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

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

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

She had…an odd career. 

The Sokol class

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

An artist’s impression of Sokol

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

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

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

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

Sokol class destroyer Prytkiy (Quick) formerly Kretchet

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

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

The crew was about 50 officers and men.

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

Meet Our Tin Can

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

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

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

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

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

War!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Escape to China

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Service aboard shrapnel-riddled Askold in Shanghai

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

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

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

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

Reshitel‘nyi was out of the war.

Except she wasn’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Under the Rising Sun

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yamahiko in the 1915 Brassey’s

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

Epilogue

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

Baltic Fleet Sokol class destroyers 1912, Ryanyy in front

The Black Sea Sokols, in the 1914 Janes.

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

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

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

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

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

Roshchakovsky

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The beautiful and brand new 188-foot 1,300-ton U.S. Army Mine Planter No. 16, Col. George W. Ricker, at New Orleans’s Pauline Street Wharf, 14 May 1943. She arrived at the New Orleans Port of Embarkation from Point Pleasant, West Virginia, on 11 May 1943 from her builder, Marietta Manufacturing Co. She only served the Army for a year before the Navy picked her up and commissioned her as the Minesweep Gear and Repair Ship, USS Planter (ACM 2), in April 1944. Struck from the Naval Register on 23 December 1947, she was sold to commercial interests and was still in use as a fishing trawler into the 1970s. Official U.S. Army Photograph 298-1-43 via the WWII Museum.

Lost in the sauce when it comes to U.S. mine warfare in World War II is the Army’s sea mine planting efforts during the conflict.

Brainstormed by the Army as early as 1866 from experience gained against Confederate “torpedoes” in the Civil War, by 1876 an experimental defensive minefield was sown at Fort Mifflin in Pennsylvania. This led to an explosion (pun intended) in floating Army minefields during the Endicott Period of coastal defense.

By the Spanish-American War, at least 28 harbors and coastal chokepoints had Army-controlled electric submarine mines installed.

Mine 1919 Fort Pickens, outside of Pensacola. Typically 45 mines in seven groups were planted there between 1917-18

This only continued to grow and, after Army sea mines were transferred from the Corps of Engineers to the Artillery Corps, leading to the dedicated Coast Artillery Corps in 1907, the branch even kicked off an Army Mine Planter Service in 1918. At least 37 large planters, typically named after colonels and generals, were used by the AMPS during this period as well as twice as many “junior mine planters”, or “pup planters.”

Army-controlled submarine nets, mines, and shore batteries protected the entrance to San Francisco Bay May 1942 Ft. Cronkite. Of note, Fort Funston with its modern 16-inch guns, is not listed

By the time WWII came, the Coastal Artillery controlled 27 Harbor Defense Commands with minefields, at least five of them overseas in Hawaii, the Canal Zone, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. Speaking of which, USAMP Col. George F.E. Harrison and USAJMP Neptune sowed Army minefields at Manila Harbor in 1941 to help block the Japanese advance. Both planters were sunk during the Luzon campaign, with Harrison earning a Navy battle star.

The 704-ton, 172-foot USAMP Col. George F.E. Harrison moored pierside at Ilollo, Panay, Philippine Islands, 2 February 1933. Sunk by Japanese dive bombers in May 1942, she was later raised and would serve as the Japanese Imperial Navy cable ship IJN Harushima, only to be sent to the bottom again, this time by American dive bombers, in 1945. U.S. Army Signal Corps photo # 331549, U.S. National Archives 111-SCA-Album-2986.

On 7 December 1941, the Army had approximately 5,000 controlled mines on hand for harbor defense and during the war would sow 7,320 (3,569 contact and 3,751 magnetic) domestically along with 1,847 mines ex-CONUS.

That doesn’t even count the no less than 12,000 air-dropped offensive mines laid by the USAAF in the Pacific during the war, which is a whole different story.

Operation Starvation. Loading aerial mines on a B-29 of the 468th Bomb Group, 24 January 1945. (NARA)

Via Navweaps: 

By 1945, the Army Air Force was devoting considerable resources to the mining role, with 80 to 100 B-29s based at Tinian being used to mine the home waters around Japan. These B-29s could carry seven 2,000 lbs. (907 kg). or twelve 1,000 lbs. (454 kg) mines. “Operation Starvation” started in March 1945 and continued until early August with 4,900 magnetic, 3,500 acoustic, 2,900 pressure, and 700 low-frequency mines being laid. These mines sank 294 ships outright, damaged another 137 beyond repair, and damaged a further 239 that could be repaired. In cargo tonnage, the total was 1.4 million tons lost or damaged which was about 75% of the shipping available in March 1945.

With the Army’s airborne minedropping capability going in 1947 to the newly established USAAF (which still maintains the little talked about skillset), and the disbandment of the Coastal Artillery branch soon after, when the defunct AMPS was fully zeroed out on paper on 22 January 1954– 70 years ago today– it closed the Big Green’s 88-year run with sea mines.

ARABIAN GULF. A formation of Avenger-class mine countermeasure ships USS Devastator (MCM 6), USS Gladiator (MCM 11), USS Sentry (MCM 3), and USS Dextrous (MCM 13) maneuver in the Arabian Gulf, July 6, 2019. (U.S. Navy photo by Lt. Antonio Gemma Moré/Released)190706-N-HV841-002

The Chief of Naval Operations has advised the SECNAV has issued a Meritorious Unit Commendation for the MCM units of Bahrain-based Task Force 52 in ’21-23, a period that included a historic 5,000-mile transit from the Arabian Gulf to the Red Sea– the first time the voyage was completed in seven years for U.S. Navy mine countermeasures ships.

The MUC:

For meritorious achievement from October 2021 to June 2023. The personnel of Commander, Task Force FIVE TWO distinguished themselves through unprecedented performance that enabled the world’s largest mine countermeasures task force to achieve unparalleled results in support of mine warfare initiatives in the U.S. FIFTH Fleet area of operations. During this period, Commander, Task Force FIVE TWO led the development and execution of 65 multi-national mine countermeasures exercises that employed assets and personnel from 60 partner nations.

Their efforts resulted in the successful operational employment of eight mine countermeasure ships, one MH-53E helicopter detachment, two expeditionary mine countermeasures companies, and one mine hunting unit. Additionally, due to the decommissioning of legacy mine countermeasure platforms, they created hybrid Mine Countermeasures Mission Packages, utilizing next-generation unmanned systems and legacy mine countermeasure platforms, ultimately transforming into the U.S. Navy’s only trans-regional mine countermeasures task force.

The hybrid Mine Countermeasure Mission Packages provide a full spectrum of detect-to-engage mine warfare capability in support of U.S. Central Command and U.S. national objectives in the FIFTH, SIXTH, and SEVENTH Fleets. By their truly distinctive accomplishments, unrelenting perseverance, and unfailing devotion to duty, the officers and enlisted personnel of Commander, Task Force FIVE TWO reflected credit upon themselves and upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.

//SIGNED//

L. M. Franchetti

Admiral, US Navy

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

Warship Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2024: A Tough Tambor

Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the U.S. National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-32217

Above we see the Tambor-class fleet boat USS Trout (SS-202) as she returns to Pearl Harbor on 14 June 1942, just after the Battle of Midway. She is carrying two Japanese prisoners of war from the sunken cruiser Mikuma. Among those waiting on the pier are RADM Robert H. English and “the boss,” Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. Note the pair of .30-06 Lewis guns on Trout’s sail, flanking her periscope shears.

Trout is believed lost with all hands, 80 years ago this month, around 29 February 1944, off the Philippines while on her 11th war patrol.

The Tambors

The dozen Tambors, completed in a compressed 30-month peacetime period between when USS Tambor (SS-198) was laid down on 16 January 1939 and USS Grayback (SS-208) commissioned on 30 June 1941, are often considered the first fully successful U.S. Navy fleet submarines. This speedy construction period was in large part due to the fact they were completed in three different yards simultaneously.

Some 307 feet long with a 2,375-ton submerged displacement, they carried 10 21-inch torpedo tubes (six forward, four aft) with a provision for 24 torpedoes (or 48 mines), as well as a small 3″/50 deck gun augmented by a couple of Lewis guns and the occasional .50 cal. They enjoyed a central combat suite with a new Torpedo Data Computer and attack periscope.

With an engineering suite of four diesel engines driving electrical generators and four GE electric motors drawing from a pair of 126-cell Sargo batteries, they could sail for an amazing 10,000nm at 10 knots on the surface and sprint for as much as 20 knots while on an attack. Further, they had strong hulls, designed for 250-foot depths with a possible 500-foot redline crush. They also had updated habitability for 70-day patrols including freshwater distillation units and air conditioning. A luxury!

Meet Trout

Our boat was one of four Tambors constructed by the historic Portsmouth Navy Yard, built side-by-side with sister USS Triton (SS-201). Trout was the first boat to carry the name in the U.S. Navy and, laid down on 28 August 1939, was launched on 21 May 1940 after a nine-month gestation period.

Trout (SS-202) bow view at fitting out the pier, 10 July 1940 at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Kittery, Maine, via ussubvetsofworldwarii.org through Navsource.

Commissioned on 15 November 1940, LCDR Frank Wesley “Mike” Fenno, Jr., (USNA 1925), formerly of the “Sugar Boats” S-31 and S-37, was in command.

Following shakedowns on the East Coast, Trout sailed through “The Ditch” and joined five sister boats in Submarine Division 62, based at Pearl Harbor, where she arrived in August 1941 as part of the big build-up in the tense Pacific.

USS Trout, 1941

War!

On 7 December 1941, one of Trout’s sisters, USS Tautog (SS-199), was tied up at the Submarine Base at Pearl Harbor and her .50 cals and Lewis guns were credited with downing at least one Japanese plane during the attack that morning.

As for the other five Tambors operating at Pearl?

They were all out on patrol, our Trout included, which was off the then-unknown atoll of Midway. That night, she spotted the Japanese destroyers Sazanami and Ushio as they shelled the American base there but was unable to successfully attack them.

Ending what turned out to be her 1st War Patrol on 20 December in the still-smoking battle-scarred base at Pearl, Trout, after landing most of her torpedoes and ballast, was ordered to take aboard 3,517 rounds of badly needed 3-inch AA ammunition and sortie out on her 2nd War Patrol on 12 January 1942, bound run the Japanese blockade to the besieged American forces on the “Rock” Corregidor in the Philippines. Over 45 days, nine American subs, Trout included, made the dangerous run to the last U.S. stronghold in Luzon.

Arriving at Corregidor on 6 February after a brief brush with a Japanese subchaser, Trout unloaded her shells and then took on a ballast of 20 tons of gold bars and silver pesos (all the paper money in the islands had already been burned), securities, mail, and United States Department of State dispatches, which she dutifully brought back to Pearl on 3 March. However, on the way she took the time to chalk up her first confirmed “kill” of the war: the Japanese auxiliary gunboat Chuwa Maru (2719 GRT), sent to the bottom about 55 nautical miles from Keelung, Formosa on 9 February.

She arrived back in Pearl Harbor to unload her precious cargo.

USS Trout (SS-202) approaches USS Detroit (CL-8) at Pearl Harbor in early March 1942, to unload a cargo of gold that she had evacuated from the Philippines. The gold had been loaded aboard Trout at Corregidor on 4 February 1942. NH 50389

USS Trout (SS-202) coming alongside USS Detroit (CL-8) at Pearl. Note details of the submarine’s fairwater, and .30 caliber Lewis gun mounted aft of the periscope housing. NH 50388

USS Trout (SS-202) At Pearl Harbor in early March 1942, unloading gold bars which she had evacuated from Corregidor. 80-G-45971

USS Trout (SS-202): gold bars that Trout carried from Corregidor to Pearl Harbor. Photographed as the gold was being unloaded from the submarine at Pearl Harbor in early March 1942. 80-G-45970

Sailing for her 3rd War Patrol on 24 March, she was ordered to take the war to Tokyo and haunt the Japanese home waters. Trout fulfilled that mandate and logged damaging attacks on the tanker Nisshin Maru (16801 GRT) and Tachibana Maru (6521 GRT), as well as sending the Uzan Maru (5019 GRT) and gunboat Kongosan Maru (2119 GRT) to the bottom before returning to Pearl in early May.

At the time Trout had logged the most successful U.S. Navy submarine war patrol to date and she was given credit for 31,000 tons sunk and another 15,000 tons damaged.

Midway

Her 4th War Patrol was to participate in the fleet action that is known today as the Battle of Midway– Trout’s old December 7th stomping grounds. She left Pearl on 21 May in company with her sisters, USS Tambor, and USS Grayling, to join the 12-submarine Task Group 7.1, the Midway Patrol Group.

From her war diary of the battle, which included chasing down a crippled Japanese battleship which turned out to be the lost 14,000-ton Mogami class heavy cruiser Mikuma. She rescued two Japanese survivors from said warship, Chief Radioman Hatsuichi Yoshida and Fireman 3rd Class Kenichi Ishikawa, on 9 June. Some of the very few IJN POWs in American custody at the time, Trout was ordered to return to Pearl with her waterlogged guests of the Emperor’s Navy, arriving there five days later to an eager reception committee.

Battle of Midway, June 1942. The burning Japanese heavy cruiser Mikuma, photographed from a U.S. Navy aircraft during the afternoon of 6 June 1942, after she had been bombed by planes from USS Enterprise (CV-6) and USS Hornet (CV-8). Note her third eight-inch gun turret, with the roof blown off and barrels at different elevations, Japanese Sun insignia painted atop the forward turret, and wrecked midship superstructure. 80-G-457861

Japanese prisoners being removed from USS Trout (SS 202) at Pearl Harbor Submarine Base, Territory of Hawaii Shown: Three officers standing together are: Commander Jack Haines; Commander Norman Ives, and Commander O’Leary. Photographed 1942. 80-G-32213

Japanese prisoners being removed from USS Trout (SS 202) at Pearl Harbor Submarine Base, Territory of Hawaii Shown: Japanese Prisoner. Photographed 1942. 80-G-32212

With four patrols under his belt, including the successful 3rd patrol, the Corregidor ammo run/gold return, and the Midway POWs, FDR directed that LCDR Fenno be awarded the Army Distinguished Service Cross, while the rest of the crew received the Army Silver Star Medal. Fenno also racked up two Navy Crosses and, ordered to take command of the building Gato-class fleet boat USS Runner (SS-275), Trout’s plank owner skipper left for New London.

He was replaced by LCDR Lawson Paterson “Red” Ramage (USNA 1931) who had earned a Silver Star earlier in the year as the diving officer on Trout’s sister, USS Grenadier (SS-210), during the sinking of the 14,000-ton troopship Taiyō Maru.

Back in the War

Red Ramage and Trout left Pearl on the boat’s 5th War Patrol on 27 August, bound for the Japanese stronghold of Truk, where she was able to sink the net layer Koei Maru (863 GRT) and damage the 20,000-ton light carrier Taiyo, knocking the latter out of the war for over two months and forced her back to Kure for repairs.

Escort carrier IJN Taiyo in Kure drydock after Trout torpedo

Damaged by a Japanese airstrike that knocked out her periscopes, Trout cut her patrol short and made for Freemantle.

Repaired, Trout’s 6th War Patrol, in the Solomons in October-November, proved uneventful.

Red Ramage then took Trout on her 7th Patrol, leaving Fremantle four days after Christmas 1942, headed for the waters off Borneo. This long (11,000-mile, 58-day) patrol saw the boat damage two large (16-17,000 ton) tankers as well as two small gunboats and sink a pair of coastal schoolers. Combat included a running gunfight with the tanker Nisshin Maru on Valentine’s Day 1943 which left 10 members of Trout’s crew injured.

Trout vs Nisshin Maru Feb 14 1943

Trout’s 8th War Patrol, a minelaying run off Japanese-occupied Sarawak, Borneo in March-April, ended Red Ramage’s tour with our boat, and he left Freemantle bound for Portsmouth where he would oversee the building, outfitting, and first two (very successful) war patrols of the new Balao-class submarine USS Parche (SS-384).

Trout’s final skipper would be LCDR Albert “Hobo” Hobbs Clark (USNA 1933) who had been Trout’s Engineering officer on several of her early war patrols before serving on the staff of SubRon 6. He rejoined his former boat as “the old man” on 4 May 1943, just shy of his 33rd birthday. He would not see his 34th.

Trout was ordered back to the occupied Philippines as part of LCDR Charles “Chick” Parsons’s “Spy Squadron” of 19 submarines– including several Tambors— which delivered 1,325 tons of supplies in at least 41 missions to local guerrillas between December 1942 and New Years Day 1945, with an emphasis on medicine, weapons, ammunition, and radio gear.

Trout’s 9th War Patrol, from 26 May to 30 July 1943, saw two successful “special missions” landing agents and supplies in Mindanao well as conducting four attacks on Japanese surface ships, claiming some 17,247 tons sunk. Post-war the only confirmed sinking from this patrol was the freighter Isuzu Maru (2866 GRT), sunk 2 July.

Trout’s four attacks on the 9th War Patrol

As for the Spyron missions accomplished by Trout on this patrol, these included recovering Chick Parsons himself along with survivors of the Bataan Death March, who had escaped the hellish Davao POW camp, and delivering them to Australia where they were able to tell the world of what they had endured.

Details of Trout’s two Spyron missions, via the 7th Fleet Intelligence Section report:

Special mission accomplished. 12 June 1943.
Submarine: USS Trout (SS-202)
Commanding Officer: A. H. Clark
Mission: To deliver a party of six or seven men, funds ($10,000), and 2 tons of equipment and supplies to a designated spot on Basilon Island to establish a secret intelligence unit in the Sulu Archipelago and Zamboanga area; to establish coast watcher net in the area and for surveying purposes, and to arrange for delivery of extra supplies to guerrilla units.

Special Mission accomplished 9 July 1943
Submarine: USS Trout (SS-202)
Commanding Officer: A. H. Clark
Mission: To land a party of two officers and three men, together with supplies and ammunition off Labangan, Pagadian Bay, on the South Mindanao Coast. In addition to the above, Trout picked up Lt. Comdr. Parsons and four U.S. Naval officers and reconnoitered the area southeast of Olutanga Island (South Coast of Mindanao, P.I.).

Leaving Freemantle again just three weeks later on her 10th War Patrol, Trout again returned to the Philippines where she patrolled the Surigao and San Bernardino straits. She would fight an epic surface engagement, pirate style, with a Japanese trawler during this patrol.

As noted by DANFS:

On 25 August, she battled a cargo fisherman with her deck guns and then sent a boarding party on board the Japanese vessel. After they had returned to the submarine with the prize’s crew, papers, charts, and other material for study by intelligence officers, the submarine sank the vessel. Three of the five prisoners were later embarked in a dinghy off Tifore Island.

A happy patrol, she would go on to sink the transports Ryotoku Maru (3438 GRT) and Yamashiro Maru (3427 GRT) back-to-back on 23 September before returning to Pearl Harbor, and from there, a much-needed trip to Mare Island for a four-month shipyard overhaul.

In her first ten patrols, Trout claimed 23 enemy ships, giving her 87,800 tons sunk, and damaged 6 ships, for 75,000 tons.

Leaving Mare Island for Pearl, on 8 February, Trout began her 11th and final war patrol. Topping off with fuel at Midway on the 16th she headed towards the East China Sea but was never heard from again.

Hobo Clark went down fighting and her 81 officers and men are listed on Eternal Patrol, with Clark and two other officers in the USNA’s Memorial Hall. 

As detailed by DANFS:

Japanese records indicate that one of their convoys was attacked by a submarine on 29 February 1944 in the patrol area assigned to Trout. The submarine badly damaged one large passenger-cargo ship and sank the 7,126-ton transport Sakito Maru [which was carrying the Japanese 18th Infantry Regiment, of which 2,500 were lost]. Possibly one of the convoy’s escorts sank the submarine. On 17 April 1944, Trout was declared presumed lost.

It is thought that she was sunk by the destroyer Asashimo in conjunction with fellow tin cans Kishinami and Okinami.

Japanese destroyer Asashimo

Trout received 11 battle stars for World War II service and the Presidential Unit Citation for her second, third, and fifth patrols.

Trout is on the list of 52 American submarines lost in the conflict, along with twin sister Triton and classmates Grampus, Grayling, Grayback, Grenadier, and Gudgeon.

(Photo: Chris Eger)

Just five of 12 Tambors were still afloat on VJ Day, and the Navy quietly retried them for use as Reserve training ships and then disposed of even these remnants by the late 1950s.

Epilogue

The plans and war diaries for Trout are in the National Archives. 

Her 2nd Patrol– the Corregidor sneak that brought in AAA shells and left with gold and silver– was turned into an episode of The Silent Service in the 1950s.

Of her two surviving skippers, Mike Fenno would go on to take USS Runner on her first two war patrols in 1943 and take USS Pampanito (SS-383) on her 4th in 1944, chalking up at least two additional Japanese Marus, before going on to command SubRon 24 (“Fenno’s Ferrets”) for the rest of the war. He went on to command Guantanamo Bay during the tense early Castro period and retired as a rear admiral in 1962.

RADM Mike Fenno passed away in 1973, aged 70, and is buried in Arlington.

Red Ramage likewise took other boats out after he left Trout and is famous for a July 1944 convoy attack on USS Parche in conjunction with USS Steelhead that went down in the history books as “Ramage’s Rampage,” after it sent five Japanese ships to the bottom. This earned Ramage the MoH. He retired as a vice admiral in 1969 and passed in 1990. Like Mike Fenno, he is buried at Arlington. In 1995, the Flight I Burke, USS Ramage (DDG-61)— which I worked on at Ingalls and sailed on her trials– was named in honor of “Red.”

Red Ramage

The Navy recycled Trout’s name for a late-model diesel boat of the Tang class (SS-566). This second USS Trout was laid down on 1 Dec. 1949 at EB and at her launch she was sponsored by the widow of LCDR Albert H. Clark, the last commanding officer of the first USS Trout (SS-202), who was lost on the boat’s 11th war patrol in 1944 along with 80 other souls.

Here we see a P-2H Neptune of Patrol Squadron (VP) 16 as it flies over the Tang-class submarine USS Trout (SS-566), near Charleston, S.C., May 7, 1961. NHHC KN-2708

After serving during the Cold War and being transferred to Turkey, in 1992, the near-pristine although 40-year-old Trout was returned to U.S. Navy custody and then used as an experimental hull and acoustic target sub at NAWCAD Key West. She somehow survived in USN custody until 2008 when she was finally reduced to razor blades at Brownsville.

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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How about this great circa 1988 shot of an unidentified sailor in UDT shorts and a chocolate chip boonie firing from the hip at a target floating behind the wooden-decked Aggressive/Agile-class ocean minesweeper USS Esteem (MSO 438), “somewhere in the Persian Gulf.” The rifle seems to be an XM177.

USN Photo 330-CFD-DN-ST-89-02593 by PH2 Alexander C. Hicks, Jr., USN, via NARA 6443568

The 172-foot Esteem, one of 93 members of her class, was built by the Martinolich Shipbuilding Co. of San Diego in the days after the U.S. Navy had an abrupt experience with sea mines off Korea in 1950 and she joined the fleet in 1955.

After lots of service in the Far East through the Vietnam era (earning six Vietnam Service Medals as well as the Republic of Vietnam Meritorious Unit Citation), by 1987 she was sent to the Persian Gulf, based in Bahrain with a lot of her sisters to combat a rash of mines left bobbing around in the wake of the Iran-Iraq War, a page in the largely forgotten story of Navy MCM during that period.

Decommissioned and struck from the Naval Register on 30 September 1991 after 36 years of service, she was laid up at Bremerton until disposed of for sale in 2000 and scrapped soon after.

Back in the 1970s, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands all needed replacement minesweepers to phase out WWII-era vessels. The answer was to band together to jointly develop a class known to naval history as the Tripartite, of which some 35 were built to close out the Cold War.

Now showing their age, the 600-ton 169-foot Tripartites have been increasingly retired and passed on to second-hand users such as Ukraine, Pakistan, Latvia, and Bulgaria.

Dutch Tripartite-mijnejager Hr Ms Hellevoetsluis (M859, 1987-2011). NIMH N0009330-12

To replace the vessels in Belgian-Dutch service, as well as the 2,000-ton circa 1965 Belgian minesweeper tender Godetia, the two Lowland countries teamed up for a dozen assorted City-class MCMs that run much bigger (2800 tons, 270-foot) than the ships they are replacing, with each country picking up six new ships.

They look like a floating breadbox. 

Note the landing platform for UAVs and davits for USVs

M940 class model as viewed by Dutch King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima, along with Belgian King Philippe and Queen Mathilde

Leaning heavily into unmanned systems including unmanned surface, aerial, and underwater vehicles alongside towed sonars and mine identification and neutralization ROVs, they also carry a 40mm Bofors Mk4 DP gun, soft-kill systems such as an LRAD, and high-pressure water cannon, as well as several mounts for .50 cal remote guns and 7.62mm GPMGs. This allows the City class to clock in as needed for low-threat OPV and constabulary work, such as against pirates off Somalia and migrants in the Med.

The first of the class, the future Belgian minehunter Oostende (M940), began her pre-delivery sea trials earlier this month with a planned commissioning in December.

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

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

Warship Wednesday, 11 September 2024: You Have to Go Out…

USCG Photo #: 16079-A Photographer: J. N. Heuisy

Above we see a member of the 35 so-called “Buck and a Quarter” Active-class Coast Guard cutters rushed into completion to deal with bootleggers during Prohibition, the USCGC Jackson (WPC-142) as she appeared in 1927 in her original “rum-buster” haze gray configuration. Don’t let the bone in her teeth fool you, she is probably just making revolutions for 10 knots– her designed top speed.

These choppy little 125-foot gunboats were designed to serve as subchasers in times of war and Jackson, along with her sister Bedloe, did their part during the conflict, atop an unforgiving sea, to the bitter end.

The 125s

These cutters were intended for trailing the slow, booze-hauling “Blacks” mother ships of “Rum Row” along the outer line of patrol during Prohibition.

Constructed for $63,173 each, they originally had a pair of 6-cylinder 150hp Superior or Winton diesel engines that allowed them a stately speed of 10 knots, max, but allowed a 4,000 nm, theoretically Atlantic-crossing range– an outstanding benefit for such a small craft.

While slow, this was deemed at first adequate as most of the Blacks were cheapy acquired and nearly condemned old coasters and fishing schooners salvaged from backwater ports around New England and the Maritimes for their shady last hurrah. 

For armament, they carried a single 3″/23 cal deck gun for warning shots– dated even for the 1920s– a Lewis gun or two for serious use, and a small arms locker that included everything from Tommy guns to .38s. In a time of conflict, they could tote listening gear and depth charge racks left over from the Great War, but we’ll get to that later.

Taking advantage of one big contract issued on 26 May 1926, the class were all built within 12 months by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation in Camden, New Jersey (although often listed as “American Brown Boveri” due to their owners at the time, the Swiss Brown Boveri corporation).

The class was named in honor of former historic cutters from the Coast Guard and its preceding Lighthouse Service, Revenue Marine, and Revenue Cutter Services.

Meet Bedloe

Commissioned 25 July 1927 as USCGC Antietam (WPC-128) after a circa 1864 Revenue Cutter Service centerboard schooner of the same name that was a nod to the pivotal Maryland Civil War battle, this hardy 125-footer was first stationed in Boston under the 1st CG District where she served for eight years, accomplishing her hallmark law enforcement and SAR duties but also breaking light ice when needed.

The USCG sent no less than 11 of the first 125s to Boston, where they were desperately needed to parol the New England coastline. Besides Antietam, they included USCGC Active (WPC-125), Agassiz (WPC-126), Alert (WPC-127), Bonham (WPC-129), Dix (WPC-136), Faunce (WPC-138), Fredrick Lee (WPC-139), Harriet Lane (WPC-141), General Greene (WPC-140), and Jackson (WPC-142).

These new cutters were based at the Charleston Navy Yard and arrived in a haze-gray livery, built to take the “Rum War” to the bootleggers.

Five 125-foot cutters– likley including Antietam– at Charleston Navy Yard Boston late 1920s. Boston Public Library Leslie Jones Collection.

Once the Volstead Act was repealed, the 125s got a more regal peacetime USCG white and buff appearance.

Cutter Antietam in the Boston area, likely during a summer regatta around 1930. Boston Public Library Leslie Jones Collection 08_06_004565.

USCGC Antietam, later Bedloe in 1930, likely in the Boston area. USCG Photo.

With cutters needed on the Great Lakes and the downturn in cutter tempo that accompanied the end of Prohibition, Antietam transferred to Milwaukee in May 1935, a station that typically meant a winter lay-up once the lakes froze over.

Of note, on 1 December 1937, Antietam was used as a dive platform for a famous deep dive in Lake Michigan by Max Gene Nohl that set the world’s then-deep dive record of 420 feet. Nohl, using a self-contained suit with a heliox (helium/oxygen) breathing mixture pioneered by what would become DESCO, had earlier made history from the cutter’s deck the previous April when she hosted the first live underwater broadcast to a national audience by WTMJ over the NBC-Blue network.

On 10 April 1937, Max Nohl (shown in the dive suit) along with John Craig made a dive on the shipwreck Norland to perform another early test of the newly designed diving suit in conjunction with testing the helium-oxygen mixture that Dr. End and Max had been working on. The dive took place off the deck of the Coast Guard cutter Antietam (note the “A” on her whaler) about five miles out from Milwaukee’s breakwater, via the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Between 1939 and 1940, most of the 125s in the Coast Guard’s inventory had their often cranky original diesels replaced by new General Motors 268-As. Rated for 600 hp, they were capable of breaking 14 knots (vs the designed 10) in still seas. However, the radius dropped down to 2,500nm @ 12 knots and 3,500 @ 8.

Then came WWII in Europe and the need for the Neutrality Patrol. This was long before FDR’s 1 November 1941 Executive Order 8929 that transferred the Coast Guard to the Navy Department.

With the Navy short on hulls, Antietam was pulled from her Wisconsin home and ordered to Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1940. There, her armament was beefed up at the Tietjen & Lang yard to include stern depth charge racks and the capacity to carry 10 cans. To acknowledge the upgrade, in February 1942, the 125s were redesignated from WPC (Coast Guard patrol craft) to WSC (Coast Guard sub chaser.)

Assigned to the EASTSEAFRON (Eastern Sea Frontier), Antietam was stationed out of Stapleton, Staten Island, where she saw service as a coastwise convoy escort along the eastern seaboard. It was in this duty that she proved a godsend to those souls on the sea and was involved in several rescues including that of the unescorted Gulf Oil tanker SS Gulftrade (6,776 tons) after she had been sunk by U-588 (Victor Vogel). Antietam pulled 16 Gulftrade survivors out of the ocean on 9 March 1942.

It was around this period that our cutter would be further up-armed with a pair of 20mm/70 Mk 4 Oerlikon AAA guns, a Mousetrap Mk 20 ASWRL, swap out their goofy little 3″/23 for a 40mm Bofors single Mk 1, and pick up a SO-model surface search radar set. So equipped, they had become subchasers in reality rather than just names.

The 125-foot Coast Guard Cutter Cuyahoga ready to depart from the Coast Guard Yard in Curtis Bay, Md., Feb. 11, 1945. U.S. Coast Guard photo. Note her 40mm Bofors crowding her bow. By mid-war Antietam and her sisters had a similar appearance.

As the Navy was looking to use the name “Antietam” for a new Essex-class fleet carrier (CV-36) that was under construction at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, our patrol boat was unceremoniously renamed USCGC Bedloe on 1 June 1943. Shortly after, she was dispatched to Navy Section Base (NSB) Morehead City, North Carolina, to join the Chesapeake Escort Group (T.G. 02.5).

The AOR of TG 02.5, as seen on the cover of its war diary

Morehead City served as the link in the coastal escort chain between Norfolk and Charleston and its vessels– a mix of auxiliary motor minesweepers (YMS), miscellaneous Yard Patrol craft (YPs), random patrol yachts such as USS Cymophane (PYc-26), a handful of 110-foot patrol boats (PC) and subchasers (SC), augmented by a dozen Coast Guard 83 footer “Jeeps of the Deep”— was a motley assortment to say the least. A couple of 97-foot converted trawler hulled coastal minesweepers, USS Kestrel (AMc-5) and USS Advance (AMc-63) puttered around on sweep duties just in case the Germans laid a few eggs.

Antietam/Bedloe, and her sister Jackson, were about the brawniest vessels the Morehead City group had at its disposal.

USCGC Bedloe, probably 1944. Note her stern depth charges and SO radar set. USCG Photo #: A-8125.

Meet Jackson

Repeating the name of one of the 13 circa 1830s Morris-Taney class 73-foot topsail schooners ordered for the service USCGC Jackson (WPC-142) commissioned 14 March 1927. Like her sister Antietam/Bedloe, she was immediately assigned to Boston.

Four 125-foot cutters at Charleston Navy Yard Boston late 1920s including, from the outside, USCGC Fredrick Lee, General Green, and Jackson. Boston Public Library Leslie Jones Collection.

Like Antietam, Jackson painted over her haze grey for a more Coastie white and buff scheme post-Prohibition.

A black and white photograph of the Coast Guard Cutter Jackson passing through the Cape Cod Canal on the day of the Canal Bridge Opening, August 15, 1935. Nina Heald Webber Cape Cod Canal collection. MS028.04.022.005

Reassigned in the late 1930s to U.S. Coast Guard Stations Rochester and Greenport, New York in the Great Lakes, Neutrality Patrol work saw her armed and assigned to Norfolk on 1 July 1941 for anti-submarine patrol and coastal escort duty.

This typically boiled down to escorting one or two merchies at a time along cleared (for mines) routes at speeds hovering around 10 knots. Some faster vessels took their chances and ran the coastline on their own which didn’t always work.

One such instance was the unescorted and unarmed tanker SS Tiger (5,992 tons) which on April Fool’s Day 1942 caught a torpedo from U-754 (Hans Oestermann) just as she reduced speed and signaled with blinkers to pick up a pilot off Cape Henry, Virginia. Her complement taken off by the Yippee boat USS YP-52, Jackson and the tug Relief brought a salvage crew by the listing tanker to attempt to tow it to Norfolk but the hulk was uncooperative and sank in the Chesapeake.

On 20 July 1944, Jackson was made part of Task Group 02.5, joining sister Antietam/Bedloe.

Then came…

SS George Ade

An EC2-S-C1 break bulk cargo carrier, SS George Ade (7176 tons) was built by Florida-based J. A. Jones in 1944. Based out of Panama City, while carrying a mixed load of cotton, steel, and machinery from Mobile to New York, the brand new Liberty ship was unescorted (!) and steaming on a non-evasive course (!!) off Cape Hatteras when she came across by the Schnorchel-equipped Type IXC U-518 (Oblt. Hans-Werner Offermann) on 12 September 1944.

Hit by a Gnat that destroyed her rudder and flooded the shaft alley, she was effectively dead in the water. Her Naval Armed Guard fired a few rounds in U-518’s direction, keeping the boat away but she was a sitting duck.

The Great Atlantic Hurricane of September 1944

Four days before George Ade was torpedoed, Commander Gulf Sea Frontier issued an advisory that a tropical hurricane centered east of the Leeward Islands was moving northwest at 10 knots. Aircraft recon on 11 September found a system with a radius of 150 miles and warnings “This is a large and severe storm” were flashed.

It would grow into what we today would deem a Category-4 monster.

Guantanamo to New York Convoy GN-156 on 12 September came across the storm’s periphery and logged 47-knot winds, later upping to over 65 which scattered the convoy although no casualties were reported.

On the night of 12 September, the refrigerated stores ship USS Hyades (AF-28), escorted by the Somers-class destroyer USS Warrington (DD-383) only two days out of Norfolk bound for Trinidad, encountered the hurricane between West Palm Beach and the Bahamas as the storm moved North.

USS Warrington (DD-383), photographed by Navy Blimp ZP-12, 9 August 1944. Just five weeks after this image was snapped, the destroyer would be at the bottom of the Atlantic. 80-G-282673

As noted by DANFS:

Later that evening, the storm forced the destroyer to heave to while Hyades continued on her way alone. Keeping wind and sea on her port bow, Warrington rode relatively well through most of the night. Wind and seas, however, continued to build during the early morning hours of the 13th. Warrington began to lose headway and, as a result, started to ship water through the vents to her engineering spaces.

The water rushing into her vents caused a loss of electrical power which set off a chain reaction. Her main engines lost power, and her steering engine and mechanism went out. She wallowed there in the trough of the swells-continuing to ship water. She regained headway briefly and turned upwind, while her radiomen desperately, but fruitlessly, tried to raise Hyades. Finally, she resorted to a plain-language distress call to any ship or shore station. By noon on the 13th, it was apparent that Warrington’s crewmen could not win the struggle to save their ship, and the order went out to prepare to abandon ship. By 1250, her crew had left Warrington; and she went down almost immediately.

From Warrington’s War History:

A prolonged search by Hyades, Frost (DE-144), Huse (DE-145), Inch (DE-146), Snowden (DE-246), Swasey (DE-248), Woodson (DE-359), Johnnie Hutchins (DE-360), ATR-9, and ATR-62 rescued only 73 men of the destroyer’s 321 member watch bill– and these were spread out for 98 miles from the destroyer’s last position!

Coordinated by the jeep carrier USS Croatan, whose escorting tin cans did a lot of the work in pulling men from the water, the group commander signaled on 14 September, “Sharks very active. Am making every effort to locate and recover living before dark as those so far rescued are very weak.”

Further north, New York to Guantanamo Convoy NG-458, with 15 tankers and 17 freighters escorted by two frigates and a few PCs and YMSs, encountered the unnamed hurricane for 18 hours across the 12th and 13th, and reported: “winds estimated 130-150 knots and seas 50-60 feet.” The COMEASTSEAFRON War Diary for the period notes, “It was impossible for a person to remain exposed to the wind because the tremendous force of driving spray was unbearably painful. Visibility was nil, and all ships and escorts were widely scattered.”

One man, LT North Oberlin of USS PC-1210, was swept overboard “and undoubtedly drowned.”

Another small escort, PC-1217, had her bulkhead plates buckled and several compartments flooded– including her radio shack. Her communications knocked out and long missing from the rest of the convoy, she limped into Mayport alone on the 16th– self-resurrecting from among the missing thought dead.

One ship that never arrived in port was the 136-foot baby minesweeper USS YMS-409, which foundered and sank, taking her entire crew of 33 to the bottom.

Photo from the collection of LT(jg) Bernard Alexander Kenner who served on board YMS-409. He departed a few days before the ship left port and sank off Cape Hatteras. He kept this photo for over 61 years along with a list of his former crew mates who perished, via Navsource.

Further up the coast, the USCG’s Vineyard Sound lightship (LS-73), anchored before the shallows off Cuttyhunk, Massachusetts, was also claimed by the storm, taking her entire crew.

The 123-foot United States Lightvessel 73 (LV 73 / WAL-503) on her Vineyard Sound station where she served from 1924 through 1944. On 14 September 1944, she was carried off station during a hurricane and sank with the loss of all hands. USCG photo

…Back at the George Ade

Late on the afternoon of 12 September, some 14 hours after the attack by U-518 that left her dead in the water, the salvage ship USS Escape (ARS 6), escorted by our previously mentioned Bedloe and Jackson, arrived and took her in tow.

Struggling against the ever-increasing seas with the hurricane inbound, Ade and Escape hove to on 14 September some 12 miles off Bodie Island, North Carolina in 13 fathoms of water, where they reported 100-knot winds and 50-foot seas. Ade suffered one of her anchors, two lifeboats, and four rafts carried away.

However, the tow’s escorts, Bedloe and Jackson, had vanished.

At around 1030 on 14 September, Jackson was struck hard by seas while laid her over her port side, a roll from which the 125-footer could not recover. Given the order to abandon ship, her complement too to four life rafts, which all swamped/flipped and sank within 30 minutes. This left her crew afloat and on their own…in a hurricane.

Bedloe, meanwhile, was entirely unaware of the disaster with her nearby sister due to the strong seas and nil visibility. At around 1300 local, she suffered three severe rolls to port, the last of which left her that way until she submerged three minutes later. Of her crew, 29 were able to abandon ship on three life rafts.

Rescue

With Bedloe and Jackson failing to report to shore following the storm, and George Ade and Escape confirming their separation from the escorts, the 5th Naval District launched an air search beginning with four Coast Guard-operated OS2U3 Kinfishers from CGAS Elizabeth City taking to the air at first light on the morning of the 16th. At this point, the survivors of Bedloe and Jackson had been on the sea for two days.

The first group of men, the three waterlogged rafts from Bedloe with but just 21 remaining men, were spotted 10 miles off Cape Hatteras. Three of the Kingfishers landed and taxied to the rafts to give aid to the injured.

Pilots and radio operators knocked off their shoes and then dove into the water to help pull semi-conscious men onto the wings of the bobbing planes.

Eight of the Bedloe’s crew had perished over the night of the 15th from a mixture of injuries and exposure. Two more would die shortly after rescue.

A Navy blimp dropped emergency rations.

Navy airship hovers over two OS2Us and a CG launch with picked-up survivors of the USCGC Bedloe, 16 September. USN ZP24-2906

With the Kingfishers on hand as a guide, a Coast Guard 30-foot motor lifeboat, CG-30340, from the Oregon Inlet Lifeboat Station, 15 miles away, raced to the scene and brought the survivors ashore.

BM1 William W. McCreedy from the Oregon inlet Lifeboat Station, who assisted in the rescue of the survivors from the Bedloe said the first thing he saw was a man doubled up in a small raft, his eyes resembling “a couple of blue dots in a beefsteak.”

“He flashed a beautiful smile that couldn’t be missed,” McCreedy continued. “I felt I had looked at something a man sees once in a lifetime — sort of thought I had come to the edge of heaven. Then, as though his last will to fight had been lost when he saw us, he jumped into the water. The radioman grabbed him and held him in the raft. I went overboard to help and the three of us dragged the raft down. The unconscious man’s foot was twisted in the lines, but I cut him free and we put him in the boat.” Just before reaching shore, the man reached, stroked McCreedy’s face and mumbled “We made it.” Then he died.

Once back at Oregon Inlet, a Coast Guard PBM with a doctor aboard flew the men to Norfolk for treatment.

Original caption: “Coast Guard survivors of hurricane disaster recover in Norfolk hospital: eight of the 12 survivors of the hurricane sinking of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Bedloe are shown recovering in the naval hospital at Norfolk, Virginia. They were rescued by Coast Guard air and seacraft after clinging to life rafts for more than 50 hours in shark-invested [sic] Waters 15 miles off the Virginia coast. All suffered from shock and exposure, as well as lashing by the stingers of ‘Portuguese men-of-war.’ the cutter Bedloe was sunk at the height of the hurricane on Thursday, about the time that the Coast Guard Cutter Jackson went down in the same area. In all, 19 were rescued and 49 officers and enlisted men are missing in the twin disaster. In this group, left to right, are Coast Guardsmen Jerry VanDerPuy, seaman, first class, of. . . .Sheboygan, Wisconsin; John Kissinger, soundman, third class, of Brooklyn, N.Y.; Robert Greeno, seaman first class, of Monroe, Michigan; Robert Hearst, seaman first class, of Latonia, Kentucky; Joseph Martzen, soundman second class, of. . . .McAdoo, Pennsylvania.; Michael J. Cusono, radioman third class, of Schenectady, NY, Pearcy C. Poole, chief radioman of Lakewood, N.J. and Joseph Ondrovik, coxswain of Bellville, Michigan.” Date: 14 September 1944. USCG Photo 1248 Photographer: “Kendall”, U.S. Coast Guard photo.

The search for the floating Jackson survivors continued into the night of the 16th, with Navy Blimp K-20 following up on a report from a Navy SB2C Helldiver that two groups of men were sighted in the water 18 miles offshore. USS Inflict (AM-251), on her shakedown cruise between Charleston and Norfolk, joined the rescue.

Aided by dropped water lights from the aircraft, whaleboats from the minesweeper recovered 12 men who had been adrift for over 60 hours, hounded by sharks and Portuguese men-of-war. Of these, the ship’s pharmacist’s mate found one man had a gangrene infection, another appendicitis, a third a broken leg, and a fourth a dislocated shoulder and cracked ribs, while all suffered necrotic salt water ulcers, hypothermia, and general fatigue.

Pushing her twin ALCO diesels to their max to break 14 knots, Inflict made Norfolk on the morning of the 17th and her charges were rushed to the Naval Hospital.

Later that day, USS PC-1245 recovered the floating bodies of four from Bedloe.

The air and naval search for the cutters’ lost members continued until the evening of the 18th. No less than 116 planes and six blimps had been aloft in the search.

In all, 22 men from Bedloe are still marked “missing” while another four who were recovered died. Of Jackson’s crew, which spent more time in the sea– almost all of it treading water– 21 are still somewhere under the waves.

This bill from Poseidon was paid, along with the 251 souls from the destroyer Warrington, LT Oberlin of PC-1210, the 33 minemen aboard YMS-409, and a dozen lightkeepers on LV-73.

Epilogue

Separate courts of inquiry conducted by ComFive and COMEASTSEAFRON inquired into the loss of Bedloe and Jackson:

Coast Guard Historian William H. Thiesen suspected Jackson succumbed to waves pushed ahead of the storm’s eyewall, while Bedloe was sunk by rogue waves formed on the backside of the eyewall, writing in a 2019 Proceedings article that, “It is possible that both cutters were victims of a phenomenon called the ‘three sisters,’ a series of rogue waves that travel in threes and are large enough to be tracked by radar.”

Post-war, the Coast Guard would use both cutters’ names a third time, with USCGC Jackson (WPC-120), ex-USS PCE(R)-858, and USCGC Bedloe (WPC-121), ex-USS PCE(R)-860. In typical Coast Guard fashion, “Both of the new cutters remained berthed at Curtis Bay, Maryland due to a lack of personnel,” and were later decommissioned and sold in 1947.

Today, Jackson rests, broken in two, southeast of Nags Head in 77 feet of water in NOAA’s Monitor National Marine Sanctuary. Navy EOD visited the site in the 1990s to remove ordnance and depth charges.

Sister Bedloe is close by, intact but on her side in 140 feet of water, and, while her depth charges were removed by the Navy, NOAA notes she still has live shells aboard.

The USCGC Maple in 2022 hosted a Coast Guard chaplain, divers, and an underwater archaeologist for four days while the sites were visited, mapped, and honored.

The Coast Guard Art Program has also saluted the cutters.

“The Fate of Cutters Jackson and Bedloe,” Louis Barberis, watercolor, 16 x 23. US Coast Guard Art Program 2005 Collection, Ob ID # 200503

As for the SS George Ade, the Liberty ship made it back to Norfolk where she was drydocked and repaired, returning to service on 18 December 1944.

Ade’s shot away rudder and damaged screw/shaft following the hit from U-518 and surviving a hurricane at sea immediately after. Photos: MARAD.

Post-war, Ade was transferred to the National Defense Reserve Fleet, in Mobile, Alabama, and, after 20 years in mothballs, was sold for scrap in 1967.

As for U-518, she was sunk on 22 April 1945 in the North Atlantic north-west of the Azores by depth charges from the destroyer escorts USS Carter (DE 112) and USS Neal A. Scott (DE 769), with all hands lost including Oblt. Hans-Werner Offermann. Ade was the final ship the U-boat had torpedoed.

U-518 via Deutsches U-Boot-Museum, Cuxhaven-Altenbruch, Germany

The Atlantic holds its dead.

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80 years ago today: American DUKWs transport supplies to waiting British troops and American paratroopers across the River Waal at Nijmegen, Holland, the day after German frogmen of Marine Einsatzkommando (MEK) 65 dropped the East-West bridge’s central span via floating mines, 30 September 1944

Midgley, A. N. (Sergeant), No. 5 Army Film and Photo Section, Army Film and Photographic Unit, IWM B 10435

Same as above, IWM B10434

During the war, the Arsenal of Democracy cranked out over 21,000 of this six-wheel-drive amphibious modification of GMC’s 2+1⁄2-ton CCKW “Jimmy” trucks.

With a 7-ton curb weight, they were capable of 50 mph on paved roads and 6 knots in the water via its stern propeller and could carry 24-ish troops or as much as 5,000 pounds of payload while operated by a single driver.

DUKW Amphibious vehicles in the canals of Venice, Italy, during World War II. c. May, 1945

They remained in service post-war well through Korea while Allies such as France (Indochina), Britain (Malaya/Borneo), and Spain (Africa) would keep them in service into the 1980s.

DUKW of the Spanish Infantería de Marina in a Madrid parade, late 1960s

Following up on our Warship Wednesday this week, which covered the Great War-era Admiralty Strath-class “battle trawler” HMT William Barnett (3632) and its later life as the French Navy’s auxiliary minesweeper Roche Noire during WWII, how about a great series of related period maritime art?

British portrait painter, landscape artist, and printmaker Francis Edgar Dodd, RA, turned 40 as the “lamps are going out all over Europe.”

Volunteering to serve as an Official War Artist during World War I, he spent some time at sea with the hired trawler HMT Mackenzie (Adty No 336) during the conflict.

One of more than 1,400 British trawlers taken up from trade— some dating back to 1880– Mackenzie was built in 1911 (Hull-reg H.349) and retained her original name while in naval service. A craft of some 335 tons, she was hired in August 1914 and would remain in RN service, armed with a single 6-pounder Hotchkiss gun, likely taken from an old torpedo boat or battleship fighting top.

Primarily serving as a minesweeper, Mackenzie was returned to her owner in 1919.

She was one of the lucky ones. Of the 1,456 hired trawlers used by the British during the war, 266 were lost during the conflict including no less than 142 to enemy action. They fought a war very much as real as those with the Grand Fleet at Jutland. 

Dodd captured the life on Mackenzie in great detail. You can almost smell the pipes’ smoke and coal dust. 

All of these pieces are from the Imperial War Museum Collection, which has some 80 of Dodd’s wartime pieces digitized and viewable online.

The After Cabin, HM Trawler Mackenzie (Art. IWM ART 904) image: four sailors sit around a large table, upon which are plates and cutlery, while behind are cabin windows; one sailor is seen full length, the others half body. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7556

A Cook in the Galley, HM Trawler Mackenzie (Art. IWM ART 896) image: three-quarter portrait of a man in overalls and cap, holding a mug in his left hand. He is sitting in a galley, with a large range, a pot, and a kettle on the left Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7548

Cleaning the Gun, HM Trawler Mackenzie (Art. IWM ART 898) image: standing on the left a sailor, wearing a life jacket, is thrusting a pole into the breech of a deck gun, most of the mechanism of which is to the right. Rigging and a white ensign are visible behind the gun, and other ships are visible on the horizon. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7550

Cards in the Fo’c’s’le, HM Trawler Mackenzie (Art. IWM ART 931) image: below decks in a confined space, five sailors stand and sit around a table playing cards, while two others look on. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7584

The Engine Room, HM Trawler Mackenzie (Art. IWM ART 897) image: two men stand in an enclosed space surrounded by the heavy machinery of a ship’s engine room. The man to the right, wearing a cap, has his left hand on the engine-room telegraph apparatus, while the man to the left, with a pipe in his mouth, has his right leg up on a step. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7549

Forward from the Wheelhouse, HM Trawler Mackenzie: the figures are just about to slip the ‘kite’ used to sink the wire hawser to the required depths for sweeping (Art. IWM ART 905) image: a view of the bow, mast, and starboard forward deck of a ship at sea. Two figures are bending over equipment on the deck, while a third stands on a ladder resting over the side of the ship. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7557

The Stokehold, HM Trawler Mackenzie (Art. IWM ART 903) image: in a cramped enclosed space of metal plating and machinery, a stoker is bent over shoveling coal from a bunker into a boiler. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7555

Sweeps to Starboard: HMT Mackenzie (Art. IWM ART 909) image: in the foreground is a view over the side of a ship with minesweeping equipment deployed. Behind, a broad seascape with several other trawlers in the distance. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7562

The Wheelhouse, HM Trawler Mackenzie (Art. IWM ART 933) image: a view inside the wheelhouse of a ship, with two officers to the left and a sailor controlling the wheel, all in left profile. A binnacle is in the left foreground and another trawler is visible through the wheelhouse windows. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7586

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

Warship Wednesday on a Friday, Dec. 27, 2024: Taking a Licking

Via Navsource.

Above we see the Balao-class fleet submarine USS Bergall (SS-320) upon her triumphal return to Freemantle, Australia, some 80 years ago this week, on 23 December 1944, on completion of her epic Second War Patrol. The path of a 278-pound 8-inch shell fired from the Japanese heavy cruiser Myoko is clearly marked, having passed from port to starboard through the sub’s pressure hull.

But you should see the other guy!

The Balaos

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. U.S. subs, unlike those of many navies of the day, 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) Mk 14 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 Spikefish and USS Greenfish, the rocket mail-slinging USS Barbero, the carrier-slaying USS Archerfish, the long-serving USS Catfish, the U-boat scuttling USS Atule, the Busy Bug that was the USS Bugara, and the frogman Cadillac USS Perch —but don’t complain, they have lots of great stories.

Meet Bergall

Bergall was named for a small fish (Tautogolabrus adspersus) found along the East Coast.

Via the State of New York Forest, Fish, and Game Commission, 1901, painted by SF Denton.

Laid down on 13 May 1943 at Electric Boat in Groton, Bergall launched just nine months later and commissioned on 12 June 1944, her construction running just 396 days.

Electric Boat Company, Groton, Connecticut. Shipway where future USS Bergall (SS-320) is under construction, circa summer 1943. Two welders are at work in the foreground. 80-G-K-15063

Her plankowner skipper, T/CDR John Milton Hyde, USN, (USNA 1934), had already earned a Silver Star as executive officer of the Salmon-class submarine USS Swordfish (SS-193) across four Pacific war patrols that bagged 11 Japanese ships and commanded that sub’s sister, Snapper (SS-185) while the latter was under overhaul.

Bergall carried out shakedown operations off New England for three weeks then, following post-shakedown availability at New London, set out for the Pacific via the Caribbean and the Panama Canal, pausing to rescue the two fliers of a crashed Army training plane in the Mona Passage off Puerto Rico.

She arrived at Pearl Harbor on 13 August and was soon ready for battle.

War!

Made the flagship of SubRon 26’s SubDiv 262, Bergall departed from Pearl Harbor on 8 September 1944 on her First War Patrol, ordered to hunt in the South China Sea.

Arriving off Saipan on the 19th, she soon had her first encounter with the Empire’s fighting men:

Her first contact with the enemy came a day and a half west of Saipan when in the high periscope she sighted a small boat containing five Japanese infantrymen. Bergall closed, attempting rescue, but the efforts were abandoned when the Japanese made gestures that indicated that they wanted us to leave them alone and that we were the scum of the earth. The Americans marveled at the pride and insolent bearing of the enemy, admired their courage, and pitied their stupidity.

Continuing West, she damaged a small Japanese transport vessel with gunfire east of Nha Trang, French Indo-China on 3 October with an exchange of 5-inch (20 rounds) and 40mm (40 rounds) gunfire, and six days later sank a small (700-ton) Japanese cargo vessel just south of Cam Ranh Bay with a trio of Mark 14 torpedoes.

She followed up on that small fry on 13 October by stalking a small four-ship convoy off the coast of Vietnam and sent the tanker Shinshu Maru (4182 GRT) to the bottom via four Mk 23s– and survived a five-hour-long depth charging in retaliation.

On the 27th, she torpedoed and sank the big Japanese tanker Nippo Maru (10528 GRT) and damaged the Japanese tanker Itsukushima Maru (10007 GRT, built 1937) south-west of Balabac Strait, a heroic action seeing the two vessels were protected by a thick escort of four frigates.

On her way back to Freemantle on 2 November, she sank, via 420 rounds of 20mm, a small junk loaded with coconuts and chickens east of the Kangean Islands. Hyde noted in his patrol report “Regret the whole affair as picayune.”

Bergall’s very successful First War Patrol ended at Freemantle on 8 November 1944, covering 15,702 miles. Seventh Fleet authorized a Submarine Combat Insignia for the patrol and credited the boat with sinking 21,500 tons of Japanese shipping.

Not a bad first start!

Hyde would pick up his second Silver Star while the boat’s XO, LCDR Kimmel was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with Combat “V.”

Cruiser Shootout

On 2 December 1944, Bergall departed Fremantle for her Second War Patrol, ordered once again to hunt in the South China Sea.

On 13 December, nearing sunset, our boat spotted a large ship at 35,000 yards off Royalist Bank and made a plan to attack after dark.

Over the next couple of hours, running in just 12-to-14 fathoms of water, she fired six Mk 23s while on the surface and received gunfire back. It turned out she blew the stern off the heavy cruiser Myoko and left her dead in the water. In return, the surfaced submarine was bracketed by shells typically credited as being 8-inchers from Myoko but more likely 5-inch shells from the escorting Japanese destroyer Ushio. One of these zipped right through Bergall’s pressure hull, a disaster that kept the submarine from surfacing while floating some 1,200 miles inside Japanese territory.

Her patrol report on the attack:

While the shell impact left no personnel casualties, the sub was severely damaged and, with no welding capability, repairs consisted of a mix of brazed and bolted plates, plugged with pillows and mattresses:

With all guns manned, demolition charges set for scuttling, and her damage patched up as best as possible, Bergall headed for home and was grateful when, on the morning of 15 December, she rendezvoused with the Gato-class submarine USS Angler (SS-240).

Transferring 2/3rds of her crew (54 men and one officer, the junior ensign) to Angler, Hyde noted of the attempt to make the Karimata Strait:

“if mandatory we could dive in shallow water and sit on the bottom. With Angler near at hand the enterprise didn’t seem too bad for the skeleton crew and officers. To have scuttled our ship in itself seemed unthinkable and it wasn’t much further to deep water in the right direction that it was in the wrong. The weather was very much in our favor too. The sky was heavily overcast with rain storms coming from the west-northwest.”

The men who remained aboard, all volunteers, comprised eight officers and 21 crew, the latter including at least three chiefs. This allowed an underway watch bill with two officers on the bridge, two men (helm and radar) in the tower, three (Chief of Watch, Aux, and I.C.) in the control room, and one EM in the maneuvering room.

By the end of the 16th, Bergall and Angler cleared the Karimata Strait without incident.

By the 18th, they cleared the Lombok Strait– just skirting Japanese patrol boats in the dark.

Making Exmouth on the tip of Western Australia’s North West Cape on the 20th, Bergall was able to remove the lightly brazed plating from the torpedo loading hatch and had new plates arc welded in place, enabling her to make for Freemantle on the 23rd where she ended her abbreviated patrol.

Hyde would receive the Navy Cross for the patrol and three other officers received the Silver Star.

The patrol was later dramatized in an episode of The Silent Service coined, “The Bergall’s Dilemma.” Hyde appears at the end of the episode for a brief comment.

As for Myoko, arriving at Singapore via tow on Christmas day, she would never sail again under her own power and surrendered to the Royal Navy in September 1945.

Japanese Heavy Cruiser Myōkō in Singapore four days after surrendering to Royal Navy units, tied up alongside the submarines I-501 (ex U-181) and I-502 (ex U-862) – September 25, 1945 IWM – Trusler, C (Lt) Photographer IWM A 30701

Captain Power visits the damaged Japanese cruiser. 25 September 1945, Singapore. In May 1944, five ships of the Twenty-Sixth Destroyer Flotilla attached to the British East Indies fleet, led by HMS Saumarez, with Captain M L Power, CBE, OBE, DSO, and BAR, as Captain (D), sank the Japanese cruiser Haguro in one hours action at the entrance to the Malacca Strait. When Saumarez entered Singapore Naval Base, Captain Power with his staff officers, paid a visit to Myoko, the sister ship of Haguro, now lying there with her stern blown off after the Battle of the Philippines. Crossing to the deck of the Myoko via the conning tower of a German U-boat, Captain Power and his party were met by Japanese officers who took them on a comprehensive tour of the ship. Two British naval officers examine what is left of the Myoko’s stern. IWM A 30703

Cuties

Patched up and taking on a supply of diminutive new Mk 27 passive acoustic torpedoes– dubbed Cuties as they only went about half the size of Mk 14s and 23s— Bergall left Fremantle on 27 January 1945 for her Third War Patrol, ordered to scour the Lombok Strait of small Japanese escorts and move on to the South China Sea.

However, with a short range (just 5,000 yards), the shallow-water Cuties had to be used up close to work. Carrying a warhead with just 95 pounds of Torpex, they were meant for killing small escorts.

Between 27 January and 7 February, Bergall made five nighttime attack runs with Cuties while in the Lombok, each time allowing a single slow (12 knots) Mk 27 to swim out at ranges as close as 200 yards. The result was in sinking of the Japanese auxiliary minesweeper Wa 102 (174 tons)– picking up two survivors and making them POWs– and damaging the store ship Arasaki (920 GRT).

Moving toward the Philippines, Bergall sank the Japanese frigate Kaibokan 53 (745 tons) and damaged the tanker Toho Maru (10,238 GRT) off Cam Ranh Bay.

Then, on 13 February, working in conjunction with fellow subs USS Blower and Guitarro off Hainan island, she came across a ripe target for any submariner– a pair of Japanese battlewagons– the hybrid battleship/carriers Ise and Hyuga.

She ripple-fired six Mk 14s in a risky daylight periscope attack from 10,000 yards– without success.

She ended her patrol on 17 February at recently liberated Subic Bay, PI, having traveled 6,070 miles.

The “Cutie Patrol” would be immortalized in an episode of The Silent Service, “The Bergall’s Revenge.”

The hits keep coming

The boat’s uneventful Fourth War Patrol (5 March to 17 April) which included a special mission (typically code to land agents) and rescuing four USAAF B-25 aircrew from the water, ended at Freemantle.

Bergall then left Australia on 12 May 1945 on her Fifth Patrol, bound to haunt the coast of Indochina.

On the morning of the 18th, she battered a small Japanese coastal freighter in the Lombok Strait but didn’t get to see it sink as enemy aircraft were inbound.

Joining up with an American wolfpack in the Gulf of Siam including USS Bullhead (SS-332), Cobia (SS-245), Hawkbill (SS-366), and Kraken (SS-370), she sighted a small intercoastal convoy of tugs and barges in the predawn moonlight of 30 May, and sank same.

Then, on 13 June, she swept a mine the hard way while chasing an enemy convoy.

Ironically, the minefield, a mix of three dozen acoustic and magnetic-induction type mines, had been laid by Allied aircraft out of India in March and was unknown to the Seventh Fleet command. While the mine, which had at least a 490-pound explosive charge, was believed to be some 90 feet away from the hull when it went off, and Bergall’s hull retained integrity, it nonetheless rocked the boat severely.

From her damage report: 

The impact of the detonation jarred the entire ship. Personnel were knocked off their feet, tossed out of bunks, and in the maneuvering room were thrown up against the overhead. Lighting failed in the maneuvering and after torpedo rooms. The overspeed trips operated on Nos. 2 and 3 main Diesel engines, which were on propulsion, and No. 1 main Diesel engine, which was charging the batteries, causing all three engines to stop and thereby cutting off power to the main propulsion motors.

However, just 20 minutes after the explosion, Bergall had restarted her engines and was motoring away. While still capable of operations, her engineering suite was so loose and noisy it was thought she would be unable to remain operational and she was ordered to Subic, arriving there on 17 June.

Quick inspection at Subic found that the facility was unable to effect repairs and Bergall was ordered to shlep some 10,000 miles back to New London via Saipan, Pearl Harbor, and the Panama Canal.

Arriving at New London on 4 August 1945, she was there when the war ended.

Bergall earned four battle stars and a Navy Unit Commendation (for her 2nd patrol) for her World War II service. Her unconfirmed record at the end of the war included some 33,280 tons of enemy shipping sunk across five sunken warships and five merchantmen along with another 66,000 tons damaged.

Her WWII battle flag carried an upside-down horseshoe with the number “13” inside of it since so many incidents in her service had occurred on the 13th day of the month.

CDR Hyde, when he left the vessel in September 1945, was given a farewell watch by his crew. Engraved on its back was a large “13.”

As for Myoko, she towed to the Strait of Malacca in 1946 and scuttled off of Port Swettenham (Port Klang), Malaya.

Cold Warrior

Finishing her repair and overhaul– she picked up new sensors including an SV radar– Bergall rejoined the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in December 1945 and, as part of SubRon1, would spend the next five years stationed in Hawaii. This typically involved a series of reserve training dives, simulated war patrols and cruises between the West Coast and Hawaii, ASW exercises with the fleet, and acting as a tame sub for maritime patrol squadrons.

From December 1948 through February 1949, she roamed to the West Pac, visiting Australia and Japan for a bottom mapping exercise, a cruise that earned her a Navy Occupation Service Medal and a China Service Medal.

Bergall at Brisbane in December 1948, note she is still largely in her WWII configuration. Via Navsource. Photo courtesy of John Hummel, USN (Retired).

Transferring to the Atlantic Fleet in June 1950, she had her topside streamlined, landing her deck guns and receiving a new sail, then, between November 1951 and April 1952, received a Fleet Snorkel conversion at Philadelphia Navy Yard.

Bergall circa 1950, with her topside streamlined but before her snorkel conversion.

USS Bergall (SS-320), 22 July 1952. USN 479940

Bergall, in the spirit of her “lucky 13” nature, lost her periscope twice within five years during her peacetime service.

The first, in 1949, was to a passing Van Camp tuna boat off the California coast.

The second, during LANTFLEX on Halloween 1954, had her periscopes and radar masts where sliced through by the destroyer USS Norris (DDE-859)’s bow, luckily without any casualties.

Ironically, USS Angler, the same boat that stood by Bergall after she was holed in the fight against Myoko a decade prior, stood by her and escorted the sub into port.

Bergall (SS-320) as a causality on 2 November 1954. Photo and text i.d. courtesy of Mike Brood, bergall.org.

Repaired, she completed two Mediterranean cruises (9 Nov 1955-28 Jan 1956 and 31 Aug -6 Dec 1957), and, once she returned, was reassigned to Key West Naval Station for preparations to be handed over at military aid.

Bergall 1958, returning from Bermuda just before she was handed over to a NATO ally as military aid. Via Bergall.org

Turkish Guppy Days

Between May 1948 and August 1983, the Turkish Navy would receive no less than 23 second-hand U.S. Navy diesel submarines, all WWII-era (or immediately after) fleet boats.

These would include (in order of transfer): ex-USS Brill (SS 330), Blueback (SS 326), Boarfish (SS 327), Chub (SS 329), Blower (SS 325), Bumper (SS 333), Guitarro (SS 363), Hammerhead (SS 364), Bergall (SS 320), Mapiro (SS 376), Mero (SS 378), Seafox (SS 402), Razorback (SS 394), Thornback (SS 418), Caiman (SS 323), Entemedor (SS 340), Threadfin (SS 410), Trutta (SS 421), Pomfret (SS 391), Corporal (SS 346), Cobbler (SS 344), Tang (SS 563), and Gudgeon (SS 567).

Our Bergall would sail from Key West on 26 September 1958, bound for Izmir, Turkey, where she would arrive 19 days later.

On 17 October, she was decommissioned and handed over in a warm transfer to the Turkish Navy in a ceremony that saw her renamed Turgutreis (S-342), officially on a 15-year lease.

The highlights of the handover ceremony, in Turkish: 

Ex-Bergall/Turgutreis (S-342) in Turkish service. She would take part in the Cyprus War in 1974, among other operations with the Turkish fleet.

Turkey’s collection of Snorkel and GUPPY modified U.S. Navy fleet boats via the 1960 edition of Janes, to include Bergall/Turgutreis.

While in Turkish service, Bergall in the meantime had her name canceled from the Navy List in 1965 and was stricken from the USN’s inventory altogether in 1973, with ownership transferred to Istanbul.

Following the delivery of new Type 209 submarines from West Germany, Bergall/Turgutreis was no longer needed for fleet operations and in April 1983 she was decommissioned.

Renamed Ceryan Botu-6, she was relegated to pier side service at Golcuk Naval Shipyard for another 13 years, where she was stripped of parts to keep other American boats in operations while serving as a battery charging boat with a 15-man crew, primarily of electricians.

In June 1999, Ceryan Botu-6/Turgutreis/Bergall was pulled from service and sold for scrap the following year.

Turkey only retired its last two ex-USN “smoke boats,” Tang and Gudgeon, in 2004

Epilogue

Few lingering relics remain of Bergall.

Her War History and deck logs are in the National Archives. 

Her wartime skipper, John Milton Hyde (NSN: 0-73456), retired from the Navy following Korean War service as a captain with a Navy Cross and three Silver Stars on his salad bar. He passed in 1981, aged 71, and is buried in Arlington’s Section 25.

“The Old Man” completed 12 war patrols, five of them on Bergall.

The Navy recycled the name of its rough-and-tumble Balao for another vessel, SSN-667, a Sturgeon-class hunter-killer built, like her namesake, at EB, ordered on 9 March 1965.

USS Bergall (SSN-667) conducts an emergency surfacing test off the east coast, in September 1969. K-77428

Commissioned on 13 June 1969 (!) her ship’s crest carried five stars in a salute to the old Bergall’s five WWII Pacific war patrols. In another, less Navy-approved similarity to her namesake, she suffered a casualty-free peacetime collision with the submarine rescue vessel USS Kittiwake (ASR-13).

Notably, SSN-667 was the first submarine in the fleet to carry the Mk 48 heavy torpedo on deployment, as well as the first east coast-based submarine to carry a DSRV, and earned two Navy Unit Commendations. She decommissioned on 6 June 1996.

A vibrant veterans’ group saluting both Bergalls endures.

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!

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

Warship Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025: Go Long

Naval History and Heritage Command photo NH 51351

Above we see the Clemson-class “flush decker” USS Long (Destroyer No. 209), taking water over the bow, during her squadron’s experimental Alaska cruise, in 1937.

Don’t let her Great War-era good looks fool you, Long would go on to earn nine battle stars in the Pacific in WWII and be lost some 80 years ago this month.

The Clemsons

One of the massive fleets of 156 Clemson-class flush-decker destroyers, like most of her sisters, Long came too late to help lick the Kaiser. An expansion of the almost identical Wickes-class destroyers with a third more fuel capacity to enable them to escort a convoy across the Atlantic without refueling, the Clemsons were sorely needed to combat the pressing German submarine threat of the Great War.

At 1,200 tons and with a top speed of 35 knots, they were brisk vessels ready for the task.

Inboard and outboard profiles for a U.S. Navy Clemson-class destroyer, in this case, USS Doyen (DD-280)

Meet Long

Our subject is the only warship named for the Secretary of the Navy during the Spanish-American War, John Davis Long, one of the fathers of the “New American Navy.”

Laid down by William Cramp & Sons at Philadelphia on 23 September 1918– just Pershing’s Doughboys came out on top in the Battle of Saint-Mihiel– Long was just too late for the Great War. Launched on 26 April 1919, she was commissioned on 20 October 1919.

Of note, Long was a bit different from the rest of her Clemson-class sisters. While they were mostly completed with four single 4″/50s as a main battery, Long and her sister USS Hovey (DD 208) were completed with four twin 4″/50 mounts, doubling their guns.

Besides Long and Hovey, only the old (Caldwell-class) destroyer USS Stockton (DD 73) carried this Mk 14 mount, and she only did as a single experimental model mounted forward.

Stockton with her twin 4″/50 Mk 14

Hovey and Long carried four of these mounts, one forward and aft and two amidships.

USS Hovey (DD-208) view looking down from the foremast, showing the twin 4/50 gun mounts atop her midships deckhouse, along with a loading practice machine (in the lower left), ready service ammunition stowage, and three of the ship’s smokestacks. Taken during the mid-1930s. Collection of Rear Admiral Elmer E. Duval, Sr., who was Hovey’s Commanding Officer at the time. NH 99573

Postbellum service and a decade-long nap

While she didn’t get a chance to fire her guns in anger during the war itself, Long was nonetheless sent “Over There” following her East Coast shakedown cruise, assigned to DesDiv 26, she was assigned to the war-torn Adriatic and Mediterranean in the tense post-war era and served in the region as a station ship.

USS Long (DD-209) dressed in her glad rags next to one of her sisters in the Mediterranean, and two other dressed warships to the rear, circa 1919-1920. Courtesy of Jack Howland, 1982. NH 93979

Remaining overseas, she was sent to the exotic climes of the Asiatic Fleet in late 1920, based at Cavite.

USS Long (DD-209) and another destroyer of the Asiatic Fleet, c 1920s. Note the local vessel traffic– junks etc.– and extensive awning fits, common in the Pacific inter-war. Courtesy of Capt. G. F. Swainson, USN, 1969 NH 67244

Ordered back home after her globetrotting overseas service, Long was mothballed due to peacetime budget cuts– the Navy shrank from 752 ships in 1919 to just 379 by the end of 1922.

With that, Long decommissioned at San Diego on 30 December 1922, but she was kept on emergency standby if needed.

Thirty-four mothballed destroyers of the U.S. Navy decommissioned in 1921 and tied up at the San Diego Naval Base, being hauled from their berths by tugs to replace ships of the 11th and 12th squadrons that were being laid up. USS Long (DD-209) can be seen as tugs prepare to move her out, on 21 September 1929. Courtesy of the San Francisco Maritime Museum, San Francisco, California, 1969. NH 69123

Salad days

Between 1930-31, 60 Navy high mileage active duty flush-deckers with worn-out Yarrow boilers were decommissioned and disposed of– it was cheaper to scrap them than rebuild them. This required a dip into the reserve fleet to reactivate 60 of the low-mileage tin cans that had been growing algae on their hulls to take their place.

That meant Long, which recommissioned at San Diego on 29 March 1930, had her hull cleaned and was brought back to life, this time assigned to the Pacific Fleet.

A circa 1930s photo of USS Long, note her giant hull numbers, which were typical of the period. NARA 80-G-1025957

She maintained the standard peacetime operational tempo common to the fleet in the 1930s, alternating between training cruises and large fleet problems.

Battleship USS Maryland (BB-46) and escorting destroyers USS Hovey (DD-208), and USS Long (DD-209) (ships listed left to right) In the Miraflores Locks, while transiting the Panama Canal during the annual inter-ocean movement of the U.S. Fleet, 24 April 1931. Note the distinctive twin 4″/50 Mk 14 gun mountings carried by Hovey and Long. 80-G-455918

Part of the combined U.S. fleet moored in Balboa harbor on 25 October 1934. Ships present include two battleships at dock, three cruisers, while the leviathan destroyer tenders USS Whitney (AD-4) and Dobbin (AD-3) nurse more than 40 destroyers. Among the latter are McFarland (DD-237), Goff (DD-247), and Long (DD-209). 80-G-455966

In the summers of 1936 and 1937, the Navy sent destroyer squadrons (along with the carrier USS Ranger) into Alaskan waters to get a feel for fleet operations in that increasingly valuable territory. As Alaska was far removed from the CONUS, and its Aleutians chain rather close to Northern Japan– with Attu island just 1,300 miles from Hokkaido while some 2,800 miles from Seattle– the writing was on the wall that the territory could find itself a difficult battleground should war come between the U.S. and the Empire.

Following these deployments, at the urging of a report by RADM Arthur J. Hepburn’s board, the Navy in 1938 recommended the construction of a naval base on sprawling Amaknak Island, at Dutch Harbor, with the first troops arriving there in June 1941.

Long and her direct sister Hovey, accompanied by half-sisters USS Dallas (DD-199), Wasmuth (DD-338), Zane (DD-337), and Trever (DD-339), made the 1937 sortie.

The photos from the cruise show an idyllic window into what would be an interbellum period.

Talk about a recruiting poster! USS Long (DD-209) underway during an Alaskan cruise, circa 1937. Note her twin 4/50 gun mountings. She was one of two ships of her class to carry these weapons and would trade them in during WWII for a quartet of 3″/50s. NH 63243

Destroyers USS Long (DD-209) and USS Wasmuth (DD-338) in Chelkate Inlet with the Kakuhau Range Mountains in the background during an Alaska cruise, 1937. NH 109579

USS Long (DD-209) leading USS Wasmuth (DD338), during the Alaskan cruise of 1937. NH 51845

Clemson class destroyers maneuvering at sea during an Alaska cruise. Left to right: USS Wasmuth (DD-338), Long (DD-209), USS Zane (DD-337), and USS Trever (DD-339), 1937. NH 109560

Destroyers in Wrangell Narrows, after view of USS Dallas (DD-199), USS Wasmuth (DD-338), and USS Long (DD-209) following North Flat South end lights in Wrangell Narrows during an Alaska cruise, 1937. NH 109578

Destroyers USS Long (DD-209) in front with USS Trever (DD339) and USS Zane (DD-337) in the rear during an Alaska cruise, 1937. NH 109581

Destroyers USS Wasmuth (DD-338) and USS Long (DD-209) maneuvering while flying their flag signals during an Alaska cruise, 1937. NH 109582

During the 1937 Alaska cruise, destroyer USS Dallas (DD-199) noses her bow toward the city of Juneau, the capital of the Alaska Territory, situated on the Gastineau Channel with a population of about 4,500 people. USS Long (DD-209) and USS Wasmuth (DD-338) are already docked in the foreground, with a 250-foot Lake class Coast Guard cutter of the Bering Sea Patrol to the right. NH 109568

Now that is MWR! Sailors from USS Dallas, Long, and Wasmuth fishing in Auan Creep Hump Back Bay, Alaska NH 118928

Destroyers docked at Skagway, Alaska: USS Dallas (DD-199), USS Long (DD-209), and USS Wasmuth (DD-338) as they dock side by side at Skagway, Alaska, with snow-covered mountains in the background, 1937. NH 109565

The cruise would also see some dramatic images captured, with Long leading the pack of greyhounds.

USS Long (DD-209) leading other destroyers in a change of course, during the Alaska cruise, in 1937. NH 51353

USS Long (DD-209) leading sister USS Wasmuth (DD 338) through Fitzhugh Sound, British Columbia, during the Alaskan cruise of 1937. NH 51847

Long rolling, during the Alaska cruise, in 1937. NH 51350

Destroyer tender USS Dixie (AD-14), was photographed in early 1940 with USS Long (DD-209) alongside. NH 89401

DMS Conversion

With the class having so many hulls, and the Navy steadily building more advanced classes of destroyers, the Clemsons saw many of these aging greyhounds converted to other uses including as “green dragon” fast troop transports (ADP) able to put a battalion ashore via davit-carried LCVPs, fast minelayers (DMs) carrying 80 mines, small seaplane tenders (AVD) capable of supporting a squadron of flying boats such as PBYs, and fast minesweepers (DMS).

In late 1940, nine of the class– Chandler, Southard, Hovey, Hopkins, Zane, Wasmuth, Trever, Perry, and Long, became ersatz minesweepers. Long became DMS-12 on 19 November 1940.

The DMS conversion meant the installation of mechanical sweep gear, primarily a pair of paravane cranes on the stern (port and starboard), along with large deck-mounted cable winches, and space for four vanes and kites.

They still had their depth charge racks (repositioned forward and angled outboard), guns (which were downgraded), and two Y-gun depth charge throwers to continue to work as escorts, as well as (eventually) an SC radar. Gone were the torpedo tubes and, as they didn’t need to be too fast, they landed the No.4 boiler and had their exhaust vented into three shortened funnels, with the fourth removed. Generator sets were upgraded to provide 120kw vs the original 75kw. This still allowed a 25-knot speed.

From Long’s 29 October 1943 plans at Mare Island, detailing her crew at the time as well as her battery (four 3″50 Mk 20 DPs, five 20mm Oerlikons) and powerplant:

Her profile, 29 October 1943, as DMS-12, note the shadow of her original four tall stacks now replaced by three smaller ones:

Compare the difference between her 1930s four-piper profile and the one seen during WWII:

NH 67630 compared to NH 81358

It was in this configuration that Long found herself when Pearl Harbor was attacked.

War!

Based at Pearl Harbor with several of her sisters as part of Mine Squadron 2, Long escaped the Japanese attack on 7 December 1941 due to the fact she and four DMS sisters were at sea as escort for the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis (CA‑35) at the time some 800 miles southwest conducting a simulated naval bombardment of remote Johnson Island.

From Indy’s War Diary:

Returning to Pearl with the cruiser-DMS force on 9 December, Long steamed into the still-smoking harbor, then soon after began a series of antisubmarine patrols around the islands.

Long alternated this duty over the past six months with running coastal escorts among the Hawaiian Islands and with runs to Midway, Palmyra, and far-off Canton, where the Navy was building an airstrip.

Then came a stint in Alaskan waters following the Japanese attack on Dutch Harbor and the occupation of Attu and Kiska. Serving in the familiar old territory for the next 15 months, she narrowly avoided destruction in a collision with the destroyer USS Monaghan (DD‑354) in heavy fog, and fired her first shots in anger, on 31 January 1943 against Japanese air attacks on Amchitka’s Constantine Harbor with three fellow Clemsons.

In May 1943, she was assigned to TG 51.3 of RADM Francis Rockwell’s TF 51, the Attu Assault Force. Standing out of Cold Harbor as part of the screen for Rockwell’s flag on the battlewagon USS Pennsylvania on 4 May, seven days later she and the fellow fast minesweepers USS Elliot (DMS-4) and USS Chandler (DMS 9) broke off from the main force and swept the lanes to the landing beaches on Japanese-held Attu.

The 12th saw a repeat, this time in Massacre Bay.

The rest of the month saw Long revert back to her destroyer DNA and provide escort and ASW patrol around the island, including the spirited pursuit of a sonar contact on the 15th.

While there were known Japanese midget submarines based in the Aleutians, and larger subs passing through, post-war records didn’t support a “kill” claim for this incident.

Then came the Kiska and Adak operations until, finally, Long was dispatched back to Pearl Harbor in September 1943 for some warmer service.

USS Long (DMS-12) photographed during World War II. Courtesy of D. M. McPherson, 1974. NH 81358

Following a refit and escort and patrol operations in Hawaiian waters, Long was dispatched to the Southwest Pacific to join in the New Guinea operations in February 1944. Operating as part of TF 76, she supported the landings there and in the Admiralties and Hollandia, (Operations Reckless and Persecution) both sweeping mines and escorting.

It was at Humboldt Bay on 22 April 1944 that she was able to both run her paravanes and get hits on shore targets, firing 253 rounds of 3″/50 and 660 of 20mm on the landing beaches of Cape Tjeweri, Cape Djar, and Cape Kassoe, just prior to the LVTs and LSTs carrying the 162nd and 186th Regiments of the 41st “Jungleers” Division hitting the beach.

Switching gears and sailing north to the Marianas, Long was on hand for the occupation of Saipan in June and the liberation of Guam in July, in each cases conducting preinvasion mine sweeps to clear lanes, then providing radar picket and guard ship duties, followed by convoy work.

Similar operations in the Palaus in September and October included a very hectic week during the landings during which Long, Hovey, and fellow DMS vessels were zapping mines left and right. In all, Long destroyed at least 45 Japanese mines during the Palau operation, all via 3-inch gunfire– some as close as 100 yards– following sweeping.

A sample day: 

This brought Long into the drive to liberate the Philippines after nearly three years of Japanese occupation.

Sailing under orders with Minesweeping Unit 1 in early October, she spearheaded the invasion of the PI at Leyte Gulf, successfully clearing Japanese mines off Dinagat and Hibuson, as well as in the Dulag‑Tacloban approach channel and the soon-to-be-infamous Surigao Strait, all while fighting off Japanese air attacks.

A sample of these operations, that of 19 October 1944:

She spent the Battle of the Surigao Strait guarding empty transports bound in convoy for Manus, narrowly avoiding contact with the Japanese surface.

Late December saw her return to the PI to sweep for the landings at Lingayen Gulf. Just after the New Year, while in the Mindanao Sea, she survived a series of furious Japanese air attacks, continuing her yeoman job of sweeping.

Long’s luck ran out on 6 January.

Two Japanese Zeke 52s approached from low over the beach, dropping down to just 25 feet of the deck, with one strafing and crashing into (DD-232/APD-10) and the other coming fast at Long broadside on her port side. Although LT Stanley David Caplan, Long’s 16th and final skipper, rang up 25 knots and ordered everything on board to fire on the incoming planes. Despite three 3″/50s and three 20mm Oerlikons opening up and hits being observed, it was already over.

As detailed in an 11-page report by Caplan, who survived the maelstrom:

Her old twin, Hovey, was on hand and immediately stood by to help, as did her sister Chandler, and the fleet tug USS Apache (AT-67).

Caplan observed a five-foot hole in Long’s side, penetrating to the officer’s wardroom and the forward living compartment, with fire observed just over the No. 1. magazine. Nonetheless, 26 men responded to Caplan’s call for volunteers to attempt to reboard and save their faithful old tin can.

While organizing the return from Apache’s deck, disaster struck.

Waiting overnight, by the next morning, Long’s main deck, just after the forecastle about midships, was underwater, while her screws were showing on the stern. Her back was broken. There was nothing left to save. Landing on the sinking ship with 12 volunteers to make sure the ship’s sensitive gear was wrecked, Caplan and party soon departed after just five minutes, leaving just “30 seconds to a minute to the good” before the destroyer capsized then went down in two pieces at 1115 on 7 January.

Six men were killed in the attack on Long, with two others later passing from their injuries.

Sadly, Hovey would perish a few hours before her sister took her final dive, hit by a Japanese Kate torpedo bomber, carrying a fish, around 0455 on the 7th. By dawn, she was lost, and the men she had taken off Long, some 120 survivors, went back into the water. The Chandler and Apache moved in to make their second extended rescue in 24 hours.

Some 35 bluejackets injured in Long’s initial kamikaze strike and another 28 from her that picked up wounds while on Hovey were transferred to the large sick bay on the battleships USS California and USS West Virginia. Two dozen men from Brooks and Long who were aboard Hovey when she sank were never found.

Both Hovey and Long earned Navy Unit Commendations for their service, both for action at Palau.

Besides the NUC, Long earned at least night battle stars during her WWII service including:

• 11 May 43 – 31 May 43 Attu occupation
• 2 Feb 44 – 8 Feb 44 Western New Guinea operations
• 29 Feb 44 – 4 Mar 44 and 7 Mar 44 – 11 Mar 44 Admiralty Island landings
• 18 Apr 44 – 25 Apr 44 and 2 May 44 Hollandia operation (Aitape Humbolt Bay-Tanahmerah Bay)
• 13 Jun 44 – 18 Jul 44 Capture and Occupation of Saipan
• 12 Jul 44 – 25 Jul 44 Capture and Occupation of Guam
• 6 Sep 44 – 14 Oct 44 Capture and occupation of southern Palau Islands
• 12 Oct 44 – 20 Oct 44 Leyte landings (as well as 4 Jan 45 – 18 Jan 45), and Battle of Surigao Strait

Epilogue

Long’s war diaries are in the National Archives along with her circa 1943 plans. 

The Navy never saw fit to recycle the name, despite her nine battlestars and NUC. The same goes for Hovey.

The twins rest somewhere in the Lingayen Gulf, very close to each other, near position 16º12’N, 120º11’E.

LT Caplan, born in 1915 in Elmira, New York, and commissioned via ROTC in 1940, had already survived Pearl Harbor with a commendation for his actions that day. He likewise survived the war and passed in 1999 on dry land in Florida, aged 84.

There are no Clemsons preserved. No less than 16 sisters in addition to Long and Hovey were lost during WWII.

For more information on the Clemsons and their like, read CDR John Alden’s book, “Flush Decks and Four Pipes” and/or check out the Destroyer History Foundation’s section on Flushdeckers. 

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!

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

Warship Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025: The 80 Eightballs

U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 50755

Above we see the Lapwing-class “Old Bird” USS Penguin (Minesweeper # 33) underway off Shanghai, China, circa the late 1920s, following conversion for river gunboat service. Note the sampan in the foreground. She rescued 24 shipwrecked Japanese sailors some 85 years ago this week.

The favor would not be repaid a year later.

The Lapwings

When a young upstart by the name of Franklin D. Roosevelt came to the Navy Department in 1913 as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, he helped engineer one of the largest naval build-ups in world history. By the time the U.S. entered World War I officially in 1917, it may have been Mr. Wilson’s name in the role of Commander in Chief, but it was Mr. Roosevelt’s fleet.

One of his passions was the concept of the Great North Sea Mine Barrage, a string of as many as 400,000 (planned) sea mines that would shut down the Kaiser’s access once and for all to the Atlantic and save Western Europe (and its overseas Allies) from the scourge of German U-boats. A British idea dating from late 1916, the U.S. Navy’s Admiral Sims thought it was a bullshit waste of time but it was FDR’s insistence to President Wilson in the scheme that ultimately won the day.

While a fleet of converted steamships (and two old cruisers- USS San Francisco and USS Baltimore) started dropping mines in June 1918, they only managed to sow 70,177 by Armistice Day and accounted for a paltry two U-boats gesunken (although some estimates range as high as 8 counting unaccounted-for boats).

And the thing is, you don’t throw that many mines in international shipping lanes without having a plan to clean them up after the war (while having the bonus of using those mine countermeasures ships to sweep enemy-laid fields as well).

That’s where the 54 vessels of the Lapwing-class came in.

Review of the Atlantic Fleet Minesweeping Squadron, November 1919. USS Lapwing (AM-1) and other ships of the squadron anchored in the Hudson River, off New York City, while being reviewed by Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels on 24 November 1919, following their return to the United States after taking part in clearing the North Sea mine barrage. The other ships visible are USS Lark (Minesweeper No. 21), with USS SC-208 alongside (at left); and USS Swan (Minesweeper No. 34) with USS SC-356 alongside (at right). Heron was there but is not seen in the photo. U.S. Navy photo NH 44903. Note the crow’s nest for sighting floating mines.

Inspired by large seagoing New England fishing trawlers, these 187-foot-long ships were large enough, at 965 tons full, to carry a pair of economical reciprocating diesel engines (or two Scotch boilers and one VTE engine) with a decent enough range to make it across the Atlantic on their own (though with a blisteringly slow speed of just 14 knots when wide open on trials.)

Lapwing class 1944 profile USS Kingfisher AM-25 ATO-135

They could also use a sail rig to poke along at low speed with no engines, a useful trait for working in a minefield. Their two masts stood 73 feet high above the LWL.

Lapwing-class sister USS Falcon AM-28 in Pensacola Bay 1924 with the Atlantic submarine fleet. Note her rig

While primarily built to sweep mines, their battery amounted to a pair of 3″/50 singles with 20 ready rounds in the chest on her superstructure deck and 200 below deck. Capable of landing a squad ashore as needed, the standard small arms locker for a Lapwing class sweeper included a single Lewis light machine gun, 10 rifles (M1903s), and five revolvers (likely M1917s).

Their electrical system included two 25 kW generators as well as a smaller oscillator and radio generator which powered two 24-inch searchlights, a submarine signal apparatus, a radio outfit as well as her lights. Deck machinery included three stern hoisting winches for sweeping gear, an anchor hoist, and towing engine, and a capstan engine. Small boats amounted to a 30-foot motor launch, a 28-foot whaleboat, and a 16-foot dingy, allowing a total capacity of carrying 82 persons. Their onboard workshop included a lathe, a shaper, and a drill press along with assorted hand tools.

Crew amounted to four officers, six CPOs, and 40 ratings.

The class leader, Lapwing, designated Auxiliary Minesweeper #1 (AM-1), was laid down at Todd in New York in October 1917 and another 53 soon followed. While five were canceled in November 1918, the other 48 were eventually finished– even if they came to the war a little late.

This leads us to the hero of our tale, the humble Penguin.

Meet Penguin

Our subject is the second U.S. Navy ship to carry the name of the Antarctic flightless bird.

The first was a 155-foot screw steamer armed with a quartet of 32-pounders and a single 12-pounder that served with distinction on the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron and along the Gulf of Mexico during the Civil War.

Bombardment and Capture of Port Royal, South Carolina, 7 November 1861 Engraving published in “Harper’s Weekly”, July-December 1861. It depicts Federal warships, under Flag Officer Samuel F. DuPont, USN, bombarding Fort Beauregard (at right) and Fort Walker (at left). The Confederate squadron commanded by Commodore Josiah Tattnall is in the left-center distance. Subjects identified below the image bottom are (from left): tug Mercury, Fort Walker, USS Wabash (DuPont’s flagship), USS Susquehanna, CSS Huntsville, Commo. Tattnall, USS Bienville, USS Pembina, USS Seneca, USS Ottawa, USS Unadilla, USS Pawnee, USS Mohican, USS Isaac Smith, USS Curlew, USS Vandalia, USS Penguin, USS Pocahontas, USS Seminole, Fort Beauregard, USS R.B. Forbes and “Rebel Camp”.NH 59256

The second Penguin (Minesweeper No. 33) was laid down on 17 November 1917 at Elizabethport by the New Jersey Dry Dock & Transportation Co.; launched on 12 June 1918 and commissioned on 21 November 1918– just 10 days after the Armistice.

Sent to New York, she spent the next six months in minesweeping and salvage work for the Third Naval District.

USS Penguin (Minesweeper # 33) liberty party gathered on the ship’s stern, preparing to go ashore after reviewing the Fleet in New York Harbor, on 26 December 1918. NH 59647

Working the Barrage

Outfitted with “electrical protective devices,” Penguin set out for Scotland in late March 1919 to join the North Sea Minesweeping Detachment.

USS Penguin (Minesweeper # 33) underway near USS Scranton (ID # 3511), probably circa 28 March 1919. Photograph from the USS Scranton photo album kept by J.D. Bartar, one of her crew members. NH 99458

USS Penguin close astern of USS Scranton (ID # 3511), as a Chief Petty Officer, is putting the heaving line 60 ft. between the two ships, circa 28 March 1919. Note the line’s weight in the air above Penguin’s bow. Photograph from the USS Scranton photo album kept by J.D. Bartar, one of her crew members. NH 99450

Beginning operations in June 1919, Penguin was on hand near Scapa Flow when the 72 ships of RADM Ludwig von Reuter’s interned former German High Seas Fleet elected to scuttle rather than have their ships turned over to the Allies. She raced to the scene to help save what could be kept above the waves.

USS Penguin steaming at full speed for Scapa Flow, on 21 June 1919, during an unsuccessful effort to arrive in time to save some of the German warships, scuttled there on that day. Note the identification letters PD on her bow. Halftone reproduction of a photograph taken by DeLong, of USS Black Hawk, published in the cruise book Sweeping the North Sea Mine Barrage, 1919, page 38. Donation of Chief Storekeeper Charles A. Free. NH 99472

In all, Penguin would spend four months plumbing the depths of the North Sea for mines. This included picking up damage in two different explosions. One of these, a mine going off in her kite, resulted in three days in the yard for repair. The second caused more extensive destruction that required her to be repaired at Chatham for a month.

Three explosions between Lapwing and Penguin

USS Penguin (Minesweeper # 33), at left, and USS Lapwing (Minesweeper # 1) coming up to repass sweep gear, after exploding a mine during the sweeping of the North Sea Mine Barrage in 1919. Note the identification letters on the ships’ bows: PD on Penguin and W on Lapwing. Halftone reproduction of a photograph taken by DeLong, of USS Black Hawk, published in the cruise book Sweeping the North Sea Mine Barrage, 1919, page 59. Donation of Chief Storekeeper Charles A. Free. NH 99473

The Buoy Laying Division in Kirkwall Harbor From left to right, in the center: USS Osprey (Minesweeper # 29), USS Penguin (Minesweeper # 33), and USS Lapwing (Minesweeper # 1) moored together in Kirkwall Harbor, Orkney Islands, during the sweeping of the North Sea Mine Barrage, 1919. Note the identification letters on the ships’ bows: A on Osprey, PD on Penguin, and W on Lapwing. Halftone reproduction of a photograph taken by Kitress, of USS Swan, published in the cruise book Sweeping the North Sea Mine Barrage, 1919, page 63. Donation of Chief Storekeeper Charles A. Free. NH 99474

Her repairs at Chatham were completed, and she set off back across the Atlantic with the tug USS Concord on October 31, sailing via the Azores.

For her dangerous service in the Barrage between 5 June and 30 September 1919, Penguin earned a Great War Victory Medal

Peacetime service

Once returning stateside, Penguin was transferred to the Pacific and laid up at Pearl Harbor on 1 June 1922.

With a need for shallow draft gunboats in the Asiatic Fleet to work China’s civil war-torn inland waterways during the country’s Warlord Era, Penguin landed her sweeping gear and, recommissioned 13 October 1923 along with sister USS Pigeon (AM-47), would spend the next seven years on China station ala “The Sand Pebbles.”

USS Penguin (AM-47) in Chinese waters 1920s

As related by her XO at the time, LT (later VADM) Felix L. Johnson, Penguin made it from Pearl to Shanghai with the help of rigged auxiliary sails, which were good for nine knots. Once there, things often got hairy.

From his oral history:

We spent the next two years steaming up and down the Yangtze, protecting missionaries when they had a rough time and looking after American rights. We could only go as far as Ichang, the foot of the gorges, where we began to strike the rapids. We had two little gunboats, the USS Palos (PG-16) and Monocacy (PG-20), which did the run further up from Ichang to Chungking. Some bandits and Chinese were beginning to take cracks at us. We put an armed guard, eight enlisted men, and one officer, on each American merchant ship running the 200–300 miles to Chungking. I’ve made the run many times,the first time I was ever fired on.

Another anecdote from Johnson:

This was the time of the Chinese warlords, and we were always afraid that Chiang So Lin, the warlord of the north, was going to come down and knock everything off the river. Wo Pei Fu was the other warlord. As long as they were suspicious of each other they did not bother us much. One time, the American Consul got word that a group was going to try to take over the consulate. Our Herman Barker took about 40 men, marched from the Standard Oil dock up to the consulate, and spent the night. Just a few shots were fired, but the next day Barker had to march backward all the way, a mile and one half to the dock, because the Chinese were following. The captain fired off a couple of the ship’s 3-inch guns, just up in the air. We never had anybody killed. The objective of the bandits was plunder.

For her tense China service, between June and July 1925, Penguin, along with the destroyers and gunboats Edsall, Elcano, Hart, Isbel, MacLeish, McCormack, Noa, Parrott, Peary, Pillsbury, Pope, Preble, Sacramento, Stewart, and Truxtun earned the (Shanghai) Expeditionary Medal.

She was stationed at Kluklang (near Hankow, now Wuhan) starting in February 1927 for several months, as the sole foreign naval presence in the city during the conflict between the Guomindang army and warlord Sun Chuanfan.

For her 13-month period patrolling along the broad and often very wild banks of the Yangtze River, between 26 September 1926 and 21 October 1927, Penguin’s officers and men aboard during that frame earned the Yangtze Service Medal.

Lapwing class, 1929 janes

The “Old Duck” Lifesaver

Her China service was taken over by newer and more purpose-built gunboats, and Penguin was reassigned to work out of Guam as the territory’s guard ship around 1930. Nicknamed the “Old Duck,” the reports of the Asiatic Fleet from the 1930s frequently note minor problems and mechanical issues with the aging gunboat.

As the Navy had opened mess attendant and steward positions to CHamoru volunteers– with some 700 authorized by 1941 (12 were killed at Pearl Harbor) it made sense for four of Penguin’s crew to be drawn from the local population.

Penguin proved a godsend to many on the sea around Guam during this quiet decade, patrolling the new transpacific air routes and shipping lanes.

Among those plucked from the waves were the 24 mariners of the 91-foot wooden hulled Japanese fishing schooner Daichs Saiho Maru (Seiho Maru No. 1) which wrecked– in a restricted area– on a reef off Guam’s southeast tip on 15 January 1940. Not sure if a fishing schooner needs a 24-member crew, but hey…

A week later, after negotiations by the Navy governor of Guam, Penguin transferred these survivors to the passing Japanese Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) liner Suwa Maru after the Imperial Navy refused access to land them on nearby Saipan itself. Not weird.

Drums of War

With the march towards open combat in the Pacific, the forces on Guam, under Navy Capt. George Johnson McMillin (USNA 1911) as military governor, was sparse.

In the summer of 1940, two .50 caliber water-cooled machine guns were fitted to each AM (Penguin included) and DM in the Pacific Fleet, and Admiral Kimmel, in his 1941 report, recommended additional guns. He also noted that portable depth charge racks- that didn’t interfere with sweeping– each carrying eight ash cans, were being provided to the Mine Divisions.

To help out Penguin, the Navy in October 1941 shipped two “Yippee” yard boats, USS YP-16 and YP-17 to the island as deck cargo aboard the oiler USS Ramapo (AO-12). These were recycled Prohibition-era USCG “six-bitters,” 75-foot wooden hulled patrol boats (ex-CG-267 and ex-CG-275, respectively), each armed with light machine guns and crewed by eight men commanded by a CBM, augmented by four Chamorros. Both of these craft, along with the rest of the island, were seriously damaged in a typhoon in November.

The territory’s station ship, the 4,800-ton freighter USS Gold Star (AK-12), with much of her crew made up of Chamorros, natives of Guam, was in the Philippines in December 1941 on a regular inter-islands cargo run. A small 5,380-ton tanker, USS Robert L. Barnes (SP-3088), had been a fixture in Apra Harbor since 1920 where she had been used as a stationary oil storage vessel, towed every few years to Cavite for maintenance.

That’s it for afloat assets.

Still, the Navy, in June 1941, ordered Penguin to patrol off the Harbor entrance each night, a responsibility only occasionally alternated with the YP boats after October. This order came with a new skipper, the Old Duck’s 16th and final, LT James William Haviland (USNA 1925).

Ashore, a coastal defense battery of 6-inch guns that had been installed in 1909 to defend the station had been withdrawn due to budget cuts in the 1930s along with a Marine aviation unit.

This left 274 Navy personnel (including Penguin’s crew) between the Naval Yard at Piti, the Hospital (which had 70 Medical Corps personnel including five female nurses), and the radio stations at Agana and Libugon. A force of 150 Marines, barracked at Sumay under Lt. Col. William K. McNulty, which was not a combat unit. The Marines had the primary mission to train the recently formed 240-member territorial militia (the Guam Insular Force Guard) which had only been established in April 1941 and the local civilian police force (the Guam Insular Patrol).

Besides the revolver-equipped Insular Patrol, the Insular Guard was armed with just three Lewis guns, four Thompson submachine guns, six BARs, and 85 Springfield M1903 rifles which may have been just for drill purposes (perhaps early low-number ’03s that had been withdrawn by the War Department as unsafe) as several reportedly bore labels that said “Do not shoot. For training only.” There were no mortars, artillery pieces, or heavy machine guns available to the ashore forces. Nothing in a larger caliber than .30-06.

Guam Insular Force Guard parade, displaying of Guam Flag, 1941. Note the Navy whites and turned down “Donald Ducks.” Guam Public Library System Collection

The improvements in the outlying U.S. Navy outposts around the Hawaiian islands from ADM Kimmel’s summer 1941 report, covering Palmyra Reef, Johnston Island, Wake, American Samoa, and Guam, painted a hopeful picture so long as the war could be put off until after 1943: 

With war warnings ramping up, the base evacuated its 104 civilian dependents aboard the steamer SS Henderson to San Francisco in October.

On 5 December 1941, the Navy signaled Capt. McMillin to begin burning his classified materials. At the same time, ADM Thomas C. Hart, the commander of the Asiatic Fleet, ordered Guam’s station ship, Gold Star, to delay sailing back to her homeport and instead remain in the Philippines.

It was clear no one expected Guam to hold if things went hot, and no one was coming in the short term to help them.

War!

As detailed post-war by Capt. McMillin:

0545, 8 December [local] 1941, a message was received which had been originated by the Commander in Chief, Asiatic fleet, to the effect that Japan had commenced hostilities by attacking Pearl Harbor, prior to a declaration of war.

This kickstarted the local plans which included standing up the Insular Guard, arresting known Japanese nationals (including three of eight infiltrators who recently arrived from Saipan), shutting down the navigational lights and beacons, and evacuating local civilians away from potential military targets.

Immediately post-Pearl Harbor, a group of 24 local American civilians on Guam, 17 of which were retired military, mustered into their own group and volunteered to help defend their home. Fighting with the Insular Guard, at least two would go on to perish in Japanese POW camps.

As Penguin, which was out on her regular nightly patrol, had a broken radio (!), one of the Yippie boats was sent out to warn them that a war was on but the minesweeper was already heading back in, with a third of the crew already departed the Old Duck on their way to Recreation Beach to make initial preparations for an afternoon beach party.

As told by a member of her crew, CBM Robert William O’Brien:

The beach had been frantically trying to radio us since early morning, but naturally, they couldn’t reach us, as we had no means of communication. We were still without it and would be until the end because our one and only radioman was in that first boatload of men already ashore. He had gone after spare parts.

Well, you can imagine our consternation. There we were, moored to a buoy right in the middle of the harbor with our boilers dead, as we had doused them upon arrival as we could see the repair barge on the way out from the little Navy Yard in Piti.

Raising steam and getting underway with a reduced crew and no radio, the scratch-and-dent Penguin broke out the ammo for her two water-cooled .50 cals and her two 3-inchers and was as ready as she could be when the first wave of Japanese bombers from Saipan arrived overhead at 0827.

At least one Japanese plane would turn back from Penguin, smoking, while Ensign Robert White, head of one of the gun crews, was killed. A trio of bombs landed so close as to open her seams. Soon, LT Haviland, her skipper, wounded, ordered the men to take to the boats and pull the plug on the Old Duck in 200 fathoms of water so that she couldn’t be salvaged.

“The ship was gallantly fought, but was soon in a sinking condition,” reported McMillian. “The ship was abandoned in a sinking condition and sank in deep water off Orote Point. There several men were injured, but all of the crew succeeded in getting ashore on life rafts, bringing Ensign White’s body with them.”

Then came the fight ashore. Penguin’s men– most of which had lost their shoes in the swim ashore– joined with the under-armed Marines, Insular Guards, and self-mobilized civilians to resist a force of Japanese that, unknown to them, would amount to nearly 6,000 infantry and Naval Special Landing Force members.

A Japanese illustration of the main landing on Guam by the 144th Infantry Regiment, South Seas Detachment. Painting by Kohei Ezaki.

Weapons were scarce.

“I shared a .45 with seven other men,” said Chief O’Brian, who had caught shrapnel in the sinking of Penguin. “If I got it, number two took the gun; if he got it, number three took the gun, and so on.”

The ground combat, which began on the morning of the 10th, was sharp but soon over. Seven further Navy men– six from Penguin— were killed, with the men lost from the minesweeper executed on the beach they were defending.

From Chief O’Brien:

We were waiting for them when they approached Agana, and they had to give themselves away for a group of our Penguin men, six in all, had been established at the power plant. The power plant was on the beach and when they saw the Japanese moving up on the beach, instead of falling back to the Plaza a half mile inland, as had been their orders, they decided to attack the Japanese. They did, and the initial surprise worked well for a few minutes. They had one BAR with them and they moved down a good number. However…in moments they recovered from their surprise and killed all six of our boys quickly.

The Japanese showed their later-to-be-learned attitude by butchering these six so they were beyond recognition. Later one of the Fathers was permitted to take some CHamorus and bury them, and none could be identified, they were so badly mutilated.

The six Minemen killed on the beach:

• Ernst, Robert Walter, SM3c, 3812969, USN, USS Penguin
• Fraser, Rollin George, BM1c, 3110965, USN, USS Penguin
• Hurd, Seba Guarland, SM3c, 3371486, USN, USS Penguin
• O’Neill, Frank James, BM1c, 3282372, USN, USS Penguin
• Pineault, Leo Joseph, Cox, 2044461, USN, USS Penguin
• Schweighhart, John, GM1c, 2282954, USN, USS Penguin

Penguin altogether had 22 of her crew wounded in action– almost half her complement– between the attacks on their ship on the 8th, Japanese air attacks on Guam on the 9th, and the ground combat on the 10th.

Seven Navy bluejackets evaded initial capture and escaped into the jungle: four from the Agana Radio station– RM1c Albert Joseph Tyson and George Ray Tweed, YM1c Adolphe Yablonsky, and Chief Aerographer Luther Wilbur Jones; one from the Piti Naval Yard– CMM Malvern Hill Smoot; and two from Penguin, Chief Motor Machinist’s Mate Michael L. Krump and MM1c Clarence Bruce Johnston. All but Tweed were found during the Japanese occupation and beheaded, with Krump and Johnston holding out until October 1942, an amazing 10 months behind enemy lines.

The Insular Guard lost four killed and 22 wounded, almost all in the short 10 December ground battle.

MacNulty, the 49-year-old Marine barracks commander, was a fighter, having earned a Silver Sar in the Argonne in 1918 and the Navy Cross in Nicaragua in 1926. He lost a full one-third of his men (13 dead and 37 wounded) as casualties and probably would have gone down swinging an empty rifle if Capt. McMillin hadn’t ordered the surrender.

“I was captured in the Reception Room of my quarters about twenty minutes after the cease-firing signal. The leader of the squad of Japanese who entered my quarters required me to remove my jacket and trousers before marching me into the Plaza, where officers and men were being assembled, covered by machine guns,” said McMillin.

Forced to run a gauntlet of rifle butts, the surrendered Americans were forced to strip and lay face up in the sun until noon when they were herded indoors.

They had a whole new war ahead of them.

The POW chapter

Penguin, sunk in deep waters, escaped the Japanese as did Gold Star, which would survive the war carrying precious cargo throughout the South Pacific.

The old tanker Barnes, left strafed and abandoned, was pressed into Japanese service and, recovered at war’s end, was taken into British merchant service until 1949.

The Yippies, YP-16, and YP-17 were strafed by the Japanese and set to the torch by their crews.

In all, 487 people were taken prisoner of war on Guam in December 1941, according to research by Roger Mansell. They were shipped to Japan on 10 January 1942 aboard the transport Argentina Maru. This included not only the legitimate American military POWs but also 13 local Catholic clergy (two of whom were Spanish citizens), 11 Pan-American Airways employees, and six civilian sea cable employees.

At least 19 of the Guam POWs would perish over the next 3.5 years in captivity.

A handful (the nurses, Spanish clergy, a military wife, and her newborn baby) were repatriated in 1942.

The officers, medical corps POWs, and senior NCOs were largely sent at first to the Zentsuji “model camp” which was shown off to the International Red Cross.

Group portrait of POWs from Zentsuji Camp at Shikoku, Osaka, Japan. Identified are Ensign Walter Senchuk, United States (US) Navy Reserve, and USS Penguin (extreme right), the other men are unidentified. Most of the men in the camp were Allied officers captured in the early battles of 1941. The camp was a ‘show camp’ used by the Japanese for propaganda purposes, but after 1942 conditions worsened.

Group portrait of prisoners of war (POWs) from Zentsuji Camp at Shikoku, Osaka, Japan. Identified, left to right: Lieutenant (Lt) James W Haviland, United States Navy, USS Penguin; Lt John L Nestor, US Navy, USS R L Barnes; Major G V Porter, US Army; Mr H P Havenor, US Bureau of the Budget; and Lt Arnold J Carlson, US Navy, Supply. Most of the men in the camp were Allied officers captured in the early battles of 1941. The camp was a ‘show camp’ used by the Japanese for propaganda purposes, but after 1942 conditions worsened.

Group portrait of prisoners of war (POWs) from Zentsuji Camp at Shikoku, Osaka, Japan. Identified, left to right: unidentified; Ensign Edwin Wood, United States (US) Navy, USS Penguin; Ensign Hugh Mellon, US Navy Reserve (USNR); Ensign Joseph Martin Jnr, USNR; and Warrant Officer Robert C Haun, US Navy, Supply. Most of the men in the camp were Allied officers captured in the early battles of 1941. The camp was a ‘show camp’ used by the Japanese for propaganda purposes, but after 1942 conditions worsened.

A group of about 80 prisoners (at least 65 of which had been captured on Guam), considered by the Japanese to be hard cases, were made to work as stevedores on the docks at Osaka Camp No.1 “until they gave the guards so much trouble that they shipped them to a new camp at Hirohata in August 1943 where they acquired the nickname ‘The 80 Eightballs.”

These Eightballs included several men from Penguin.

Of the 55 men from Penguin that Mansell noted as surviving the Battle of Guam and becoming POWs, Capt. Sidney E. Seid, the captured U.S. Army Medical Corps officer at Hirohata, treated at least 10 of Penguin’s crew while at Hirohata for various ailments and injuries. One member of her crew, SK3c Robert Brown MacLean, died of pneumonia in 1944 while a POW.

In total, of the four officers and 60 enlisted among Penguin’s pre-war crew, including regulars, reservists, and Chamorro, 10 were killed in action, died in prison camps, or were executed by the Japanese. Those who survived– 22 of them wounded in action– earned every grain of their POW medals, spending even longer under the Empire’s locks than even the “Battling Bastards of Bataan.” At least one of the ship’s POWs, a young seaman, would suffer a complete mental breakdown and spend the rest of his long life in VA hospitals.

Chief O’Brien, who weighed 175 pounds going into the war, was down to 120 at the end of it.

During the last summer there, the ill effects of living on dried sweet potato vines and dock sweepings finally commenced showing up in a big way. Everyone seemed to be sick at once. The Japanese felt the same way about human beings as they did about their work animals; if sick, cut down the food. If they died… oh, well.

Penguin’s skipper, LT Haviland, was held at the Rokuroshi camp outside of Osaka. Liberated post-war, he was advanced to Captain and presented with a Silver Star. He retired as a rear admiral and passed in 1960 aged 55.

Both Capt. McMillin, the Naval Governor of Guam, and Marine Lt. Col MacNulty would survive the war in the camps as well. McMillin, liberated in August 1945 by Soviet paratroopers at Mukden in Manchuria, would go on to retire as a rear admiral in 1949, then go on to work as a postmaster before passing in 1983, aged 93. MacNulty, also held at the Rokuroshi, retired as a brigadier general in 1946 and passed in 1964, aged 72.

Epilogue

The Marines, with help from the Navy and Coast Guard, returned to liberate Guam in July 1944. RM1c George Tweed emerged from his cave, having evaded capture for 31 months.

The Navy recycled the name “Penguin” during WWII for the lead ship (ASR-12) of a class of submarine rescue and salvage vessels. Commissioned 29 May 1944. She spent a lengthy career working out of New London with the Second Fleet and Rota with the Sixth and, while she conducted hundreds of drills and dozens of tows, she gratefully was never called on to conduct rescue operations for an actual submarine disaster. She decommissioned in 1970.

USS Penguin (ASR-12) photographed on 21 June 1953. NH 105502

Sadly, the Navy has been without a “Penguin” on the Navy List for the past half-century, and neither Haviland, McMillin, nor MacNulty have had a ship named in their honor. That should change.

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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ARABIAN GULF. A formation of Avenger-class mine countermeasure ships USS Devastator (MCM 6), USS Gladiator (MCM 11), USS Sentry (MCM 3), and USS Dextrous (MCM 13) maneuver in the Arabian Gulf, July 6, 2019. (U.S. Navy photo by Lt. Antonio Gemma Moré/Released)190706-N-HV841-002

The Chief of Naval Operations has advised the SECNAV has issued a Meritorious Unit Commendation for the MCM units of Bahrain-based Task Force 52 in ’21-23, a period that included a historic 5,000-mile transit from the Arabian Gulf to the Red Sea– the first time the voyage was completed in seven years for U.S. Navy mine countermeasures ships.

The MUC:

For meritorious achievement from October 2021 to June 2023. The personnel of Commander, Task Force FIVE TWO distinguished themselves through unprecedented performance that enabled the world’s largest mine countermeasures task force to achieve unparalleled results in support of mine warfare initiatives in the U.S. FIFTH Fleet area of operations. During this period, Commander, Task Force FIVE TWO led the development and execution of 65 multi-national mine countermeasures exercises that employed assets and personnel from 60 partner nations.

Their efforts resulted in the successful operational employment of eight mine countermeasure ships, one MH-53E helicopter detachment, two expeditionary mine countermeasures companies, and one mine hunting unit. Additionally, due to the decommissioning of legacy mine countermeasure platforms, they created hybrid Mine Countermeasures Mission Packages, utilizing next-generation unmanned systems and legacy mine countermeasure platforms, ultimately transforming into the U.S. Navy’s only trans-regional mine countermeasures task force.

The hybrid Mine Countermeasure Mission Packages provide a full spectrum of detect-to-engage mine warfare capability in support of U.S. Central Command and U.S. national objectives in the FIFTH, SIXTH, and SEVENTH Fleets. By their truly distinctive accomplishments, unrelenting perseverance, and unfailing devotion to duty, the officers and enlisted personnel of Commander, Task Force FIVE TWO reflected credit upon themselves and upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.

//SIGNED//

L. M. Franchetti

Admiral, US Navy

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

Warship Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2024: A Tough Tambor

Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the U.S. National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-32217

Above we see the Tambor-class fleet boat USS Trout (SS-202) as she returns to Pearl Harbor on 14 June 1942, just after the Battle of Midway. She is carrying two Japanese prisoners of war from the sunken cruiser Mikuma. Among those waiting on the pier are RADM Robert H. English and “the boss,” Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. Note the pair of .30-06 Lewis guns on Trout’s sail, flanking her periscope shears.

Trout is believed lost with all hands, 80 years ago this month, around 29 February 1944, off the Philippines while on her 11th war patrol.

The Tambors

The dozen Tambors, completed in a compressed 30-month peacetime period between when USS Tambor (SS-198) was laid down on 16 January 1939 and USS Grayback (SS-208) commissioned on 30 June 1941, are often considered the first fully successful U.S. Navy fleet submarines. This speedy construction period was in large part due to the fact they were completed in three different yards simultaneously.

Some 307 feet long with a 2,375-ton submerged displacement, they carried 10 21-inch torpedo tubes (six forward, four aft) with a provision for 24 torpedoes (or 48 mines), as well as a small 3″/50 deck gun augmented by a couple of Lewis guns and the occasional .50 cal. They enjoyed a central combat suite with a new Torpedo Data Computer and attack periscope.

With an engineering suite of four diesel engines driving electrical generators and four GE electric motors drawing from a pair of 126-cell Sargo batteries, they could sail for an amazing 10,000nm at 10 knots on the surface and sprint for as much as 20 knots while on an attack. Further, they had strong hulls, designed for 250-foot depths with a possible 500-foot redline crush. They also had updated habitability for 70-day patrols including freshwater distillation units and air conditioning. A luxury!

Meet Trout

Our boat was one of four Tambors constructed by the historic Portsmouth Navy Yard, built side-by-side with sister USS Triton (SS-201). Trout was the first boat to carry the name in the U.S. Navy and, laid down on 28 August 1939, was launched on 21 May 1940 after a nine-month gestation period.

Trout (SS-202) bow view at fitting out the pier, 10 July 1940 at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Kittery, Maine, via ussubvetsofworldwarii.org through Navsource.

Commissioned on 15 November 1940, LCDR Frank Wesley “Mike” Fenno, Jr., (USNA 1925), formerly of the “Sugar Boats” S-31 and S-37, was in command.

Following shakedowns on the East Coast, Trout sailed through “The Ditch” and joined five sister boats in Submarine Division 62, based at Pearl Harbor, where she arrived in August 1941 as part of the big build-up in the tense Pacific.

USS Trout, 1941

War!

On 7 December 1941, one of Trout’s sisters, USS Tautog (SS-199), was tied up at the Submarine Base at Pearl Harbor and her .50 cals and Lewis guns were credited with downing at least one Japanese plane during the attack that morning.

As for the other five Tambors operating at Pearl?

They were all out on patrol, our Trout included, which was off the then-unknown atoll of Midway. That night, she spotted the Japanese destroyers Sazanami and Ushio as they shelled the American base there but was unable to successfully attack them.

Ending what turned out to be her 1st War Patrol on 20 December in the still-smoking battle-scarred base at Pearl, Trout, after landing most of her torpedoes and ballast, was ordered to take aboard 3,517 rounds of badly needed 3-inch AA ammunition and sortie out on her 2nd War Patrol on 12 January 1942, bound run the Japanese blockade to the besieged American forces on the “Rock” Corregidor in the Philippines. Over 45 days, nine American subs, Trout included, made the dangerous run to the last U.S. stronghold in Luzon.

Arriving at Corregidor on 6 February after a brief brush with a Japanese subchaser, Trout unloaded her shells and then took on a ballast of 20 tons of gold bars and silver pesos (all the paper money in the islands had already been burned), securities, mail, and United States Department of State dispatches, which she dutifully brought back to Pearl on 3 March. However, on the way she took the time to chalk up her first confirmed “kill” of the war: the Japanese auxiliary gunboat Chuwa Maru (2719 GRT), sent to the bottom about 55 nautical miles from Keelung, Formosa on 9 February.

She arrived back in Pearl Harbor to unload her precious cargo.

USS Trout (SS-202) approaches USS Detroit (CL-8) at Pearl Harbor in early March 1942, to unload a cargo of gold that she had evacuated from the Philippines. The gold had been loaded aboard Trout at Corregidor on 4 February 1942. NH 50389

USS Trout (SS-202) coming alongside USS Detroit (CL-8) at Pearl. Note details of the submarine’s fairwater, and .30 caliber Lewis gun mounted aft of the periscope housing. NH 50388

USS Trout (SS-202) At Pearl Harbor in early March 1942, unloading gold bars which she had evacuated from Corregidor. 80-G-45971

USS Trout (SS-202): gold bars that Trout carried from Corregidor to Pearl Harbor. Photographed as the gold was being unloaded from the submarine at Pearl Harbor in early March 1942. 80-G-45970

Sailing for her 3rd War Patrol on 24 March, she was ordered to take the war to Tokyo and haunt the Japanese home waters. Trout fulfilled that mandate and logged damaging attacks on the tanker Nisshin Maru (16801 GRT) and Tachibana Maru (6521 GRT), as well as sending the Uzan Maru (5019 GRT) and gunboat Kongosan Maru (2119 GRT) to the bottom before returning to Pearl in early May.

At the time Trout had logged the most successful U.S. Navy submarine war patrol to date and she was given credit for 31,000 tons sunk and another 15,000 tons damaged.

Midway

Her 4th War Patrol was to participate in the fleet action that is known today as the Battle of Midway– Trout’s old December 7th stomping grounds. She left Pearl on 21 May in company with her sisters, USS Tambor, and USS Grayling, to join the 12-submarine Task Group 7.1, the Midway Patrol Group.

From her war diary of the battle, which included chasing down a crippled Japanese battleship which turned out to be the lost 14,000-ton Mogami class heavy cruiser Mikuma. She rescued two Japanese survivors from said warship, Chief Radioman Hatsuichi Yoshida and Fireman 3rd Class Kenichi Ishikawa, on 9 June. Some of the very few IJN POWs in American custody at the time, Trout was ordered to return to Pearl with her waterlogged guests of the Emperor’s Navy, arriving there five days later to an eager reception committee.

Battle of Midway, June 1942. The burning Japanese heavy cruiser Mikuma, photographed from a U.S. Navy aircraft during the afternoon of 6 June 1942, after she had been bombed by planes from USS Enterprise (CV-6) and USS Hornet (CV-8). Note her third eight-inch gun turret, with the roof blown off and barrels at different elevations, Japanese Sun insignia painted atop the forward turret, and wrecked midship superstructure. 80-G-457861

Japanese prisoners being removed from USS Trout (SS 202) at Pearl Harbor Submarine Base, Territory of Hawaii Shown: Three officers standing together are: Commander Jack Haines; Commander Norman Ives, and Commander O’Leary. Photographed 1942. 80-G-32213

Japanese prisoners being removed from USS Trout (SS 202) at Pearl Harbor Submarine Base, Territory of Hawaii Shown: Japanese Prisoner. Photographed 1942. 80-G-32212

With four patrols under his belt, including the successful 3rd patrol, the Corregidor ammo run/gold return, and the Midway POWs, FDR directed that LCDR Fenno be awarded the Army Distinguished Service Cross, while the rest of the crew received the Army Silver Star Medal. Fenno also racked up two Navy Crosses and, ordered to take command of the building Gato-class fleet boat USS Runner (SS-275), Trout’s plank owner skipper left for New London.

He was replaced by LCDR Lawson Paterson “Red” Ramage (USNA 1931) who had earned a Silver Star earlier in the year as the diving officer on Trout’s sister, USS Grenadier (SS-210), during the sinking of the 14,000-ton troopship Taiyō Maru.

Back in the War

Red Ramage and Trout left Pearl on the boat’s 5th War Patrol on 27 August, bound for the Japanese stronghold of Truk, where she was able to sink the net layer Koei Maru (863 GRT) and damage the 20,000-ton light carrier Taiyo, knocking the latter out of the war for over two months and forced her back to Kure for repairs.

Escort carrier IJN Taiyo in Kure drydock after Trout torpedo

Damaged by a Japanese airstrike that knocked out her periscopes, Trout cut her patrol short and made for Freemantle.

Repaired, Trout’s 6th War Patrol, in the Solomons in October-November, proved uneventful.

Red Ramage then took Trout on her 7th Patrol, leaving Fremantle four days after Christmas 1942, headed for the waters off Borneo. This long (11,000-mile, 58-day) patrol saw the boat damage two large (16-17,000 ton) tankers as well as two small gunboats and sink a pair of coastal schoolers. Combat included a running gunfight with the tanker Nisshin Maru on Valentine’s Day 1943 which left 10 members of Trout’s crew injured.

Trout vs Nisshin Maru Feb 14 1943

Trout’s 8th War Patrol, a minelaying run off Japanese-occupied Sarawak, Borneo in March-April, ended Red Ramage’s tour with our boat, and he left Freemantle bound for Portsmouth where he would oversee the building, outfitting, and first two (very successful) war patrols of the new Balao-class submarine USS Parche (SS-384).

Trout’s final skipper would be LCDR Albert “Hobo” Hobbs Clark (USNA 1933) who had been Trout’s Engineering officer on several of her early war patrols before serving on the staff of SubRon 6. He rejoined his former boat as “the old man” on 4 May 1943, just shy of his 33rd birthday. He would not see his 34th.

Trout was ordered back to the occupied Philippines as part of LCDR Charles “Chick” Parsons’s “Spy Squadron” of 19 submarines– including several Tambors— which delivered 1,325 tons of supplies in at least 41 missions to local guerrillas between December 1942 and New Years Day 1945, with an emphasis on medicine, weapons, ammunition, and radio gear.

Trout’s 9th War Patrol, from 26 May to 30 July 1943, saw two successful “special missions” landing agents and supplies in Mindanao well as conducting four attacks on Japanese surface ships, claiming some 17,247 tons sunk. Post-war the only confirmed sinking from this patrol was the freighter Isuzu Maru (2866 GRT), sunk 2 July.

Trout’s four attacks on the 9th War Patrol

As for the Spyron missions accomplished by Trout on this patrol, these included recovering Chick Parsons himself along with survivors of the Bataan Death March, who had escaped the hellish Davao POW camp, and delivering them to Australia where they were able to tell the world of what they had endured.

Details of Trout’s two Spyron missions, via the 7th Fleet Intelligence Section report:

Special mission accomplished. 12 June 1943.
Submarine: USS Trout (SS-202)
Commanding Officer: A. H. Clark
Mission: To deliver a party of six or seven men, funds ($10,000), and 2 tons of equipment and supplies to a designated spot on Basilon Island to establish a secret intelligence unit in the Sulu Archipelago and Zamboanga area; to establish coast watcher net in the area and for surveying purposes, and to arrange for delivery of extra supplies to guerrilla units.

Special Mission accomplished 9 July 1943
Submarine: USS Trout (SS-202)
Commanding Officer: A. H. Clark
Mission: To land a party of two officers and three men, together with supplies and ammunition off Labangan, Pagadian Bay, on the South Mindanao Coast. In addition to the above, Trout picked up Lt. Comdr. Parsons and four U.S. Naval officers and reconnoitered the area southeast of Olutanga Island (South Coast of Mindanao, P.I.).

Leaving Freemantle again just three weeks later on her 10th War Patrol, Trout again returned to the Philippines where she patrolled the Surigao and San Bernardino straits. She would fight an epic surface engagement, pirate style, with a Japanese trawler during this patrol.

As noted by DANFS:

On 25 August, she battled a cargo fisherman with her deck guns and then sent a boarding party on board the Japanese vessel. After they had returned to the submarine with the prize’s crew, papers, charts, and other material for study by intelligence officers, the submarine sank the vessel. Three of the five prisoners were later embarked in a dinghy off Tifore Island.

A happy patrol, she would go on to sink the transports Ryotoku Maru (3438 GRT) and Yamashiro Maru (3427 GRT) back-to-back on 23 September before returning to Pearl Harbor, and from there, a much-needed trip to Mare Island for a four-month shipyard overhaul.

In her first ten patrols, Trout claimed 23 enemy ships, giving her 87,800 tons sunk, and damaged 6 ships, for 75,000 tons.

Leaving Mare Island for Pearl, on 8 February, Trout began her 11th and final war patrol. Topping off with fuel at Midway on the 16th she headed towards the East China Sea but was never heard from again.

Hobo Clark went down fighting and her 81 officers and men are listed on Eternal Patrol, with Clark and two other officers in the USNA’s Memorial Hall. 

As detailed by DANFS:

Japanese records indicate that one of their convoys was attacked by a submarine on 29 February 1944 in the patrol area assigned to Trout. The submarine badly damaged one large passenger-cargo ship and sank the 7,126-ton transport Sakito Maru [which was carrying the Japanese 18th Infantry Regiment, of which 2,500 were lost]. Possibly one of the convoy’s escorts sank the submarine. On 17 April 1944, Trout was declared presumed lost.

It is thought that she was sunk by the destroyer Asashimo in conjunction with fellow tin cans Kishinami and Okinami.

Japanese destroyer Asashimo

Trout received 11 battle stars for World War II service and the Presidential Unit Citation for her second, third, and fifth patrols.

Trout is on the list of 52 American submarines lost in the conflict, along with twin sister Triton and classmates Grampus, Grayling, Grayback, Grenadier, and Gudgeon.

(Photo: Chris Eger)

Just five of 12 Tambors were still afloat on VJ Day, and the Navy quietly retried them for use as Reserve training ships and then disposed of even these remnants by the late 1950s.

Epilogue

The plans and war diaries for Trout are in the National Archives. 

Her 2nd Patrol– the Corregidor sneak that brought in AAA shells and left with gold and silver– was turned into an episode of The Silent Service in the 1950s.

Of her two surviving skippers, Mike Fenno would go on to take USS Runner on her first two war patrols in 1943 and take USS Pampanito (SS-383) on her 4th in 1944, chalking up at least two additional Japanese Marus, before going on to command SubRon 24 (“Fenno’s Ferrets”) for the rest of the war. He went on to command Guantanamo Bay during the tense early Castro period and retired as a rear admiral in 1962.

RADM Mike Fenno passed away in 1973, aged 70, and is buried in Arlington.

Red Ramage likewise took other boats out after he left Trout and is famous for a July 1944 convoy attack on USS Parche in conjunction with USS Steelhead that went down in the history books as “Ramage’s Rampage,” after it sent five Japanese ships to the bottom. This earned Ramage the MoH. He retired as a vice admiral in 1969 and passed in 1990. Like Mike Fenno, he is buried at Arlington. In 1995, the Flight I Burke, USS Ramage (DDG-61)— which I worked on at Ingalls and sailed on her trials– was named in honor of “Red.”

Red Ramage

The Navy recycled Trout’s name for a late-model diesel boat of the Tang class (SS-566). This second USS Trout was laid down on 1 Dec. 1949 at EB and at her launch she was sponsored by the widow of LCDR Albert H. Clark, the last commanding officer of the first USS Trout (SS-202), who was lost on the boat’s 11th war patrol in 1944 along with 80 other souls.

Here we see a P-2H Neptune of Patrol Squadron (VP) 16 as it flies over the Tang-class submarine USS Trout (SS-566), near Charleston, S.C., May 7, 1961. NHHC KN-2708

After serving during the Cold War and being transferred to Turkey, in 1992, the near-pristine although 40-year-old Trout was returned to U.S. Navy custody and then used as an experimental hull and acoustic target sub at NAWCAD Key West. She somehow survived in USN custody until 2008 when she was finally reduced to razor blades at Brownsville.

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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How about this great circa 1988 shot of an unidentified sailor in UDT shorts and a chocolate chip boonie firing from the hip at a target floating behind the wooden-decked Aggressive/Agile-class ocean minesweeper USS Esteem (MSO 438), “somewhere in the Persian Gulf.” The rifle seems to be an XM177.

USN Photo 330-CFD-DN-ST-89-02593 by PH2 Alexander C. Hicks, Jr., USN, via NARA 6443568

The 172-foot Esteem, one of 93 members of her class, was built by the Martinolich Shipbuilding Co. of San Diego in the days after the U.S. Navy had an abrupt experience with sea mines off Korea in 1950 and she joined the fleet in 1955.

After lots of service in the Far East through the Vietnam era (earning six Vietnam Service Medals as well as the Republic of Vietnam Meritorious Unit Citation), by 1987 she was sent to the Persian Gulf, based in Bahrain with a lot of her sisters to combat a rash of mines left bobbing around in the wake of the Iran-Iraq War, a page in the largely forgotten story of Navy MCM during that period.

Decommissioned and struck from the Naval Register on 30 September 1991 after 36 years of service, she was laid up at Bremerton until disposed of for sale in 2000 and scrapped soon after.

Back in the 1970s, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands all needed replacement minesweepers to phase out WWII-era vessels. The answer was to band together to jointly develop a class known to naval history as the Tripartite, of which some 35 were built to close out the Cold War.

Now showing their age, the 600-ton 169-foot Tripartites have been increasingly retired and passed on to second-hand users such as Ukraine, Pakistan, Latvia, and Bulgaria.

Dutch Tripartite-mijnejager Hr Ms Hellevoetsluis (M859, 1987-2011). NIMH N0009330-12

To replace the vessels in Belgian-Dutch service, as well as the 2,000-ton circa 1965 Belgian minesweeper tender Godetia, the two Lowland countries teamed up for a dozen assorted City-class MCMs that run much bigger (2800 tons, 270-foot) than the ships they are replacing, with each country picking up six new ships.

They look like a floating breadbox. 

Note the landing platform for UAVs and davits for USVs

M940 class model as viewed by Dutch King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima, along with Belgian King Philippe and Queen Mathilde

Leaning heavily into unmanned systems including unmanned surface, aerial, and underwater vehicles alongside towed sonars and mine identification and neutralization ROVs, they also carry a 40mm Bofors Mk4 DP gun, soft-kill systems such as an LRAD, and high-pressure water cannon, as well as several mounts for .50 cal remote guns and 7.62mm GPMGs. This allows the City class to clock in as needed for low-threat OPV and constabulary work, such as against pirates off Somalia and migrants in the Med.

The first of the class, the future Belgian minehunter Oostende (M940), began her pre-delivery sea trials earlier this month with a planned commissioning in December.

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

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

Warship Wednesday, 11 September 2024: You Have to Go Out…

USCG Photo #: 16079-A Photographer: J. N. Heuisy

Above we see a member of the 35 so-called “Buck and a Quarter” Active-class Coast Guard cutters rushed into completion to deal with bootleggers during Prohibition, the USCGC Jackson (WPC-142) as she appeared in 1927 in her original “rum-buster” haze gray configuration. Don’t let the bone in her teeth fool you, she is probably just making revolutions for 10 knots– her designed top speed.

These choppy little 125-foot gunboats were designed to serve as subchasers in times of war and Jackson, along with her sister Bedloe, did their part during the conflict, atop an unforgiving sea, to the bitter end.

The 125s

These cutters were intended for trailing the slow, booze-hauling “Blacks” mother ships of “Rum Row” along the outer line of patrol during Prohibition.

Constructed for $63,173 each, they originally had a pair of 6-cylinder 150hp Superior or Winton diesel engines that allowed them a stately speed of 10 knots, max, but allowed a 4,000 nm, theoretically Atlantic-crossing range– an outstanding benefit for such a small craft.

While slow, this was deemed at first adequate as most of the Blacks were cheapy acquired and nearly condemned old coasters and fishing schooners salvaged from backwater ports around New England and the Maritimes for their shady last hurrah. 

For armament, they carried a single 3″/23 cal deck gun for warning shots– dated even for the 1920s– a Lewis gun or two for serious use, and a small arms locker that included everything from Tommy guns to .38s. In a time of conflict, they could tote listening gear and depth charge racks left over from the Great War, but we’ll get to that later.

Taking advantage of one big contract issued on 26 May 1926, the class were all built within 12 months by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation in Camden, New Jersey (although often listed as “American Brown Boveri” due to their owners at the time, the Swiss Brown Boveri corporation).

The class was named in honor of former historic cutters from the Coast Guard and its preceding Lighthouse Service, Revenue Marine, and Revenue Cutter Services.

Meet Bedloe

Commissioned 25 July 1927 as USCGC Antietam (WPC-128) after a circa 1864 Revenue Cutter Service centerboard schooner of the same name that was a nod to the pivotal Maryland Civil War battle, this hardy 125-footer was first stationed in Boston under the 1st CG District where she served for eight years, accomplishing her hallmark law enforcement and SAR duties but also breaking light ice when needed.

The USCG sent no less than 11 of the first 125s to Boston, where they were desperately needed to parol the New England coastline. Besides Antietam, they included USCGC Active (WPC-125), Agassiz (WPC-126), Alert (WPC-127), Bonham (WPC-129), Dix (WPC-136), Faunce (WPC-138), Fredrick Lee (WPC-139), Harriet Lane (WPC-141), General Greene (WPC-140), and Jackson (WPC-142).

These new cutters were based at the Charleston Navy Yard and arrived in a haze-gray livery, built to take the “Rum War” to the bootleggers.

Five 125-foot cutters– likley including Antietam– at Charleston Navy Yard Boston late 1920s. Boston Public Library Leslie Jones Collection.

Once the Volstead Act was repealed, the 125s got a more regal peacetime USCG white and buff appearance.

Cutter Antietam in the Boston area, likely during a summer regatta around 1930. Boston Public Library Leslie Jones Collection 08_06_004565.

USCGC Antietam, later Bedloe in 1930, likely in the Boston area. USCG Photo.

With cutters needed on the Great Lakes and the downturn in cutter tempo that accompanied the end of Prohibition, Antietam transferred to Milwaukee in May 1935, a station that typically meant a winter lay-up once the lakes froze over.

Of note, on 1 December 1937, Antietam was used as a dive platform for a famous deep dive in Lake Michigan by Max Gene Nohl that set the world’s then-deep dive record of 420 feet. Nohl, using a self-contained suit with a heliox (helium/oxygen) breathing mixture pioneered by what would become DESCO, had earlier made history from the cutter’s deck the previous April when she hosted the first live underwater broadcast to a national audience by WTMJ over the NBC-Blue network.

On 10 April 1937, Max Nohl (shown in the dive suit) along with John Craig made a dive on the shipwreck Norland to perform another early test of the newly designed diving suit in conjunction with testing the helium-oxygen mixture that Dr. End and Max had been working on. The dive took place off the deck of the Coast Guard cutter Antietam (note the “A” on her whaler) about five miles out from Milwaukee’s breakwater, via the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Between 1939 and 1940, most of the 125s in the Coast Guard’s inventory had their often cranky original diesels replaced by new General Motors 268-As. Rated for 600 hp, they were capable of breaking 14 knots (vs the designed 10) in still seas. However, the radius dropped down to 2,500nm @ 12 knots and 3,500 @ 8.

Then came WWII in Europe and the need for the Neutrality Patrol. This was long before FDR’s 1 November 1941 Executive Order 8929 that transferred the Coast Guard to the Navy Department.

With the Navy short on hulls, Antietam was pulled from her Wisconsin home and ordered to Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1940. There, her armament was beefed up at the Tietjen & Lang yard to include stern depth charge racks and the capacity to carry 10 cans. To acknowledge the upgrade, in February 1942, the 125s were redesignated from WPC (Coast Guard patrol craft) to WSC (Coast Guard sub chaser.)

Assigned to the EASTSEAFRON (Eastern Sea Frontier), Antietam was stationed out of Stapleton, Staten Island, where she saw service as a coastwise convoy escort along the eastern seaboard. It was in this duty that she proved a godsend to those souls on the sea and was involved in several rescues including that of the unescorted Gulf Oil tanker SS Gulftrade (6,776 tons) after she had been sunk by U-588 (Victor Vogel). Antietam pulled 16 Gulftrade survivors out of the ocean on 9 March 1942.

It was around this period that our cutter would be further up-armed with a pair of 20mm/70 Mk 4 Oerlikon AAA guns, a Mousetrap Mk 20 ASWRL, swap out their goofy little 3″/23 for a 40mm Bofors single Mk 1, and pick up a SO-model surface search radar set. So equipped, they had become subchasers in reality rather than just names.

The 125-foot Coast Guard Cutter Cuyahoga ready to depart from the Coast Guard Yard in Curtis Bay, Md., Feb. 11, 1945. U.S. Coast Guard photo. Note her 40mm Bofors crowding her bow. By mid-war Antietam and her sisters had a similar appearance.

As the Navy was looking to use the name “Antietam” for a new Essex-class fleet carrier (CV-36) that was under construction at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, our patrol boat was unceremoniously renamed USCGC Bedloe on 1 June 1943. Shortly after, she was dispatched to Navy Section Base (NSB) Morehead City, North Carolina, to join the Chesapeake Escort Group (T.G. 02.5).

The AOR of TG 02.5, as seen on the cover of its war diary

Morehead City served as the link in the coastal escort chain between Norfolk and Charleston and its vessels– a mix of auxiliary motor minesweepers (YMS), miscellaneous Yard Patrol craft (YPs), random patrol yachts such as USS Cymophane (PYc-26), a handful of 110-foot patrol boats (PC) and subchasers (SC), augmented by a dozen Coast Guard 83 footer “Jeeps of the Deep”— was a motley assortment to say the least. A couple of 97-foot converted trawler hulled coastal minesweepers, USS Kestrel (AMc-5) and USS Advance (AMc-63) puttered around on sweep duties just in case the Germans laid a few eggs.

Antietam/Bedloe, and her sister Jackson, were about the brawniest vessels the Morehead City group had at its disposal.

USCGC Bedloe, probably 1944. Note her stern depth charges and SO radar set. USCG Photo #: A-8125.

Meet Jackson

Repeating the name of one of the 13 circa 1830s Morris-Taney class 73-foot topsail schooners ordered for the service USCGC Jackson (WPC-142) commissioned 14 March 1927. Like her sister Antietam/Bedloe, she was immediately assigned to Boston.

Four 125-foot cutters at Charleston Navy Yard Boston late 1920s including, from the outside, USCGC Fredrick Lee, General Green, and Jackson. Boston Public Library Leslie Jones Collection.

Like Antietam, Jackson painted over her haze grey for a more Coastie white and buff scheme post-Prohibition.

A black and white photograph of the Coast Guard Cutter Jackson passing through the Cape Cod Canal on the day of the Canal Bridge Opening, August 15, 1935. Nina Heald Webber Cape Cod Canal collection. MS028.04.022.005

Reassigned in the late 1930s to U.S. Coast Guard Stations Rochester and Greenport, New York in the Great Lakes, Neutrality Patrol work saw her armed and assigned to Norfolk on 1 July 1941 for anti-submarine patrol and coastal escort duty.

This typically boiled down to escorting one or two merchies at a time along cleared (for mines) routes at speeds hovering around 10 knots. Some faster vessels took their chances and ran the coastline on their own which didn’t always work.

One such instance was the unescorted and unarmed tanker SS Tiger (5,992 tons) which on April Fool’s Day 1942 caught a torpedo from U-754 (Hans Oestermann) just as she reduced speed and signaled with blinkers to pick up a pilot off Cape Henry, Virginia. Her complement taken off by the Yippee boat USS YP-52, Jackson and the tug Relief brought a salvage crew by the listing tanker to attempt to tow it to Norfolk but the hulk was uncooperative and sank in the Chesapeake.

On 20 July 1944, Jackson was made part of Task Group 02.5, joining sister Antietam/Bedloe.

Then came…

SS George Ade

An EC2-S-C1 break bulk cargo carrier, SS George Ade (7176 tons) was built by Florida-based J. A. Jones in 1944. Based out of Panama City, while carrying a mixed load of cotton, steel, and machinery from Mobile to New York, the brand new Liberty ship was unescorted (!) and steaming on a non-evasive course (!!) off Cape Hatteras when she came across by the Schnorchel-equipped Type IXC U-518 (Oblt. Hans-Werner Offermann) on 12 September 1944.

Hit by a Gnat that destroyed her rudder and flooded the shaft alley, she was effectively dead in the water. Her Naval Armed Guard fired a few rounds in U-518’s direction, keeping the boat away but she was a sitting duck.

The Great Atlantic Hurricane of September 1944

Four days before George Ade was torpedoed, Commander Gulf Sea Frontier issued an advisory that a tropical hurricane centered east of the Leeward Islands was moving northwest at 10 knots. Aircraft recon on 11 September found a system with a radius of 150 miles and warnings “This is a large and severe storm” were flashed.

It would grow into what we today would deem a Category-4 monster.

Guantanamo to New York Convoy GN-156 on 12 September came across the storm’s periphery and logged 47-knot winds, later upping to over 65 which scattered the convoy although no casualties were reported.

On the night of 12 September, the refrigerated stores ship USS Hyades (AF-28), escorted by the Somers-class destroyer USS Warrington (DD-383) only two days out of Norfolk bound for Trinidad, encountered the hurricane between West Palm Beach and the Bahamas as the storm moved North.

USS Warrington (DD-383), photographed by Navy Blimp ZP-12, 9 August 1944. Just five weeks after this image was snapped, the destroyer would be at the bottom of the Atlantic. 80-G-282673

As noted by DANFS:

Later that evening, the storm forced the destroyer to heave to while Hyades continued on her way alone. Keeping wind and sea on her port bow, Warrington rode relatively well through most of the night. Wind and seas, however, continued to build during the early morning hours of the 13th. Warrington began to lose headway and, as a result, started to ship water through the vents to her engineering spaces.

The water rushing into her vents caused a loss of electrical power which set off a chain reaction. Her main engines lost power, and her steering engine and mechanism went out. She wallowed there in the trough of the swells-continuing to ship water. She regained headway briefly and turned upwind, while her radiomen desperately, but fruitlessly, tried to raise Hyades. Finally, she resorted to a plain-language distress call to any ship or shore station. By noon on the 13th, it was apparent that Warrington’s crewmen could not win the struggle to save their ship, and the order went out to prepare to abandon ship. By 1250, her crew had left Warrington; and she went down almost immediately.

From Warrington’s War History:

A prolonged search by Hyades, Frost (DE-144), Huse (DE-145), Inch (DE-146), Snowden (DE-246), Swasey (DE-248), Woodson (DE-359), Johnnie Hutchins (DE-360), ATR-9, and ATR-62 rescued only 73 men of the destroyer’s 321 member watch bill– and these were spread out for 98 miles from the destroyer’s last position!

Coordinated by the jeep carrier USS Croatan, whose escorting tin cans did a lot of the work in pulling men from the water, the group commander signaled on 14 September, “Sharks very active. Am making every effort to locate and recover living before dark as those so far rescued are very weak.”

Further north, New York to Guantanamo Convoy NG-458, with 15 tankers and 17 freighters escorted by two frigates and a few PCs and YMSs, encountered the unnamed hurricane for 18 hours across the 12th and 13th, and reported: “winds estimated 130-150 knots and seas 50-60 feet.” The COMEASTSEAFRON War Diary for the period notes, “It was impossible for a person to remain exposed to the wind because the tremendous force of driving spray was unbearably painful. Visibility was nil, and all ships and escorts were widely scattered.”

One man, LT North Oberlin of USS PC-1210, was swept overboard “and undoubtedly drowned.”

Another small escort, PC-1217, had her bulkhead plates buckled and several compartments flooded– including her radio shack. Her communications knocked out and long missing from the rest of the convoy, she limped into Mayport alone on the 16th– self-resurrecting from among the missing thought dead.

One ship that never arrived in port was the 136-foot baby minesweeper USS YMS-409, which foundered and sank, taking her entire crew of 33 to the bottom.

Photo from the collection of LT(jg) Bernard Alexander Kenner who served on board YMS-409. He departed a few days before the ship left port and sank off Cape Hatteras. He kept this photo for over 61 years along with a list of his former crew mates who perished, via Navsource.

Further up the coast, the USCG’s Vineyard Sound lightship (LS-73), anchored before the shallows off Cuttyhunk, Massachusetts, was also claimed by the storm, taking her entire crew.

The 123-foot United States Lightvessel 73 (LV 73 / WAL-503) on her Vineyard Sound station where she served from 1924 through 1944. On 14 September 1944, she was carried off station during a hurricane and sank with the loss of all hands. USCG photo

…Back at the George Ade

Late on the afternoon of 12 September, some 14 hours after the attack by U-518 that left her dead in the water, the salvage ship USS Escape (ARS 6), escorted by our previously mentioned Bedloe and Jackson, arrived and took her in tow.

Struggling against the ever-increasing seas with the hurricane inbound, Ade and Escape hove to on 14 September some 12 miles off Bodie Island, North Carolina in 13 fathoms of water, where they reported 100-knot winds and 50-foot seas. Ade suffered one of her anchors, two lifeboats, and four rafts carried away.

However, the tow’s escorts, Bedloe and Jackson, had vanished.

At around 1030 on 14 September, Jackson was struck hard by seas while laid her over her port side, a roll from which the 125-footer could not recover. Given the order to abandon ship, her complement too to four life rafts, which all swamped/flipped and sank within 30 minutes. This left her crew afloat and on their own…in a hurricane.

Bedloe, meanwhile, was entirely unaware of the disaster with her nearby sister due to the strong seas and nil visibility. At around 1300 local, she suffered three severe rolls to port, the last of which left her that way until she submerged three minutes later. Of her crew, 29 were able to abandon ship on three life rafts.

Rescue

With Bedloe and Jackson failing to report to shore following the storm, and George Ade and Escape confirming their separation from the escorts, the 5th Naval District launched an air search beginning with four Coast Guard-operated OS2U3 Kinfishers from CGAS Elizabeth City taking to the air at first light on the morning of the 16th. At this point, the survivors of Bedloe and Jackson had been on the sea for two days.

The first group of men, the three waterlogged rafts from Bedloe with but just 21 remaining men, were spotted 10 miles off Cape Hatteras. Three of the Kingfishers landed and taxied to the rafts to give aid to the injured.

Pilots and radio operators knocked off their shoes and then dove into the water to help pull semi-conscious men onto the wings of the bobbing planes.

Eight of the Bedloe’s crew had perished over the night of the 15th from a mixture of injuries and exposure. Two more would die shortly after rescue.

A Navy blimp dropped emergency rations.

Navy airship hovers over two OS2Us and a CG launch with picked-up survivors of the USCGC Bedloe, 16 September. USN ZP24-2906

With the Kingfishers on hand as a guide, a Coast Guard 30-foot motor lifeboat, CG-30340, from the Oregon Inlet Lifeboat Station, 15 miles away, raced to the scene and brought the survivors ashore.

BM1 William W. McCreedy from the Oregon inlet Lifeboat Station, who assisted in the rescue of the survivors from the Bedloe said the first thing he saw was a man doubled up in a small raft, his eyes resembling “a couple of blue dots in a beefsteak.”

“He flashed a beautiful smile that couldn’t be missed,” McCreedy continued. “I felt I had looked at something a man sees once in a lifetime — sort of thought I had come to the edge of heaven. Then, as though his last will to fight had been lost when he saw us, he jumped into the water. The radioman grabbed him and held him in the raft. I went overboard to help and the three of us dragged the raft down. The unconscious man’s foot was twisted in the lines, but I cut him free and we put him in the boat.” Just before reaching shore, the man reached, stroked McCreedy’s face and mumbled “We made it.” Then he died.

Once back at Oregon Inlet, a Coast Guard PBM with a doctor aboard flew the men to Norfolk for treatment.

Original caption: “Coast Guard survivors of hurricane disaster recover in Norfolk hospital: eight of the 12 survivors of the hurricane sinking of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Bedloe are shown recovering in the naval hospital at Norfolk, Virginia. They were rescued by Coast Guard air and seacraft after clinging to life rafts for more than 50 hours in shark-invested [sic] Waters 15 miles off the Virginia coast. All suffered from shock and exposure, as well as lashing by the stingers of ‘Portuguese men-of-war.’ the cutter Bedloe was sunk at the height of the hurricane on Thursday, about the time that the Coast Guard Cutter Jackson went down in the same area. In all, 19 were rescued and 49 officers and enlisted men are missing in the twin disaster. In this group, left to right, are Coast Guardsmen Jerry VanDerPuy, seaman, first class, of. . . .Sheboygan, Wisconsin; John Kissinger, soundman, third class, of Brooklyn, N.Y.; Robert Greeno, seaman first class, of Monroe, Michigan; Robert Hearst, seaman first class, of Latonia, Kentucky; Joseph Martzen, soundman second class, of. . . .McAdoo, Pennsylvania.; Michael J. Cusono, radioman third class, of Schenectady, NY, Pearcy C. Poole, chief radioman of Lakewood, N.J. and Joseph Ondrovik, coxswain of Bellville, Michigan.” Date: 14 September 1944. USCG Photo 1248 Photographer: “Kendall”, U.S. Coast Guard photo.

The search for the floating Jackson survivors continued into the night of the 16th, with Navy Blimp K-20 following up on a report from a Navy SB2C Helldiver that two groups of men were sighted in the water 18 miles offshore. USS Inflict (AM-251), on her shakedown cruise between Charleston and Norfolk, joined the rescue.

Aided by dropped water lights from the aircraft, whaleboats from the minesweeper recovered 12 men who had been adrift for over 60 hours, hounded by sharks and Portuguese men-of-war. Of these, the ship’s pharmacist’s mate found one man had a gangrene infection, another appendicitis, a third a broken leg, and a fourth a dislocated shoulder and cracked ribs, while all suffered necrotic salt water ulcers, hypothermia, and general fatigue.

Pushing her twin ALCO diesels to their max to break 14 knots, Inflict made Norfolk on the morning of the 17th and her charges were rushed to the Naval Hospital.

Later that day, USS PC-1245 recovered the floating bodies of four from Bedloe.

The air and naval search for the cutters’ lost members continued until the evening of the 18th. No less than 116 planes and six blimps had been aloft in the search.

In all, 22 men from Bedloe are still marked “missing” while another four who were recovered died. Of Jackson’s crew, which spent more time in the sea– almost all of it treading water– 21 are still somewhere under the waves.

This bill from Poseidon was paid, along with the 251 souls from the destroyer Warrington, LT Oberlin of PC-1210, the 33 minemen aboard YMS-409, and a dozen lightkeepers on LV-73.

Epilogue

Separate courts of inquiry conducted by ComFive and COMEASTSEAFRON inquired into the loss of Bedloe and Jackson:

Coast Guard Historian William H. Thiesen suspected Jackson succumbed to waves pushed ahead of the storm’s eyewall, while Bedloe was sunk by rogue waves formed on the backside of the eyewall, writing in a 2019 Proceedings article that, “It is possible that both cutters were victims of a phenomenon called the ‘three sisters,’ a series of rogue waves that travel in threes and are large enough to be tracked by radar.”

Post-war, the Coast Guard would use both cutters’ names a third time, with USCGC Jackson (WPC-120), ex-USS PCE(R)-858, and USCGC Bedloe (WPC-121), ex-USS PCE(R)-860. In typical Coast Guard fashion, “Both of the new cutters remained berthed at Curtis Bay, Maryland due to a lack of personnel,” and were later decommissioned and sold in 1947.

Today, Jackson rests, broken in two, southeast of Nags Head in 77 feet of water in NOAA’s Monitor National Marine Sanctuary. Navy EOD visited the site in the 1990s to remove ordnance and depth charges.

Sister Bedloe is close by, intact but on her side in 140 feet of water, and, while her depth charges were removed by the Navy, NOAA notes she still has live shells aboard.

The USCGC Maple in 2022 hosted a Coast Guard chaplain, divers, and an underwater archaeologist for four days while the sites were visited, mapped, and honored.

The Coast Guard Art Program has also saluted the cutters.

“The Fate of Cutters Jackson and Bedloe,” Louis Barberis, watercolor, 16 x 23. US Coast Guard Art Program 2005 Collection, Ob ID # 200503

As for the SS George Ade, the Liberty ship made it back to Norfolk where she was drydocked and repaired, returning to service on 18 December 1944.

Ade’s shot away rudder and damaged screw/shaft following the hit from U-518 and surviving a hurricane at sea immediately after. Photos: MARAD.

Post-war, Ade was transferred to the National Defense Reserve Fleet, in Mobile, Alabama, and, after 20 years in mothballs, was sold for scrap in 1967.

As for U-518, she was sunk on 22 April 1945 in the North Atlantic north-west of the Azores by depth charges from the destroyer escorts USS Carter (DE 112) and USS Neal A. Scott (DE 769), with all hands lost including Oblt. Hans-Werner Offermann. Ade was the final ship the U-boat had torpedoed.

U-518 via Deutsches U-Boot-Museum, Cuxhaven-Altenbruch, Germany

The Atlantic holds its dead.

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80 years ago today: American DUKWs transport supplies to waiting British troops and American paratroopers across the River Waal at Nijmegen, Holland, the day after German frogmen of Marine Einsatzkommando (MEK) 65 dropped the East-West bridge’s central span via floating mines, 30 September 1944

Midgley, A. N. (Sergeant), No. 5 Army Film and Photo Section, Army Film and Photographic Unit, IWM B 10435

Same as above, IWM B10434

During the war, the Arsenal of Democracy cranked out over 21,000 of this six-wheel-drive amphibious modification of GMC’s 2+1⁄2-ton CCKW “Jimmy” trucks.

With a 7-ton curb weight, they were capable of 50 mph on paved roads and 6 knots in the water via its stern propeller and could carry 24-ish troops or as much as 5,000 pounds of payload while operated by a single driver.

DUKW Amphibious vehicles in the canals of Venice, Italy, during World War II. c. May, 1945

They remained in service post-war well through Korea while Allies such as France (Indochina), Britain (Malaya/Borneo), and Spain (Africa) would keep them in service into the 1980s.

DUKW of the Spanish Infantería de Marina in a Madrid parade, late 1960s

Following up on our Warship Wednesday this week, which covered the Great War-era Admiralty Strath-class “battle trawler” HMT William Barnett (3632) and its later life as the French Navy’s auxiliary minesweeper Roche Noire during WWII, how about a great series of related period maritime art?

British portrait painter, landscape artist, and printmaker Francis Edgar Dodd, RA, turned 40 as the “lamps are going out all over Europe.”

Volunteering to serve as an Official War Artist during World War I, he spent some time at sea with the hired trawler HMT Mackenzie (Adty No 336) during the conflict.

One of more than 1,400 British trawlers taken up from trade— some dating back to 1880– Mackenzie was built in 1911 (Hull-reg H.349) and retained her original name while in naval service. A craft of some 335 tons, she was hired in August 1914 and would remain in RN service, armed with a single 6-pounder Hotchkiss gun, likely taken from an old torpedo boat or battleship fighting top.

Primarily serving as a minesweeper, Mackenzie was returned to her owner in 1919.

She was one of the lucky ones. Of the 1,456 hired trawlers used by the British during the war, 266 were lost during the conflict including no less than 142 to enemy action. They fought a war very much as real as those with the Grand Fleet at Jutland. 

Dodd captured the life on Mackenzie in great detail. You can almost smell the pipes’ smoke and coal dust. 

All of these pieces are from the Imperial War Museum Collection, which has some 80 of Dodd’s wartime pieces digitized and viewable online.

The After Cabin, HM Trawler Mackenzie (Art. IWM ART 904) image: four sailors sit around a large table, upon which are plates and cutlery, while behind are cabin windows; one sailor is seen full length, the others half body. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7556

A Cook in the Galley, HM Trawler Mackenzie (Art. IWM ART 896) image: three-quarter portrait of a man in overalls and cap, holding a mug in his left hand. He is sitting in a galley, with a large range, a pot, and a kettle on the left Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7548

Cleaning the Gun, HM Trawler Mackenzie (Art. IWM ART 898) image: standing on the left a sailor, wearing a life jacket, is thrusting a pole into the breech of a deck gun, most of the mechanism of which is to the right. Rigging and a white ensign are visible behind the gun, and other ships are visible on the horizon. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7550

Cards in the Fo’c’s’le, HM Trawler Mackenzie (Art. IWM ART 931) image: below decks in a confined space, five sailors stand and sit around a table playing cards, while two others look on. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7584

The Engine Room, HM Trawler Mackenzie (Art. IWM ART 897) image: two men stand in an enclosed space surrounded by the heavy machinery of a ship’s engine room. The man to the right, wearing a cap, has his left hand on the engine-room telegraph apparatus, while the man to the left, with a pipe in his mouth, has his right leg up on a step. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7549

Forward from the Wheelhouse, HM Trawler Mackenzie: the figures are just about to slip the ‘kite’ used to sink the wire hawser to the required depths for sweeping (Art. IWM ART 905) image: a view of the bow, mast, and starboard forward deck of a ship at sea. Two figures are bending over equipment on the deck, while a third stands on a ladder resting over the side of the ship. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7557

The Stokehold, HM Trawler Mackenzie (Art. IWM ART 903) image: in a cramped enclosed space of metal plating and machinery, a stoker is bent over shoveling coal from a bunker into a boiler. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7555

Sweeps to Starboard: HMT Mackenzie (Art. IWM ART 909) image: in the foreground is a view over the side of a ship with minesweeping equipment deployed. Behind, a broad seascape with several other trawlers in the distance. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7562

The Wheelhouse, HM Trawler Mackenzie (Art. IWM ART 933) image: a view inside the wheelhouse of a ship, with two officers to the left and a sailor controlling the wheel, all in left profile. A binnacle is in the left foreground and another trawler is visible through the wheelhouse windows. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7586

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

Warship Wednesday on a Friday, Dec. 27, 2024: Taking a Licking

Via Navsource.

Above we see the Balao-class fleet submarine USS Bergall (SS-320) upon her triumphal return to Freemantle, Australia, some 80 years ago this week, on 23 December 1944, on completion of her epic Second War Patrol. The path of a 278-pound 8-inch shell fired from the Japanese heavy cruiser Myoko is clearly marked, having passed from port to starboard through the sub’s pressure hull.

But you should see the other guy!

The Balaos

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. U.S. subs, unlike those of many navies of the day, 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) Mk 14 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 Spikefish and USS Greenfish, the rocket mail-slinging USS Barbero, the carrier-slaying USS Archerfish, the long-serving USS Catfish, the U-boat scuttling USS Atule, the Busy Bug that was the USS Bugara, and the frogman Cadillac USS Perch —but don’t complain, they have lots of great stories.

Meet Bergall

Bergall was named for a small fish (Tautogolabrus adspersus) found along the East Coast.

Via the State of New York Forest, Fish, and Game Commission, 1901, painted by SF Denton.

Laid down on 13 May 1943 at Electric Boat in Groton, Bergall launched just nine months later and commissioned on 12 June 1944, her construction running just 396 days.

Electric Boat Company, Groton, Connecticut. Shipway where future USS Bergall (SS-320) is under construction, circa summer 1943. Two welders are at work in the foreground. 80-G-K-15063

Her plankowner skipper, T/CDR John Milton Hyde, USN, (USNA 1934), had already earned a Silver Star as executive officer of the Salmon-class submarine USS Swordfish (SS-193) across four Pacific war patrols that bagged 11 Japanese ships and commanded that sub’s sister, Snapper (SS-185) while the latter was under overhaul.

Bergall carried out shakedown operations off New England for three weeks then, following post-shakedown availability at New London, set out for the Pacific via the Caribbean and the Panama Canal, pausing to rescue the two fliers of a crashed Army training plane in the Mona Passage off Puerto Rico.

She arrived at Pearl Harbor on 13 August and was soon ready for battle.

War!

Made the flagship of SubRon 26’s SubDiv 262, Bergall departed from Pearl Harbor on 8 September 1944 on her First War Patrol, ordered to hunt in the South China Sea.

Arriving off Saipan on the 19th, she soon had her first encounter with the Empire’s fighting men:

Her first contact with the enemy came a day and a half west of Saipan when in the high periscope she sighted a small boat containing five Japanese infantrymen. Bergall closed, attempting rescue, but the efforts were abandoned when the Japanese made gestures that indicated that they wanted us to leave them alone and that we were the scum of the earth. The Americans marveled at the pride and insolent bearing of the enemy, admired their courage, and pitied their stupidity.

Continuing West, she damaged a small Japanese transport vessel with gunfire east of Nha Trang, French Indo-China on 3 October with an exchange of 5-inch (20 rounds) and 40mm (40 rounds) gunfire, and six days later sank a small (700-ton) Japanese cargo vessel just south of Cam Ranh Bay with a trio of Mark 14 torpedoes.

She followed up on that small fry on 13 October by stalking a small four-ship convoy off the coast of Vietnam and sent the tanker Shinshu Maru (4182 GRT) to the bottom via four Mk 23s– and survived a five-hour-long depth charging in retaliation.

On the 27th, she torpedoed and sank the big Japanese tanker Nippo Maru (10528 GRT) and damaged the Japanese tanker Itsukushima Maru (10007 GRT, built 1937) south-west of Balabac Strait, a heroic action seeing the two vessels were protected by a thick escort of four frigates.

On her way back to Freemantle on 2 November, she sank, via 420 rounds of 20mm, a small junk loaded with coconuts and chickens east of the Kangean Islands. Hyde noted in his patrol report “Regret the whole affair as picayune.”

Bergall’s very successful First War Patrol ended at Freemantle on 8 November 1944, covering 15,702 miles. Seventh Fleet authorized a Submarine Combat Insignia for the patrol and credited the boat with sinking 21,500 tons of Japanese shipping.

Not a bad first start!

Hyde would pick up his second Silver Star while the boat’s XO, LCDR Kimmel was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with Combat “V.”

Cruiser Shootout

On 2 December 1944, Bergall departed Fremantle for her Second War Patrol, ordered once again to hunt in the South China Sea.

On 13 December, nearing sunset, our boat spotted a large ship at 35,000 yards off Royalist Bank and made a plan to attack after dark.

Over the next couple of hours, running in just 12-to-14 fathoms of water, she fired six Mk 23s while on the surface and received gunfire back. It turned out she blew the stern off the heavy cruiser Myoko and left her dead in the water. In return, the surfaced submarine was bracketed by shells typically credited as being 8-inchers from Myoko but more likely 5-inch shells from the escorting Japanese destroyer Ushio. One of these zipped right through Bergall’s pressure hull, a disaster that kept the submarine from surfacing while floating some 1,200 miles inside Japanese territory.

Her patrol report on the attack:

While the shell impact left no personnel casualties, the sub was severely damaged and, with no welding capability, repairs consisted of a mix of brazed and bolted plates, plugged with pillows and mattresses:

With all guns manned, demolition charges set for scuttling, and her damage patched up as best as possible, Bergall headed for home and was grateful when, on the morning of 15 December, she rendezvoused with the Gato-class submarine USS Angler (SS-240).

Transferring 2/3rds of her crew (54 men and one officer, the junior ensign) to Angler, Hyde noted of the attempt to make the Karimata Strait:

“if mandatory we could dive in shallow water and sit on the bottom. With Angler near at hand the enterprise didn’t seem too bad for the skeleton crew and officers. To have scuttled our ship in itself seemed unthinkable and it wasn’t much further to deep water in the right direction that it was in the wrong. The weather was very much in our favor too. The sky was heavily overcast with rain storms coming from the west-northwest.”

The men who remained aboard, all volunteers, comprised eight officers and 21 crew, the latter including at least three chiefs. This allowed an underway watch bill with two officers on the bridge, two men (helm and radar) in the tower, three (Chief of Watch, Aux, and I.C.) in the control room, and one EM in the maneuvering room.

By the end of the 16th, Bergall and Angler cleared the Karimata Strait without incident.

By the 18th, they cleared the Lombok Strait– just skirting Japanese patrol boats in the dark.

Making Exmouth on the tip of Western Australia’s North West Cape on the 20th, Bergall was able to remove the lightly brazed plating from the torpedo loading hatch and had new plates arc welded in place, enabling her to make for Freemantle on the 23rd where she ended her abbreviated patrol.

Hyde would receive the Navy Cross for the patrol and three other officers received the Silver Star.

The patrol was later dramatized in an episode of The Silent Service coined, “The Bergall’s Dilemma.” Hyde appears at the end of the episode for a brief comment.

As for Myoko, arriving at Singapore via tow on Christmas day, she would never sail again under her own power and surrendered to the Royal Navy in September 1945.

Japanese Heavy Cruiser Myōkō in Singapore four days after surrendering to Royal Navy units, tied up alongside the submarines I-501 (ex U-181) and I-502 (ex U-862) – September 25, 1945 IWM – Trusler, C (Lt) Photographer IWM A 30701

Captain Power visits the damaged Japanese cruiser. 25 September 1945, Singapore. In May 1944, five ships of the Twenty-Sixth Destroyer Flotilla attached to the British East Indies fleet, led by HMS Saumarez, with Captain M L Power, CBE, OBE, DSO, and BAR, as Captain (D), sank the Japanese cruiser Haguro in one hours action at the entrance to the Malacca Strait. When Saumarez entered Singapore Naval Base, Captain Power with his staff officers, paid a visit to Myoko, the sister ship of Haguro, now lying there with her stern blown off after the Battle of the Philippines. Crossing to the deck of the Myoko via the conning tower of a German U-boat, Captain Power and his party were met by Japanese officers who took them on a comprehensive tour of the ship. Two British naval officers examine what is left of the Myoko’s stern. IWM A 30703

Cuties

Patched up and taking on a supply of diminutive new Mk 27 passive acoustic torpedoes– dubbed Cuties as they only went about half the size of Mk 14s and 23s— Bergall left Fremantle on 27 January 1945 for her Third War Patrol, ordered to scour the Lombok Strait of small Japanese escorts and move on to the South China Sea.

However, with a short range (just 5,000 yards), the shallow-water Cuties had to be used up close to work. Carrying a warhead with just 95 pounds of Torpex, they were meant for killing small escorts.

Between 27 January and 7 February, Bergall made five nighttime attack runs with Cuties while in the Lombok, each time allowing a single slow (12 knots) Mk 27 to swim out at ranges as close as 200 yards. The result was in sinking of the Japanese auxiliary minesweeper Wa 102 (174 tons)– picking up two survivors and making them POWs– and damaging the store ship Arasaki (920 GRT).

Moving toward the Philippines, Bergall sank the Japanese frigate Kaibokan 53 (745 tons) and damaged the tanker Toho Maru (10,238 GRT) off Cam Ranh Bay.

Then, on 13 February, working in conjunction with fellow subs USS Blower and Guitarro off Hainan island, she came across a ripe target for any submariner– a pair of Japanese battlewagons– the hybrid battleship/carriers Ise and Hyuga.

She ripple-fired six Mk 14s in a risky daylight periscope attack from 10,000 yards– without success.

She ended her patrol on 17 February at recently liberated Subic Bay, PI, having traveled 6,070 miles.

The “Cutie Patrol” would be immortalized in an episode of The Silent Service, “The Bergall’s Revenge.”

The hits keep coming

The boat’s uneventful Fourth War Patrol (5 March to 17 April) which included a special mission (typically code to land agents) and rescuing four USAAF B-25 aircrew from the water, ended at Freemantle.

Bergall then left Australia on 12 May 1945 on her Fifth Patrol, bound to haunt the coast of Indochina.

On the morning of the 18th, she battered a small Japanese coastal freighter in the Lombok Strait but didn’t get to see it sink as enemy aircraft were inbound.

Joining up with an American wolfpack in the Gulf of Siam including USS Bullhead (SS-332), Cobia (SS-245), Hawkbill (SS-366), and Kraken (SS-370), she sighted a small intercoastal convoy of tugs and barges in the predawn moonlight of 30 May, and sank same.

Then, on 13 June, she swept a mine the hard way while chasing an enemy convoy.

Ironically, the minefield, a mix of three dozen acoustic and magnetic-induction type mines, had been laid by Allied aircraft out of India in March and was unknown to the Seventh Fleet command. While the mine, which had at least a 490-pound explosive charge, was believed to be some 90 feet away from the hull when it went off, and Bergall’s hull retained integrity, it nonetheless rocked the boat severely.

From her damage report: 

The impact of the detonation jarred the entire ship. Personnel were knocked off their feet, tossed out of bunks, and in the maneuvering room were thrown up against the overhead. Lighting failed in the maneuvering and after torpedo rooms. The overspeed trips operated on Nos. 2 and 3 main Diesel engines, which were on propulsion, and No. 1 main Diesel engine, which was charging the batteries, causing all three engines to stop and thereby cutting off power to the main propulsion motors.

However, just 20 minutes after the explosion, Bergall had restarted her engines and was motoring away. While still capable of operations, her engineering suite was so loose and noisy it was thought she would be unable to remain operational and she was ordered to Subic, arriving there on 17 June.

Quick inspection at Subic found that the facility was unable to effect repairs and Bergall was ordered to shlep some 10,000 miles back to New London via Saipan, Pearl Harbor, and the Panama Canal.

Arriving at New London on 4 August 1945, she was there when the war ended.

Bergall earned four battle stars and a Navy Unit Commendation (for her 2nd patrol) for her World War II service. Her unconfirmed record at the end of the war included some 33,280 tons of enemy shipping sunk across five sunken warships and five merchantmen along with another 66,000 tons damaged.

Her WWII battle flag carried an upside-down horseshoe with the number “13” inside of it since so many incidents in her service had occurred on the 13th day of the month.

CDR Hyde, when he left the vessel in September 1945, was given a farewell watch by his crew. Engraved on its back was a large “13.”

As for Myoko, she towed to the Strait of Malacca in 1946 and scuttled off of Port Swettenham (Port Klang), Malaya.

Cold Warrior

Finishing her repair and overhaul– she picked up new sensors including an SV radar– Bergall rejoined the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in December 1945 and, as part of SubRon1, would spend the next five years stationed in Hawaii. This typically involved a series of reserve training dives, simulated war patrols and cruises between the West Coast and Hawaii, ASW exercises with the fleet, and acting as a tame sub for maritime patrol squadrons.

From December 1948 through February 1949, she roamed to the West Pac, visiting Australia and Japan for a bottom mapping exercise, a cruise that earned her a Navy Occupation Service Medal and a China Service Medal.

Bergall at Brisbane in December 1948, note she is still largely in her WWII configuration. Via Navsource. Photo courtesy of John Hummel, USN (Retired).

Transferring to the Atlantic Fleet in June 1950, she had her topside streamlined, landing her deck guns and receiving a new sail, then, between November 1951 and April 1952, received a Fleet Snorkel conversion at Philadelphia Navy Yard.

Bergall circa 1950, with her topside streamlined but before her snorkel conversion.

USS Bergall (SS-320), 22 July 1952. USN 479940

Bergall, in the spirit of her “lucky 13” nature, lost her periscope twice within five years during her peacetime service.

The first, in 1949, was to a passing Van Camp tuna boat off the California coast.

The second, during LANTFLEX on Halloween 1954, had her periscopes and radar masts where sliced through by the destroyer USS Norris (DDE-859)’s bow, luckily without any casualties.

Ironically, USS Angler, the same boat that stood by Bergall after she was holed in the fight against Myoko a decade prior, stood by her and escorted the sub into port.

Bergall (SS-320) as a causality on 2 November 1954. Photo and text i.d. courtesy of Mike Brood, bergall.org.

Repaired, she completed two Mediterranean cruises (9 Nov 1955-28 Jan 1956 and 31 Aug -6 Dec 1957), and, once she returned, was reassigned to Key West Naval Station for preparations to be handed over at military aid.

Bergall 1958, returning from Bermuda just before she was handed over to a NATO ally as military aid. Via Bergall.org

Turkish Guppy Days

Between May 1948 and August 1983, the Turkish Navy would receive no less than 23 second-hand U.S. Navy diesel submarines, all WWII-era (or immediately after) fleet boats.

These would include (in order of transfer): ex-USS Brill (SS 330), Blueback (SS 326), Boarfish (SS 327), Chub (SS 329), Blower (SS 325), Bumper (SS 333), Guitarro (SS 363), Hammerhead (SS 364), Bergall (SS 320), Mapiro (SS 376), Mero (SS 378), Seafox (SS 402), Razorback (SS 394), Thornback (SS 418), Caiman (SS 323), Entemedor (SS 340), Threadfin (SS 410), Trutta (SS 421), Pomfret (SS 391), Corporal (SS 346), Cobbler (SS 344), Tang (SS 563), and Gudgeon (SS 567).

Our Bergall would sail from Key West on 26 September 1958, bound for Izmir, Turkey, where she would arrive 19 days later.

On 17 October, she was decommissioned and handed over in a warm transfer to the Turkish Navy in a ceremony that saw her renamed Turgutreis (S-342), officially on a 15-year lease.

The highlights of the handover ceremony, in Turkish: 

Ex-Bergall/Turgutreis (S-342) in Turkish service. She would take part in the Cyprus War in 1974, among other operations with the Turkish fleet.

Turkey’s collection of Snorkel and GUPPY modified U.S. Navy fleet boats via the 1960 edition of Janes, to include Bergall/Turgutreis.

While in Turkish service, Bergall in the meantime had her name canceled from the Navy List in 1965 and was stricken from the USN’s inventory altogether in 1973, with ownership transferred to Istanbul.

Following the delivery of new Type 209 submarines from West Germany, Bergall/Turgutreis was no longer needed for fleet operations and in April 1983 she was decommissioned.

Renamed Ceryan Botu-6, she was relegated to pier side service at Golcuk Naval Shipyard for another 13 years, where she was stripped of parts to keep other American boats in operations while serving as a battery charging boat with a 15-man crew, primarily of electricians.

In June 1999, Ceryan Botu-6/Turgutreis/Bergall was pulled from service and sold for scrap the following year.

Turkey only retired its last two ex-USN “smoke boats,” Tang and Gudgeon, in 2004

Epilogue

Few lingering relics remain of Bergall.

Her War History and deck logs are in the National Archives. 

Her wartime skipper, John Milton Hyde (NSN: 0-73456), retired from the Navy following Korean War service as a captain with a Navy Cross and three Silver Stars on his salad bar. He passed in 1981, aged 71, and is buried in Arlington’s Section 25.

“The Old Man” completed 12 war patrols, five of them on Bergall.

The Navy recycled the name of its rough-and-tumble Balao for another vessel, SSN-667, a Sturgeon-class hunter-killer built, like her namesake, at EB, ordered on 9 March 1965.

USS Bergall (SSN-667) conducts an emergency surfacing test off the east coast, in September 1969. K-77428

Commissioned on 13 June 1969 (!) her ship’s crest carried five stars in a salute to the old Bergall’s five WWII Pacific war patrols. In another, less Navy-approved similarity to her namesake, she suffered a casualty-free peacetime collision with the submarine rescue vessel USS Kittiwake (ASR-13).

Notably, SSN-667 was the first submarine in the fleet to carry the Mk 48 heavy torpedo on deployment, as well as the first east coast-based submarine to carry a DSRV, and earned two Navy Unit Commendations. She decommissioned on 6 June 1996.

A vibrant veterans’ group saluting both Bergalls endures.

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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