceau.

The armored cruiser ordered in his honor was laid down at Arsenal de Brest on 15 January 1901.

Lead ship, Armoured Cruiser Léon Gambetta, construction at Arsenal de Brest, 1901

She was launched into the waters of the Bay of Biscay on 26 October 1902.

Brest. Launching of the armoured cruiser Leon Gambetta.

Lancement du croiseur cuirassé Léon Gambetta Petit Journal 10 novembre 1901

While on sea trials in February 1904, she ran aground in the fog and required dry docking for another six months, then promptly ran aground a second time, sending her back to the yard for further repair.

Gambetta, Brassey’s Naval Annual 1905

She finally finished her trials and was accepted and commissioned on 21 July 1905, with her cumulative construction cost hitting 29,248,500 francs.

Made the flagship of VADM Camille Gigon’s (later VADM Horace Jaureguiberry’s) 1re Division de croiseur as part of the Northern Squadron, she immediately sailed to Portsmouth in August 1905 for the Anglo-French naval review to celebrate the historic Entente Cordiale, which ended centuries of tension between London and Paris and helped set the stage for the Great War.

Entente Cordiale: The French squadron in Portsmouth Harbor – from the French magazine Le Petit Journal, August 13, 1905.

The French ships were reviewed by King Edward VII and hosted in a variety of events ashore for the Gallic visitors throughout the week, including a garden party in Victoria Park.

Remaining a ship of state, she carried President Clement Armand Fallieres to England in May 1908 for an official visit and, later that summer, represented France at the Quebec Tercentenary.

French cruiser Léon Gambetta at the Quebec Tercentenary 1908 LAC 336185

Gambetta and HMS Minotaur at the Quebec Tercentenary 1908 LAC

Quebec Tercentenary, HMS Minotaur, Leon Gambetta, Don de Dieu, and HMS Indomitable

Quebec Tercentenary Illumination of Indomitable, Minotaur, Leon Gambetta and the Chateau Frontenac

By 1911, the three Gambetta sisters would make up the 1re Division legere in the French Mediterranean fleet with RADM Louis Dartige du Fournet hoisting his flag on our subject.

War!

Carrying the flag of RADM Victor-Baptistin Senes, Gambetta entered the Great War at the head of the 2e Division legere out of Toulon and was soon busy escorting troopships moving colonial troops from French North Africa to the Republic proper.

Then came orders to join the force of ADM Augustin Boue de Lapeyrere’s fleet of two dozen battlewagons and cruisers blockading the Austro-Hungarian coast along the Adriatic. This included several sharp skirmishes with Austrian ships, tracking the neutral Italians, supporting the Serbian and Montenegrin armies ashore, and escorting troop ships through U-boat-infested waters.

Speaking of the latter, on 26 April 1915, she was found at sea by SM U-5 of the k.u.k. Kriegsmarine. A humble 105-foot gasoline-electric submarine designed by Electric Boat of Connecticut to the same plans as used by the U.S. Navy’s C-class, U-5 only carried four 17.7-inch Whitehead torpedoes to be fired from her two forward tubes.

Kuk S.M. U 5 

The tiny boat, good only for 10 knots under the best sea conditions, her new skipper, Linienschiffsleutnant Georg Ludwig Ritter von Trapp, had only assumed command nine days prior. Von Trapp, from a noble family and husband to Agathe Whitehead, granddaughter of the torpedo godfather, had joined the Austrian fleet at age 14 in 1894 and had served in China during the Boxer Rebellion with the surface fleet before switching to submarines in 1908.

SM U-5 of the k.u.k. Kriegsmarine and her commander, Linienschiffsleutnant Georg Ludwig Ritter von Trapp, at the joint Austro-German U-Boat base in the northern Adriatic in the Brioni (Brijuni) islands off Pula in Croatia during the War.

Von Trapp, in his tiny a risky little boat, continued to stalk Gambetta in the Ionian Sea off Italy’s Cape Santa Maria di Leuca into the night and, closing to within 500 yards, fired both tubes at point blank range just after midnight on 27 April.

With hits against the massive target inevitable, both fish exploded and created havoc on Gambetta, which soon began settling in the water, her boilers knocked out. Ten minutes later, it was all over, and the proud cruiser was on the bottom, taking every single one of her officers and the bulk of her 800-man crew with her.

Escorted by Italian destroyers who had only entered the war that week, they rescued 137 waterlogged survivors from the lost French cruisers.

Von Trapp made history that pre-dawn morning, conducting the first-ever underwater nighttime (and only the second) submarine attack on a vessel in the region. Gambetta remained one of the largest ships hit by a U-boat during the war.

For the feat, he would eventually earn the coveted Militär-Maria-Theresien-Orden, the highest military honor of the old Habsburg monarchy, and he would become a household name in both Austria and Germany.

Propagandists on both sides took advantage of the loss to show how brave French sailors met Poseidon without fear and how, for the Central Powers, the U-boat was a modern marvel of war, commanded by a brave modern-day knight of the sea

Engraving from the Petit Journal of May 5, 1915: “How French sailors know how to die.” Source gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France

French armoured cruiser Leon Gambetta, sinking SMS U-5. 2

German propaganda art of Gambetta sinking by Alexander Kircher

Sinking of the French armoured cruiser Léon Gambetta on 27 April 1915, by German artist August von Ramberg

Torpedoed and sunk by the Austro-Hungarian Submarine U-5 on 27 April 1915. Austrian War Art painting. NH 60194

As for Von Trapp, just three months after sending Gambetta to the bottom, he sank the Italian submarine Nereide on 5 August 1915, just off Pelagosa (Palagruza) Island. He followed that up with capturing the Greek steamer Cefalonia three weeks later. Before the end of the war, Von Trapp would add 11 more steamers to his tally sheet, surviving 19 war patrols.

Epilogue

Little remains of Gambetta topside that I can find.

Her sisters, Jules Ferry and Victor Hugo, survived the war and, after overseas service policing French colonies in the Far East, were retired and scrapped in the late 1920s.

French armored cruiser Jules Ferry at sea, around 1905-1911, Gambetta class

Léon Gambetta-class cruiser Victor Hugo Melbourne 1923

Von Trapp, left without either a navy or a sovereign when Austrian Emperor Karl left the throne in November 1918, had to fall back on his personal inherited fortune. Left a widower with seven children in 1922 upon the passing of his wife due to scarlet fever, he hired one Maria Augusta Kutschera, a young novice from the nearby nunnery, as a live-in tutor, and the old sea dog later married her in 1927 despite the 25-year age difference, and had three further children.

The Von Trapp family then drifted into a singing career, and the rest is history.

Von Trapp, exiled from Austria in 1938, later settled in the U.S., where he passed in 1947, aged 67. He is buried in Stowe, Vermont.

Christopher Plummer portrayed him in the 1965 movie, The Sound of Music, which was very loosely based on the family’s story in the 1920s and 30s.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

 

Ships are more than steel

and wood

And heart of burning coal,

For those who sail upon

them know

That some ships have a

soul.

 

***

 

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

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

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

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, April 16, 2025: Missile Can Number One

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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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi . As Henk says, “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday, April 16, 2025: Missile Can Number One

Original Kodachrome by Hank Walker, Life Magazine Archives

Above we see the world’s first guided missile destroyer, USS Gyatt (DD-712), launching one of her precious 14 stern-carried Convair SAM-N-7 Terrier two-stage medium-range naval surface-to-air missiles to port, circa early 1957 during her trials. Gyatt, the only Gearing-class tin can to pick up this budget DDG conversion, blazed a path now well-traveled.

The Gearings

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

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

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

Meet Gyatt

Our subject is the only warship commissioned into the U.S. Navy in honor of Pvt. Edward Earl Gyatt, a 21-year-old Marine who earned a posthumous Silver Star with the 1st Marine Raider Battalion during the Guadalcanal campaign in 1942. The Navy remembered nearly two dozen Raiders in similar ways. The future USS Gyatt (DD-712) was laid down on 7 September 1944 by the Federal Shipbuilding & Drydock Co., Kearney, New Jersey. She was launched on 15 April 1945, sponsored by Mrs. Hilda Morrell, the mother of the late Private Gyatt. The festivities were muted due to FDR’s recent passing. Gyatt was commissioned on 2 July 1945 at the New York Navy Yard. The total time required to build the new destroyer was nine months, three weeks, and four days.

The cost in 1945 dollars was $8,947,809. USS Gyatt’s first skipper was CDR Albert David Kaplan (USNA ’32), the former XO and skipper of the destroyer USS Mayo (DD 422).

Her WWII history was brief, covering just an abbreviated page in the National Archives.

After a shakedown in the Caribbean and post-shakedown availability back in New York, Gyatt was visited by over 5,000 sightseers in Baltimore for Navy Day 1945 in October.

She then reported to Pensacola for plane guard duties and was then shifted to Norfolk as part of the peacetime Navy. She became part of DesRon 4, an outfit she would call home for the next 14 years alongside sisters USS Gearing, Greene, Bailey, Vogelsang, Steinaker, Ellison, and Ware.

As described by her Veterans’ association, she was a speedy girl.

It is understood that the Gyatt in late 1945 set a long-distance speed record for destroyers of its class. The Gyatt maintained, for an extended period, a speed of 31.8 knots per hour. In 1946, on a run from Norfolk to Boston, the Gyatt was the only ship in Destroyer Squadron Four (DesRon 4) to sustain a speed of 38 knots that had been reached by the Gearing (DD 710), Greene (DD 711), and Bailey (DD 713).

A three-month goodwill trip to Latin America in early 1947 saw her represent the U.S. at the inauguration of Uruguayan President Tomas Berreta at Montevideo and call on a variety of other ports.

Gearing (DD-710) and Gyatt moored at Montevideo, Uruguay, January 1947. Marcus Hill via Navsource

She then began a series of five lengthy deployments with the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean and Europe at a time when the region was adrift in post-war intrigue as part of the general cool down into the Cold War.

This included spending New Years 1948 at Salonika among sunken ships sent to the bottom during the war, marking the 5th anniversary of the Normandy Landings off Omaha Beach in 1949, assisting the old USS Twiggs in the filming of the tin can movie Gift Horse at Plymouth (released in the U.S. as Glory at Sea) in 1951, escorting the carrier USS Wright (CVL-49) in the Med in 1952, and attending the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.

Gyatt, 1954, escorting an Essex-class carrier

Stateside, she participated in two-week naval reserve cruises and annual trips to the Caribbean for exercises and gunnery practice.

In October-November 1949, Gyatt escorted the super carrier USS Midway to the frigid waters of the Davis Strait for appropriately named Operation Frostbite, her crew earning Blue Noses in the process.

By this phase of her career, in a refit at Boston Navy Yard in the summer of 1950, she landed her 20mm guns and picked up Hedgehog ASW rockets in their place. She also had her single mast replaced with a tripod mast and her starboard motor whaleboat deleted.

Gyatt (DD-712) 27 September 1950, NARA 24743163

USS Gyatt (DD-712) at anchor on 10 June 1953 with her glad rags aloft. Courtesy of Donald M. McPherson, 1969. NH 67696

Cold War Missile Slinger

Gyatt entered the Boston Naval Shipyard on 26 September 1955 and was decommissioned on Halloween. The Navy had plans to make her the third operational U.S. warship– and the first destroyer– to carry guided missiles.

The Terrier program, an offshoot of Operation Bumblebee going back to 1948, was moving fast.

A big 27-foot 1.5-ton beam-riding SAM that could hit Mach 1.8 and engage targets as high as 80,000 feet, Terrier had been successfully fired from the converted seaplane tender USS Norton Sound (AV-11/AVM-1) in 1951, then the old battlewagon USS Mississippi in January 1953.

USS Mississippi (EAG-128). Fires a “Terrier” surface-to-air missile from early Mk 1 GMLS launchers during at-sea tests, circa 1953-55. 80-G-K-17878 (Color) and 80-G-659359 (B&W)

The missiles were first deployed on the converted cruisers USS Boston (CA-69/CAG-1) and Canberra (CA-70/CAG-2) in 1956. The cruisers used massive twin-arm Mark 4 GMLS missile launchers fed by bottom-loaded 72-round magazine houses, with the vertically loaded Terriers launched and guided by a pair of Mark 25 Mod 7 (later SPQ-5) radars. To make room, the after 8-inch turret (Turret III) was deleted on each.

USS Boston (CAG-1) fires a Terrier guided missile from her after launcher, during a training cruise in August 1956. Note that she and her sister Canberra carried two launchers over the stern, directed by big Mk 25 radars, in place of their third 8″/55 mount. It was originally planned to extend the conversion to the front of the cruisers as well, but this never happened. NH 98281

For Gyatt, which had a compact 390-foot-long hull compared to the cruisers’ 673 feet oal, she would receive the one-off Mk 8 launcher, which used two rings that held seven missiles each, contained inside a small deckhouse just forward of the launcher. The system was only about a fifth the weight of the larger Mk 9 launchers that would go on to be used on the Providence-class cruisers.

This required the removal of Gyatt’s aft armament to allow for the addition of Terrier missiles, a move that coincided with the landing of most of her WWII-era AAA guns and ASW gear, replaced with more contemporary systems. This saw her billets reduced from 360 officers and men to just 272. As detailed by her Veterans’ association, spanning her 13-month conversion:

The weaponry aft of the number one stack was removed including all depth charges, the number three five-inch gun mount, three quad 40mm guns and the two twin 40 mm guns aft of the bridge and the torpedoes. The Terrier Missile Battery consisted of two missiles, each approximately 27 feet in length, 13.5 inches in diameter, and weighing 2,760 pounds. The magazine that stored fourteen additional missiles was located directly forward of the missile battery. The missiles had a speed in excess of Mach 2. and a range in the order of 20 miles. The missiles had an altitude sufficient enough to engage jet aircraft, and the warhead was of sufficient size that it could destroy other planes flying in the same formation. The missiles’ guidance system was called ‘Radar Beamrider.” Missile targets were tracked by a modified Mark 25 Model 8 gunfire-control radar located atop the original gun battery director forward; the Mark 72 weapons control system provided only a single fire-control channel for both the missile system and 5-inch gun mounts. The ship retained the two forward 5-inch twin gun mounts. Four 3-inch 50-caliber twin mounts replaced the 40 millimeter guns, and the five-tube torpedo spread was replaced by two stacked triple-tube groupings. The Mark 56 fire-control system was set up abaft the stacks for the 3-inch weapons. In addition, there were radar improvements to the SPS-6 air search and the SPS-10 surface search radars. The radar at high altitude had a range of 220 miles, and at low altitude the range was twenty miles. The AN/SPS-6C radar handled the location of aerial targets,; there was no height finding radar, and given the constant changes and alterations in the earlier Terrier system, only the most cooperative targets were in danger. Two Mark 2 Hedgehog Spigot Mortars and two Mark 2 Torpedo Launchers were available to deal with submarines. The ship was also the first warship in the Navy to have a stabilization system added to the hull. The Denny-Brown Stabilization System, pioneered in Great Britain, had been installed to eliminate much of the rolling that is characteristic of destroyers and other small ships. The system had two retractable fins, each with an area of approximately 45 square feet; the fins extended amidships and were well below the waterline. In addition to all this hi-tech equipment the Gyatt was one of the first Navy ships to use solar power when the after emergency diesel generator was replaced with a Solar Gas Turbine Generator, On many occasions, especially in rough weather, this stabilization allowed the Gyatt to stay on station during plane guard detail and refueling operations.

She emerged much different, recommissioned 3 December 1956 at Boston NSY, and reclassified as DDG-1, although she was spotted with her DD-712 hull number for a while. From her deck log:

USS Gyatt (DDG-712) 3 December 1956. NH 67687

USS Gyatt (DDG-1) underway at sea, circa the late 1950s or early 1960s. NH 106723

USS Gyatt (DDG-1) launching Terrier missile, photograph released April 9, 1958. Following her conversion, she was the first Guided-Missile Destroyer. 330-PS-8876 (USN 1015613)

She was widely celebrated, and the Old Man himself, ADM Arleigh “33 Knot” Burke, at the time the CNO, visited Gyatt in March 1959 to personally observe Terrier tests. Transferring to DesRon 6, Gyatt was then sent to Europe on a deployment with the 6th Fleet for a sixth time, 28 January 1960, and as such was the first guided missile destroyer to deploy overseas fleet. Returning to Charleston, her new home port, on 31 August 1960, she had “participated in fleet readiness and training operations throughout the Mediterranean.” It was during this deployment, while on the Riveria, that she hosted Prince Rainer and Princess Grace of Monaco, escorted by 6th Fleet commander, VADM GW Anderson, for a demonstration.

The U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer USS Gyatt (DDG-1) comes alongside of the guided missile cruiser USS Boston (CAG-1), in 1960. Gyatt had sailed to join the U.S. 6th Fleet on 28 January 1960 and was the first guided missile destroyer to deploy with an overseas fleet. Note the Radioplane BTT target drone in the foreground.

In 1960, the rest of the world rushed their DDGs into service, with the Soviets building the Kanin-class (Project 57A), the British ordering the County class, and the French moving forward with the Suffren class. The fix was in.

On stateside operations, Gyatt was on loan to NASA for Mercury Program unmanned nosecone recovery details off the East Coast on at least two occasions (5-10 November 1960 for Mercury-Redstone 1 and 24-26 April 1961 for Mercury Atlas-3).

USS Gyatt (DDG-1) on 30 June 1961. USN 1056266

Gyatt as DDG, 1960 Janes

USS Gyatt (DDG-1) approaching USS Waccamaw (AO-109) from USS Boston (CAG-1) June 1961, Atlantic, via Navsource

She would return to the Med for a seventh deployment from 3 August 1961 to  3 March 1962, spanning 213 days and 39,197 miles.

When she came back home, she was already obsolete.

While the possible Gyatt-style conversion was wishful thinking to turn still-young all-gun Gearings into DDGs– and one that freed up funds for more Big Navy ideas like nuclear-powered submarines and giant aircraft carriers– tests with our subject’s Mk 8 launcher proved less than ideal, and it was decided in 1957, only a year after Gyatt recommissioned, to order a purpose-built class of 16 (eventually 29) new Adams class DDGs, which were 47 feet longer, seven feet wider, and 1,100 tons heavier. Adams (DDG-2) would carry a pair of Mk 11 twin-armed launchers for the new General Dynamics RIM-24 Tartar, which, although it was only 15.5 feet long and weighed half as much as Terrier, offered arguably better performance than the early models of that missile.

Adams class, DDG 1960 Janes

Technologically arcane, just six years after she had been the tip of the spear, Gyatt entered the Charleston Naval Shipyard on 29 June 1962 for an overhaul that removed her short-lived missile system. Installed in its place was equipment for “specialized service” with the Operational Test and Evaluation Force (OPTEVOR). As such, her hull number reverted to DD-712.

USS Gyatt (DD-712) underway in Hampton Roads, Virginia, on 21 November 1966, while serving as an experimental test ship. Note the large mast installed atop her former guided missile magazine and the large object carried on her after main deck. Photographer: PH2 M.L. Ritter. NH 107008

She would spend the next three years in a series of tests and training evolutions between the Caribbean and Maine, typically running evaluations on prototype radio and radar-jamming and anti-jamming (ECM/EW) equipment.

Although she was included on regular refresher training each year and even scheduled to go to the gun line off Vietnam in 1968, her primary job was to set out with a dozen or so subject matter experts from Westinghouse, the NRF, the NSRDC, or the NRL aboard to see how some new gee-whiz black box worked while underway.

At one point, an elaborate water wash-down system was installed topside to experiment with heat-seeking missiles and diversionary flares, a forerunner of SRBOC.

Keeping the memory of her namesake alive, the ship’s sponsor, the mother of the late Pvt Gyatt, visited our destroyer while on a port call to New York City in September 1965.

Worse, surveys had found that Gyatt’s hull began to crack from stress caused by the missile launches.

In October 1968, her work with OPTEVOR finished, she was sent to Key West and then the Washington Navy Yard, relegated to the Select Reserve with her crew reduced to just 120, tasked with training 20-40 USNR personnel, two weeks at a time.

In September 1969, following a material inspection and survey, it was recommended that Gyatt be decommissioned and disposed of as the cost to modernize her was estimated to be $9.8 million, and even a less extensive repair and refit for further service was estimated to run $3.7 million.

On 22 October 1969, she was decommissioned for the second and final time, with the Navy estimating her scrap value to be just $105,000.

From her log that day: 

Stricken shortly after, all useable equipment was removed, and she was expended as a target ship off Virginia on 11 June 1970, capping a 25-year career.

The end page, from her Veterans’ group:

On the 11th day of June, the ex-Gyatt, as the decommissioned hull was referred, was towed to her final resting-place in the Virginia Capes Operating Area. The ship rendezvoused with surface units under the command of Commander Naval Reserve Destroyer Division Third Naval District, who was embarked in the USS John R. Pierce (DD-753). The ex-Gyatt was the designated target ship for surface gunnery exercises for the division, consisting of the Pierce and three other destroyers. After several hours of five-inch salvos, the Gyatt was listing badly, but still afloat. Air units from the Oceana Naval Air Station joined the exercise with air-to-surface missiles, and shortly thereafter, the Gyatt slid beneath the surface to her final resting place at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The coordinates of the USS Gyatt’s final resting-place are as follows: Latitude. 37 Degrees 20 Minutes North and Longitude, 73 Degrees 52 Minutes West.

Epilogue

Little remains of Gyatt that I can find.

Her logs and some footage are in the National Archives.

Some additional Terrier footage is in the University of South Carolina archives.

Her Veterans organization doesn’t seem to have been updated online since about 2015, and most of its content has slipped away. However, a good bit of history is archived. 

She has a memorial at the National Museum of the Pacific War in Texas. 

As far as legacy is concerned, missile-armed destroyers are the backbone of the fleet these days, with no less than 73 active Arleigh Burke-class DDGs in the Navy.

The future USS Harvey C. Barnum Jr. (DDG-124), named after Medal of Honor recipient Col. Harvey C. Barnum Jr., USMC Ret., is set to commission in the coming months, bringing that number to 74. Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

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

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Warship Wednesday, April 9, 2025: First of a Long Line

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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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday, April 9, 2025: First of a Long Line

Naval History and Heritage Command photo NH 310

Above, we see the unique U.S. Revenue Cutter Windom circa 1900. She had already fought in one war under Navy orders, would go on to carry a “USS” during WWI, bust rum-runners, and chart a course for the modern Coast Guard.

Not bad for a 170-foot ship.

A New Era

In 1890, the Revenue Cutter Service– the forerunner of the USCG– was celebrating its centennial, having been authorized as part of the Treasury Department in 1790. Having fought during the Quasi War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Civil War, the USRCS had a long history of suiting up for combat when needed.

It was a busy force.

In 1890, the 36 assorted cutters of the service had cruised a total of 301,416 nautical miles, boarded and examined 26,962 vessels for revenue purposes, and assisted 123 distressed vessels, saving a value of $2,806,056 in ships and cargoes on the sea. They did everything that year from chasing down seal poachers in the Bering Sea to breaking up smuggling rings along the Florida Keys and arresting murderers on the high seas.

However, it was stuck in the 19th century while pointing towards the 20th and was obsolete. Most of the 36 cutters were small (under 100 foot) sloops, luggers, and tugs, capable of harbor and coastal patrols at best. The more blue water of the fleet were typically iron-hulled topsail steam schooners (USRC Gallatin, Hamilton, Boutwell, Dallas, Dexter, Rush, Corwin, and Forward) of about 140 feet in length. Two big steamers with auxiliary rigs, the 165-foot USRC Perry and the 198-foot USRC Bear, were dedicated to the far-off Alaska patrol. A couple of more modern twin-screwed steam cutters, the 145-foot USRC Morrill and the 190-foot USRC Galveston, were just coming online.

Armament in many cases was simply whatever could be scrounged from the Navy’ that was small enough to carry and service without lifts, typically 3-pounder 47mm or 6-pounder 57mm breechloading mounts, while smaller cutters usually just carried small arms. Speaking of which, trapdoor Springfield conversions and S&W cartridge revolvers were the norm. Some older cutters carried breechloading 3-inch Ordnance conversions of Civil War-era cannon.

USRC Corwin departing for Alaska in 1887. She was a 140-foot topsail schooner-rigged iron-hulled steamer that exemplified the cutter service in 1890. She carried a single 6-pounder.

As noted by the SECNAV at the time, Benjamin Franklin Tracy, “At present this large fleet of small vessels is constructed without any reference to the necessities of modern warfare.”

Pioneering a new age of steel cruising cutters for the service, capable of serving as a gunboat for the Navy in times of war, would be our USRC Windom.

Modern for her era, she was the first cutter constructed with a fully watertight hull, longitudinal and transverse bulkheads, and a triple expansion steam plant capable of 15 knots sustained speed.

She would carry a twin schooner auxiliary rig, at least at first

Designed to service Chesapeake Bay, Windom would displace 412 tons, have a length of 170 feet, eight inches overall, and an extreme beam of 27 feet. Her normal draught, carrying 50 tons of coal aboard, would be 6.5 fee,t while her hold was 13.5 deep.

Her twin inverted cylinder, direct-acting, triple-expansion steam engines (11 3-4, 16 1-2, and 26 1-2  cylinders with a 24-inch stroke) were designed by the Navy’s Bureau of Steam Engineering under orders of Commodore George Melville and were “regarded in engineering circles as more advanced in type than any in the Revenue Cutter Service. They drove twin cast-iron propellers and could generate 800 hp at 175 rpm. They drew steam via a single tubular double-ended horizontal 16×12 foot boiler.

Her battery was one installed 6-pounder RF Hotchkiss with weight and space for a 3-inch or 4-inch BL and a second 6-pounder as well. Small arms of a “modern type” would be provided for the 45-member crew.

Revenue Cutter Windom, Port Arthur, Texas

The design of Windom would lead the service to order five so-called Propeller class cutters, which were larger and faster (as well as costing about twice as much per hull) at 18 knots. These vessels, to the same overall concept but each slightly different in design, were built to carry a bow-mounted torpedo tube for 15-inch Bliss-Whitehead type torpedoes (although they appeared to have not been fitted with the weapons) and as many as four modern quick-firing 3-inch guns (though they typically used just two 6-pounder, 57mm popguns in peacetime).

These ships included:

–McCulloch, a barquentine-rigged, composite-hulled, 219-foot, 1,280-ton steamer ordered from William Cramp and Sons of Philadelphia for $196,000. She was the longest of the type as she was intended for Pacific service and so was designed with larger coal bunkers.

–Gresham, a brigantine-rigged 206-foot, 1,090-ton steel-hulled steamer built by the Globe Iron Works Company of Cleveland, OH for $147,800.

–Manning, a brigantine-rigged 205-foot, 1,150-ton steamer ordered from the Atlantic Works Company of East Boston, MA, for a cost of $159,951.

–Algonquin, brigantine-rigged 205.5-foot, 1,180-ton steel-hulled steamer ordered from the Globe Iron Works Company of Cleveland, OH for $193,000.

–Onondaga, brigantine-rigged 206-foot, 1,190-ton steel-hulled steamer ordered from the Globe Iron Works Company of Cleveland, OH for $193,800.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Meet Windom

Our subject, in frequent USRC/USCG practice, was named for a past secretary of the U.S. Treasury, in this case, William Windom. A long-term U.S. Congressman (1859-1869) and Senator (1870-1881, 81-83) from Minnesota, he served as the Treasury boss under James A. Garfield for nine months in 1881 and then again under Benjamin Harrison from 1889 through 1891, passing in office at age 63. He successfully helped defeat a push to transfer the Cutter Service to the Navy

The Honorable William Windom, of Minnesota, left, while in Congress compared to his official portrait as Secretary of the Treasury in the Garfield administration. NARA 165-A-3716 & LOC LC-DIG-cwpbh-03920

Honoring the late Mr. Windom, the Treasury Department carried his engraved portrait on the $2 U.S. Silver Certificate from 1891 to 1896, while the USRCS named its groundbreaking new cutter after him.

Ordered from the Iowa Iron Works, Dubuque, for $98,500, with delivery to be made down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico and then to Key West. The plates, frames, angle irons, and castings employed in the hull were furnished by the West Superior Steel Works of Wisconsin, while William Cramp built her engines.

Accepted by the Treasury Department on 11 May 1896, she was moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where she completed fitting out and was placed in commission on 30 June 1896.

Her initial skipper was Capt. Samuel Edmondson Maguire, a 54-year-old Marylander who had joined the Revenue Cutter Service in 1871 as a third lieutenant after carpetbagging in Louisiana during Reconstruction. Maguire had volunteered during the Civil War as a private in Company C of the 114th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, the famed Zouaves d ‘Afrique, and was wounded at Fredericksburg.

In October 1896, Windom was tasked with keeping guard over the notorious gun-running steamer Dauntless.

Impounded at sea by the cruiser USS Raleigh off Florida after a run to arm rebels fighting against the Spanish in Cuba, Windom guarded the filibuster mothership until the Collector of Customs released the libeled Dauntless, after paying a $200 fine for lying to off the coast with no lights, to resume her illicit activities. Windom joined the cutters, Boutwell and Colfax, through the end of the year in Florida waters, based on the St. John River, to run interference against other filibuster boats headed for Cuba, impounding the steamers Kate Spencer and Three Friends in November.

Besides filibuster-busting, Windom spent the first 17 months of her career in quiet operations on the Chesapeake and patrolling the fishing grounds between the Virginia capes and Cape Hatteras.

Then came…

War with Spain!

On 24 March 1898, with the drums of war beating with Spain, President McKinley ordered the cutters Gresham, Manning, Windom, Woodbury, Hamilton, Morrill, Hudson, Guthrie, and Calumet, “with their officers and crews, be placed under the direction of the Secretary of the Navy.” This was later augmented by the Corwin, Grant, Perry, McCulloch, and Rush in the Pacific, as well as the McLane, Onondaga, and Winona, with at least 20 cutters on Navy and Army (Coastal Artillery) orders during the short conflict.

As noted by the Secretary of the Treasury after the conflict from the USRCS’s thin volume on the war:

There were in cooperation with the Navy 13 revenue cutters, carrying 61 guns, 98 officers, and 562 enlisted men. Of these, 8 cutters (43 guns), 58 officers, and 339 men were in Admiral Sampson’s fleet and on the Havana blockade; 1 cutter (6 guns), 10 officers, and 95 men were in Admiral Dewey’s fleet at Manila, and 4 cutters (12 guns), 30 officers, and 128 men cooperated with the Navy on the Pacific coast.

In addition to services rendered by vessels with the naval forces, there were 7 others, carrying 10 guns, 33 officers, and 163 men, with the Army, engaged in patrolling and guarding mine fields in various harbors, from Boston to Mobile and New Orleans.

Two days after the transfer order from McKinley, Windom, at Hampton Roads at the time, received orders to report at Norfolk and was there on 25 April when Congress passed the resolution recognizing that a state of war existed between the United States and Spain. She was painted gray and fitted with a four-inch main gun and a second 6-pounder.

USRC Windom in drydock at the Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth, Virginia, 9 April 1898. Photograph from the Bureau of Ships Collection in the U.S. National Archives. 19-N-19-21-12

Windom’s wardroom during the war, in addition to Maguire, included:

  • First Lieutenant F. G. F. Wadsworth, executive officer
  • Second Lieutenant Richard Owens Crisp, navigator
  • Second Lieutenant S. P. Edmunds
  • Third Lieutenant J. V. Wild
  • Chief Engineer C. F. Coffin
  • First Assistant Engineer C. W. Zastrow
  • Second Assistant Engineer Edwin W. Davis
  • Surgeon John C. Travis (March 29 to August 1, 1898)
  • Surgeon W. E. Handy (August 2 to August 29, 1898)

On 30 April, Windom departed Hampton Roads on her way to the blockade off Cuba, stopping at  Key West briefly before arriving off Cuba on 8 May.

Assigned to Commodore Howell’s 1st Squadron, she patrolled the southern coast of Cuba near Cienfuegos until the 13 May, cutting the two Cienfuegos cables. She also helped cover the withdrawal of the Navy small boat raid to the cable house ashore (the Battle at Punta de la Colorados), closing with a Spanish battery and plastering it with 4-inch fire, scattering assembled local infantry. She also reportedly destroyed the lighthouse there, which was being used as an observation post by the Spanish, with her 6-pounders.

In all, Windom’s battery fired 85 rounds that day.

Her efforts helped allow 51 of the 53 Sailors and Marines dispatched from the cruiser USS Marblehead and gunboat USS Nashville to return to their vessels alive, and the cutter afterward evacuated several of the more seriously wounded bluejackets to Key West.

From her official report of the incident:

Windom then, after a respite at Key West, assumed station off Havana on 28 May, holding the line through August, chasing four Spanish blockade runners in June.

Hostilities ended on 13 August, and Windom reverted to Treasury Department control four days later. Arriving at Norfolk, she soon transferred newly installed guns to the USRC Gresham, returning to her pre-war appearance by October.

Maguire, the former Pennsylvania Zouave, remained in the service until 1906, when he retired as a senior captain, closing out 35 years of service to the Treasury Department. He passed in Patchogue, New York, in 1916, aged 73.

Return to Peace

Following the end of the Spanish-American War, Windom was soon back on her normal beat along the Chesapeake, including patrolling the America’s Cup Races in 1903.

In 1906, she transferred to Galveston to replace the cutter of the same name.

January 27, 1908. Photograph of the canal in Port Arthur, Texas. People stand along the shore. Boats are pulled over to the shore. The Revenue Cutter Windom is in the background. Heritage House Museum Local Control No: hhm_01293.

Working the length of the Gulf of Mexico from Key West to Brownsville, she returned to Maryland in September 1911 for a refit that saw her placed in ordinary for six weeks.

Back in Galveston, she was the first vessel to transit the newly opened Houston Ship Channel on 10 November 1914. President Wilson fired a cannon via remote control to officially mark the channel as open for operations. A band played the National Anthem from a barge in the center of the Turning Basin while Sue Campbell, daughter of Houston Mayor Ben Campbell, sprinkled white roses into the water from Windom’s top deck and decreed, “I christen thee Port of Houston; hither the boats of all nations may come and receive hearty welcome.”

USRC Windom in the Houston Ship Channel

In January 1915, Windom again entered ordinary in Maryland for an extensive one-year rebuild that saw her coal-fired boilers replaced by more efficient Babcock & Wilcox oil-fired models and her bunkers converted. This mid-life service extension saw her emerge with a new name: the USRC Comanche, soon to be the USCGC Comanche.

Recommissioned on 8 January 1916, Windom/Comanche returned to the Gulf and was deemed the Krewe of Rex’s royal yacht for Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

Windom as USCGC Comanche

View of the royal yacht “Comanche” as it prepares to dock at the foot of Canal Street on the Monday before Mardi Gras 1916

War with Germany!

With the U.S. entry into the Great War, Comanche was transferred from the Coast Guard to the Navy on 6 April 1917. She soon picked up another large deck gun, this time a 3″/50 Mk II. Her crew was bumped from 49 to 76 to allow for more watch standers and gun crew.

Commissioned as USS Comanche on 11 April 1917, she performed patrol duties in the New Orleans area under the command of LT Robert Ferriday Spangenberg, USNRF, until the summer of 1919.

Comanche was stricken from the Navy List on 1 August 1919 and returned to the Treasury Department on 28 August 1919.

Twilight

Wearing her white scheme once again, Comanche continued her patrols of the Gulf for another seven months and then headed for Key West where she was decommissioned on 17 April 1920 for repairs.

USRC Windom Gulf of Mexico NARA 56-AR-049

Recommissioned in July 1920, the ship relieved the USCGC Tallapoosa at Mobile and rejoined the Gulf Division. There, she was active in the campaign against bootleggers bringing contraband liquor up from the Caribbean during Prohibition.

Comanche Commonwealth Lib 2002-013-002-029

Comanche Commonwealth Lib 2002-013-002-048

Arthur S. Graham – Ralph A. Dett – Albert T. Chase – Brady S. Lindsay with barrels of confiscated 195% liquor while serving on the U.S. Revenue Cutter Comanche off Texas, circa 1920. Digital Commonwealth 2002.013.002.039.

Serving successively at Mobile, Key West, and Galveston, she patrolled coastal waters constantly until June of 1930. During that period, she left the Gulf of Mexico only once, in 1923, for repairs at Baltimore and Norfolk.

In July 1927, while at sea 170 miles southeast of Galveston, she suffered a blaze in her fireroom that left her adrift and her radio room silent, the ship’s generators offline. Towed into port by a tug a week later, she was apparently never restored to her pre-blaze condition.

On 2 June 1930, she was detached from the Gulf Division and was ordered back to Arundel Cove for the final time.

She arrived at her destination on 1 July and was placed out of commission on the 31st. She was sold to Weiss Motor Lines of Baltimore on 13 November 1930 for a paltry $4,501.

While Weiss possibly kept her in service for a time longer, I cannot find her mentioned in Lloyds from the era. Odds are, with the downturn in the economy in the early 1930s leading to the Depression, and the aftermath of the 1927 fire never addressed, she was probably just scrapped.

Epilogue

Little remains of Winston/Comanche that I can find.

Some of her plans and papers are digitized in the National Archives.

The Coast Guard recycled the name “Comanche” for two subsequent cutters (served 1934-48 and 1959-1980) that we have profiled in the past.

Comanche seen on 26 November 1934, post-delivery but before commissioning in a rare period color photo. Note she does not have her Navy-owned main and secondary batteries fitted yet but does have her gleaming white hull, buff stack and masts, and black cap.

During WWII, a Maritime Commission Liberty ship (MC hull no. 516, 7194 GRT) was named SS William Windom. Entering service in early 1943, she dodged Scharnhorst on Arctic convoys, landed cargo at Normandy, and survived the war to be scrapped in 1964.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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

***

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

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

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

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO, has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships, you should belong.

I’m a member, so you should be!

Warship Wednesday, April 2, 2025: Jeezy Breezy, We Hit Em!

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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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday, April 2, 2025: Jeezy Breezy, We Hit Em!

Naval History and Heritage Command photo NH 90825

Above, we see the Balao-class fleet boat USS Charr (SS-328), off Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Mare Island, California, 16 September 1946, just after the war.

Although she got into the war late, only starting her first war patrol in December 1944, Charr has the distinction of sinking the last enemy cruiser sent to the bottom by a U.S. submarine, a feat accomplished after a four-day chase some 80 years ago this week.

The Balao Class

A member of the 180+-ship Balao class, she was one of the most mature U.S. Navy diesel designs of the World War Two era, constructed with knowledge gained from the earlier Gato class. Unlike those of many navies of the day, U.S. subs were “fleet” boats, capable of unsupported operations in deep water far from home. The Balao class was deeper diving (400 ft. test depth) than the Gato class (300 feet) due to the use of high-yield strength steel in the pressure hull.

Able to range 11,000 nautical miles on their reliable diesel engines, they could undertake 75-day patrols that could span the immensity of the Pacific. Carrying 24 (often unreliable) Mk14 Torpedoes, these subs often sank anything short of a 5,000-ton Maru or warship by surfacing and using their deck guns. They also served as the firetrucks of the fleet, rescuing downed naval aviators from right under the noses of Japanese warships.

Some 311 feet long overall, they were all-welded construction to facilitate rapid building. Best yet, they could be made for the bargain price of about $7 million in 1944 dollars (just $100 million when adjusted for today’s inflation) and completed from keel laying to commissioning in about nine months.

An amazing 121 Balaos were completed through five yards at the same time, with the following pennant numbers completed by each:

  • Cramp: SS-292, 293, 295-303, 425, 426 (12 boats)
  • Electric Boat: 308-313, 315, 317-331, 332-352 (42)
  • Manitowoc on the Great Lakes: 362-368, 370, 372-378 (15)
  • Mare Island on the West Coast: 304, 305, 307, 411-416 (9)
  • Portsmouth Navy Yard: 285-288, 291, 381-410, 417-424 (43)

We have covered a number of this class before, such as the sub-killing USS Greenfish, the UDT-10 carrying USS Burrfish, the rocket mail slinger USS Barbero, the carrier-slaying USS Archerfish, the long-serving USS Catfish, the U-boat scuttling USS Atule, Spain’s “30-one-and-only,” and the frogman Cadillac USS Perch —but don’t complain, they have lots of great stories

Meet Charr

Originally to be the first warship named after the Bocaccio, a type of West Coast rock fish, our subject was laid down, 26 August 1943, at Electric Boat in Groton. The powers that be swapped this tough to spell marine creature for the much easier Charr, a type of trout common to the Pacific Northwest, a month later.

As such, the future USS Charr- the only warship to carry the name-  was launched on 28 May 1944, sponsored by the wife of a no doubt upstanding citizen of Groton, and commissioned on 23 September 1944, her construction spanning a scant 394 days. At the time, EB was building them so fast that it was a dual commissioning ceremony– the first at New London- with sistership USS Boarfish (SS-327), who had been laid down just a fortnight before Charr.

Charr’s plank owner skipper was CDR Francis Dennis Boyle (USNA ’34). It was his first command, having gone out as a junior officer and XO on three previous war patrols on other fleet boats.

Sailing for the West Pac on 5 November to join the Big Show after six weeks of shakedowns, she arrived at Pearl Harbor via the Ditch in early December and spent Christmas of 1944 at Pearl Harbor.

She had a fairly green crew, with her wardroom averaging out to about two patrols per officer (although her two most junior ensigns were mustangs with 14 patrols between them). Meanwhile, her goat locker had a similar average with three of her chiefs counting zero patrols between them. Overall, only 43 of her 80 men aboard had earned their dolphins.

War!

On 30 December 1944, Charr was escorted out of Pearl Harbor along with the veteran boat, USS Batfish, to begin her first war patrol, ordered to roam the South China Sea by way of Saipan. Clearing that occupied former Japanese possession on 13 January 1945 with a full load of diesel oil and provisions topped off from the sub-tender USS Fulton, Charr made for her patrol area and spent the next several weeks fighting heavy seas while hiding from Japanese patrol aircraft.

Carr in the distinctive late-war fleet “gunboat submarine” configuration with forward and aft 5″/25s augmented with matching 40mm and 20mm mounts. Photo by Lt. Herb Hanson via Navsource.

She dodged a couple of floating mines and made a rendezvous at sea with her commissioning mate Boarfish on 27 January off Pulo Kambir, some 8,500 miles away from New London. Small world!

The next day, she was dispatched to close with the coast of Japanese-occupied French Indochina to search for downed fliers. Anchoring just 2,700 yards offshore, a landing team recovered the radioman of a downed aircraft in broad daylight on the 29th, then had to return after dark for the rest of the aircrew but found herself in the middle of Japanese convoy HI-88-B (Singapore to Moji).

From Charr’s patrol report:

While Boarfish was lucky enough to sink the Japanese tanker Enki Maru (6968 GRT) and force the tanker Daietsu Maru (6890 GRT) aground, Charr came away from the encounter empty-handed, never able to get close enough to make an attack. Transferring her navy radioman aboard her sistership, which was Fremantle-bound, Charr remained on fruitless patrol, working off and on with the fellow fleet boats USS Tuna and Blackfin.

On 21 February, while Boarfish’s crew was enjoying the bars and beaches of Western Australia, Charr crossed the equator and was ordered to go to the rescue of the imperiled Dutch T-class submarine HrMs Zwaardvisch (P 322), which she did on the 22nd. She would spend the next four days on a risky southbound passage to Lombok Strait on the surface.

Charr ended her 1st patrol at Fremantle on 3 March, having not fired any torpedoes, dodged over 20 enemy air contacts, and only fired her guns (20mm) at enemy mines. Despite the risky rescue of the downed Navy radioman, and boldly escorting Zwaardvisch back to safety, the patrol was not deemed by COMSUBPAC to be successful.

On the bright side, she ran 13,799 miles across 63 days on her first patrol with no casualties, and 75 of 80 men aboard had dolphins at the end of it. She was ready.

Second Patrol

Charr sailed out of Freemantle again on 27 March after refit, ordered, in part, to comb the Flores, Java, and South China Seas in coordination with USS Gabilan (SS-252) and Besugo (SS-321) while HM Submarine Spark was nearby but not attached. Charr celebrated Easter submerged on 1 April entering the Lombok Strait.

Soon, this Yankee wolfpack would sniff out one of the Empire’s last operational cruisers outside of Japan’s home waters.

The Nagara class light cruiser Isuzu had helped seize Hong Kong from the British and survived the Solomons and the hellfire of the Leyte Gulf, but her days had run out.

Nagara Class Light Cruiser Isuzu pictured on completion off Uraga on August 20th, 1923

Nagara Class Light Cruiser Isuzu pictured underway in Tokyo Bay on September 14th, 1944

Tasked with collecting isolated Japanese troops from Kupang and taking them to Sumbawa Island with an escort of a torpedo boat and two minesweepers, Boyle’s wolfpack (he was SOPA) sighted the little convoy off Paternoster Island at 1125 on 4 April but were forced to submerge due to Japanese air cover. Meanwhile, Gabilan sank a small Japanese vessel with gunfire in a surface action.

Besugo got close enough in the predawn of 5 April to fire six torpedoes at Isuzu and one, throat down, at her escorts, all of which missed.

The pursuit continued with RAAF Mosquitos of No. 87 Squadron and FRUMEL intercepts, pointing the way for B-25s of the Free Dutch No. 18 Squadron to attack the force on the morning of 6 April, dropping 60 500-pound bombs without result.

Meanwhile, Isuzu picked up her assigned marooned troops and deposited them that afternoon at Sumbawa, unharmed. A second attack by B-24s of the RAAF’s Nos. 21 and 24 Squadrons later that day left Isuzu limping and on manual steering.

It was in the afternoon of 6th April, between Sumbawa and Komodo islands is the Sape Strait, that Boyle’s wolfpack caught up to the Isuzu group again. Besugo fired another 11 torpedoes in two attacks and bagged the escorting Japanese minesweeper W 12 (630 tons) for her effort, then was forced back to Freemantle as she was out of fish. She surfaced and saw survivors in the water after the Japanese had moved on “but all refused to be picked up.”

At 0255 on 7 April, Charr made radar contact with Isuzu and her two remaining escorts at 14,700 yards, making their way out of Sumbawa’s Bima Bay. “Bingo, this may be the jackpot,” noted Boyle.

Radioing the contact to Gabilan, who was in the path of the Isuzu group, that submarine made an attack on the cruiser with five torpedoes, one of which hit below the bridge, causing flooding forward and cutting her speed to 10 knots.

Meanwhile, Charr moved in for the kill. From her patrol report:

Isuzu was the last of her class in Japanese service remaining and the final Axis cruiser sunk by an American submarine.

The next day, the wolfpack broke up, with Gabilan and Spark heading on their ways as Charr was detailed to complete a Special Mission (planting a minefield off Pulo Island) while sinking a 500-ton Japanese coaster on 10 April via gunfire. On the 13th, they received word of FDR’s death (“All hands are deeply saddened”), then on the 16th fired six torpedoes at two Japanese escorts in the Gulf of Siam without luck.

Stopping in at Subic Bay briefly on 20-24 April, she then headed to Formosa for lifeguard duty, saving USAAF Lt. Hugo Casciola, a Fifth Air Force P-51 pilot (likely of the 3rd Air Commando Group), on 6 May.

Ending her 56-day patrol at Subic on 21 May, Charr sailed 11,688 miles. Her patrol was deemed a success and a Submarine Combat Insignia was authorized, with Charr credited for 5,670 tons of Japanese shipping sunk.

Third Patrol

On 14 June 1945, Charr left Subic Bay for her 3rd war patrol, ordered to the Gulf of Siam, one of the few areas with a significant Japanese presence afloat, even if it was in the form of coastal traffic. By the end of the month, she formed an Allied wolfpack with HMS Selene (P 254) and Sea Scout (P 253), later joined by Supreme (P 252). They chased down a small Japanese convoy not worth the torpedoes to sink but could never get close enough to engage it with gunfire.

On 5 July at 0042 while on the surface alone, Charr’s lookouts spotted an incoming torpedo that only missed them by 25 yards, with Boyle noting “Evidence of the torpedo from its wake is unmistakable” as Charr left the area at flank speed.

With the three luckless British S-boats returning to Freemantle, Boyle, on 11 Jul,y inherited an all-American pack built around USS Hammerhead, Blower, and Bluefish. Four days later, Bluefish, birddogged by reports from Blower, who fired four torpedoes at a Japanese I-class submarine contact, found I-351 on the surface 100 miles out of Natuna Besar, Borneo with a cargo of 42 irreplaceable naval aircrewmen. Bluefish sent I-351 and 110 of her 113 crew and passengers to the bottom with a four-torpedo spread.

Charr ended her 43-day 3rd war patrol at Fremantle on 26 July. Although her group bagged a big Japanese sub, that was Bluefish’s kill, and, thus, the patrol was not deemed worthy of an SCI.

As WWII ended before Charr could begin a fourth patrol, she ended the conflict with just one battle star for her second patrol. She was then dispatched to Guam to join SUBRON5.

Fleet boats USS Sea Cat (SS-399), USS Redfish (SS-395), and USS Charr (SS-328) alongside a tender at Apra Harbor, Guam, in 1945. Photographed by John R. Huggard. NH 93824

Submarine Squadron 5 boats of the squadron nested together in 1945. Photographed by Lieutenant Herb Hanson. Ships are (from left to right): Segundo (SS-398), Sea Cat (SS-399), Blenny (SS-324), Blower (SS-325), Blueback (SS-326), and Charr (SS-328). NH 86621

Charr then returned to the West Coast on 27 January 1946, capping 15 months deployed out of CONUS. A refit at Mare Island and a new skipper followed.

USS Charr (SS-328) off the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Mare Island, California, 16 September 1946. NH 90826

Cold War Snorkel Days

With the Navy rapidly demobilizing, there still had to be somebody on watch, especially with conflict boiling around the suddenly post-colonial West Pac, and Charr was one of several subs tasked with making what were termed simulated war patrols. One 115-day training patrol, departing San Francisco on the 4 October 1946, included visits to Pearl, Subic Bay, Shanghai, and Tsingtao China, as well as Yokosuka Japan, and was concluded at San Diego on 27 January 1947. A second one followed soon after.

She then fell into a quiet peacetime period of drilling naval reservists on two-week coastal deployments along the California and Mexican coasts with two dozen reservists aboard, serving as a training boat to the Submarine Training Facilities San Diego, participating in exercises, and earning a series of Battle Es including the Marjorie Sterrett Battleship Fund Prize in 1948, the first for a Pacific sub.

TBM-3E Avenger attack planes of VS-25 in flight over USS Charr (SS-328), 15 March 1950, under deployment to Fleet Air Wing Four, Whidbey Island. Note that she is still in her original configuration. 80-G-443900

On 10 July 1951, she entered Mare Island to be converted to a “Four-engine Fleet-type Snorkel” submarine, emerging four months later with a radically different topside appearance.

Caiman, SS-323 and Charr at Mare Island conversion to Guppy IA and Fleet Snork

USS Charr at Mare Island 9 Nov 1951

Would you look at that snorter! USS Charr at Mare Island 9 Nov 1951

Besides the obvious snorkel installation and sensor updates, the conversion gave her a new streamlined sail and removed her deck guns. She also sported a two-tone scheme.

USS Charr (SS-328) off the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Mare Island, California, November 1951. Following conversion to “fleet-Snorkel” configuration. Note her experimental paint scheme. NH 90830

Same as above. NH 90828

Same as above. NH 90829

Same as above.

Then came the Korean War, which included a six-month war patrol (26 March -2 October 1952) in the region under the orders of Commander Naval Forces, Far East.

Sent to the West Pac again after the cease fire, she left San Diego on 13 June 1954.

USS Charr at speed

She visited Formosa, Taiwan, and met the 7th Fleet boss and the inaugural commander of the U.S. Taiwan Defense Command, VADM Alfred M. Pride, who appeared on hand with exiled Generallisimo Chiang Kei-Shek himself. The 67-year-old first president of the Republic of China toured Charr extensively and got underway briefly on 9 November. Most Americans forget today, but the U.S. had upwards of 20,000 troops deployed at any given time to Taiwan through 1979, when the USTDC was disbanded under the Carter administration.

General Chiang Kai Shek on board USS Charr (SS 328) at Keelung, Formosa. General Shek peers through the periscope as Commander Whitman, Commanding Officer of the submarine, looks on, November 9, 1954. 330-PS-7025 (USN 649238)

General Chiang Kai Shek on board USS Charr (SS 328) at Keelung, Formosa. General Shek with Vice Admiral Alfred H. Pride on the navigation bridge, November 9, 1954. 330-PS-7025 (USN 649236)

General Chiang Kai Shek on board USS Charr (SS 328) at Keelung, Formosa. General Shek with Vice Admiral Alfred H. Pride on the weather deck, November 9, 1954. 330-PS-7025 (USN 649237)

Then followed a decade of West Coast operations, ranging from Vancouver to Acapulco with naval reservists and participating in public events such as the Seattle Sea Fair and supporting Girl Scout Marine Ship 36 of Pasadena with tiger cruises.

She was in 12,000 feet of water off San Diego on 26 September 1961 when, while rigged for deep submergence, a main motor circulating water hose ruptured at 150 feet, flooding the Maneuvering Room, a situation saved after two ratings sealed themselves in the engine room and maintained power to rapidly bring the Charr to the surface. Living to fight another day, she was towed to San Francisco Naval Shipyard for repairs. John McGee, EM1, received the Navy Commendation Medal, while Douglass Webster, EM3, received a Letter of Commendation for their efforts to save their ship that day.

Operationally, she drilled in PACTRAEX and completed active West Pac deployments with Seventh Fleet in 1957, 1959, 1961, and 1963.

USS Tilefish, USS Razorback, and USS Charr moored in Vancouver in 1957. Note the difference in sail types

Balao-class submarine USS Charr (SS-328) in drydock at Yokosuka, Japan, 1963

USS Charr (SS-328) underway, 14 December 1963. USN 1094488

Same as above USN 1094493

USS Charr (SS-328) underway off San Diego, California, 8 January 1965. USN 1110922

Balao class, 1965 Janes, at which point the Navy still had a whopping 80 of these boats on hand

With U.S. involvement in Vietnam ramping up in 1965, Charr was deployed to those waters as a sideshow to SEATO Exercise Sea Horse and, along with a half-dozen other diesel boats, would soon be laying off the North Vietnam littoral on secret observation and lifeguard missions for Rolling Thunder air strikes.

It was during these support operations that Charr recovered CDR Jack H. Harris, commanding officer of VA-155, from the Gulf of Tonkin on 29 March.

Harris, flying from the USS Coral Sea, had ejected from his damaged A-4E Skyhawk (BuNo 150078) after an Alpha strike against North Vietnamese air search radar facilities on Bach Long Vi Island, which is located about 70 miles offshore roughly midway between Haiphong and the Chinese island of Hainan. He was the last pilot to be rescued CSAR style by a lifeguard submarine, almost 20 years to the date from Charr’s WWII lifeguard service. The waterlogged pilot remained on Charr for several days and was eventually high-lined to a destroyer for return to Coral Sea. Sadly, he died in the fire on Oriskany in 1966.

Charr almost got a second rescue from Coral Sea off Bach Long Vi Island as well.

As noted by EM3(SS) Sid Anderson of the old USS Charr Association:

CDR William N. Donnelly, CO of Fighter Squadron 154, flying F-8D BuNo 148642, had his controls shot out while in a dive-bombing run against an AAA site. He ejected while inverted at 450 knots and 1,000 feet altitude, landing about 4 miles from the island. On the night of March 30th, upon becoming aware that transmissions from CDR Donnelly’s emergency radio were being received, the USS Charr surfaced and conducted a grid search but was unsuccessful in finding him. Later that day, during the mid-watch (12 noon to 4 p.m.) CDR Donnelly was sighted floating in his survival raft by aircraft that were en route to another bombing raid. His location was about 14 miles from the Charr, which was submerged at the time. Once in receipt of this information, LCDR John M. Draddy, CO of the Charr, surfaced and proceeded to CDR Donnelly’s location. Upon arrival at the site, a fleet of Chinese junks were already there, with no sight of CDR Donnelly or his raft. With the belief that the junks had gotten to him first, LCDR Draddy quickly assembled an armed boarding party intending to rescue him. However, before any action was taken, LCDR Draddy received word that CDR Donnelly had already been picked up by a U.S. Air Force HU-16 amphibian, and the boarding party was dismissed. In his raft, CDR Donnelly had successfully evaded North Vietnamese patrol boats for some 45 hours.

Entering the twilight of her career, Charr would be redesignated an Auxiliary Submarine (SGSS) in July 1966, and make her seventh West Pac deployment from May to December 1967 that included SEATO Exercise Sea Dog and service as a “tame” Military Assistance Program submarine on loan to the navies of the Philippines, South Korea and China for use in ASW training.

She made her 7,000th dive on 20 July 1968. Not bad work considering most of her constructors were war-hires and “Rosies.”

Charr’s (SS-328) 7000th dive, 20 July 1968. (L to R): TMSN Don McClain (IC Electrician watch), HMC(SS) “Doc” Taft(standing by just in case), TM1(SS) Vince Solari (OOD/Diving Officer), LCDR Jim Callan (port lookout), CS1(SS) Jake Wade (Chief of the Watch), EN1(SS) Harley Rackley (trim manifold watch), EM2(SS) Lin Marvil (starboard lookout).    Photo by J.D. Decrevel EM2(SS), via Navsource.

Spending the rest of her career stateside, Charr was decommissioned on 28 June 1969 in a mass five-way ceremony with the old fleet boats Bream, Tunny, Bluegill, and Raton.

Bream (AGSS-243), Tunny (AGS-282), and Charr (AGSS-328), during the decommissioning ceremony at Mare Island on 28 June 1969. Photo courtesy of the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum via Darryl L. Baker, via Navsource.

Charr continued “In Service, In Reserve” for another 18 months until 20 December 1971, at which time she was struck from the Navy List. She was sold to Nicolai Joffe, Beverly Hills, for $105,381 on 17 August 1972, then subsequently scrapped in Kearny. New Jersey

Charr earned an Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal for her Vietnam cruise, added to two for Korea, and her sole WWII battle star.

Epilogue

Little remains of Charr.

Her Cold War deck logs, WWII patrol reports, and war history are digitized in the National Archives. 

She had an active veteran’s group that was online until about 2020.

Post-WWII, Charr’s only wartime skipper CDR Boyle, who earned a Navy Cross for sinking Isuzu, did a stint at JPL then got heavily into guided missile research, rising to head White Sands in the late 1950s. He earned his surface warfare badge as commander of the USS Springfield (CLG-7) just after her conversion to a guided missile cruiser and then later broke his flag over Cruiser Destroyer Flotilla 7 as a rear admiral. He retired in 1968 and passed a decade later at age 68. His papers are in the Hoover Institution.

RADM Doyle, Charr’s WWII skipper

Her Vietnam-era skipper, LCDR John Draddy, the man who was ready to fight off a fleet of Chinese junks on the surface with Tommy guns and M1 Carbines to save a downed naval aviator, earned a Bronze Star for that cruise. He retired from the Navy as a captain, 29 years a submariner. He passed in 2005, aged 76, with a host of grandkids, and is buried at Arlington.

The P-51 pilot that Charr plucked from the drink off Formosa in May 1945, Hugo Casciola, survived the war and passed in Pennsylvania in 1976 at age 60. During WWII, U.S. submarines rescued no less than 504 downed airmen from all services.

It would be almost two decades after Chiang Kai-shek rode on Charr that the Republic of China obtained its first submarines, receiving the Balao-class ex-USS Tusk (SS-426) and Tench-class ex-USS Cutlass (SS-478) in 1973, recommissioning them as the “unarmed” training boats Hai Po and Hai Shih respectively. They were later augmented by a pair of Dutch-built SSKs.

Taiwan’s first Indigenous Defense Submarine (IDS), Hai Kun (SS-711), was launched last February at the CSBC shipyard in Kaohsiung. She is set to wrap up sea trials this month.

Taiwan IDS submarine, the future Hai Kun, departing for sea trials. CSBC picture.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

 

***

 

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

 

***

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

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

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

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO, has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships, you should belong.

I’m a member, so you should be!

Warship Wednesday, March 26, 2025: First of 65

Posted on by 2 comments

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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday, March 26, 2025: First of 65

Photographed by Noggle. Naval History and Heritage Command Collection: NH 63259

Above we see the USS F-4 (Submarine No. 23) along with her three sisters, USS F-2 (SS-21), USS F-3 (SS-22), and USS F-1 (SS-20), proud and flying their “fish” flags and 13-star “boat” ensigns with their crackerjacks waiting either for a division inspection or shore leave– or both.

Taken in Pearl Harbor in 1914, these early boats were the first based in Hawaii, predating the construction of the submarine base, and as such were simply docked at Pier 5 at the end of Richards Street in Honolulu near where the Aloha Tower is today.

Less than a year later, on 25 March 1915– some 110 years ago this week– F-4 would take her final dive and a lot of those brave young men on her deck would vanish.

The F-class boats

The story of early American submarines was one of John Philip Holland’s Torpedo Boat Company which became the Electric Boat company in 1899.

Holland and his company would provide the Navy’s first steel boat, the 53-foot USS Holland (Submarine Torpedo Boat #1) in 1900, followed by the seven 63-foot USS Plunger (SS-2) or A-class boats, and three 82-foot B-class boats– all very small, basically midget submarines. EB’s five follow-on C-class boats, designed by Lawrence York Spear after Holland’s death, were steadily larger, at 105 feet, and used twin engines and twin motors, giving them a measure of reliability. Nonetheless, all these early boats, and those that immediately followed, were known as “pig boats” due to their downright foul living quarters and unusual and downright unship-like hull shapes, which tended to wallow and hog on the surface.

Then, as now, the U.S. Submarine arm is all-volunteer.

Spear’s D-class boats– the first American boats to run four torpedo tubes, were subcontracted out to Fore River and were the largest yet, at 134 feet. Spindle shaped and single-hulled with short sails, they would become the basis for Navy sub hull forms for the next decade.

“U.S. Submarines awaiting Orders,” halftone reproduction, printed on a postal card, of a photograph of five submarines nested together prior to World War I. The three boats on the right are (from center to right): USS D-2 (Submarine # 18); USS D-1 (Submarine # 17); and USS D-3 (Submarine # 19). The two left are probably (in no order) USS E-1 (Submarine # 24) and USS E-2 (Submarine # 25). Courtesy of Commander Donald J. Robinson, USN (Medical Service Corps), 1973. NH 78926

By 1909, less than a decade after the first Holland boat was bought by the Navy, Fore River began construction of a more modern pair of boats, dubbed the E-class, that were roughly the same size as the D-class that preceded them but, importantly, ditched the dangerous gasoline engines of the previous designs for a pair of NELSECO diesels. Importantly for maneuverability while diving, they were also the first U.S. submarines to have bow planes.

Further, they incorporated both a search and attack periscope along with a narrow-windowed conning tower, complete with deadlights.

USS E-1 (Submarine # 24) underway in New York Harbor during the October 1912 naval review. Note her diving planes and “chariot” style canvas and tubing open sea running platform erected over the narrow conning tower. NH 41946

This gives us the F-class, which are just improved Es, and were only the second group of American designed and built diesel-electric submarines.

F-class boats were the first U.S. Navy submarines built on the West Coast, with the first two, F-1 and F-2, constructed by Union Iron Works in San Francisco as Yard No. 94 and 95 using NELSECO diesels. The second pair, F-3 and F-4, were the first subs launched into Puget Sound, built as Yard No. 55 and 56 by The Moran Company, which soon after became Seattle Construction and Drydock Co. The latter pair used Craig diesels.

The D, E, and F classes were the first American submarines (and some of the first anywhere) to have permanently installed radios, and the latter class used telescoping aerials as well.

An improved version of the E-class subs, Fore River provided the design sheets to Union and Moran, which each respective company used in building their first submarines.

General plans prepared by the Fore River Shipbuilding Company, Quincy, Massachusetts, 18 June 1910. This sheet features inboard and outboard profile drawings. These submarines were constructed by the Union Iron Works, San Francisco, California. Initially named Carp (Submarine # 20), Barracuda (Submarine # 21), Pickerel (Submarine # 22), and Skate (Submarine # 23), they were renamed F-1 through F-4 in November 1911 while under construction. NH 84383

Same as the above. Note the three divided sections, fore, middle, and stern. NH 84382

Running some 142 feet overall and able to float on the surface in just 12 feet of water, the F-class were still designed more for coastal and harbor defense than blue water patrols. Just 330 tons when surfaced, they used two small 390 hp NELSECO or Craig diesels to make 13.5 knots on trials. Submerged, at 400 tons, they used a pair of 120 kW Electro Dynamic electric motors fed by two 60-cell steel-jar batteries to make 11.5 knots, a speed they could only maintain for about an hour or so before the batteries were drained.

Overall, they were designed for patrols lasting no more than a week and only carried 33 tons of diesel oil- enough to allow for a 2,300nm range at 11 knots.

Constructed of mild steel, riveted in place and depermed, they had a test dept of 200 feet and could submerge in just 45 feet– although the aerials would still betray them. While on trials in 1913, F-1 dived to 283 feet in tests, but after her hull groaned and she started taking on water within ten minutes, she quickly made it to the surface.

Armament was a four-pack of 18-inch torpedo tubes in the bow behind a rotating torpedo tube muzzle cap– a main battery pioneered just a few years earlier in the D-class– with one set of reloads, allowing for eight fish maximum if all spots were filled. There was no provision for a deck gun and the fairwater or conning tower was short and thin, prone to spray and wash while underway.

The F-class were, to be blunt, just an evolutionary step for the Navy, who soon after would order larger and more sophisticated G, H, K, L, and M-class boats– all before entering the Great War, accumulating 51 commissioned submarines by 1917.

American submarines, 1914 Janes

Meet F-4

Laid down on 21 August 1909 at Moran as the future USS Skate (Submarine No. 23)– the first American warship to carry that later storied name- our subject was renamed a more generic USS F-4 on 17 November 1911. Launched on 6 January 1912, sponsored by the wife of a shipyard executive, she was commissioned 3on  May 1913.

F-4. Note the tiny conning tower with the trunk between the two periscopes. It was thought the conning tower was the most likely part of the boat to be struck during a collision while submerged or carried away by a wave on the surface, so it was made as a separate watertight compartment that could, at least in theory, be wrenched off without breaking the integrity of the hull, provided the hatch was dogged tight. However, it was so small that it could not be used for much, and the skipper and XO had their duty stations, even in an attack run, standing by the diving controls and steering stations. First periscope for the skipper, the second for a lookout. NH 108789

USS F-4 (SS-23) Photographed between 1913-15. Courtesy of Donald M. McPherson, 1972. NH 74736

F4 via Bowfin museum. Note her diving planes

The four F-boats were assigned to the First Submarine Group, Pacific Torpedo Flotilla, based at San Pedro and operated on the West Coast as such until August 1914.

F-Class Submarines at the Mare Island Navy Yard, California, before World War I. This view shows the bows of USS F-1 (Submarine # 20), USS F-2 (Submarine # 21), and USS F-3 (Submarine # 22). Collection of Thomas P. Naughton, 1973. NH 92187

F Class Submarines and tender USS Alert (AS 4) in Dry Dock 2 at Mare Island, California 21 January 1913. Note the extensive awnings erected on the conning towers and the open torpedo cap on F1 to the right

Tender USS Alert and four F boats, San Diego, 1914. Alert, an iron-hulled steam sloop that entered the fleet in 1875, had been decommissioned in 1907 and lent to the California Naval Militia. The Navy recalled her in 1912 specifically for use as a submarine tender for the F-class. 

Then, with war in Europe and a German cruiser squadron roaming the Pacific pursued by British and Japanese fleets, our little F-boats were towed to Hawaii behind armored cruisers to provide presence in the islands.

The Final Dive

The early days of submarining were highlighted by the tendency for these submersibles to claim the lives of their crews. After all, the infamous Hunley sank three times during her seven-month career, on each occasion with a total loss of her complement.

The U.S. Navy was lucky for a time, while European powers and Japan suffered no less than 21 fatal submarine losses between 1903 and 1914, claiming over 200 lives. That luck ran out on the morning of 25 March 1915 when an accident occurred on F-4 while she was off Oahu on maneuvers, sinking to the sea floor 306 feet below with two officers and 19 enlisted aboard.

She had left her tender, the old gunboat USS Alert, at 0900 for a submerged run at a maximum depth of 30 fathoms (180 feet) for target runs but failed to return to the surface by noon. While her emergency buoy was not seen, a sheen of diesel oil appeared on the surface some 1.5 miles off Fort Armstrong between Diamond Head and Barber’s Point, about a mile and a quarter from the channel entrance.

As described by the Submarine Force Museum:

When the F-4 was at a depth of something less than 60 feet, chlorine gas began seeping into the middle, or control, compartment of the boat, indicating that somehow salt water had reached the batteries. F-4’s commanding officer, LT(JG) Alfred Ede, ordered the boat to return to the surface but soon the engines, straining to lift the weight of the sub plus tons of added seawater from what was obviously a substantial leak, overheated and quit. Before the Sailors in the control section retreated to the engine room—several already having passed out after breathing too much of the chlorine gas—they tripped the system that blew air from the high-pressure tank into the main ballast tanks.

But it was too late; water was pouring into the boat faster than the air could blow it out and soon the F-4 came to rest on the bottom, 300 feet below the surface, about 100 feet greater than her test depth. The pressure of the surrounding water soon overcame the rivets that held the torpedo hatch in place and the two forward compartments flooded quickly. Although the crew had secured the hatch behind them when they moved back to the engine room, the bulkhead around it couldn’t hold out against the weight of water and collapsed.

Rescue…turns to recovery

For two days, the Navy combed the waters near where F-4 had been lost and, using drags followed up by divers, was able to approximate her position on the sea bottom. Two Navy hard hat salvage divers attached from the submarine flotilla, GMCs John “Jack” Agraz and John Evans, descended rapidly to 190 feet without seeing the sub. Agraz attempted again and made it to 215 feet- a record at the time for open ocean work- in an unsuccessful attempt to reach the bubbling sub.

A hairy-chested hero, Agraz did the bounce under helmet only with no suit to save time, and somehow never suffered from the bends.

Divers working over the wreck of F-4 in March 1915

An experimental 54-inch diving bell owned by the Hawaiian Dredging Company was sent for, to be rented for $750 per diem.

On 27 March, two days after F4’s dive to the bottom, as the Alert stood by some 500 feet from the lost submarine in water just 160 feet deep, the tugs USS Navajo and Intrepid, accompanied by the 150-ton derrick dredge California, the latter towed by the steamer SS Claudine, arrived on scene with a plan to use a cable loop to lift F-4 and shift her close enough to the tender for divers to attach chains to her and bring her slowly to the surface via crane. The equipment involved amounted to two 110-fathom wire hawsers, with 45 fathoms of chain in the middle.

Heartache came as the clock ticked past 55 hours with F-4 submerged and the cable loop, which had reportedly managed to lift the boat from the bottom, slipped and the submarine careened back to the floor, bow first. The sweep brought to the surface a piece of brass from the submarine’s fairwater, believed to be a section of one of her periscopes.

With the desperate rescue making headlines across the country, SECNAV Josephus Daniels ordered a Navy-wide task force to head to Hawaii and join the effort. From the New York (Brooklyn) Navy Yard, one of the first dive medicine experts, Passed Asst. Surgeon George Reuben Williamson French, USN, (UPenn ’08) was dispatched by express train to Mare Island. French brought five of the Navy’s most experienced divers: Warrant Gunner George D. Stillson and GMCs Stephen J. Drellishak, Frank Crilley, Frederick Nielson, and William Loughman.

The men had spent the past 28 months in a program to evaluate diving tables based on English Dr. John S. Haldane’s theories on staged decompression. The divers had previously reached the amazing depth of 274 feet in experimental tests from the destroyer USS Walke (DD 34) in the relatively sheltered waters of Long Island Sound, developing the first U.S. Navy Diving Manual (the 252-page “Report on Deep Diving Tests”) in the process.

The team had developed a three-wire telephone connection for the divers to remain in constant contact topside the entire dive. It was dubbed the Stillson Phone for years.

USS Walke (Destroyer # 34) Diving support activities on the ship’s deck, while Gunner George D. Stillson, USN, was on the bottom, during deep diving tests conducted in Long Island Sound in late October and early November 1914. This photo may have been taken during Stillson’s 23 October dive, in which he reached the bottom in 88 1/2 feet of water. Note Chief Petty Officer holding diver’s air line, Passed Assistant Surgeon George R.W. French (wearing communications headset and microphone) talking to the diver by telephone, and recompression chamber (with hatch closed) in the background. GMC Frank Crilley is hatless to the left, looking at the camera. Courtesy of Jim Kazalis, 1981. NH 99832

Oh, yeah, and they also helped vet and design the iconic Mark V diving rig, adopted in 1916, based on the British Siebe-Gorman 6-bolt diving helmet but with significant improvements. Air was supplied to the divers from charged torpedo flasks, with pressure controlled through a reducing valve and by throttling.

Chief Gunner’s Mate Stephen J. Drellishak on the deck of USS Walke (DD 34) after making a record dive to 274 feet on November 3, 1914. U.S. Naval Undersea Museum photo

Crew members of the destroyer USS Walke (DD 34) pose with a diving helmet, diving boots, and a recompression chamber installed on the ship’s deck to support deep diving tests in Long Island Sound in the fall of 1914. U.S. Naval Undersea Museum photo

Diver preparing to go over the side of Walke on 3 March 1914. Note the airline attached to the back of his helmet. NH 99836, courtesy of Jim Kazalis, 1981. Chief Gunner’s Mate Stephen J. Drellishak ascending unassisted from a ten-foot stage at the end of his record 274-foot dive from Walke to the sea floor on 3 November 1914. His ascent from the bottom occupied 1 hour and 20 minutes. This dive was one of a series of deep diving tests conducted in Long Island Sound in late October and early November 1914. NH 99838

The dive team traveled with 10,756 pounds of specialized equipment in 27 crates, including a large recompression tank and 1,450 feet of air hose. Another 700 feet of hose was rushed from Norfolk. Mare Island was able to scrounge an additional 500 feet. Daniels dutifully told the press in Washington that, using “special appliances,” he was confident they could reach F-4. This would be their first practical test of their experimental diving techniques and what could be accomplished under service conditions.

Still, Daniels noted, “The Department fears there is not room to hope for the lives of the crew but is determined to do all that is humanly possible to raise the vessel and is undertaking to send the Navy divers to an unprecedented depth if necessary to accomplish this.”

Arriving at Mare Island, they boarded the armored cruiser USS Maryland (ACR-8), which in the meantime had been filled with six lifting pontoons- capable of lifting 520 tons- to be used in the salvage attempt.

New York Navy Yard’s Recompression Chamber No. 1 used during the salvage of F-4 (SS-23). The chamber was shipped to Mare Island and then put aboard Maryland (ACR-8) for the trip to Pearl Harbor. Photo courtesy of Darryl L. Baker via Navsource.

View of the stern of Maryland (ACR-8) with salvage pontoons loaded at Mare Island Navy Yard. Maryland was in dry dock at the time. Photo courtesy of Darryl L. Baker via Navsource.

The cruiser, the experimental dive team, and their accumulation of gear arrived in Hawaii on 12 April, sadly 18 days after F-4 was lost.

In the meantime, back at Pearl, RADM Charles B. T. Moore (commandant of the naval station), LT. Charles E. Smith (1st SubGrp skipper) and Naval Constructor Julius “Dutchie” Furer had been working on a series of mechanical lifts and sweeps to try to secure F-4, with the tugs Navajo and Intrepid joined by the dredge Gaylord.

On 7 April, with the experimental dive team still a week away, dragging continued with the tugs Navajo and Intrepid.

Furer acquired two mud scows from the Hawaiian Dredging Company, each some 104 feet long by 36 feet beam by 13 feet deep, and rigged them with four slings “made from the heaviest cables procurable” attached to purpose-built windlasses on each vessel. The windlass drums were made from 16-inch diameter sugar mill shafts and spooled with 2.5-inch galvanized steel cables obtained from the Pacific Mail Steamship Company with the 10-inch by 14-inch steam engine, geared to 6 drums, on the dredge used to reel.

With the dive team from Brooklyn arriving on the scene on 14 April, GMC Frank Crilley was the first diver to reach the submarine, dropping to a new record of 288 feet of seawater, and walked along the boat’s upper deck. He found F-4 on a smooth sandy bottom with no coral growth to impede hoisting operations, and her bow pointed shoreward. He noted two parted lines from previous snagging and recovery efforts attached to the craft. The dive took two hours, with a five-minute descent, 12 minutes on the bottom, and the balance on the slow rise to the surface to decompress.

Stillson, following immediately after, reported the superstructure was caved in, and the hull under it was filled with water.

Salvage of USS F-4 (SS-23), April-August 1915. A hard hat diver descending to the sunken submarine. Purportedly photographed 90 feet below the surface via a sealed glass bottomed box. F-4 had sunk on 25 March 1915 off Honolulu, Hawaii, in over 300 feet of water. Courtesy of Donald M. McPherson, 1972. NH 74731

The salvage equipment devised and employed by Furer to lift F-4 to the surface was slowly attached to the vessel over the next several days, with the divers only able to work 15-20 minutes per dive due to the exertion of working at such depth and the prerequisite decompression time. At least 13 dives went past 275 feet in depth, with five reaching the sea floor at 306 feet, struggling with 10 atmospheres of pressure (130-140 pounds per sq. inch).

To say this was dangerous for the divers was an understatement.

On 17 April, one of the men, Loughman, almost perished, adding his soul to the 21 already lost on the submarine. Entangled in lines on his ascent, he was trapped more than 250 feet down and helpless. Chief Crilley, who had already dived that day, volunteered to don a helmet and return to the deep to help his shipmate return to the surface.

Loughman, who spent more four hours at depths over 200 feet, was brought to the surface in semi-conscious conditions and had to spend nine hours in the recompression chamber, then was waylaid for two weeks with severe pneumonia and Caisson’s disease (the Bends). He was only released from Mare Island Naval Hospital at the end of June.

Dr. French on Loughman, via the 1916 Naval Medical Bulletin:

Crilley would later (in 1929!) receive a rare peacetime MoH for his actions.

Medal of Honor citation of Chief Gunner’s Mate Frank W. Crilley (as printed in the official publication “Medal of Honor, 1861-1949, The Navy”, page 106):

“For display of extraordinary heroism in the line of his profession above and beyond the call of duty during the diving operations in connection with the sinking in a depth of water 304 feet, of the U.S.S. F-4 with all on board, as a result of loss of depth control, which occurred off Honolulu, T.H., on 25 March 1915. On 17 April 1915, William F. Loughman, chief gunner’s mate, United States Navy, who had descended to the wreck and had examined one of the wire hawsers attached to it, upon starting his ascent, and when at a depth of 250 feet beneath the surface of the water, had his life line and air hose so badly fouled by this hawser that he was unable to free himself; he could neither ascend nor descend. On account of the length of time that Loughman had already been subjected to the great pressure due to the depth of water, and the uncertainty of the additional time he would have to be subjected to this pressure before he could be brought to the surface, it was imperative that steps be taken at once to clear him. Instantly, realizing the desperate case of his comrade, Crilley volunteered to go to his aid, immediately donned a diving suit, and descended. After a lapse of time of 2 hours and 11 minutes, Crilley was brought to the surface, having by a superb exhibition of skill, coolness, endurance and fortitude, untangled the snarl of lines and cleared his imperiled comrade, so that he was brought, still alive, to the surface.”

Slowly, using manila reeving line, by 18 April, all four lifting hawsers had been placed and transferred to the scows, but F-4 remained stubbornly on the bottom, drawn closer to shore into a shallower 275 feet depth.

Re-rigging the lifting hawsers with lengths of Maryland’s 2⅝-inch stud-link anchor chain for extra strength and reinstalling them, the next lift was tried on 20 May. Over the next four days, through a complicated series of lifts and tows, with the tugs, scows, pontoons, and dredge all working together day and night, F-4 had been lifted to a depth of just 84 feet by 24 May and 50 feet by 25 May. The plan was to bring her into a flooded dry dock that allowed a depth of 25.5 feet.

Then came a three-day storm that buffeted the lifting vessels and translated down the hawsers to the suspended water-filled submarine below as diving and salvage operations were suspended. When Furer sent divers down on 29 May after the waters calmed, it was found that the top of the sub was caved in and torn almost halfway through to the keel.

With F-4 upside down, suspended 46 feet under the water by hawsers, it was decided to transfer the rest of the lift to the six submergible pontoons and bring the submarine to the surface before transfer to a dry dock. Twenty charged torpedo air flasks were installed on a coal barge, then linked by pipe and a dozen 150-foot lengths of hose to the pontoons to bring them to the surface, with F-4 along for the ride. This took until 29 August to set up.

Valve manifold and hose leads to submerged pontoons, on board a salvage vessel off Honolulu, Hawaii, in August 1915. Halftone photograph, copied from Transactions of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, Volume 24, 1916, Figure 11. The tug in the left distance is probably the USS Navajo. NH 43497

Then the lift started, with the flasks charging the pontoons and F-4 rising slowly. Importantly for diving history, this segment saw one of the first uses of several divers connected to the surface via telephone line for communication to coordinate the careful rise as one pontoon, rising too slow or too fast or at the wrong angle, could upend the whole operation.

Bow salvage pontoons emerging from the depths, off Honolulu, Hawaii, circa 29 August 1915, during the final lifting of the sunken submarine. Halftone photograph, copied from Transactions of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, Volume 24, 1916, Figure 12. NH 43498

All salvage pontoons on the surface, off Honolulu, Hawaii, circa 29 August 1915, with preparations under way to tow the sunken submarine into Honolulu Harbor. Halftone photograph, copied from Transactions of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, Volume 24, 1916, Figure 13. The tug in the center is probably the USS Navajo. NH 43499

Salvage pontoons on the surface, off Honolulu, Hawaii, circa 29 August 1915, after the final lifting of the sunken submarine in preparation for towing her into Honolulu harbor. Note the wooden protective sheathing around the pontoons. The tug on the right is probably the USS Navajo. Courtesy of Donald M. McPherson, 1972. NH 74732

Towed into port with the pontoons surfaced, F-4 was finally transferred to the dry dock of the Island Steam Navigation Company at the Quarantine Station dock.

From Beneath the Surface: World War I Submarines Built in Seattle and Vancouver by Bill Lightfoot. Photo from Kerrick, Military & Naval America, via Navsource.

F-4 in drydock at Honolulu, Hawaii, on 1 September 1915, after she had been raised from over 300 feet of water and towed into port. Note the large implosion hole in her port side and the salvage pontoons used to support her during the final lift. This view shows the F-4’s port bow. She is upside down, rolled to starboard approximately 120 degrees from the vertical. Photographed by Kodagraph, Honolulu. Courtesy of Donald M. McPherson, 1972. NH 74733

Naval personnel examine the large implosion hole in F-4’s port side, in drydock at Honolulu, Hawaii, circa late August or early September 1915. She had been raised from over 300 feet of water and towed into port. This view was taken from off the port bow, showing the submarine’s port side diving plane in the center. She is upside down, rolled to starboard approximately 120 degrees from the vertical. Courtesy of Donald M. McPherson, 1972. NH 74734

View of F-4’s port side name plate, taken in drydock at Honolulu, Hawaii, circa late August or early September 1915, after she had been raised from over 300 feet of water and towed into port. These figures are mounted on the submarine’s port bow and are shown upside down, as she was drydocked rolled to starboard approximately 120 degrees from the vertical. Courtesy of Donald M. McPherson, 1972. NH 74735

It was determined that the loss occurred due to leaking battery acid that corroded F-4’s hull rivets in the port wall of the battery steel tank at Frame 51, which allowed progressive flooding, chlorine off gassing due to salt water interaction with the battery jars, loss of depth control, and eventual catastrophic hull failure. This led to design changes in future submarine classes.

The salvage of F-4 is well covered in more detail at PigBoats.com. 

Epilogue

Of the 21 members of F-4’s crew that went on her last dive, 18 were recovered from her wreckage.

A team of physicians assembled from the Maryland’s medical department led by Surgeon H. Curl and Asst. Dental Surgeon Halleck, joined by Asst Surgeon WW Cress of the Alert, and Surgeons Trotter and Seaman of the Marine Hospital in Honolulu combed through the wreckage for remains.

The interior of the submarine, having been submerged for six months in the tropics, was in bad shape.

Detailed by Seaman in the 1916 Naval Medical Bulletin:

Four sets of remains were found in the middle compartment of F-4, while the rest were found in the stern engine compartment. Of the four recovered that were identifiable, two, Ashcroft and Herzog, were identified due to dental records, while the other two, Wells and Mahan, were identified due to the contents of their pockets. The remains were wrapped in cotton, surrounded by oakum, and placed in caskets.

The four who were able to be identified were repatriated to their families for interment, sent to California, Utah, and Virginia.

The 14 unidentified sets of remains were arranged in four sealed metal coffins, marched in a somber funeral parade through Honolulu to the California-bound USS Supply, and were eventually buried with honors at Arlington.

The modern marker for the F-4 crew includes the 14 men buried and three missing

Her crew is remembered as the first of the American submarines listed on Eternal Patrol and appear on markers and monuments as such across the country.

She is the first of 65 still on Eternal Patrol. (Photo: Chris Eger)

Following the investigation of her doom and the removal of remains, the wreckage of F-4 was refloated on 15 September 1915– the dry dock was rented after all– and towed under the pontoons by Navajo into Magazine Loch until she grounded in the shallow inlet. There she sat in the shallows until 1940 when the area was turned into the Sierra submarine piers. She was rolled into a trench by the pier and buried.

In 1999, a magnetometer survey near pier Sierra 13/14 detected a large object, some 80 feet from the pier, under some 20 feet of sediment. A sign has since been erected to note this resting place.

Meanwhile, the small original headstone for her 17 crew members buried at Arlington was installed at the USS Bowfin Museum at Pearl.

USS Bowfin Executive Director Jerry Hofwolt and Richard Mendelson (Submarine Veterans) during F4 Headstone dedication to USS Bowfin Submarine Museum and Park, 2000.

Some of her construction notes endure in the National Archives. 

In November 1915, Dutchie Furer, who directed the recovery of F-4, largely with improvised equipment, submitted an extremely detailed article on the salvage operation to Proceedings. A 1901 Annapolis grad who fought against the Spanish in 1898 while still a midshipman, he was a proponent of small craft operations and campaigned successfully for the 110-foot subchasers in the Great War. Earning a Navy Cross, he later helped supervise the modernization of the battleships USS Pennsylvania and New Mexico in the 1930s and, still on duty in 1941, became Chief of Navy Research and helped coordinate new technology into the fleet in WWII. He retired in November 1945.

RADM Julius Augustus Furer, USNA ’01, passed in 1963, aged 82, and is buried at Arlington.

Likewise, Dr. French would publish “Diving Operations in Connection with the Salvage of the USS ‘F-4″ in the Naval Medical Bulletin in 1916. He retired from the navy as a commander in 1937, then returned to the colors during WWII, later passing at the Oakland Navy Hospital in May 1955. He is regarded as the Navy’s first Diving Medical Officer. 

The hard hat divers of the experimental team that set and repeatedly broke their own deep-sea records also kept at it.

When there was another accident in 1927, when the USS S-4 (SS-109) became disabled and was lost with all hands, a familiar face hit the news again, with now-Ensign Grilley again earning a peacetime decoration for bravery.

“Naval divers who worked hard and faithfully at the difficult task of raising the submarine S-4” (quoted from the original 1928 caption). Probably photographed at the Boston Navy Yard, Charlestown, Massachusetts, circa 19-20 March 1928, shortly after the salvaged S-4 entered dry dock there. Those present are identified in the original caption as (standing, left to right): Michaels, Eadie, Wilson, Carr, and Eissn. (Kneeling, left to right): Grilley, Mattox and Doherty. Michaels may be Chief Torpedoman Michels. Eadie is Chief Gunner’s Mate. Thomas Eadie, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for rescuing Michaels during salvage work. Grilley is probably Ensign Frank W. Crilley. NH 41836

Navy Cross citation of Ensign Frank W. Crilley (as printed in his official biography):

“For extraordinary heroism and fearless devotion to duty during the diving operations in connection with the salvage of the USS S-4, sunk as a result of a collision off Provincetown, Massachusetts, 17 December 1927. During the period 17 December 1927 to 17 March 1928, on which latter date the ill-fated vessel was raised, Crilley, under the most adverse weather conditions, at the risk of his life, descended many times into the icy waters and displayed throughout that period fortitude, skill, determination and courage which characterizes conduct above and beyond the call of duty.”

Ensign Frank William Crilley, who earned both the Navy Cross and MoH, the latter only presented in 1929 by Coolidge some 14 years after the fact, retired from the service at least twice and was called back to help salvage lost subs. He passed in 1947, aged 64, on dry land. He is buried at Arlington.

The current Navy Experimental Diving Unit was formally established in 1927 at the Washington Navy Yard and the equipment and procedures developed at NEDU, including the McCann Rescue Chamber and mixed gas diving, were essential to the rescue of the crewmen who survived the initial sinking of the submarine USS Squalus on the bottom off the Isle of Shoals near Portsmouth in 1939.

The disabled Squalus was located on the sea floor at a depth of 240 feet in 29°F water, and a rescue ship with a diving chamber came to the site. The 33 crew in the non-flooded compartments were transferred to the surface within 40 hours via four trips of the diving chamber.

Now moving towards its 100th year in operation, the NEDU, still under SUPSALV, continues its research to save lives in the worst-case scenario.

They retain the Mark V on their insignia.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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

***

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