Admiral-In-Chief: Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. Navy, and the Invasion of Norfolk, Part I

May 3, 2018, 2:05 pm

≫ Next: Admiral-in-Chief: Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. Navy, and the Invasion of Norfolk, Part 2

≪ Previous: What Prevented WWIII? It Just Might Be the INCSEA

$

0

0

By A.J. Orlikoff
Hampton Roads Naval Museum Educator

This illustration published in 1907 depicts an attack against Confederate-held Sewells Point on May 8, 1862 by U.S. Navy vessels such as USS Monitor (in the lead) and the experimental Revenue Cutter E.A. Stevens (also known as theUSRC Naugatuck) (following immediately behind).  The steam sloops Dacotah, Seminole, and steam frigate Susquehanna are also depicted as having taken part in the bombardment against Confederate troops of the Columbus (Georgia) Light Guard and the Norfolk Light Artillery Blues. The circular structure in the middle distance to the right represents Fort Wool, despite the fact that its final design was a crescent at best, with Fort Monroe beyond, also looking much larger and closer than it would have looked to those manning the batteries, under a battle flag with a design that did not exist that early in the war. (Naval History and Heritage Command/ NH 58756)

On the afternoon of May 7, 1862, a tall figure stood upon the ramparts of Fort Wool in the middle of the James River. The figure watched as a powerful naval strike force, spearheaded by the ironclad Monitor, advanced towards the Confederate batteries at Sewells Point. Just that morning, the man who now watched as the ships of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron moved into position had quickly appraised the strategic situation in Hampton Roads and prodded the naval commander, Flag Officer Louis Goldsborough, to utilize his powerful naval assets to conduct a “demonstration” against the Confederate works. With the rare opportunity to watch an operation he had ordered in person, the figure watched as the U.S. Navy flotilla, with powerful 11-inch guns, opened fire on the Sewells Point defenses. 

Fort Wool (formerly known as Fort Calhoun and known informally as the Rip Raps) on a man made island sitting roughly equidistant between Fort Monroe and Willoughby Spit, was the closest U.S. Army territory to Confederate-held Norfolk during the spring of 1862, making it a good vantage point for President Lincoln.  (Hampton Roads naval Museum file)

The "Rebel Batteries" of Sewells Point as they appeared in Harper's Weekly on November 8, 1861.  A print of this appears in the Hampton Roads naval Museum gallery. (Marcus W. Robbins via usgwarchives.net)

Their fire was devastating as the Confederate defenders desperately tried to fight back. As the man on the ramparts watched, cannons to his left and right joined the furious cannonade as the Confederate batteries were silenced. As the smoke cleared, the Navy strike force shifted their fire to other Confederate batteries a half mile away from Sewells Point and the man on the ramparts was surely gratified that his strategic wisdom to strike the Confederate batteries had been sound. The man on the ramparts was Abraham Lincoln, Commander-in-Chief and President of the United States, and he was determined to make good use of his time in Hampton Roads in May of 1862.

Although it was common to have to sit still while being photographed during the Civil War, Alexander Gardner's photograph of this meeting at Antietam, Maryland, in October 1862 between President Abraham Lincoln and Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan captures the stilted relationship between the two men.  The following month, Lincoln would remove McClellan from command of the Army of the Potomac, and two years later, McClellan would run against Lincoln for the presidency.  (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division via Wikimedia Commons)

Lincoln’s arrival in Hampton Roads, which resulted in the naval operations which led to Norfolk’s capture by Union forces, ironically had nothing to do with a desire to spur the U.S. Navy into action. Rather, Lincoln had arrived to confer with Union General-in-Chief George B. McClellan on his now notorious over cautiousness and lethargy during the Peninsular Campaign of 1862, when the vast Army of the Potomac was stalled by a much smaller Confederate army in Yorktown. Lincoln, having arrived at a time when McClellan deemed it inconvenient to meet with the Commander-in-Chief, was not one to sit idle and he almost immediately decided to take control of the naval situation in Hampton Roads while he waited for McClellan to meet with him.

This engraving published in the July-December 1861 volume Harper's Weekly depicts 13 merchant steamships acquired by the U.S. Navy between April and August 1861 and subsequently converted into warships, plus the steamer Nashville (far left), which became a Confederate cruiser. U.S. Navy ships, as identified below the image bottom, are (from left to right): Alabama, Quaker City, Santiago de Cuba (listed as St. Jago de Cuba), Mount Vernon, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Florida, De Soto, Augusta, James Adger, Monticello, Bienvilleand R.R. Cuyler. (HN 5936/ Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph)

The U.S. Navy, over its illustrious history, has benefited from a number of ardent navalist presidents. Presidents John Adams, Teddy Roosevelt, and Franklin Roosevelt were famous naval champions who consistently fought for and touted the benefits of a strong U.S. Navy. However, many leave Lincoln out of the discussion of navalist presidents even though Lincoln was as much a naval champion as any president. In fact, Lincoln presided over an era of unprecedented naval spending and activity with the U.S. Navy exploding in size from 42 ships in commission at the beginning of the war to 671 by the end of the war, an increase in size by a factor of 15. This naval buildup was no accident as the Union “Anaconda Plan,” the grand strategy devised by the old General Winfield Scott and approved by Lincoln, relied heavily upon the Navy to blockade the Confederate coast, close its major ports, and isolate portions of the Confederacy by controlling the major rivers. To Lincoln, the U.S. Navy was a vital instrument in the military symphony designed to quell the rebellion.

This contemporary stylized map by J.B. Elliot illustrates the general concept of the U.S. Navy's Anaconda Plan, conceived by the Army's senior general at the outbreak of the Civil War, Winfield Scott. (Library of Congress Geography and map Division)

Lincoln was certainly an unlikely naval champion. From an inland state and with, by his own admission, no naval experience, Lincoln nevertheless took to naval affairs almost immediately after taking office, though admittedly by necessity with the question of supplying Fort Sumter. However, by all accounts, Lincoln was greatly personally interested in the fleets, strategies, and technological aspects of the U.S. Navy. Lincoln was particularly fascinated by naval technology and one of his favorite activities during the war was to visit his friend Ordnance Chief Captain John A. Dahlgren at the Washington Naval Yard to personally view the latest naval technologies and weapons.

The then Captain Dahlgren, pictured here on the USS Pawnee next to the cannon that bore his name, was a technological visionary who served as Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance until his promotion to Rear Admiral in 1863. He was a close friend of Lincoln's and both men had immense respect for each other's abilities. (Library of Congress)

One of Lincoln’s greatest qualities as both a Commander-in-Chief and as an individual was his capacity to rapidly invest himself in and learn something that was unfamiliar to him. As a result Lincoln, by the time he was watching the bombardment of Sewell’s Point from the ramparts of Fort Wool in May 1862, was an adept naval strategist in his own right and he was resolved to take the fight to the enemy in Hampton Roads. With the Confederate batteries silenced, Lincoln watched as a puff of black smoke became visible from around the bend of the Elizabeth River. The CSS Virginia, terror of the Confederate Navy and the Monitor’s old opponent at the Battle of Hampton Roads, was coming to do battle with the Union strike force. 

An Alfred Waud sketch of the Rip raps (Fort Wool) in 1861. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

As seen from off Old Point Comfort in 2016, Fort Wool looms in front of the Ocean View section of Norfolk.  The top of the Westin Virginia Beach Town Center can be seen in the far distance middle left. (M.C. Farrington)

---

Admiral-in-Chief: Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. Navy, and the Invasion of Norfolk, Part 2

May 9, 2018, 10:03 pm

≫ Next: New Prince's Namesake a Naval Hero in Hampton Roads

≪ Previous: Admiral-In-Chief: Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. Navy, and the Invasion of Norfolk, Part I

$

0

0

By A.J. Orlikoff
Hampton Roads Naval Museum Educator

Cheered on by Confederate soldiers manning the batteries at Craney Island at the western side of the mouth of the Elizabeth River, the casemate ironclad Virginia steams north into Hampton Roads with her escorts to take on the U.S. Navy ships of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron.  Although this illustration probably depicts Virginia's first wildly successful foray into Hampton Roads in March 1862, later attempts by the former Merrimack to disrupt the operations of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron were much less dramatic, and the Confederate warship would ultimately meet her end off Craney Island in May. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

With the dust settling from the Navy’s bombardment of Sewells Point in May 1862, President Abraham Lincoln watched as a curl of black smoke appeared from around the bend of the Elizabeth River.  Someone on the ramparts shouted “There comes the Merrimac!” The former U.S. Navy vessel, now the pride of the small Confederate Navy under the name CSS Virginia, was coming to strike a powerful blow to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, just as it had done in March of 1862.  However, just as before, the U.S. Navy had the USS Monitor to counter the iron monster. Dwarfed by the oceangoing steamer USS Vanderbilt, named for her donor, American railroad titan Cornelius Vanderbilt, Monitor advanced to protect the vulnerable wooden ships of the squadron. As Lincoln departed Fort Wool with members of his cabinet to wisely retreat to the stronger Fort Monroe, the two ships advanced towards the lumbering Virginia with only an empty sheet of water separating them. The North Atlantic Blockading Squadron had once again accepted the Virginia’s challenge.

USS Vanderbilt (1862-1873) in a period engraving by G. Parsons as published in Harper's Weekly, 1862. This former flagship of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt's North Atlantic Mail Steamship Line was turned over to the U.S. Navy on March 24, 1862 and fitted with a heavy battery of 15 guns. (Navy.mil)

As Lincoln, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton retreated from Fort Wool, they watched the unfolding drama as Monitor and Vanderbilt stared down CSS Virginia. For a few moments, nothing happened.  Then, as suddenly as a ship of such displacement could, Virginia turned and retreated back up the Elizabeth River. Lincoln’s strategic intuition had been sound; American naval supremacy in the area was enough to both silence Confederate batteries and turn back counterattacks from their mightiest ship. With their objectives completed, the ships returned to the shelter of Fort Monroe, but Lincoln was far from done.

Looking south, this 1862 print shows Fort Monroe's commanding view from Old Point Comfort in what is now Hampton. Named for President James Monroe, this, the largest stone fort ever built in the United States, was constructed for coastal defense and was never taken by the Confederacy, serving as a key base of operations in Virginia. (Library of Congress Geography and Map Division)

Lincoln immediately wanted to continue striking the enemy in Norfolk.  The next day, he ordered the Monitor, this time without Flag Officer Louis Goldsborough’s input, to confirm the silencing of the rebel batteries. In addition, Lincoln consulted with General John Wool, the commander of Fort Monroe and the U.S. Army forces in the area, on how to best launch an amphibious invasion of Norfolk. Wool was initially hesitant as he believed there was no suitable landing site, but Lincoln was insistent that a reconnaissance should be conducted and, should a landing site be found, an invasion force launched from Hampton.

General John E. Wool, then 78, was the oldest general to serve on either side of the American Civil War. The fort Lincoln watched the bombardment of Sewells Point from, originally known as Fort Calhoun, was renamed Fort Wool in honor of the old general who was in command of Fort Monroe. (Southworth & Hawes)

Lincoln sent Chase on the initial reconnaissance missions of May 8 to act as a direct liaison to Lincoln. Chase reported that he and Wool had indeed discovered a suitable landing point which was sheltered from any potential intervention by CSS Virginia. The President, wanting to see the landing site for himself, boarded a small tug with Secretaries Stanton and Chase, accompanied by a small party of soldiers from Fort Wool, to conduct an evening reconnaissance of the site. Thus, the  Commander-in-Chief, one with no military experience, personally led a reconnaissance mission of an enemy shore.  Confederate cavalry arrived on the beach to investigate the approaching vessels but Lincoln ordered that they not be fired upon.  Satisfied that the landing site was suitable, Lincoln returned to U.S. lines, and General Wool agreed to launch the amphibious invasion on May 10.

Salmon P. Chase was Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury and he accompanied the President, along with Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, to Hampton Roads in May 1862. A former senator and governor, Chase played an active role in the military operations which led to Norfolk’s capture and is the only sitting Secretary of the Treasury to personally participate in an amphibious invasion.

The level of micromanagement Lincoln displayed in Hampton Roads may seem unusual, but it is important to recognize that Lincoln exercised such personal control over American forces out of what he believed was certain necessity. Lincoln was already frustrated with the lethargic progress of General McClellan’s 100,000-strong Army of the Potomac and he detected much of the same lethargy from Goldsborough and Wool.  Lincoln was perfectly willing to defer, delegate, and take a hands-off approach with military affairs and he frequently did so during the war with various Union commanders such as General Ulysses S. Grant and Admiral David G. Farragut.

Photographer Matthew Brady captured the audacity of Admiral David Glasgow Farragut, who was the naval antithesis of George McClellan. He aggressively commanded several fleets throughout the Civil War and consistently won victory after victory for the Union by striking directly at the enemy. Farragut famously led ran past the forts which protected New Orleans on April 29, 1862, capturing the Confederacy’s largest city with only a minimal loss of life. (National Archives & Records Administration)

These men had what Goldsborough, Wool, and McClellan lacked; they aggressively and willingly took the fight to the enemy. Lincoln detested the timidity and over cautiousness of many Union commanders and was resolved that the best way to win the war was to take the fight to the enemy and strike them simultaneously at multiple points, as the Anaconda Plan called for, in order to best leverage the Union numerical superiority. Thus, when Lincoln believed it was necessary, the Commander-in-Chief personally intervened on many occasions to ensure that the U.S. Military was constantly striking the Confederacy in multiple places all at once.

This print by C. Bohn shows the area around Camp Butler in Newport News, where many of the troops that participated in the invasion of Norfolk embarked.  (Library of Congress Geography and Map Division)

In the early morning hours of May 10, approximately 5,000 soldiers from Hampton and Newport News boarded ships to embark on the invasion of Norfolk. On the wharf of Fort Monroe, Lincoln, Chase, and Stanton stood at the heart of the action as Lincoln was, according to an observer, “…rushing about, hollering to someone on the wharf.” Lincoln was determined that the invasion he had ordered, planned, and personally reconnoitered be successful. As the rays of the morning sun began to shine with more intensity, Lincoln watched from aboard a tug as thousands of U.S. Army soldiers, personally led by Wool, landed unopposed near what is now known as Ocean View.  Navy Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge accompanied Lincoln on the tug and recalled that, “He was very much preoccupied. He sat out on deck, aloof from everyone else, and appeared extremely tired, careworn, and weighted down with responsibility.”

Brigadier General Egbert L. Viele in 1860. (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

The invasion was initially botched as the Union forces were disorganized but Chase, who had gone ashore with the troops while Lincoln stayed on ship, sprang into action and ordered Brig. Gen. Egbert Ludovicus Viele, who had accompanied Lincoln to Hampton Roads as a guest of the cabinet, to take command of the landing force “…in the name of the President of the United States.” With Viele in command, the Army quickly organized and made rapid progress towards Norfolk. With Confederates abandoning their positions before them, they surged forward until they were met a few miles outside of the city by the Mayor of Norfolk, who promptly surrendered the city. This was likely to buy time for the retreating Confederates, who were sabotaging the Gosport Naval Yard before completing their retreat. 

This illustration from Harper’s Weekly shows the surrender of Norfolk by the mayor.(Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

Lincoln was overjoyed to hear the news of the victory and the icy and aloof demeanor Selfridge had observed seemed to melt away as Lincoln offered everyone his congratulations and even hugged General Wool. What Lincoln and the others did not know was that the Confederates had planned to abandon Norfolk eventually, yet Lincoln surely had forced their hand by compelling them to abandon Norfolk far sooner than they had wanted. The ultimate proof of this came the next morning as Goldsbourough reported to Lincoln the destruction of CSS Virginia at the hands of her own crew off Craney Island. The workers at the Gosport Naval Yard had been hard at work trying to lighten the Confederate vessel to reduce her draft to less than 18 feet, enough to get her over the shoals of the James River safely to Richmond. With the Union now in possession of Norfolk, the Confederates had run out of time and were forced to destroy their most powerful naval asset. Virginia had survived the might of three North Atlantic Blockading Squadron frigates, the Monitor, and battery fire, yet in the end she was destroyed as a result of the pragmatic and aggressive posture of the Commander-in-Chief.

This Currier and Ives lithograph shows the final moment of CSS Virginia off of Craney Island on May 11 where the fires set by her crew ignited the powder magazine, resulting in a massive explosion. The Confederacy would never again contest the U.S. Navy's supremacy in Hampton Roads. (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

Lincoln departed Hampton Roads on May 11, and perhaps his worth during his week in Hampton Roads is best summed up by those who were there. Chase wrote of the President’s conduct, “I think it quite certain if he had not come down Norfolk would still have been in possession of the enemy.” He later added, “So ended a brilliant week's campaign by the President.” A reporter for the Washington Star added, “The sailors all unite in saying he is a ‘trump’ and they also express the opinion that the success of the movement is due to the energy infused into it by ‘Uncle Abe.’” Lincoln, in the eyes of many Sailors, was an inspiring figure.

Scholars and enthusiasts alike believe this portrait of Abraham Lincoln, taken on November 8, 1863, eleven days before his famed Gettysburg Address, to be the best photograph of him ever taken. Lincoln’s character was notoriously difficult to capture in pictures, but Alexander Gardner’s close-up portrait, quite innovative in contrast to the typical full-length portrait style commonly used by Matthew Brady, comes closest to preserving the expressive contours of Lincoln’s face and his penetrating gaze. (Scewing/ Wikimedia Commons)

Lincoln’s qualities as a commander-in chief were on full display during his week in Hampton Roads. Though he possessed no military experience nor was he a navalist by training, Lincoln nevertheless immediately and aggressively rallied his naval assets to strike at Sewells Point, stare down the vaunted Virginia, reconnoiter a hostile coast, and land an amphibious force to take Norfolk. Lincoln was a natural and intuitive naval strategist who essentially acted as a commanding flag officer who successfully took the fight to the enemy despite the trepidation of both Goldsborough and Wool. Perhaps, if the circumstances of his life had gone much differently, Lincoln would have been a capable admiral.

Editor's note: For more on President Abraham Lincoln's relationship with, and management of, the United States Navy, check out Craig Symonds'Lincoln and his Admirals (Oxford University Press, 2008)

New Prince's Namesake a Naval Hero in Hampton Roads

May 18, 2018, 1:04 am

≫ Next: 120 Years Ago: The Redemptive Power of a Suicide Mission, Part 1

≪ Previous: Admiral-in-Chief: Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. Navy, and the Invasion of Norfolk, Part 2

$

0

0

Anglophiles around the world are abuzz over all the goings-on with the British Royal Family, from the upcoming wedding of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle to the new son recently born to Prince William and his wife Catherine, who they named Prince Louis Arthur Charles.  Many of them know that the name Louis (pronounced without the "s") has a long history in the family, and that the baby prince was most likely named for Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India who was killed by terrorists in 1979.  Unfortunately, many news reports only mentioned Mountbatten's tragic death, yet he was a man whose amazing life impacted the destinies of millions around the globe.

Not many know that Mountbatten, a cousin of King George VI and son of a German prince, spent over 50 years in service to the Royal Navy and that he was never more at home than when commanding a warship.  Fewer still know that the seasoned combat veteran took charge of the largest ship he would ever command, the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious, right here in Hampton Roads, months before the American entry into the Second World War.  But almost no one alive today knows what important attribute he shared with the ship's mascot.

Although it was common knowledge among residents of Portsmouth and Norfolk, Virginia, that the British aircraft carrier Illustrious was being completely refurbished at Norfolk Naval Shipyard after being nearly destroyed by German dive bombers, this fact was only publicly acknowledged when Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten took command. (Sargeant Memorial Collection, Norfolk Public Library)

Stories about the event appeared in newspapers from coast to coast, largely taking the American public by surprise. Until just a few days before Mountbatten's arrival, it was forbidden to report that British warships were even visiting American ports, much less undergoing major repair work in the U.S. Navy's shipyards. Many at the time wondered why such an important event would take place hundreds of miles from the nearest Royal Navy outpost.
That story is indeed obscure, but we can now shed some light upon it. 

Royal Blood and Seawater

The destinies of the United States and the United Kingdom drew closer throughout 1941. One reason for this is that when the year began, the Royal Navy was in one of the most precarious positions in its long history.

When the war began in September 1939, the German Kriegsmarine had been vastly outnumbered by the British and French navies in terms of battleships (3 vs. 22), cruisers (8 vs. 83), and virtually every other kind of warship and auxiliary. Moreover, it had no viable fleet air arm of its own to counter the Royal Navy’s, not to mention Germany's two planned aircraft carriers were nowhere near completion.  Despite this, the well-organized and coordinated German war machine managed to force the French navy out of the war and put the Royal Navy on the defensive in the North Sea, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean during the first year of the war.

The Royal Navy had lost its first carrier to the Germans only two weeks after the war began. U-29 struck HMS Courageous with two torpedoes on September 17, 1939.  She sank in 15 minutes with a loss of 519 of her crew of 1,260. In the midst of its violent wake toiled Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten, commander of the 5th Destroyer Flotilla, helping pick up survivors aboard his flagship, HMS Kelly.

Although Lord Mountbatten’s great-grandmother was Queen Victoria, he had been rising through the ranks on his own merit since joining the Royal Navy in 1916.  Although royal blood coursed through his veins, so did seawater.  His father, Prince Louis of Battenberg, had served as First Sea Lord during the First World War’s outbreak over 20 years before.

With every major setback that the British armed forces and those of its allies faced in those early months of the war, Mountbatten acted fearlessly to defray disaster. In April 1940, his flotilla had taken heavy casualties while guarding the evacuation of British troops from Norway. The following month, HMS Kelly was torpedoed off the Dutch coast, after which Mountbatten moved his flag to HMS Javelin, which subsequently had both her bow and stern shot clear away by German torpedoes and gunfire off France.  He again assumed command of his original flagship after her return to service at the end of 1940, but while supporting the withdrawal of British forces from Crete in May 1941, Kelly took a direct hit from a German Stuka dive-bomber and capsized within two minutes. While Mountbatten escaped from under the destroyer, half of his crew did not.

After enduring wave after wave of German planes, which strafed the survivors with every pass, Mountbatten recalled:

“I thought it would be a good thing to start singing and so I started that popular song ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ and the others joined in, which seemed to help.”

Triumph at Taranto, Trial at Malta 

An artist's depiction of the surprise attack upon the Italian navy at Taranto, near the southern end of the Italian peninsula. (Royal Navy)

As it became obvious in June 1940 that France’s defeat was imminent and its fleet could no longer be counted upon by the Royal Navy, Italy committed its navy against Great Britain when it declared war on June 10.  Confronted by a former ally that it then had to fight and attacked by an opportunistic new foe in its home waters, the Royal Navy was rapidly running out of refuges in the Mediterranean.  Out of the depths of this crisis, however, a brilliant plan was hatched.  On November 11, 1940, the new British aircraft carrier Illustrious made history by launching the first raid by carrier-borne torpedo planes against ships in a protected harbor.  During Operation Judgment, just two waves of 21 antiquated Swordfish biplanes put half of Italy's battleships out of action at Taranto, at a cost of two aircraft.  Although behind schedule and more modest than was originally conceived, the operation stunned Italy and captured the attention of the world's navies, including the Japanese.

As seen from an unspecified Royal Navy warship, HMS Illustrious sustains a near miss right along her starboard bow on December 10, 1941, near the Italian island of Pantelleria. (Admiralty Official Collection/ The Imperial War Museum)

While protecting a merchant convoy reinforcing Malta on January 10, 1941, between 40 and 50 Junkers 87 Stuka dive bombers found Illustrious about 85 miles off the besieged island.  In just six minutes, she sustained six direct hits. One of the bombs scored a direct hit on the carrier's centrally located aft elevator, which was bringing up a Fairey Fulmar fighter and its pilot from the hangar deck. The twisted 300-ton lift platform crashed back into the hangar bay, spreading burning debris and fuel over the four fully-loaded Fulmars and nine Swordfish torpedo planes awaiting their turn to take off. Then another 1,000-pound bomb struck ten feet from the lift entrance, smashing through the buckled deck and exploding in the hangar bay. Another bomb crashed though the flight deck and exploded as yet another wave of Stukas reached the carrier. A seventh 1,000-pound bomb smashed through an antiaircraft gun platform and exploded alongside the hull, tearing shrapnel holes along her side.

Looking aft from Illustrious's island, the results of precision dive bombing can be clearly seen, with smoke from hangar bay fires erupting from fissures and bomb holes in the armored flight deck, as well as the upended aft aircraft lift. (Admiralty Official Collection/ The Imperial War Museum)

She was left a smoking ruin, adrift and without steering or electrical power, aflame from bow to stern, hangar deck to the flight deck. Any other carrier made before her would probably have been destroyed, but, after three more aerial attacks that yielded yet another direct hit near the remains of her aft elevator, Illustrious reached Malta's Grand Harbor, still on fire. Miraculously, only 126 men were killed and 91 were wounded out of her crew of 1,400.  Her mascot, a black cat named Taranto, had survived unscathed.  Her aircraft had also managed to shoot down eight of the attackers.

Illustrious withstood several more bomb attacks while under emergency repairs at Malta, including another direct bomb hit, but on January 23, she slipped out of the harbor unbeknownst to the Germans and began an arduous trip back to the Atlantic by way of the Suez Canal, taking the long way around Africa.  Known but to a few on the nearly three and a half-month-long journey that lay ahead, the tide of the war was about to change.  She was heading for Norfolk, Virginia.

Long Before War's Beginning, Neutrality Ends

In a fireside chat broadcast on December 29, 1940, entitled “On National Security,” President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared to millions of his radio listeners, “If Great Britain goes down, all of us in the Americas would be living at the point of a gun.” He finished his speech to the nation by declaring, “We must be the great arsenal of democracy.”

On March 11, 1941, despite considerable isolationist resistance in Congress, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease bill, and war materials began streaming forth to Britain from East Coast ports, including Hampton Roads.  Within the Lend-Lease program was a provision for the repair of allied ships.  As a result, American naval shipyards began active war work many months before the rest of the Navy.  Norfolk Naval Shipyard would perform major work on British warships for the first time since it served as a base of operations for Virginia’s last colonial governor during the Revolutionary War.

The 23,000-ton Secret 

HMS Illustrious, photographed sometime between her arrival in Hampton Roads in May 1941 and her dry-docking at Norfolk Naval Shipyard. Note the fragment holes on her starboard bow. (Courtesy of Marcus Robbins/ Norfolk Naval Shipyard)

The port bow of HMS Illustrious, photographed after her dry-docking at Norfolk Naval Shipyard. Note the dozens of temporary patches that had to be applied before she left Malta. (Courtesy of Marcus Robbins/ Norfolk Naval Shipyard)

Illustrious had only been commissioned into the Royal Navy the year before she entered Norfolk Naval Shipyard on May 12, 1941 but she did not look it. Many of the initial survey photos made by shipyard photographers, many published here for the first time online, were kept secret because they showed just how effective the German attacks had been.

Shipyard workers get a look at the destruction wrought upon the aft elevator well of HMS Illustrious, which was located in the center of the aft part of the flight deck. (Courtesy of Marcus Robbins/ Norfolk Naval Shipyard)

Despite the fact that Illustrious had an armored flight deck, which probably saved the ship during the January attack, the entire flight deck would have to be replaced, along with much of the topside and hangar deck equipment. One bomb which had passed through the flight deck, hangar deck and wardroom, exploded in the aft breaker room, putting electrical power for most of the ship out of commission. As a result, most of the carrier's electrical system would have to be replaced at the yard. Some special cable fixtures and machinery that could not be fabricated at the yard had to be shipped over from England.

The forward elevator of HMS Illustrious, seen here after its removal from the aircraft carrier at Norfolk Naval Shipyard, did not escape heavy damage during the precision dive bombing attack in January 1941. (Courtesy of Marcus Robbins/ Norfolk Naval Shipyard)

Today, the international press would certainly turn out to witness, record, and broadcast a heavily damaged British warship's arrival, but Navy Secretary Frank Knox had impressed the importance of secrecy upon his fellow press barons (Knox was publisher of the Chicago Daily News), and they maintained voluntary censorship, acting in concert to deny such information to the Germans. 

“I was in Norfolk when the British plane carrier, Illustrious, was in the yards suffering from every known ailment that an airplane carrier can suffer,” wrote correspondent Henry McLemore that October. “I saw the Illustrious with my own eyes, talked to officers who told me what had happened to her and was all but run over in the streets of Norfolk by Illustrious sailors. But, according to the Navy’s censorship code, I couldn’t write a word about the Illustrious.”

“The Board of Censors is firm in its belief that a 30,000 or 50,000-ton battleship can sneak into a harbor in broad daylight, tie up at a busy dock, disembark hundreds of its crew and undergo riveting repairs without even the cat on the clock noticing that a thing is going on.”

And so it was that the British government decided in mid-August to lift the veil of secrecy from the “riveting repairs,” revealing to the world not only where Illustrious had been for over a year, but also that a member of the royal family was to take command of the rejuvenated carrier. The American press quickly followed suit.

The British were not only happy to show the dramatic transformation the warship had undergone in Norfolk, but also prove to the Germans that her new commander, a man who had two ships torpedoed out from under him already, was equally ready to rejoin the fight.

Just before officially assuming command of HMS Illustrious at Norfolk Naval Shipyard in August 1941, Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten conducts an inspection of junior ratings as shipyard workers watch the proceedings from above. (Courtesy of the Sargeant Memorial Collection, Norfolk Public Library)

Lord Louis Takes Command

“Mountbatten, who looks like the Hollywood version of a dashing naval hero, was piped aboard the battle-scarred Illustrious shortly after 9:30 a.m. today and immediately went about the business of officially taking command of the vessel,” wrote Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch reporter Charles Reilly on August 27, 1941.

“Mountbatten walked leisurely among the men, stopping frequently to chat with some gob or petty officer,” wrote Reilly. “He [sic] deevoted considerable time to talking with crew members who have been singled out for [sic] deecorations for their conduct when the ship was under fire.”

“I get a genuine thrill out of being associated with a ship that has done so much good and which has such a wonderful record,” Mountbatten told the crew after taking the podium. “I am anxious, as you are, to get her back in action and give the Germans and Italians a few knocks.”

Nine Lives

Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten meets three of Illustrious's nine mascots, the nearest to him held by Seaman Glyn Ellis (center). (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

While meeting with some of the junior sailors, Mountbatten was introduced to Taranto, the ship’s mascot, along with several other kittens rescued from other warships lost in action.

Three sailors aboard the British aircraft carrier Illustrious pose with one of the nine feline mascots purportedly living aboard her during her refit at Norfolk Naval Shipyard.  It is unclear whether the cat pictured is "Taranto." (Courtesy of the Sargeant Memorial Collection, Norfolk Public Library)

“Taranto is quite somebody aboard the Illustrious,” wrote Reilly. “She was on board during all the fighting and her calm conduct under fire won her the admiration of the crew and officers alike.”

Shirley Hogge, an artist in the shipyard’s safety office, made her own rendering of the introduction, which depicted both the captain and the cat as seasoned combat veterans with nine lives.  A framed copy was presented to Captain Mountbatten on October 13 by Rear Admiral Felix X. Gygax, commandant of the yard. Mountbatten immediately left after the presentation for Washington DC, where he was to meet with President Roosevelt.

An editor at the Virginian-Pilot newspaper wrote, "The cat in the cartoon will be remembered as one of several which are mascots of the Illustrious.  Reference in the two lines of verse perhaps go to Lord Mountbatten, since he is hale and hearty despite having had vessels torpedoed out from under him in the current conflict." The cat is leaning upon the original ship's bell of the carrier, which was heavily damaged during the January 1941 attack.  A replacement was cast by Norfolk Naval Shipyard in August and presented to the Illustrious crew in September.  (Courtesy of Marcus Robbins/ Norfolk Naval Shipyard)

Winston Churchill's Orders

Mountbatten had just arrived in Washington when he was shown an urgent message from London.

Prime Minister to Lord Louis Mountbatten: we want you to home here at once for something that you will find of the highest interest.

He departed for England, where Prime Minister Winston Churchill offered him a new post: Advisor on Combined Operations.  Mountbatten was visibly nonplussed.  He had only been commander of Illustrious for two months. The carrier was more combat capable than she was when she was first launched, yet the finishing touches had not yet been made.  He had not yet even taken her out for sea trials.

Outraged by Mountbatten’s lack of enthusiasm for the post he had been hand-picked for, Churchill exploded.

"Have you no sense of glory?"

"Here I give you a chance to take part in the higher leadership of the war, and all you want to do is go back to sea. What can you hope to achieve, except to be sunk in a bigger and more expensive ship?"

Churchill had more than a special interest in Mountbatten for the job.  He had originated the idea for an advisor on combined operations before he even became prime minister.  The disastrous Gallipoli campaign had happened on his watch as First Lord of the Admiralty during World War I. The lack of coordination between the Commonwealth forces and the Royal Navy factored into the failure to defeat the Ottoman Turks in the Dardanelles a generation ago, yet Churchill knew they were no better prepared to work together in 1941 than they were in 1915.  Britain's armed forces needed a multi-service command dedicated to coordinating the raids, and, ultimately, invasions to come. He needed a proven combat veteran to lead what would essentially be an organization dedicated to ending the defensive phase of the war. With the Americans coming in on their side, the time was ripe to begin making preparations to, in Churchill’s words, "develop a reign of terror" along the enemy's coastline.

Despite Mountbatten’s initial reluctance to relinquish command of Illustrious, the implications of his new position, along with the realization that he could not turn it down anyway, forced a change of heart. He took up the new post on October 27, determined to carry out Churchill's orders to "turn the south coast of England from a bastion of defense to a springboard of attack." Despite some initial setbacks, most notably at Dieppe in August 1942, Mountbatten would lead a diverse group of some of the Commonwealth’s greatest unconventional warriors and thinkers, along with those from America, to create the vessels, equipment, tactics and doctrine required to invade Africa, Italy, and, ultimately, France. 

Illustrious First of Many

With her new commanding officer, Captain Arthur George Talbot, Illustrious departed Norfolk Naval Shipyard on November 25, 1941, just two weeks before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, after which the United States officially entered the war.

HMS Illustrious was the first of six battle-damaged vessels to receive extensive repairs and even complete overhauls at the yard during 1941. Also included were the battleship HMS Royal Sovereign; two fleet carriers, HMS Formidable and HMS Indomitable; the cruiser Daytonian, and the escort carrier Archer.  Formidable, which arrived on August 26, underwent the most extensive repairs after Illustrious.

In all, approximately 140 British vessels would be handled at Norfolk Naval Shipyard during the war under the Lend-Lease program. Although many of these were smaller vessels such as the Landing Ship, Tank (LST) that were commissioned into the Royal Navy in droves (yet another big idea credited to Winston Churchill), the repair of those first heavily damaged capital ships made the most meaningful impact during Britain's darkest hours during the war.

Great Britain finally made the last Lend-Lease repayment back to the United States on December 29, 2006.

120 Years Ago: The Redemptive Power of a Suicide Mission, Part 1

May 31, 2018, 6:24 pm

≫ Next: The Redemptive Power of a Suicide Mission, Part 2:

≪ Previous: New Prince's Namesake a Naval Hero in Hampton Roads

$

0

0

Richmond Hobson never quite fit in the Navy.

Midshipman Richmond Hobson, USNA, 1889. (Eleanor Cunningham)

According to historian William Garrott Brown, a fellow Alabaman who knew him before he departed for the United States Naval Academy, Hobson was usually “grave faced,” adding that “[h]is manner was stiff and formal; his conversation almost comically stilted.” He seemed incapable of small talk and never used icebreakers such as jokes or amusing personal anecdotes during the many speeches he would give during his lifetime.

His maxim, forged from a strict upbringing as the son of a judge, had been, “Do your whole duty every day.” That profoundly personal sense of duty led him to Annapolis in 1885, yet the way he carried himself and related to his fellow midshipmen there portended anything but a successful career ahead.

While many other midshipmen managed their duties and allegiances with fluidity, deciding whether to follow a particular order or regulation to the letter or report a peer who didn’t on a case-by-case basis, Hobson followed his orders with crystalline rigidity. His worldview had no shades of gray. He saw his duties and those of his peers in stark black and white. They were either carried out properly or improperly, honorably or dishonorably.  His meticulous reporting of the transgressions of other plebes quickly earned him ostracism from the Brigade of Midshipmen. It was said that only one other student there spoke to him (other than what was necessary in the performance of his duties) for two entire years.

Men like Hobson tend to excel at academics but struggle in environments requiring teamwork and cooperation. Today such a person might be found profoundly lacking in “emotional intelligence” and be steered away from a military career, where esprit de corps sometimes transcends regulations and orders. Although he never quite fit in at the academy (nor did he seem to care to), Hobson was by no means a misfit. He was a man of vision whose almost messianic zeal inspired those he led, somehow compensating for his inability to relate to them personally. “Throughout his life, Hobson placed himself in the forefront of movements that became, to him, crusades,” wrote biographer Walter Pittman. “Not only was he unafraid of the opposition to his ideas and of the ridicule they brought him, but Hobson seemed to almost welcome the opportunity to convince opponents of the error of their ways.”

Despite the fact that many in Annapolis evidently loathed the young crusader, Hobson graduated first in his class in 1889.

USS Chicago at anchor with other "New Navy" ships of the Squadron of Evolution in 1889. (National Archives and Records Administration, Still Picture Records Section, RG 19 via Wikimedia Commons)

Although he probably could have had his pick of assignments, Hobson rejected a career as a line officer, instead choosing the Naval Constructor’s Corps. The next nine years were eventful, if unremarkable, as Hobson was selected for postgraduate training in England and France after his midshipman’s cruise aboard USS Chicago, flagship of the all-steel Squadron of Evolution, designed to test the concepts and doctrines of the “New Navy.” The experience had a great effect on him, as he emerged as a fierce advocate of removing all wood from naval vessels (which the Spanish navy failed to do and paid dearly for it later). He became the first American to graduate with honors from the Ecole d’Application du Genie Maritime, another in a string of academic successes, which laid the groundwork for his selection as the first instructor of naval construction at Annapolis. 

Detail from a print of Newport News circa 1891, showing the Chesapeake Dry Dock and Construction Company (now known as Newport News Shipbuilding).  The U.S. Navy first had ships refitted at the yard in 1889, but less than a decade later, no less than three modern steel warships were being built there at the same time. (Courtesy of Marcus Robbins/ Norfolk Naval Shipyard collection)

Hobson cemented a reputation for intellectual brilliance, yet it was not yet clear whether he was actually a good naval architect in practice. The most embarrassing incident of his career occurred at Newport News Shipbuilding in 1897, where he failed to note casting flaws while helping oversee the construction of the battleship Kearsarge (BB-5). He appealed the reprimand he received from Superintending Constructor Joseph Woodward all the way up to Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, yet the reproof was upheld and Hobson was forced to undergo an examination on machine tool practice to prove his competency.

By then, war clouds between the United States and Spain were on the horizon, and Hobson strongly lobbied the Navy secretary for sea duty. Whether his argument that naval architects such as himself should not only be overseeing ship construction but should also be observing their performance in combat won the day, or if Woodward was more than happy to be rid of him wasn’t clear. What was clear, at least to Hobson, was that the upcoming fight against Spain was the crusade he had been waiting for.

 

The Redemptive Power of a Suicide Mission, Part 2:

June 12, 2018, 8:52 pm

≫ Next: In the Offing: "Aztecs" at War

≪ Previous: 120 Years Ago: The Redemptive Power of a Suicide Mission, Part 1

$

0

0

How an Unwanted Ship and an Unsuccessful Mission made Richmond Hobson the Youngest Captain in the U.S. Navy

The satirical magazine Puck, without a twinge of irony, elevated the exploits of Richmond Hobson and his seven-man crew to legendary status, despite the failure of their mission.  Hobson had intended to raise a large American flag during the operation but had thought better of it once Spanish fire raked their doomed collier. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Rear Admiral William T. Sampson. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Leading the United States Asiatic Squadron, Commodore George Dewey won theretofore the most resounding victory in American naval history on May 1, 1898, tearing the Spanish Pacific Squadron apart at Manila Bay. Three weeks later, however, a similar triumph in Cuba eluded Admiral William Thomas Sampson, commander of the North Atlantic Squadron. Spain’s Cape Verde Squadron under Contraalmirante (Rear Admiral) Pascual Cervera y Topete had crossed the Atlantic and slipped into the well-defended harbor at Santiago de Cuba on May 19.  For all the American Sailors who waited for Cervera’s squadron to come out and fight, there was a sense that even greater glory awaited. Foremost among them was Lieutenant Richmond Hobson.

Richmond Hobson. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

Assigned as assistant naval constructor on Sampson’s staff, Hobson’s role was mainly that of an advisor. As a naval architect, his main duty was to estimate just how much punishment the squadron’s ships could take during their upcoming battles with the Spanish naval forces. He concluded that only three of Sampson’s ships could take more than one direct torpedo hit, telling the admiral that his ships could probably not draw close enough to do much damage to shore fortifications before being destroyed themselves.

Hobson expounded at length to the admiral on how he could pave the way for the powerful yet vulnerable capital ships by building “unsinkable” small steam launches that would ferry seaborne sappers to clear enemy harbors of mines, torpedoes, and other obstructions, making it possible for battleships to move in and destroy Spanish fortifications. Hobson volunteered to personally lead the effort, which he reckoned would take a few weeks of preparation.

The channel entrance leading to Santiago de Cuba, with Morro Castle guarding its entrance. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

Sampson listened patiently, but replied that, in light of the enemy squadron holed up in Santiago harbor, it was “not a question of the unsinkable, but the sinkable.” It would be counterproductive to spend weeks building fortified boats to clear harbors when Cervera’s squadron could still attack them. He needed one big ship to seal them into Santiago Harbor. Immediately.

The prime candidate was the collier Merrimac, one of dozens of auxiliary ships purchased in a hurry for the Navy at the cusp of war. The British-built vessel was only four years old and had logged only a month in American service, yet her performance had been so abysmal that she was marked for the one-way mission.  And at roughly 333 feet long, she would be a prime candidate to block the neck of the channel, which ranged between 350 to 450 feet wide.

The collier Merrimac at Norfolk Naval Shipyard on April 28, 1898, shortly after her acquisition by the United States Navy. In a little over five weeks, she would be used as a blockship against the Spanish. (Bureau of Ships Collection, National Archives and Records Administration via NHHC/Flickr)

Sinking a perfectly good (or not-so-good) ship on purpose might seem counter-intuitive, yet the tactic has been effective in both defensive and offensive operations for centuries.  Blockships were used by Virginians during the defense of Norfolk against the Royal Navy during the War of 1812, and the Russians used them against the Ukrainian navy during their annexation of Crimea in 2014. Ideally, sinking selected vessels in a controlled manner before or during the opening stages of a battle prevents having to sink other vessels (or be sunk) in a far less-controlled manner during the battle.

Hobson volunteered to lead the effort and began preparations on May 29, three days before the armored cruiser New York and the rest of Sampson's squadron arrived off the southeast coast of Cuba. He originally envisioned a false flag operation, with Merrimac pretending to be a Spanish collier being chased by American ships, which would presumably force the Spanish to hold their fire until the objective was within their grasp. Despite the Americans’ confidence, however, no one presumed the Spanish to be that gullible, so they adopted a simpler plan to simply run past Morro Castle guarding the channel at the mouth of the bay far enough to come about, detonating explosives along the sides of the vessel, and sinking her athwart, or perpendicular to, the channel entrance. 

Merrimac had no transverse watertight bulkheads, so it was hoped that it would only take a day to prepare the collier with explosive charges at strategic points along the port side below the waterline. It would take only seven men to execute Hobson’s carefully-choreographed plan. One man would be stationed at the fore and aft anchors, rigged to drop at the swing of an ax.  Two would be in the engine room and one in the boiler room. One man would keep the torpedoes ready to fire, and one would be at the wheel. Each man would have a communication line from the bridge tied to their wrists, literally lying in wait until signaled.  Only two messages would be conveyed: One tug for “stand by,” and three tugs signaled each man to carry out his assigned role. 

(Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

Hobson planned to drive Merrimac at full speed at the channel, then cut the throttle and throw the helm hard to port. After reaching the narrowest spot in the channel, a bow anchor would be cast off her starboard side to help swing the ship sideways. Once that was accomplished, another anchor would be cast off her stern to hold her in place. The first man to reach the lifeboat in tow behind the ship after he had completed his duty would then maneuver close by to pick up the other men as they jumped into the water. Hobson would be the last.  He and his skeleton crew would then escape in the lifeboat as Merrimac settled to the bottom, which Hobson estimated would only take one minute and 15 seconds. "Nothing on this side of New York City will be able to raise her after that," quipped the confident lieutenant.

Making such a plan happen in a day turned out to be a bit too optimistic. Hobson had trouble finding enough electrical wire to set off the charges, much less a hand generator needed to produce a sufficient spark. The battery cells he had to settle for were iffy at best.  Rear Adm. Sampson rejected a request to use two of New York’s torpedo warheads, intimating that he wanted to sink Merrimac, and not “blow everything to the devil.” Although materials were in short supply, there was no shortage of volunteers for the mission. More than 500 Sailors stepped forward, 300 from USS New York alone, including the ship’s band master, who volunteered with several of his musicians to play “The Star-Spangled Banner” as the doomed collier sank.

Ultimately, three of the seven were drawn from Merrimac’s crew, while three others were nominees from other vessels. Hobson ended up choosing only one of the men he would depend upon for this risky and exacting operation.  As they left on what most in the squadron believed would be a one-way mission, they changed out of their standard uniforms. They would be meeting the enemy–and presumably their maker–wearing only life preservers, woolen underwear, and two pairs of socks. Each man would also wear revolvers in a belt with a box of extra cartridges sealed in tallow.

The crew made an abortive approach to the channel entrance just after midnight on June 2, but the discovery of four stowaway Sailors and the capsizing of Merrimac’s lifeboat containing extra rifles and ammunition forced Rear Adm. Sampson to recall the men as dawn broke. He dispatched Lt. John C. Fremont Jr. in the swift torpedo boat Porter to alert Hobson to stand down, yet Fremont returned with word that Hobson still intended to make his run. Sampson dispatched Fremont yet again to reiterate his orders, and only then did Hobson rejoin the squadron.

“I can carry this thing through, but there must be no more recalls,” the dejected lieutenant reportedly told the admiral upon his return. “My men have been keyed up for 24 hours, and under tremendous pressure. Iron will break at last.” Sampson ordered him back to his quarters to rest, yet for the next few hours, most of them were unable to sleep. That evening, Hobson once again boarded Merrimac, having left several letters behind to be sent in the event he did not return. 

As they drew near the channel entrance early the following morning, it seemed as though providence had delivered them under the noses of sleeping Spanish sentries atop Morro’s ramparts until a picket boat emerged from the cove beyond.  It fired resolutely towards their steering gear as if aware of exactly what was afoot. The first volleys from Morro Castle as well as another fort across the channel seemed to miss their mark at first, but Hobson’s concentration on his position probably deprived his senses about just how badly the ship was being shot up. Just as he got into position, frantically shouting to his helmsman “Hard aport… “Hard aport, I say!,” he realized that either the Spanish picket boat had shot the rudder away, or one of the shore batteries had parted the chain connecting the wheel to the tiller.  In any case, it was now impossible to bring the ship about, and she was still making over four knots.  The incoming tide brought her velocity up to six knots. Meanwhile, none of the other parts of the plan had been put into action.

After making one long pull on the communication line, Hobson made three steady pulls. The bow anchor dropped successfully, then the first charge detonated, but he detected no further shudders. “Fire all torpedoes,” he shouted to no avail. “For noise, it was Niagara magnified,” wrote Hobson later of the intense fire that seemed to drown out every thought. Only one other charge detonated, the contents of the rest having been splayed across the decks by shell bursts. Then it became apparent that the stern anchor was already gone; possibly shot away by one of Cervera’s ships lying at anchor in the cove. They were adrift and out of control.

Suddenly, Spanish “torpedoes,” today known as sea mines, began detonating against Merrimac's hull as she drifted further northward through the channel towards the cove where Cervera’s fleet waited.  “It is remarkable, indeed, that some of those men did not see us,” wrote Hobson later, “for though the moon was low, it was bright, and there we were with white life preservers almost at the muzzles of their guns.” It was then that Hobson thought of a large American flag he had taken pains to bring, with plans to hoist it at the crescendo of battle, but he was dissuaded by an exhortation by one of his men; “If you go they will see you and will see us all.”

After being grounded under the Spanish guns, momentarily breaching the channel as intended, Merrimac proceeded onward towards the cove yet again with the flood tide.  The forward anchor chain, which had been the only equipage that had functioned exactly as intended, parted under the intense fire or the strain of the tide. There was nothing to do but huddle on the main deck as sparks and splinters flew around them with deafening blasts, waiting for any random shot to tear them asunder.  Finally, after the tide straightened them out once again, Merrimac finally settled to the bottom.  The men bobbed about with the flotsam that remained on the surface, finally finding shelter under an overturned raft.
 
After evading detection under the raft until after daybreak, a steam launch drew near.  Hobson could hear the orders, “load…ready…aim.” But no one fired. He called out to the Spanish, asking whether an officer was present, and announcing that an American officer and his crew intended to surrender.   

If Hobson was the greatest unsuccessful naval hero on the American side, it was only fitting that he and his men were rescued by the most unsuccessful hero on the Spanish side, Rear Admiral Pasquale Cervera, whose squadron Hobson had tried to bottle up. After personally rescuing the men, Cervera dispatched his chief of staff, Captain Bustamante y Oviedo, under a white flag to inform Rear Adm. Sampson that Hobson and his men had been captured and were being held within Morro Castle.  He added that he had been impressed with their bravery.

Hobson and his men were released following Cervera’s defeat on July 3, during which his squadron was virtually annihilated, with over 200 of his men killed and 1,700 made prisoners of war. Sampson, meanwhile, dedicated the burnt offering of the Cape Verde Squadron to America as a “Fourth of July present.”
 
"Remember the Merrimac" 

Cervera's chivalrous conduct and conciliatory demeanor in the face of overwhelming odds won him the grudging respect of American naval officers, but his treatment of Hobson and his men garnered adulation from the Yellow Press; the same entity that had managed to thoroughly demonize the Spanish and make an inescapable case for war to the American people.
 
“We may dispense with the cry, ‘Remember the Maine,’ which was the shriek of revenge and hate,” wrote a columnist with the New Haven Register, “and fix our eyes upon ‘Remember the Merrimac,’ which is the phrase of genuine patriotism and mutual gallantry.”

Merrimac as she appeared after American forces secured Santiago de Cuba (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

Whether the mission was a success or a failure did not seem to matter as newspapers gushed with superlatives about the Merrimac mission. The Houston Daily Post called the exploit “the most daring expedition since the destruction of the ironclad Albemarle.”

Other publications went much further, engaging in a sort of literary one-upmanship. Before June ended, the satirical magazine Puck compared the eight intrepid Sailors who supposedly penetrated the Spanish defenses at Santiago de Cuba to the Greek soldiers who supposedly penetrated Troy’s defenses millennia before. In September, a writer for BostonMagazine gushed, “The Spartans who held the pass at Thermopylae may be forgotten, the 600 Englishman who made the charge at Balaklava may go unsung, but in this land under the Stars and Stripes forever will linger the memory of the gritty Christian gentleman, Richmond Pearson Hobson of Alabama.” 

Harper's Weekly, famous for its pictorial coverage of the Civil War, was no less invested in covering the Spanish-American War.  It also covered that conflict with varying degrees of accuracy.  Compare this illustration, published shortly after the operation, of Hobson and his men abandoning the sinking collier Merrimac with the illustration above, commissioned by Hobson himself later on, of Merrimac's sinking.  (Library of Congress)

This "Christian gentleman," a teetotaler largely shunned as a midshipman, became, according to the Alabama Historical Commission, “America’s Most Kissed Man” after he was sent on a national speaking tour following his release.  He reportedly endured the smooches and pecks of as many as 500 women at a stretch during stops on his national tour. Coincidentally or not, the tour ended with an extended stay at the Presbyterian Hospital in New York.

Although he was on the verge of devolving from a national hero to a subject of nationwide consternation due to all the smooching, the Navy Department still took him seriously, advancing him ten numbers in rank. Even after the rapid naval expansion during the war, there were still only 17 naval constructors in active service. 
In January 1902, Hobson was promoted to captain, with his date of rank backdated to June 23, 1898. At the age of 32, he became the youngest captain serving in the Navy at that time.

Hobson doubtless outranked other officers who had been in the Navy longer than he had been alive and he could have easily rested upon his laurels, but the restless crusader could not be satiated. More campaigns and battles awaited him; not on the high seas, but in the very heart of our nation's capitol.

A portrait of Captain Richmond Pearson Hobson hangs at his family estate, Magnolia Grove, near Greensboro, Alabama. (Alabama Department of Archives and History via alabamapioneers.com)

In the Offing: "Aztecs" at War

June 15, 2018, 8:34 pm

≫ Next: In the Offing: "War Dogs" and "The Stan"

≪ Previous: The Redemptive Power of a Suicide Mission, Part 2:

$

0

0

No Forgotten Fronts: From Classrooms to Combat 

By Lisa K. Shapiro (Annapolis, Naval Institute Press, 2018)

Reviewed by Ira R. Hanna

In early 1942, Dr. Lauren C. Post’s classes at San Diego State College, now known as San Diego State University (SDSU), included many young men and even some women who would volunteer or be drafted into military service during WWII. He asked them to write to him about their experiences and contacts with fellow “Aztecs.” Post had served on a destroyer in WWI and hoped that the letters would provide them with a way to release their feelings about their experiences and keep them connected to their home and college life. When the letters began to arrive, he decided to edit them into the San Diego State College Service Men’s News Letter (later changed to The Aztec News Letter), which would be sent back to them so that they would know what was happening to their college friends. Starting in May 1942, Post published it each month for the duration of the war.

After the end of the war, the original letters and copies of the newsletters were archived at the college. Dr. Lisa K. Shapiro, a SDSU assistant professor and community college teacher whose classes were always filled with veterans, discovered them one day while doing research for her creative writing class. For over two and a half years she read every letter and newsletter. From this experience, she became determined to turn them into a book that would bring home the meaning of war–what happened to those who were thrust into combat and faced the ultimate sacrifice. As she said, “Fighting changes not only the world, but the minds, hearts and even the souls of those required to carry out battlefield orders.” These letters described in simple, beautiful and profound prose those experiences. They also told of the boring daily life of those on the “forgotten fronts.” They painted a vivid picture of the exciting, fearful and exacting exploits of airmen, grunts in foxholes, and, if captured, their survival in enemy hands. They showed how these events changed them, not only physically, but mentally and spiritually- their pride in what America stands for – and tears at their sacrifices.

Shapiro chose one young Army Air Corps pilot, 1st Lt. Lionel Chase, to describe the beginning of Dr. Post’s effort. She ended her book with Chase’s last letter, dated October 1, 1945. In it, Chase expressed what Post’s newsletters meant to those servicemen and women. “No one can possibly tell you [Dr. Post] what a magnificent job you have done in making life more livable for the guys overseas. In my own experience, your News Letter has been something that really helped when I was down to the last blue chip.”

Shapiro helped make sense of the letters by tying them together with contextual and historical information. Chapters are arranged topically rather than chronologically, which sometimes makes for difficult transitions. On the other hand, in order to clarify the content of the letters, she selected several letters from a serviceman and his friends and provided relationship to historical facts. For example, POW letters were put in the context of what they said happened to them in relation to the 1929 Geneva Convention’s agreement on the treatment of POWs. Neither German nor Japanese POW camps fully complied with the agreement.

One chapter was dedicated to the letters from servicewomen. Many of them were commissioned as nurses, as Women’s Army Corps (WAC) pilots to ferry planes to airfields within the U.S., or Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) who worked at naval stations throughout the country. Ensign Laura E. Chase, USNR, who had an apartment on Stockley Gardens in Norfolk, Virginia, related that her job involved being a flight planner at the Information Center at the Naval Air Station. This showed that some Aztecs were even assigned to the East Coast, far from their homes in San Diego. Dr. Post’s newsletters helped to lessen their homesickness.

The letters covered most of the major battles. One group described vividly the strategic bombing raids on German and Japanese cities and factories, and the pilots’ views of the destruction and loss of lives. They covered the daily struggles on the battlefield, in the air, and on naval ships, standing long boring watches waiting for the action to begin. Their writers even documented their time on leave. They captured the thoughts and emotions of the events as they unfolded. They are powerful reminders of what war is really about- respect for their country, its values, and their willingness to fight for what they held most dear – their love of home and family. If you want to know what war can do to the average Soldier, Sailor or Marine, here is an excerpt from Private First Class Chester A. Hagman’s September 23, 1945, letter: “Death becomes so commonplace that we often ate our K-ration lunch right by the side of bloody corpses.”

More than 4,500 letters were received by Dr. Post. He selected what information would be important to them and their families, particularly about those who were wounded or killed (but not before the family had been notified) and published it in 48 monthly newsletters and several special editions at Thanksgiving and Christmas. There were 2,800 Aztecs in military service, 135 being women. Of those, 30 became prisoners of war, 81 were killed, and 72 wounded. An average of 3,700 copies of the newsletter were printed and mailed throughout the world each month, with 500 more distributed on campus. They were partially paid for by Dr. Post himself and the rest by contributions from fraternities and other SDSU organizations. In the last year of the war, monthly publication sometimes rose to 6,000.

This book examines the changes in the emotions of those young men and women who were thrust into the cauldron of war and matured in the face of danger. Through that process, they determined what was most important in their lives, especially the relationships with their Aztec classmates. As Dr. Shapiro concluded, “Dr. Post seemed to have an unerring instinct for meeting the needs of his students. From classrooms to combat theaters, his words stayed with them. He honored their service and never lost track of their whereabouts, even on the ‘forgotten fronts.’”

Numerous WWII servicemen have written about their wartime experiences. I have read many of them. None of them compare well to No Forgotten Fronts. None of them provide the breath of experiences and depth of feeling expressed in the Aztec newsletters. Shapiro has taken Post’s efforts to a new level.

Only recently, in Andrew Carroll’s “Legacy Project” (Words to Live By) has there been an effort to collect and preserve the personal letters of WWII servicemen and women. Shapiro has set the bar high for anyone who may try to edit those letters and put them into a book format.

     

Commander Ira "Dick" Hanna (USNR, Ret.), one of HRNM's longest-serving docents, holds a masters degree in history and a doctorate in education administration, and is a former public school superintendent.  

In the Offing: "War Dogs" and "The Stan"

June 22, 2018, 11:51 am

≫ Next: Captain Paul Merwin and the Renissance of Naval Station Norfolk

≪ Previous: In the Offing: "Aztecs" at War

$

0

0

The 'Stan  

By David Axe, Blue Delliquanti, & Kevin Knodell (Annapolis, Dead Reckoning, 2018)

Trench Dogs

By Ian Densford (Annapolis, Dead Reckoning, 2018)
   

Reviewed by Joseph Miechle

While the Hampton Roads Naval Museum is no stranger to reviewing books about U.S. Navy topics, we recently received some advance copies of graphic novels from Dead Reckoning, an imprint of the Naval Institute Press. The press has attempted to broaden the community they engage with these non-traditional offerings that will certainly appeal to a different market. That stated, we present you a review on two of their new graphic novels. 

The first item we reviewed was The ‘Stan. The ‘Stan is a graphic novel by Kevin Knodell, David Axe, and illustrated by Blue Delliquanti. It contains brief vignettes captured by Knodell and Axe from veterans of the war in Afghanistan. Knodell identifies himself as “a political liberal and self-avowed pacifist” and it is reflected in the segments presented to the reader in this book. The stories the authors have chosen mostly reflect a defeatist or non-consequential attitude towards the War in Afghanistan. If their attempt was to impress upon the reader a feeling of futility and despair, then they would seem to have succeeded.


The only content that makes this book interesting at all is that it utilizes stories from soldiers and civilians on both sides of the conflict. This would normally be of great interest to a reader of historical literature but as the book is a graphic novel it actually contains very little content worth remembering. The artwork in the book is unremarkable and reminds this reader of old “PS Magazines” provided to him during his time in the Army. The ‘Stan could best be summed up as blasé at best.

The second item reviewed is Trench Dogs by Ian Densford. The book is a relatively easy read because it has no written narrative. It is a graphic presentation of actual World War One events using anthropomorphic animals to represent the various player nations in the war. It is amusingly illustrated and quite graphic in nature. The watercolor images of disembodied horses and headless combatants are not softened because they are animals as opposed to humans. The real horrors of battlefield amputations and disfigurement are also included for maximum “shock” appeal. The objective of the author to illustrate the “bloody details” of the Great War were certainly accomplished.

Trench Dogs could be to a casual reader nothing more than a strangely illustrated book depicting violence for the sake of violence, yet it faithfully depicts very real events in World War One. The Battle of Jutland, unrestricted submarine warfare, gas attacks, the sinking of RMS Lusitania, and the systemic racism experienced by the Harlem Hellfighters upon their return to the United States are all present in the book. The book itself doesn’t really add anything to the historiography of World War I, yet it would surely invoke questions from a young adult audience. Mr. Densford has included a brief bibliography at the end of his graphic novel to point those who wish to know more in the right direction.

Keep your eyes open for further graphic novel offerings from Dead Reckoning of the Naval Institute Press.

Joseph Miechle is an educator with the Hampton Roads Naval Museum.
 

Editor's Note: This review is the sole opinion of the author and does not reflect an official view of the Hampton Roads Naval Museum, Naval History and Heritage Command, the United States Navy, or the Department of Defense.

 

Captain Paul Merwin and the Renissance of Naval Station Norfolk

June 28, 2018, 8:56 pm

≫ Next: Naval Station Norfolk's Silent Sea Stallion

≪ Previous: In the Offing: "War Dogs" and "The Stan"

$

0

0

Editor's Note: Sewells Point, home of the world's largest naval station, was once crisscrossed by lush salt marshes bordering creeks that were filled in many decades ago. A modest nature park has reintroduced some of the original flora to the area, bearing the name of a man who reintroduced order, discipline, and cleanliness to the Naval Station Norfolk at a critical time in its history. This is his story.

A Great Egret flies across a small lagoon at Captain Paul Merwin Salt Marsh Park and Wetlands Area, a stone's throw from Naval Station Norfolk's carrier piers. (M.C. Farrington)

By Captain Alexander G. Monroe, USN (Ret)
HRNM Docent & Contributing Writer

At a lovely spot overlooking Willoughby Bay, nestled between carrier pier overflow parking lots and the Vista Point Ball Fields at Naval Station Norfolk is an area known as the Captain Paul Merwin Salt Marsh Park and Wetlands Area.  It is named for the man who commanded the naval station from August 1974 to June 1977. Merwin had previously served as commanding officer of USS Talbot (DEG 4)[1] and was one of three executive assistants to Admiral Stansfield Turner when he served as president of the Naval War College. The newly-promoted captain was chosen to lead Naval Station Norfolk by Admiral Ralph W. Cousins, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet. He was only 42 years old when selected for the job. [2]  As he reported for duty, Merwin was mindful of the counsel of a flag officer in Washington DC who advised him to “be prepared for real problems down there and arrive running at full speed.”[3]

Captain Paul Merwin (Courtesy of Capt. Paul Merwin, USN (Ret.)

When Merwin arrived, he found there were fundamental but related problems. The station physical plant was deteriorating, and military courtesy was nonexistent. There was trash and litter throughout the base, and it was not secure from outside intrusion.  He noted that after he took command it was discovered that one “sailor” living in J-50 was actually a civilian vagrant from downtown Norfolk. Most importantly, the barracks were not secure, especially in Building J-50, where temporary, or "transient" personnel were berthed.[4]  The streets of the naval station were not safe at night, and marauding gangs of thugs set upon Sailors returning to their ships late at night.[5] Admiral Cousins had become so concerned with the report of physical plant deterioration made by his inspector general that in a June 1974 letter he ordered the commandant of the Fifth Naval District and the station commander to provide weekly reports on remedial action.

The deteriorating and dangerous conditions for junior personnel came to the attention of Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm via a letter sent by Fireman Apprentice Reginald K. Wakefield in April 1974.  She sent a staff member to interview Wakefield.  She wrote to Naval Station Norfolk’s commander at the time, Captain Samuel G. Anders, on June 17, 1974, requesting a report on racial conditions on the naval station.  Anders responded on June 26, advising that there were no indications that there was impending trouble and that perceptions could be interpreted in different ways.  Anders spoke of the difficulty bringing about attitudinal change, with racial overtones being a constant problem.[6]  Conversely, black Sailors opined that they had been singled out—“profiled” in today’s patois, for attention because of their race.  According to a black civilian base police sergeant, the possibility of night attacks, particularly if a white Sailor appeared intoxicated, were good, adding, “If he’s staggering, he’s hurt.”[7]

The northeast corner of Naval Station Norfolk near Pier 14 (center of photo) as it appeared in the late-1970s, looking east-southeast. The area that later became the salt marsh park is due east of the pier. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

A major contributing factor to the strife was overcrowding. The number of Sailors temporarily assigned to the naval station was anywhere from 2,100 to 3,000 at any given time.  Many, though by no means all, were awaiting discharge from the Navy under other-than-honorable conditions. Even with augmentation, the legal staff was not able to separate those who were to be discharged rapidly. Finally, a source of extreme difficulty was the Tradewinds Enlisted Club, which had become a center for racially-tainted, often alcohol-fueled violence.  Patrons tended to separate themselves racially and mingled only when departing through a common lobby that became a scene of donnybrooks.[8]  In addition to being a site of brawls among customers, it was a center for other crime.  In one instance, the Station Chief of Police, Jake Hardison, noted a late model sports car in the club parking lot that had been observed in other parts of the base.  He had the car’s license number traced and discovered that it belonged to a seaman deployed to the Mediterranean on a carrier.  Its owner was later arrested for narcotics offenses.  Criminality on the naval station also spilled over into the civilian community, evidenced by the indictment of two Sailors, residents of Barracks Lima, for the abduction, robbery and murder of Elizabeth Young, a Norfolk taxi driver.[9]  There was, in sum, a clear need to re-establish control.

The northeast corner of Naval Station Norfolk as it appears today, looking east-southeast in this virtual view.   The salt marsh park is at center left, opposite Pier 14. (Google Maps)

Captain Merwin took immediate action to meet the challenge.  He sought a new executive officer (XO) and chose Commander (later Vice Admiral) Jimmy Pappas.[10]  Pappas recalled later that he had orders to a duty station in Greece, but that they had been changed for him to be Merwin’s XO. He described the interlude as a “fun tour.”  Moreover, he described the long hours that he and his boss worked.  He worked in tandem with Merwin, who used techniques such as unscheduled inspections that he and his staff might conduct at unusual hours, such as 3 am. Together, they set out to improve military courtesy, reduce the number of transient personnel crowding the naval station, clean up trash, and improve security.  A key part of the effort was that one of the two would always be in the field and the other in the office.  One of his staff, the port services officer, recalled seeing Cdr. Pappas driving all over the station, picking up litter and throwing it into the trunk of his personal automobile.[11]

Captain Paul Merwin, commanding officer of Naval Station Norfolk, and his executive officer, Commander Jimmy Pappas, during the mid-1970s. (Courtesy of Capt. Paul Merwin, USN (Ret.)

Certain specific steps ensued. As noted, the most serious barracks safety problems existed in Building J-50, later renamed Nimitz Hall.[12] A security watch was immediately instituted, and only those who were positively identified were admitted. In an interview, Capt. Merwin recalled that in one instance he took Adm. Cousins on a tour of the building, and even the admiral, who was in uniform, was required to show his ID card! This was in contrast to a situation noted in the Atlantic Fleet Inspector General’s report in which it was noted that watch standers were poorly attired and did not seem to know their duties. Further, the fire doors were shut to prevent entry by unauthorized persons, although the Fire Marshal opposed this step. “We just took this step, and the security problem went away,” recalled Merwin. The same technique was used in responding to bomb threats. They were ignored, and the problem, according to Merwin, “went away.” This was a method that was used to eliminate many problems: take action and see what happened. [13] In one case, a sign noting a railroad crossing was removed because the tracks were no longer in use. In another, a deteriorating, unsightly sign at the entrance to the Naval Station was removed. “We just did it,” recalled Merwin. The most significant step was temporarily closing the Tradewinds Club, a source of chronic difficulties described earlier. The club had been closed earlier, twice in a ten-day period, in what was called “the Summer of our discontent.”

Application of routinized procedures where there had been none and a “hit the ground running” approach brought about immediate results. Merwin realized that he needed to make a bold impression early to break the sense of ennui and dispiritedness that he believed enervated the command. A key component of this was requiring his department heads to give him candid written evaluations of their most pressing problems. He used these contributions to fashion the “Norfolk Naval Station Plan;” a description of what was required to achieve the objectives he and his XO wished to reach. It was clear from a review of statistics that the team efforts put in place were working. As noted in the press, in certain categories such as assaults there was a marked reduction in crime aboard the Naval Station, while such crimes in the civilian community were increasing.

The most telling and significant praise came in a Ledger-Star editorial which held that the most important factors in changes to date were a “a fresh and vigorous program for getting at the various perceived roots of difficulty…with station personnel themselves canvassed for ideas and marshaled for an extensive upgrading of performance.“ The editorial ended by saying that “the degree of recovery to date, and that yet promised, must be given earnest applause.” Though both civic leaders and Navy officials urged caution in the interpretation of such initial data, the news was encouraging.[14] Concurrently it was reported that a retired Washington D.C. Police Chief, Jerry Wilson, had visited the station at Captain Merwin’s invitation and reported that the efforts to ensure safety were worthwhile and appropriate.

In recalling those times, Capt. Merwin spoke of the accumulation of trash and litter all over the station and set out a scheme to combat it. With XO Pappas spearheading the effort, a series of blue and gold trash cans were placed station-wide. The skipper gave a personal push to the venture by appearing, smiling, in front of a poster containing a poem promising condign punishment to litterers, which involved working with the First Lieutenant in cleaning the station. 

(Courtesy of Capt. Paul Merwin, USN (Ret.))

The large group of transient personnel on board was a robust source of labor. This reduced the problem Merwin perceived when he assumed command of having too many people “doing nothing, not given productive work and getting into trouble.” Those who still littered could be dealt with by their commands or, in the case of civilians, cited and brought to a U.S. Magistrate’s court for appropriate action. Some of these steps were documented in a February 1977 issue of All Hands Magazine and provided the impetus for later efforts that gained national attention.[15] The key actors in the effort were: Cdr. Pappas, Chief Master at Arms Hugh G. Wade, and Chief Constructionman Donald Oswald.

The Ledger-Star editorial mentioned earlier cited the role of Captain Merwin’s subordinates in fashioning solutions to the problems that he faced when assuming command. The edition of December 9, 1974, reported on the work of his Command Advisory Team (CAT), a group of representatives who decided what was best for the command, with his concurrence.[16] This innovation, made three months after Merwin took command, assembled a cross section of the station personnel, both transients and permanently assigned, military and civilian, who strived to identify areas of difficulty where procedures and customs might be altered for the benefit of all hands. Working with the Human Resource Office, meeting regularly after their first meeting on October 30, 1974, the group learned how to identify problems and recommendations. They also brainstormed about how to deal with areas of potential conflict, such as Sailors performing auto maintenance in front of the barracks. The group initially developed about 13 areas in which attention might be merited, also addressing the notion that “no one cared for transients.” Merwin recalled that during his tenure, the chaplain staff began a ministry specifically for them.

The Ledger-Star issue of November 25, 1974, reported the travail which ended in a general discharge under honorable conditions for Fireman Apprentice Wakefield, whose letter had attracted the attention of Congress. His difficulties began when his mother became ill while he was on leave. He was given an extension of his leave but then ran out of money. After finally returning to Norfolk, Wakefield became enmeshed in the disciplinary system, spending 124 days in custody. Because he had missing pay records, he could not be paid. The upshot was that the charges that accumulated were dismissed and in one instance the Navy judge scolded the service for holding him for eight months without pay, calling it an “oppressive delay.” To help keep such embarrassing personnel gaffes from happening again, the captain and his staff began sending service records by helicopter each week directly to the Bureau of Naval Personnel in Arlington, Virginia for quick processing. A hotline system was established so that those awaiting transfer or separation could check their status. Close liaison with the Navy Regional Finance Center was established to do away with pay foul-ups.[17]

The disestablishment of the Portsmouth, New Hampshire Naval Prison in 1974 also presented a challenge to Capt. Merwin when prisoners were transferred to the Correctional Center (Brig) at Norfolk Naval Station, imposing an added burden on station resources. Merwin selected Lieutenant Commander James Keller, whose firm yet fatherly demeanor marked him to Merwin as an ideal candidate. Keller took charge with a firm hand, yet he was capable to relate to both the staff and those detained there. The wisdom of this assignment was borne out when, within a story about Merwin’s tenure as CO, the Norfolk Brig was called “the best in the Navy.”[18]

While Merwin’s team focused on immediate issues such as safety, transient census reduction and base cleanliness, the captain also took steps to increase recreational opportunities for all hands. In so doing he changed the milieu of an institution that had existed since before 1942 under different names, the Commissioned Officers Mess (Open) commonly known as the Sewell’s Point Golf Course. The course was originally a part of the Norfolk Yacht and Country Club, and had been known by other names until it was acquired by the Navy in 1942 from the Norfolk Golf Club as a recreational site. It was created as an officers-only entity and had retained that stigma over the years. The financial picture was marginal, but the chief goal was removal of the elitist flavor. Merwin decided that it should be continued as a “fine recreational facility open to all entitled to use Special Services [now known as MWR] facilities.” The small number of remaining members was still able to use the course, but memberships no longer existed, and users paid modest green fees. Merwin remembers that the reaction was favorable except among a few retired officers who denounced him as an “upstart.” [19] The golf course thrives to this very day, a testament to the wisdom of the decision.

(M.C. Farrington)

By the application of steady pressure, security problems began to decrease. Merwin then turned his attention to more permanent improvements. Older buildings were modernized, sidewalks were widened. Catch basins were cleaned.  Merwin noted that over 800 trees were planted.  Wives’ clubs adopted fire hydrants and sentry stations were repainted using the red, white and blue paint scheme associated with the 1976 Bicentennial Celebration. Eleven thousand new parking spaces were created in areas that had formerly been a vacant dusty field, an innovation of no small importance to the ordinary Sailor.   The operating theory was that a clean place is likely to remain so.  By a fortuitous coincidence, the Navy was required to obtain land for an extension of Runway 27. That led to the demolition of a group of seedy locker clubs, bars and jewelry stores at the end of Hampton Boulevard known as “the strip.” [20]  In summary, the base's appearance began to change, and with it, its reputation.  Security and cleanliness went hand in hand.

The successful implementation of cleanliness, sustained by rigid enforcement, was such that Merwin's team submitted an application for formal recognition to an organization known as Keep America Beautiful, under its Clean Community Systems project.  Somewhat to his astonishment, Merwin later received a telegram from the organization's staff announcing that the Naval Station Norfolk had won first place in the “Government Agency” category.  Naval Station Norfolk had exceeded the performance of all other military and civilian governmental entities.[21]  For Merwin, the award was not only important in and of itself, but also in its contribution to “safety, morale, good order and discipline.”

Signage on a platform overlooking the lagoon describes the park's purpose. (M.C. Farrington)

The achievement for which Captain Paul Merwin is most remembered more than four decades later is in the elimination of “chaos,” to be read also as “crime.” The Norfolk Portsmouth Bar Association annually confers the Liberty Bell Award to someone who "promotes a better understanding of the rule of law or encourages a greater respect for Law and the courts.” Those honored have typically been congressmen, governors, chiefs of police, and newspaper editors, but in 1976, the individual earning the award was Captain Paul L. Merwin, in recognition for his reestablishment of a sense of order on the station.  Rear Admiral Robert R. Monroe, commander of the Operational Test and Evaluation Force, praised Merwin for, “improvements everywhere and the manner in which you have balanced functional advances with attractive landscaping and better maintenance has been most effective…the changes evoke not only great pride in our Navy but pleasure in our home and neighborhood.”

Paul Merwin reviewed his accomplishments of the previous 34 months within the pages of the Norfolk Ledger-Star of June 29, 1977.  He recalled wryly that one of his chiefs had cautioned him shortly after his arrival in 1974 against walking from his quarters to his office for his own safety![22] Yet he noted that by May 1977, there only one robbery on the station.  By that time, there were only 400 transient Sailors on board, and the base was clean.  Merwin declared, “Attention to detail in every respect…pride and hard work had come back.”

After completing their tours in Norfolk, the two top members of the team moved on. Capt. Paul Merwin became operations officer for the Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor and retired in 1980. He went on to a distinguished career at Matson Steamship Lines, retiring a second time in March 2018.  Cmdr. Pappas went on to be commanding officer of Naval Base San Diego.  Ultimately, he retired as a vice admiral after a tour as Director of Logistics for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  

Paul Merwin emerged as a leader at a time when leadership was sorely needed at Naval Station Norfolk, and the Captain Paul Merwin Salt Marsh Park is a fitting and appropriate recognition of his priceless contributions.

A Great Egret emerges from the lagoon at Captain Paul Merwin Salt Marsh Park, located near the northeast corner of Naval Station Norfolk (M.C. Farrington)

NOTES:

[1] Talbot was homeported at Newport, Rhode Island during Captain Merwin’s period in command, and later its homeport was changed to Norfolk.

[2]“Anders leaves ‘heat” to young successor,” Norfolk Ledger-Star, Section B1, September 6, 1974, Harry Padgett. Earlier practice had been to assign an officer approaching retirement to this post.

[3]“Departing CO cleaned up ‘chaos” at base,” Norfolk Ledger-Star, Section B1, June 29, 1977, Harry Padgett. Cited hereafter as "Departing CO."

[4]“Naval station incidents cited,” Norfolk Ledger-Star, Section B1, August 29, 1974, Jack Kestner.

[5]‘Wave of discontent rocks naval station,” Norfolk Ledger-Star, August 28, 1974, Jack Kestner;

[6] See again end of note 4.  Lt. Henry Wingate, a Navy lawyer, complained that after he moved into the station Bachelor Officers Quarters he was subjected to unjustified ID card checks that were in his opinion based on his race. He wrote of these incidents in a letter alleging “discrimination and racism by base police.” This letter came to the attention of Vice Admiral David H. Bagley and Vice Admiral Douglas C. Plate, Deputy Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet.

[7] Ibid. This is the statement of Sgt. “Eddie” Edmonds. His boss, Chief Jake Hardison, noted that "racial assaults are at an all- time high” in an article “Discipline, A Navy dilemma,” in the August 30, 1974, Norfolk Ledger-Star.

[8] Telephone Interview of April 12, 2018 of Captain Paul L. Merwin, USN (Ret.) by Captain Alexander G. Monroe, USNR (Ret.), cited hereafter as "Merwin Interview." Also see end note four above.

[9] The key factor here, which will be discussed below was that the two Sailors had not received pay during the time they were awaiting discharge, and they allegedly committed the crime to get money.

[10] Cdr. Pappas had earlier served as commanding officer of USS Rigel (AF 58).

[11] This is the recollection of retired Lt. Cmdr. Anthony V. D. Angelo.

[12]  “Naval station incidents cited.” According to the story, some residents were so fearful for their safety that they slept in their cars.

[13]  Merwin Interview.

[14]"Naval Station Crime does about face,” Norfolk Ledger Star, Section B1, October 30, 1974. See also “Naval Station: a turn,” Viewpoint, Norfolk Ledger-Star, November 1, 1974. The editorial appeared 56 days after Paul Merwin took command and credited the Fifth Naval District Commandant Rear Admiral Richard E. Rumble, Captain Paul L. Merwin and “all hands.”

[15]“A Winning Recipe in Norfolk,” All Hands, February 1977, pp.28-30, JO2 Gary Grady and PHC Milt Putnam. Cited hereafter as "Winning Recipe."

[16]“CAT watches base problems,” Norfolk Ledger-Star, December 9, 1974, Section B1, Jack Kestner.

[17]"Wakefield gets Navy discharge,” Norfolk Ledger-Star, November 25, 1974, SectionB1, Jack Kestner.

[18] Departing CO.

[19]“Sailors to swing at golf club,” Norfolk Ledger-Star, November 4, 1974, Jack Kestner, and “Royster remains club pro,” Norffolk Ledger-Star, November 5, 1974, Page A.14, Jack Kestner. See Also Interview between Captain Merwin and Captain Monroe of April 18, 2018

[20]"Winning Recipe."

[21] Ibid.

[22] Merwin Interview.

About the author: Captain Alexander "Sandy" G. Monroe, a retired surface warfare officer, is the author of In Service to Their Country: Christchurch School and the American Uniformed Services (2014) as well as official histories on U.S. Atlantic Command counternarcotic operational assistance to civilian law enforcement agencies and the treatment of Haitian asylum seekers at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He was also dispatched to the Arabian Gulf on assignment for the director of naval history during Operation Earnest Will.

Editor's note: This and every HRNM blog post by a contributing writer reflects the opinions and core beliefs of the writer and should not be construed as representing the official policies or opinions of the museum, the Department of the Navy, or the United States Government.

---

Naval Station Norfolk's Silent Sea Stallion

August 8, 2018, 2:37 pm

≫ Next: In the Offing: A Forgotten Fictional Hero's Return

≪ Previous: Captain Paul Merwin and the Renissance of Naval Station Norfolk

$

0

0

By Captain Alexander G. Monroe, USN (Ret)
HRNM Docent & Contributing Writer

Weighing in at 11.5 tons, the RH-53D, shown here with the memorial to the men killed aboard a similar aircraft on June 19, 1992, is the heaviest aircraft at Ely Memorial Park. (M.C. Farrington)

Ely Memorial Park, close by Gate Four of Naval Station Norfolk, on the part of the facility formerly known as Naval Air Station (NAS) Norfolk, features static displays of various aircraft. One in particular, an RH-53D Sea Stallion, serves in part as a memorial to the "Norsemen" of Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron 18 who were lost in the most deadly peacetime aviation mishap of its kind in the Tidewater, Virginia area.[1] It is a poignant reminder of the risks inherent in all aviation operations and the selfless devotion of those who fly U.S. Navy aircraft. It also reminds us of an event that, although tragic, was one from which those who remain can find strength to prevail over adversity.

 

An RH-43D flies over Chesapeake Bay in December 1981. (Photographer’s Mate 1st Class Gregory D. Toon/ RG330, National Archives)

In the early afternoon of Friday, June 19, 1992, an RH-53D (Bureau Number 158687) of Helicopter MineCountermeasures Squadron Eighteen (HM-18), assigned administratively to Naval Air Reserve Norfolk, refueled at Naval Air Station Oceana and departed, enroute along a charted waterway to its home station at NAS Norfolk. About five minutes into the flight, it exploded in midair and crashed into the Lynnhaven River, not far from the Broad Bay Country Club Golf Course. 

Bob Dagenhart and his friend Earl Wallace were on the 11^th green and had observed the aircraft which was travelling at 170 knots for about 10 seconds before the crash. As Dagenhart recalled it at the time, his first concern was for the welfare of the crew. “It was an awful tragic event that made me sick to see it.” A club groundskeeper, John McConnell stated that he saw two clouds of smoke and two large parts, “fly to the right and to the left.” [2]

Some who looked on, horrified, stated that the eleven-ton aircraft was in straight and level flight, while others felt that it flew in a somewhat “banked attitude.” All recall that it was suddenly engulfed by two bursts of smoke, and a core of orange fire. It fell slowly and inexorably into the shallow Lynnhaven River with seven men trapped inside. It was a horrifying spectacle, even though residents of the affluent Forest Hills neighborhood of the Great Neck area of Virginia Beach and others in Hampton Roads for the most part accepted the hazards of living in the vicinity of aviation operations. For example, Paul C. Lynch, who lived close by the end of the runway at Naval Air Station Norfolk, “never even gave it a thought.” Others were not as certain. Linda De Laura who lived on River Road about a quarter mile from the crash site, opined that she always had a feeling that something like that loss was going to happen. Don F. Price, who lived on East Evans Road in Virginia Beach near Naval Air Station Oceana, noted that “it crosses everyone’s mind, but until something happens, you don’t realize the potential impact.”[3] 

The area where a Sikorsky RH-53D Sea Stallion belonging to Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron 18, based at Naval Air Station Norfolk, crashed on June 19, 1992. (Google Maps)

In the moments after the mishap, efforts focused on the most important task at hand: rescuing the crew trapped in the aircraft, a task that quickly and unhappily became a recovery effort. A nearby resident had called 911 as she saw the magnitude of the event and within a short time, a Virginia Beach Police Department rescue boat was on scene, as were volunteer divers. Rescue/recovery efforts were hindered by the murky waters. One diver, Steven Kennedy, reported that he “searched for bodies by feel,” while another, Robert Helfant, reported that he did not look at the corpses but steeled himself for completing the task at hand, as he had done in other similar situations. By 5:30 that afternoon, five bodies had been recovered, examined by the local medical examiner and taken to the Portsmouth Naval Hospital. They were subsequently identified as Lieutenant Commander Greg Bingeman, Lieutenant Ken Steen, Chief Aviation Structural Mechanic (Equipment) David Romesburg, Chief Aviation Administrationman Randy Vandiver, and Aviation Structural Mechanic (Hydraulic) Stacey Mills. Meanwhile, members of Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit Two (MDSU TWO) from Amphibious Base Little Creek had begun to raise one portion of the lost aircraft.[4] The body of Aviation Structural Mechanic (Structural) 1st Class David J. Redland was located on June 21 and the last victim recovered, Airman Randy J. Hopkins of Virginia Beach, was located and identified the following day.

After the loss of the aircraft, various opinions emerged about the cause of the sudden explosion. In one article, the author stated that the H-53 series aircraft had a poor safety record and had been intermittently grounded since its introduction to the fleet in 1964. However, he stated “there has not been a specific problem with the RH-53D aircraft involved in the June 19, 1992 crash.” Furthermore, though pilots in the Norfolk area were urged not to fly the H-53 during the weekend of the 20^th and 21^st of June, the entire fleet of RH-53D aircraft was not immediately grounded. (emphasis added). The article was inconclusive with respect to the cause of the accident and raised extraneous matters that might or might not have been related to it. Among these were rotor and transmission failures in the H-53E model. Other matters such as hydraulic failures in some of the H-53D aircraft involved in the April 1980 failed attempt to rescue hostages taken at the American Embassy in Tehran and the 1987 Navy direction to the manufacturer to review the H-53E model for design flaws were noted.[5] That direction was given to mollify congressional critics who had demanded that the entire H-53 fleet be grounded.  The article was, as noted, uncertain and recited statements of unnamed U.S. Navy officers that midair explosions of this kind were “rare.”[6]

In April 1980, crewmen aboard USS Nimitz (CVN 68) watch as two unmarked RH-53 Sea Stallions are brought up from the hangar deck in preparation for Operation Evening Light, a mission to rescue American embassy personnel being held hostage in Tehran, Iran.(RG 330/ National Archives and Records Administration)

Shortly after the accident, Commander Steve Honda, a spokesman for Commander Naval Air Force Atlantic Fleet briefed the press. Among other things, he declined to speculate on the cause of the accident. He maintained that there were no indications of what had caused it.  Two and a half large cardboard boxes of debris had been recovered and that teams from MDSU TWO, squadron personnel and staff at the Naval Safety Center would continue to collect data for another four to five days. He predicted that it would take several months to determine the cause of the accident and noted that it would focus on the helicopter’s “rotor blades, transmission assembly and other key parts.”[7] As Commander Honda noted, an investigation which itself generated controversy, was conducted. By April 2, 1993, 285 days after the accident, no report had been issued.

By that time, relatives and friends of those lost began the planning effort to erect a monument to them. Periodically, survivors had visited a wooded area near the crash site on significant dates such as wedding anniversaries and anniversaries of the crash. A kind neighbor had let them use a back deck nearby to look out over the area where the aircraft had gone down. It was, according to Fay Romesburg, widow of Chief Petty Officer David Romesburg, “a serene place.” It is now the site of a lovely monument that supplements the static display in Ely Memorial Park[8] A gift from a retired World War Two Naval Aviator helped pay for the monument and the widows of Lieutenant Ken Steen and Chief  Romesburg werekey figures in the fundraising effort.

(Photo by Alexander Monroe)

Nearly two years elapsed while relatives of the victims awaited a report of the cause of the accident, fomenting frustration.  On March 14, 1994, Fay Romesburg sought the assistance of Congressman Owen Pickett in securing a Congressional investigation of all aspects of the accident. She stated then and later among other things that materials generated by the crash had been lost, making it difficult if not impossible to determine the exact cause of the mishap.  She also alleged that the delay was related to the fact that it was only two months from the date at which the two-year statute of limitations would preclude legal action to recover compensation for the losses sustained by relatives of the crash victims. A related aspect was that, because of the Doctrine of Sovereign Immunity, only the manufacturer of the Sea Stallion could be successfully sued. Most importantly, Romesburg said that “there is no healing until you have answers.”

A monument to the seven men killed in the crash of their RH-43D helicopter in the Eastern Branch of the Lynnhaven River on June 19, 1992.  (Photo by Alexander Monroe)

The Navy released its report of the crash on May 18, 1994.[9] It attributed it to the cracking of a pitch control horn in the main overhead rotor and that and a defective “unsilvered” nut might have played a role in the mishap. The report did not specify where the nut had been manufactured, stating that it could have been at naval depots at North Island, California, or Pensacola, Florida. Other matters reflecting a lack of attention to administrative detail emerged. For example, parts of the investigative report completed in November, 1992, were lost in April, 1993 in transmittal to the Office of the Judge Advocate General of the Navy for final endorsement. It was also reported that a month after the crash that the entire H-53 Fleet was grounded. During this stand down, 40 of 200 “spindle” nuts used in an associated part of the rotor assembly were found to lack silver plating, which could cause them to slip under the stresses of flight. In addition, two other aircraft were discovered to have cracked pitch control horns. 

CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters undergo sheet metal maintenance and repair at the Naval Aviation Depot, NAS Pensacola, Florida, in 1989. (Jerry Antone/ RG 330, National Archives)

The final report was critical of the Navy’s inability to track flight hours prior to 1985. The upshot of that lack of data may have meant that the control horn had exceeded its service life by as much as 161 hours.  Romesburg and others were incensed not merely at the delay in reporting findings but that any part of the report had been lost. She vowed legal action even if it were fruitless. She sadly noted that, “I can’t replace my son’s father for the rest of his life because they had a defective part. I couldn’t live with myself if I left that unaddressed. Someone is going to acknowledge that these are valuable people…”[10]

 

The HM-18 "Norseman" logo affixed to to the port drop tank of the display RH-53D located at Ely Park on Naval Station Norfolk.  (M.C. Farrington)

The static display is silent, yet in its silence, it reminds us of admirable vocations such as national service. Moreover, it reinforces the notion that a part of such service is sacrifice. One officer, Commander Charles Ress, held that those killed were “very fine individuals …dedicated…motivated.”[11] During a July 11, 1992, memorial service, Captain Johannes Wytsma, Commanding Officer of Naval Air Reserve Norfolk, observed that the inherent dangers of operations such as Desert Shield and Desert Storm are understood but that it is easy to forget dangers at home because “things don’t routinely go wrong.” He noted that those lost were husbands, fathers, brothers and sons. Captain R.J. Thomas, Commodore of Helicopter Wing Reserve, the Operational Commander of HM-18, stated that the men were “heroes who dedicated their lives to their country.” He made a final perhaps more important point: that it was his hope that the courage and skill shown by those aviators would strengthen their survivors as they met the challenges of going forward after the tragic loss.[12] It is the abiding lesson and meaning to be drawn from this tragic mishap.

The display RH-53D located at Ely Park on Naval Station Norfolk during a recent summer downpour.  (M.C. Farrington)

---

1. “Crash is area’s deadliest military aircraft accident,” Norfolk Virginian Pilot and Ledger Star, Thomas Huang, June 20^th1992, A8.

[2]“Navy copter explodes; 7 die,” Norfolk Virginian Pilot and Ledger Star,Tony Germotta and Sonsynea Tate, June 20, 1992, p.A1; See also “Navy ‘Copter crashes; 7 feared dead, United Press International Archives, June 19,1992.

[3]“Life in the flight path, noisy, unnerving,” Norfolk Virginian Pilot and Ledger Star,  Alec Klein, Sherrill Evans and Angelita Plummer, June 20, 1992, p.A9.

[4]See again endnote iii, above. See also “Murky waters hamper recovery effort,” Norfolk Virginian Pilot and LedgerStar, Jack Dorsey, June 21, 1992, p.A1.

[5]That review would endeavor to account for 7 crashes between 1984 and 1987.

[6]“H53 Helicopter has spotty record for safety,” Norfolk Virginian Pilot and Ledger Star, Jack Dorsey, June 20^th, 1992, p.A8.

[7]“Muddy waters hamper recovery effort,” Norfolk Virginian Pilot and Ledger Star,Jack Dorsey, June 21, 1992, p.A1.

[8]“Memorial to Honor Navy Aviators,” Newport News Daily Press and Times Herald,William McMichael, April 2, 1993.

[9]“Navy: Faulty Nut Caused Copter Crash,” Norfolk Virginian Pilot and Ledger Star, Jack Dorsey, May 18, 1994, p.A1.

[10]“Navy Reports on Copter Crash,’ Newport News Daily Press and Times Herald,A.J. Plunkett, May 18, 1994.

[11]“Copter Victims local men,” Norfolk Virginian Pilot and Ledger Star,Jack Dorsey and Angelita Plemmer, June 21, 1992, p.A1.

[12]“Memorial Service Honors Copter Victims,” Norfolk Virginian Pilot and Ledger Star,Denise Watson, July 12, 1992, p.B1.

About the author: Captain Alexander "Sandy" G. Monroe, a retired surface warfare officer, is the author of In Service to Their Country: Christchurch School and the American Uniformed Services (2014) as well as official histories on U.S. Atlantic Command counternarcotic operational assistance to civilian law enforcement agencies and the treatment of Haitian asylum seekers at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He was also dispatched to the Arabian Gulf on assignment for the director of naval history during Operation Earnest Will.

Editor's note: This and every HRNM blog post by a contributing writer reflects the opinions and core beliefs of the writer and should not be construed as representing the official policies or opinions of the museum, the Department of the Navy, or the United States Government.

In the Offing: A Forgotten Fictional Hero's Return

August 10, 2018, 8:21 am

≫ Next: Seventy-Five Years Ago: Beating Plowshares into Patrol Planes, Part 1

≪ Previous: Naval Station Norfolk's Silent Sea Stallion

$

0

0

The Best of Don Winslow of the Navy

Edited by Craig Yoe  (Annapolis, Dead Reckoning, 2018)

Reviewed by M.C. Farrington

 

One of the many laudable goals historians pursue is resurrecting heroes of history from the depths of obscurity so that they may be appreciated by a new generation. By reprinting the zany exploits of naval intelligence officer Don Winslow, Dead Reckoning, the new graphic novel imprint of the Naval Institute Press, has made a case about the merits of bringing fictional naval heroes of the past to the attention of today’s readers as well.

Don Winslow of the Navy started as a newspaper serial in 1934, helped along by future Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, publisher of the Chicago Daily News. During its two-decade run, Winslow’s adventures could also be read in young adult novels, heard in syndicated radio programs and seen in movie serials (with the star of the latter actually joining the Navy and rising to lieutenant commander during the war).  During the character's heyday, thousands of boys signed up to be a members of "Don Winslow's Squadron of Peace," using his official code book to decipher messages broadcast during his radio program. 
 
The comic book series from whence this collection was based debuted in February 1943. Captain Marvel, who ruled the comic book world long before Superman, personally introduced his legions of fans to Cmdr. Winslow.
Needless to say, Don Winslow did not spring from the mind of Elmer Davis or the War Writers Board. Winslow was fully formed well before the war, the brainchild of a real naval reserve intelligence officer named Frank V. Martinek, who was chairman of publicity for the Navy League of the United States before dreaming up Winslow.  

"Strangely enough, Winslow, the hero in my strip, follows closely in my own footsteps," quipped Martinek, who claimed to have worked for the FBI during the 1920s. "Of course, I have to develop slight variations of my own experiences because Winslow must always be in the thick of drama while I occasionally had a rest from running spies to earth or checking fingerprint clues."



Winslow and his trusty sidekick, Lt. Red Pennington's primary nemeses both before and after the war tended to be stock international villains; a Fu Manchu-type character called The Scorpion, then a felonious femme fatale named Singapore Sal.

During the war years, the plot lines followed pretty conventional detective story tropes as Winslow and Pennington matched wits with diabolical Nazi agents trying to steal battleships and underworld thugs attempting to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge at the behest of their Japanese masters, with diversionary stories set on Mount Everest and Antarctic exploration thrown in for good measure.

Although over two decades would pass before the term “jump the shark” came into common currency, Don Winslow of the Navy began to lose its own way in ever more bizarre ways after the end of the Second World War, as stock Axis heavies gave way to giant multi-colored cannibalistic Amazon warriors and Venusians. 


Comic book heroes have undergone somewhat of a revolution in the last quarter-century, as the demographics of their protagonists have become more inclusive and their flaws and foibles more reflective of those living in the real world, even as their godlike powers have grown ever more estranged from reality.  Those familiar with this progression might regard Don Winslow as somewhat primitive.  Or, to use a phrase I heard at a museum conference a few months ago, he might even be dismissed as "male, pale, and stale." 

Despite his square-jawed appearance, unrelenting earnestness and the absence of any quirks or vices to speak of, Winslow should not be dismissed out of hand. This "ace of naval intelligence" was fighting a secret war against transnational cabals long before James Bond was a twinkle in Ian Fleming’s eye.  His only powers seemed to be great deductive ability and a powerful right cross, yet Cmdr. Winslow was beating up bad guys the old fashioned way with his sidekick Red several years before Batman and Robin, and the bizarre banter between arch-enemies Winslow and Sal is definitely reminiscent of the scenes filmed decades later between Adam West and Julie Numar.       

The long-forgotten Cmdr. Don Winslow might or might not have inspired the creation of some of the most enduring characters of twentieth century fiction, yet his creator Frank Martinek made no bones about the fact that he wanted to inspire young people to join the Navy to experience adventures of their own.  Although it is unclear just how many youngsters sought this kind of adventurous life due to Lt. Cmdr. Martinek's opus, The Best of Don Winslow of the Navy is an interesting slice of popular culture, emblematic of who represented the ideal American fighting man on paper at a time when millions of his very real flesh-and-blood compatriots were called upon to endure less-exotic and more dangerous adventures during a conflict that changed the course of history.

.

Seventy-Five Years Ago: Beating Plowshares into Patrol Planes, Part 1

August 16, 2018, 3:41 pm

≫ Next: Seventy-Five Years Ago: Beating Plowshares into Planes, Part 2

≪ Previous: In the Offing: A Forgotten Fictional Hero's Return

$

0

0

From right to left, Rear Admiral Patrick N.L. Bellinger, Commander, Air Force, Atlantic Fleet  attends the ceremony establishing Oceana Naval Auxillary Air Station on August 17, 1943, along with with Oceana's first officer-in-charge, Lieutenant Jesse Fairley, and his executive officer, Lieutenant W.J. Lee.  The Navy had experienced a profound transformation since Bellinger took his first flight on a Wright biplane as a lieutenant in the fall of 1912.  Although NAS Oceana grew to become the largest air facility in Hampton Roads during the decades that followed, its opening was only mentioned on the last page of the local daily newspaper, the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, while its chief rival, the Ledger-Dispatch, did not mention NAAS Oceana's commissioning at all. (Sargeant Memorial Collection, Norfolk Public Library)

Once upon a time there was a little Virginia farming community called Tunis in what was then Princess Anne County, east of Norfolk. Then in 1883, the Norfolk Southern Railway line came through, creating the second-to-last stop to its new terminus at Virginia Beach. With the railroad came speculators who bought up surrounding lands on what was then called the Salisbury Plain, originally a tract of 500 acres which had been given to William Cornick by his father Simond in 1657 and remained in family hands until 1859. In 1891, Tunis’ name was changed to Oceana after it came to light that there was another town named Tunis in Western Virginia. For nearly a half-century it remained a quiet farming community. Hog raising was also a profitable activity in the area, and the expansive mud flats in the area were a testament to how ideal the land was for that activity. Besides agriculture, the only employer of note in the small town was a sawmill. That was, until the Navy came calling just before World War II.

Naval aviation had been a part of military activity in Hampton Roads since a temporary wooden deck was constructed atop the cruiser Birmingham for aviation experimentation at Norfolk Navy Yard in 1910, Glenn Curtiss began training military pilots on a 20-acre site in Newport News five years later, and one of the Navy’s first dedicated air stations was established on a 40-acre site at Sewells Point two years after that. In the wake of the USS Shenandoah (ZR 1) tragedy and the ongoing jeremiads of Army Air Service Colonel William “Billy” Mitchell (which would lead to his court martial) in the fall of 1925, President Calvin Coolidge convened a board under the leadership of banker and industrialist Dwight W. Morrow to study the role of aviation in national defense. The recommendations of the board and those from other studies which followed during the interwar period would make a huge impact on the economic development of Hampton Roads and change its landscape for decades to come.

One result of the board’s recommendations the following year was that the Navy was allowed to increase the number of its aircraft to 1,000 planes, which it reached by 1930. One of the Morrow Board members was Representative Carl Vinson of Georgia, and he would emerge over the following decade as the foremost champion of naval aviation in Congress. An act under his and Florida Senator Park Trammell’s names enacted in 1934 allowed the authorized number of naval aircraft to nearly double. Over a decade before, the collier USS Jupiter had been converted into the Navy’s first aircraft carrier, USS Langley (CV 1) at Norfolk Navy Yard, and the Navy’s first purpose-built carrier, USS Ranger (CV 4) had been launched from Newport News Shipbuilding in 1933.  The carriers Yorktown (CV 5) and Enterprise (CV 6) would emerge from the same shipyard later that decade, funded by these Congressional appropriations, yet only Chambers Field at Naval Air Station Norfolk and a smaller field at Naval Weapons Station Yorktown were in place to host the incessant training and maintenance that would be required to prepare squadrons for deployment upon these vessels.  

USS Yorktown (CV 5), shortly after launching on April 4, 1936 at Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company.  The next year, USS Enterprise (CV 6) would join the growing carrier fleet from the same shipyard.  yet its planes and pilots had an insufficient number of shore installations in Hampton Roads from which to train and maintain. (Naval History and Heritage Command image)

 With war clouds on the horizon in Europe, Vinson followed up Vinson-Trammel with the much bolder Naval Act of 1938 (also called the Vinson Navy Bill), which mandated a 20 percent increase in overall naval strength. The Vinson Navy Bill also authorized the number of naval aircraft to be increased from 1,910 to 3,000. Between June 14 and 19, 1940, however, that number was expanded to 4,500, then to 10,000, and finally a mind-boggling 15,000. Despite the giant runway expansion program nearing completion at NAS Norfolk in 1941, bringing the size of the facility to over 2,000 acres, naval aviation in the Fifth Naval District area, which comprised most of the Mid-Atlantic seaboard, was exploding at such a rate that a single air station would be insufficient to base them all. Making matters worse, the bills that Congress passed in 1934 and 1938 made no provision for shore facilities to support this breakneck expansion.

Seen here in 1939, Chambers Field at NAS Norfolk was the only major dedicated landing, storage and maintenance facility for the hundreds of new aircraft converging upon the area (until the East Runway complex was opened two years later). To alleviate the congestion, smaller grass and mud fields were established in satellite locations around Hampton Roads and in the farther reaches of the Fifth Naval District, but no paving was completed nor permanent structures built on them until the early-1940s. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

To cope with the massive influx of squadrons, planes, and pilots, plus provide all the storage, training, fueling and hundreds of other miscellaneous requirements that would come with them, Acting Secretary of the Navy Charles Edison appointed Rear Admiral Arthur J. Hepburn to lead a commission which in 1938 recommended to the Bureau of Yards and Docks that dozens of outlying airfields be established across the country to support major and secondary air bases. The Hepburn base program, which was approved by Congress and signed by President Franklin Roosevelt on April 25, 1939, appropriated $500,000 for land acquisition in support of NAS Norfolk. That money helped secure the land for a total of ten naval auxiliary air stations in the Fifth Naval District; seven in Eastern Virginia, and three in Northeast North Carolina.

The names and approximate locations of the ten Naval Auxiliary Air Stations supporting Naval Air Station Norfolk during the Second World War as labeled on a map of the Fifth Naval District that appeared in a guide to all the district naval facilities made in 1943. The colors denoted whether or not photographs of them originally appeared in the publication. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum File)

Although it ultimately became the biggest naval air station in Hampton Roads, NAAS Oceana, commissioned on August 17, 1943, was actually the last of the Naval Auxiliary Air Stations commissioned in the Fifth Naval District area during the war, all of which were commissioned that year. NAAS Manteo in North Carolina was the first on March 3, followed by Chincoteague on Virginia’s Eastern Shore on March 5, Elizabeth City, North Carolina on March 6, Franklin on March 8; Pungo and Creeds on April 5; Fentress on April 15; Monogram on May 15; and Harvey Point, North Carolina, on June 15.

Seventy-Five Years Ago: Beating Plowshares into Planes, Part 2

August 17, 2018, 2:32 pm

≫ Next: One Hundred Years Ago: Naval Air Station Norfolk's First Skipper, Part 1

≪ Previous: Seventy-Five Years Ago: Beating Plowshares into Patrol Planes, Part 1

$

0

0

As the nation girded itself for total war at the beginning of the 1940s, ten stark white concrete triangular forms appeared among the irregular patchwork of farm fields and woods in the Tidewater region and along the Mid-Atlantic coast. The last of them, all Naval Air Auxiliary Stations under the administrative management of Hampton Roads Naval Air Center, was located at the small town of Oceana, which was the second-to-last stop on the Norfolk-Southern railway line that ended at Virginia Beach.

Although it was the last Naval Air Auxiliary Station (NAAS) in the Hampton Roads area to open during World War II, NAAS Oceana (Seen here in 1944) expanded by leaps and bounds after its commissioning on August 17, 1943.  Its runways and support areas as of 1942 are shaded blue on the photograph below. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

Despite a reputation founded upon fighters, the first aircraft to call NAAS Oceana home were patrol aircraft, namely Consolidated PB4Y-1 Liberators and PB4Y-2 Privateers, dedicated to protecting the sea lanes from the continuing depredations of German U-boats, which were down by this time in 1943, but were not out. 

 
NAAS Oceana continued to expand after the war.  It was designated a naval air station on April 1, 1952, and achieved the designation of master jet base in 1957. By the the early-1990s, it had grown to over 16 times its original size. Base realignment and closure activities since then have brought even more commands and functions to the sprawling 5,916-acre facility.  

Of course, not all of the airfields created in the area during the war thrived nearly as well, or at all, yet some of them serve diverse, interesting, and even mysterious functions today.  Here are a few of them.

NAAF Pungo, just south of NAAF Oceana, as it appeared on May 23, 1945. It was originally established in March 1941 on 441 acres northeast of the town of Pungo in Princess Anne County (now the City of Virginia Beach), and after training at least 24 Wildcat and Avenger squadrons during World War II was sold to Atlantic Flight Services. Although that business failed, according to Abandoned and Little-Known Airfields, some of the land around the runways reverted to farmland, a large berm there became the nucleus of the Virginia Beach Rifle and Pistol Club, and during the 1960s, the Coast Guard established a radio transmitter site on the property.  (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

NAAF Elizabeth City had been officially commissioned into naval service on March 6, 1943, but by the time this picture was taken on May 22, 1945, the Coast Guard presence loomed large, as can be seen on the roof of the large hangar at the center of the photograph.  Today, Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City is the service's largest. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

NAAS Franklin was commissioned on March 8, 1943, approximately two months after the Navy leased Franklin Municipal Airport from the city.  It proved to be a much better facility for the Hampton Roads Naval Air Center to base its Acceptance and Delivery Unit than its earlier location at muddy NAAS Monogram, northwest of Franklin on the banks of the Nansemond River. After making a number of improvements, such as adding barracks to house hundreds of temporarily-attached squadron personnel and adding a 4,200-foot runway, the facility was returned to the city and exists today as Franklin Municipal-John Beverly Rose airport.  (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

NAAS Chincoteague, seen here in September 1943, was commissioned into naval service a little over six months before. It now part of the National Air and Space Administration's Wallops Flight Facility, yet the Navy still conducts Field Carrier Landing Practice (FCLP) there.  (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

NAAS Fentress, commissioned on April 15, 1943, is the only one among the nine other fields created during World War II to ease the pressure on NAS Norfolk to help train personnel for deployment that has has retained much of its original mission as a Naval  Auxiliary Landing Field (NALF). The original runways were woefully insufficient for the task after jet aircraft began to enter naval service en masse during the 1950s, so a runway measuring over 8,000 feet was added. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

A U.S. Geological Survey image of NALF Fentress taken in April 1990.  (Wikimedia Commons)

Navy and local officials break ground for NAS Harvey Point, North Carolina, in 1958, resurrecting the former PBM Mariner seaplane base, which had been deactivated 12 years earlier, as the new home of the experimental Martin P6M Seamaster.  The Seamaster program was cancelled in 1959, yet the Navy converted the facility for other purposes, and it now exists as the Harvey Point Defense Testing Activity. Although it has successfully kept itself out of the news for many years, the former seaplane station at Harvey Point has played an important role in recent years for, among other things, training special operations forces, most notably when it was reported that Naval Special Warfare Development Group Sailors practiced there on a full-scale mock-up of Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound in Pakistan before the successful mission was carried out in 2011, ending the biggest manhunt in United States History.

One Hundred Years Ago: Naval Air Station Norfolk's First Skipper, Part 1

August 27, 2018, 10:34 am

≫ Next: One Century Ago: Building Naval Airpower's First Permanent Home in Hampton Roads

≪ Previous: Seventy-Five Years Ago: Beating Plowshares into Planes, Part 2

$

0

0

Editor's Note: On our first blog post about Naval Air Station Oceana's establishment on August 17, 1943, it was mentioned that Rear Admiral P.N.L. Bellinger was in attendance at the commissioning ceremony.  On August 27, 1918, just shy of a quarter-century before that, Bellinger took command of Naval Air Station Hampton Roads (which was renamed NAS Norfolk after his first of his two assignments as CO there), and his name graces a major thoroughfare on Naval Station Norfolk today.  From the pages of  The Daybook, the Hampton Roads Naval Museum's quarterly magazine, our resident expert on Bellinger expounds upon Bellinger's importance to U.S. Naval Aviation in general, and its development in Hampton Roads in particular.

The administrative heads of Naval Air Station Hampton Roads (later NAS Norfolk) as photographed in January 1919.  Lieutenant Commander P.N.L. Bellinger, the station's commanding officer, is seated center front row.  (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

P.N.L. Bellinger: Pioneer Naval Aviator and the Early Days of NAS Norfolk 

By Ira R. Hanna
 
Many know that the first flight from a ship took place here in Hampton Roads, Virginia. What many people do not know is that the region was largely responsible for the creation and growth of the aviation branch of the U.S. Navy. Naval Aviation had many skeptics in the early years of flight, and it took several inspired and wise men to convince those skeptics that it was worth supporting. 
One of those wise and inspired men was Patrick Nieson Lynch Bellinger. A versatile naval officer, Bellinger served in the surface and submarine warfare communities before finding his true passion in Naval Aviation. During his 40 years of naval service from 1907 to 1947, only a few times did his name appear in the headlines of newspapers. Nor was he mentioned very often in magazines or on radio or television news broadcasts. On the other hand, the public in Hampton Roads should recall him every time it hears the sound of naval aircraft flying overhead. If not for Bellinger's foresight and perseverance in the development of naval aircraft and their integration into the fleet, those aircraft may not have become one of the most powerful weapons in the Navy.

How did this southern country boy from Cheraw (emphasis on RAW), South Carolina, become such an important part of the development and growth of Naval Aviation in general, and specifically, in Hampton Roads? Although it was his home, he hardly ever spoke of it. As his wife, Elsie, remarked, "It was CheRAW! when you arrived and HurRAW!! when you left." Born October 8, 1885, he was raised by his maternal aunt when his mother and sister died a few years after his birth. He was educated in local public schools, and in 1902 he enrolled in Clemson College as an electrical engineering student. Later that year he got his father's permission to leave Clemson to study for the Naval Academy's entrance exam. He received a congressional appointment and entered the class of 1907 on June 22, 1903. As a plebe (freshman) he weighed only 116 pounds and stood only five feet, ten inches tall. Even so, he was cajoled into athletics by an upper classman and became an excellent boxer. He credited this with putting him in good enough physical and mental shape to be accepted for aviation nine years later.

At the academy, Bellinger was influenced by several of his instructors. The most important was Thomas T. Craven (mathematics and navigation), with whom he later would serve on the battleship South Carolina. Another was Ernest J. King (ordnance and gunnery), a future chief of naval operations.  Bellinger served as King's deputy for naval air during WWII. Also important was Joseph M. Reeves (physics and chemistry), who later pioneered the development of aircraft carriers, providing Bellinger with a wider view of the uses of aircraft. He served with Reeves as his aviation aide when he was commander of the Battle Fleet during the 1920s.

Upon graduation from the Naval Academy. Bellinger was assigned as a Passed Midshipman to the USS Vermont (BB 20), part of the Great White Fleet that departed Norfolk in 1907 and went around the world to show the might of the U.S.Navy. When the fleet reached Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), after he had received exemplary fitness reports from the Vermont's captain, he was transferred to the Wisconsin (BB 9). He completed the voyage on that ship and arrived back in Hampton Roads on February 22, 1909.  On March 6, when the Wisconsin was sent to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for repairs, Bellinger and six other "student officers" were transferred to the cruiser Montgomery (C 9) based in Norfolk. It served as an experimental torpedo ship and this excited him. He watched the gunners' actions so closely that during one high-pressure run, a piece of metal flew up and hit him on the head. If it had hit him just inches lower, it would have killed him, one of many instances throughout Bellinger's lifetime that luck had a hand in his success.

One day, after watching the loading and firing of torpedoes, the student officers became bored and began to play roulette games during the shots. Bellinger happened to leave the game and go on deck for some fresh air. Before he could return, he heard his name being called loudly by the captain (Joseph Strauss, later the admiral who supervised the laying of the North Sea Mine Barrage during WWI). He wondered what trouble he was in, but Strauss merely informed him that the Navy Department had directed him to nominate two ensigns from the class of 1907 to send to the Navy's first dreadnaughts, the Michigan and the South Carolina. Strauss said, "In looking around. I find you are the only one of your class on the job, so you may have the pick." Of course, Bellinger chose the South Carolina that was located temporarily in Norfolk. He later noted "It certainly pays to be in the right spot at the right time." 

A postcard of the battleship South Carolina (BB 26). (Naval History and Heritage Command image)

 In the meantime, Northern European countries had expressed displeasure that the Great White Fleet had not visited their ports. So, in November 1910, the Navy Department sent the South Carolina to visit ports in France and England. After returning to Norfolk in January 1911, she was sent to ports in Denmark, Sweden, Russia, and Kiel, Germany. While in Kiel, Bellinger saw a plane fly over the harbor and decided that he wanted to go into aviation.

Bellinger's assignment on the South Carolina was assistant gunnery officer to "Terrible Tommy" Craven, whom he first met at the Academy and with whom he later would serve in the Bureau of Naval Aeronautics (BuAer). After much pleading, he convinced Craven to assign him command of one of the four 12-inch turrets. By holding extra practices, he had his turret crew ready for the Fleet Gunnery Championship held in March 1910 on the Virginia Capes. His guns made hits 88.5 percent of the time on a towed target and in record time. This enabled the South Carolina to win the Fleet Gunnery Trophy (which today is located in the Hampton Roads Naval Museum). This was instrumental in Craven being ordered to head the Navy's Office of Fleet Gunnery Training. The principle of teamwork and delegation of authority that Bellinger learned aboard the South Carolina stayed with him the rest of his life. The prize money, forbidden for officers to receive, went to his turret crew. Then, without his knowledge, they bought him an ornate gold watch and presented it to him. He was very proud of it and 46 years later he sent it to his grandson, who was named after him.

Before Craven left the ship in late 1911 he asked Bellinger if there was anything he could do for him in Washington. He replied that he had requested aviation duty from Lt. Theodore "Spuds" Ellyson, Naval Aviator No. 1, and would appreciate Craven's recommendation. To further prove he was sincere about aviation, he also had requested submarine duty so he could learn about gasoline engines that were similar to aircraft engines. In January 1912 he received orders to submarine duty and reported to the submarine flotilla commander in Norfolk, Lt. Chester W. Nimitz, on whose staff he later would serve during WWII, and help plan the air strategy for the Battle of Midway.

The C-Class submarine Bonita underway in 1909 before her recommissioning as USS C-4 in 1911. (Wikimedia Commons)

After five months of training Lt. j.g. Bellinger was given command of the Bonita, a training submarine that had been recommissioned as USS C-4. As fate would have it, his first orders were to sail to Greenbury Point Aviation Experimental Camp (the first in the navy) across the Severn River from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. There he was to take part in a test to see if submarines could be located under water from the air. What he saw convinced him of the usefulness of aircraft to the navy. But he also discovered that Naval Aviation was treated as an unwanted stepchild by the "big gun" admirals and starved for equipment and personnel. Many senior officers believed that aviation's growth would challenge the supremacy of battleships, an attitude that Bellinger fought against for rest of his naval career.

At Annapolis in October 1912, with permission to fly as an observer on a test flight, John Towers, a classmate of Bellinger and Naval Aviator No. 2, offered to take him up in a Curtiss A-2. Towers knew that Bellinger was skeptical about aviation, especially when the A-2 crashed the day before they were to make the flight. Still, Towers persuaded Bellinger to take a flight with Victor Herbster (Naval Aviator No. 4) in a Wright biplane with twin floats. Pilot and observer sat side by side on seats mounted on the lower wing. There were no safety straps and only a wooden outrigger to prevent sliding during a steep glide. Bellinger was concerned with personal safety on planes and wondered if he really wanted to fly. Yet, he confessed that he "felt exhilaration, danger, strangeness, and certainly fear, when perched on the edge of a wing, dangled our feet down to a bar on a pontoon, and hunched and prayed our wobbly little seaplane would lift up off the water." 

In early November, Bellinger visited Ellyson at the Washington Navy Yard. He asked Bellinger if he had received aviation duty orders. When he said he had not, Ellyson suggested that he see his detail officer at the Navy Department immediately. The detail officer told him that a clerk had erred and issued the orders to Ens. William Billingsley. Billingsley had not asked for aviation but had accepted anyway and already was being trained. Downhearted and disgusted with the navy bureaucracy, Bellinger was losing his inclination to be an aviator and returned to Annapolis. Even so, he went on a second flight with Towers and was "thrilled with the first hope" that he might become a naval pilot. On November 26, 1912, he received orders that detached him from command of the C-4 and directed him to report to Towers at Greenbury Point for aviation training duty. He was cautiously elated but very pleased to have Towers as his instructor.

Lt. j.g. P.N.L. Bellinger at the controls of a Curtiss A-type seaplane. (Naval History and Heritage Command image)

In just a few short months Bellinger was fully qualified as a naval flying officer. Because of severe weather conditions during the winter in Annapolis, in early January 1913, the pilot training school was sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to train with the fleet. At that time Capt. Washington Irving Chambers, Director of Naval Aviation, for whom the airfield at NAS Norfolk would be named, encouraged the few naval aviators under his authority to try to influence surface and submarine officers to accept aircraft as useful to the fleet. On one of his flights, Bellinger was able to see a submarine in deep water and to spot mine fields. During war games he invariably discovered the approaching "hostile" fleet at a great distance which impressed the fleet commanders. To further comply with Chambers' request the young pilots gave flights to more than 200 fleet officers without incident. This produced positive press throughout the fleet. It began a change of mind in the "big gun" senior officers toward the integration of naval aviation into the fleet. 

As one of the first Naval Aviators (No. 8), Bellinger tested innovations in aircraft design, construction and instrumentation. In May 1913, Bellinger and Holden C. Richardson, Naval Aviator No. 13 and an aircraft engineer, were sent to the Burgess Aircraft Manufacturing Company plant in Marblehead, Massachusetts, to test a new flying boat being built for the navy. They found it to be satisfactory and it was shipped to Annapolis. When they returned to Greenbury Point, Bellinger was ordered to go with 20-year old Lawrence "Gyro" Sperry to the Curtiss aircraft plant at Hammondsport, New York, to test a gyroscopic stabilizer system invented by his father, Elmer A. Sperry. Meanwhile, on June 13th, his chief mechanic told Bellinger that his plane's engine was working well and that it was a fine day to set a new altitude record with the Curtiss A-3. Since he was eager to better Herbster's record of 4,450 feet, Bellinger flew off in exceptionally smooth air and climbed in ever wider turns until suddenly the plane seemed to wallow and his right wing dipped. He instinctively shoved the controls forward and was soon in a smooth glide. He had stalled the plane, first ever for a navy pilot, and recovered perfectly. In any event, he had reached 7,200 feet, an altitude record that lasted for two years.

Before Bellinger went to Hammondsport, Elmer Sperry requested that he come to his factory in Brooklyn, New York. There, "Gyro" Sperry explained the principle of the gyroscopic stabilizer. He did not tell Bellinger that two Army pilots already had crashed and died using his "contraption." It apparently did not matter since Bellinger conducted over 50 trials in all kinds of weather and found the stabilizer to have too many problems for use on navy planes. But he did make several suggestions that eventually helped Sperry to perfect what eventually became the autopilot.
 

In 1914, Lt. Cmdr. Henry C. Mustin (Naval Aviator No. 11), and the newly-promoted Lt. Bellinger opened the first naval aviation training station in Pensacola, Florida. During his time there he met Elsie Mackeown, a cousin of Mustin's wife. They were married on July 24th, 1915. Perhaps to extend their honeymoon at the Chamberlain Hotel at Old Point Comfort In early 1915, Bellinger and Mustin took the outdated battleship Mississippi (BB 23) from Pensacola to Norfolk where it would be turned over to a Greek crew. When 30 miles away from Chesapeake Bay, Bellinger's flying boat was lowered into the ocean and he was given an official letter to be mailed. He took off and in a few minutes landed on a sandy beach near Old Point Comfort and mailed the letter at the nearest post office. It was the first time a naval aircraft was used as a mail plane in the United States. Bellinger later established daily mail service for military correspondence from Naval Operating Base (NOB), Hampton Roads, to Washington, D.C.

This very early aerial photograph from the fall of 1917 shows the nucleus of what would be commissioned as Naval Air Station Hampton Roads the following year, where most of the aircraft were stored in canvas hangars along "Discovery Landing," between two giant piers constructed for the Jamestown Exposition a decade before.  The barracks of Naval Training Station Hampton Roads, which opened in October 1917, can be seen in the background. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

In September 1917, Bellinger was assigned as the commander of Naval Air Detachment Hampton Roads. The unit had just arrived at Sewells Point on the grounds of the former Jamestown Exposition to the east of the equally new NOB Hampton Roads. In the beginning, when any of his seven seaplanes needed repair, they were housed in canvas hangars on the sandy shore of Discovery Landing in the Grand Basin between the two 1,000-foot government piers. When operational but not in use the planes were staked in the water. During his first six months in Norfolk, Bellinger saw the station facilities increase exponentially. This included two aircraft repair buildings, three, two-story barracks, a mess hall that accommodated 450 men, a blimp hangar, and a landing field for general use. There, he supervised the instruction of many regular and reserve navy pilots, some of whom became leaders in government and business as well as the Navy.

One of his students was James Forrestal who was a member of the Princeton Naval Reserve Flying Corps. In 1940, Forrestal was Undersecretary of the Navy for Air. On their way to Forrestal's office to receive last minute instructions before Bellinger reported as commander of Naval Aviation in Hawaii, Towers reminded Bellinger that Forrestal had been under his command at Norfolk in 1918. When they got to the office, Forrestal began by saying, "Bellinger, the last time I saw you at Norfolk, you called me into your office, scared the daylights out of me, and gave me hell for stunting a plane that shouldn't have been stunted." Bellinger did not remember Forrestal and later said that "After all, I had chewed out a lot of ensigns in my time."

Lt. Cmdr. Patrick N.L. Bellinger in 1919. (Naval History and Heritage Command image)

During WWI, while Bellinger was CO of NAS Hampton Roads, more pilots were trained there than any other station, including Pensacola-662 or approximately 40 percent of the total of 1,656 Naval Aviators. Student pilots were given about 400 minutes of flying instruction in Curtiss trainers. Upon completion, they soloed for five hours in Curtiss Navy Flying Boats and then shifted to the larger Curtiss N-9 seaplanes. This was a very short training time compared to that which naval pilots receive today, but apparently very effective. Many became "aces" in Europe by shooting down at least three enemy aircraft.

Commander Ira "Dick" Hanna (USNR, Ret.), one of HRNM's longest-serving docents, holds a masters degree in history from Old Dominion University and a doctorate in education administration from The College of William and Mary. Among the many leadership posts he has held in the educational field, he has served as superintendent of Mathews County Public Schools and has taught as an adjunct professor of history and education administration at Old Dominion University. His father, Chief Yeoman Ralph Hanna, worked directly for P.N.L. Bellinger during his naval career.  This article also includes published research from Professor Palo E. Colleta, who Cmdr. Hanna studied under at the U.S. Naval Academy. 

One Century Ago: Building Naval Airpower's First Permanent Home in Hampton Roads

August 29, 2018, 2:02 pm

≫ Next: The Repulse off the Capes

≪ Previous: One Hundred Years Ago: Naval Air Station Norfolk's First Skipper, Part 1

$

0

0

Five days before the official commissioning of Naval Air Station Hampton Roads (later renamed NAS Norfolk), bulkheading, dredging and filling operations for a new runway complex are in full swing.  The airfield established on the landfill forming in the middle of the photograph was named in 1938 after Capt. W.I. Chambers, the first person appointed to lead aviation development in the Navy.  The area hosting the seaplane hangars  nearest the camera is home today to the MWR Norfolk Naval Sailing Center. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

On August 27, 1918, Naval Air Station Hampton Roads (later renamed NAS Norfolk)  was officially commissioned as a subordinate command of Naval Operating Base Hampton Roads, ten months after Lieutenant Henry B. Cecil led the first naval aviators and support staff to the former Jamestown Exposition grounds at Sewells point, north of downtown Norfolk, Virginia.  They brought with them seven Curtiss seaplanes and some tents to store them in, but little else.  The aviators originally lodged in a former resort hotel on the grounds of the naval operating base.  By the time it was officially established as its own command, much had changed on the eastern part of the former Jamestown Exposition grounds bought in July 1917, yet there was a long way to go.  The Hampton Roads Naval Museum has amassed many photographs, some seen here for the first time online, showing the huge amount of work carried out to create the air station, which ceased to be a separate command from Naval Station Norfolk in 1999.  

This photograph, one of the earliest showing naval aviation personnel at Naval Operating Base Hampton Roads (now Naval Station Norfolk), shows some of the the very first naval aviators and support staff who had moved to the former Jamestown Exposition Grand Basin from where they had been training at Glenn Curtiss's Atlantic Coast Aeronautical Station as "Naval Air Detachment Curtiss Field." Here we see a "landing stage" ramp being built on the spot that was known as "Discovery Landing" during the exposition, which had welcomed foreign dignitaries as well as President Theodore Roosevelt ten years before.  At its edge is a Curtiss Model R floatplane.  They also used trainers made by the Aeromarine Plane and Motor Company.  Note the canvas tents that served as rudimentary hangars and the clock tower of the Pennsylvania House in the background, which is still a landmark on the naval station.  The basin is home to the naval station's marina today. (National Archives and Records Administration)

  

About two weeks after the arrival of naval aviators to Naval Operating Base Hampton Roads in October 1917, wooden hangars started going up.  This one, which appears to be near the corner of present-day Farragut Avenue and Dillingham Boulevard (today the site of a parking lot on Dillingham opposite a bachelor officers' quarters), features a Curtiss JN-4 being worked on by naval aviation detachment personnel. (National Archives and Records Administration)

During the ten months between the arrival of the first naval aviators and the commissioning of NAS Hampton Roads, over a dozen wooden hangars and other support structures tailor-made for aviation training and operations were erected, including a huge dirigible hangar.

The huge dirigible hangar under construction at NOB Hampton Roads, more than six months before the naval air station was commissioned as a separate administrative command from the naval operating base. (National Archives and Records Administration)

Within the giant hangar for lighter-than-air operations at NAS Hampton Roads later in 1918, Sailors are inflating one of the nonrigid dirigibles, or blimps, with hydrogen gas.  The blimps were a mainstay of patrol and convoy guarding activities in the area during the war, and remained a common site over the air station for several more years.  One of the highly flammable blimps caught fire above the air station in 1921 due to leaking hydrogen, but luckily the crew escaped before it exploded.  A much larger Army Air Corps airship, the Roma, exploded and crashed just south of the nearby Naval Operating Base less than a year later, killing 34 of the 45 officers, crewmen, and civilian personnel on board.  (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file) The aviation-specific buildings have attracted the most attention from researchers studying the early history of the naval air station, yet the general support infrastructure for the hundreds of aviators, mechanics, aviation quartermasters and other enlisted support personnel who would be training there and patrolling the East Coast against the German submarine threat during the last months of World War I and beyond have not received as much attention.

Five months before the official establishment of NAS Hampton Roads, permanent barracks and a mess hall  for aviation personnel are under construction not far from the main hangars.   (National Archives and Records Administration)

In this photograph taken in March 1919, roughly over the former Grand Basin looking southeast, the completed aviation barracks complex can be seen behind the dirigible hangar (extreme right). Some of the original Jamestown Exposition state houses are still standing (center left).  According to some sources, a former life saving station behind the barracks (near the center of the photograph), which was also left over from the exposition, served as a temporary control tower shortly after the arrival of the naval air detachment a year and a half earlier. (National Archives and Records Administration)

Among the most obscure parts of early NAS Hampton Roads was the area known as East Camp, which was built on where the large East Field (today the main part of Chambers Field) was completed in 1941.  A new collection of photographs taken by Albert Kloth, one of the contractors who constructed that part of the station, was recently donated to the museum.  Some are being shown here for the first time.

An overall photo of the southern end of the barracks complex known as East Camp, with a new drill hall (far left) at the southernmost end. The project was begun in late 1918 and completed sometime the following year, even though the reason for its existence, World War I, ended not long after the contract for its construction was awarded.  (Albert Kloth/ Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

A closer look at the drill hall under construction at East Camp. (Albert Kloth/ Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

Barracks rows under construction at East Camp. (Albert Kloth/ Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

The laundry and galley area of East Camp, circa 1918-1919. (Albert Kloth/ Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

This aerial photograph from September 1918 shows land reclamation going on at the mouth of Boush Creek, which became the nucleus of what later became known as the Naval Aviation Depot. At this point, construction on East Camp had yet to begin on the fields to the east. During the interwar period, Boush Creek was gradually filled in until there was nothing left of it by the time World War II began.  The mouth of Mason Creek (which is now cut off from Willoughby Bay) can be seen at the upper right of the photograph, and part of Willoughby Spit can be seen at the upper left. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

In July 1918, United States Shipping Board, which was responsible for transporting the American Expeditionary Force and its supplies from ports in the United States to Europe during World War I, estimated that approximately 200,000 additional men, above those already at naval training stations across the country, would be needed to crew ships due to be completed in 1920.  In response, plans were drawn up for a new training facility to be established at Yorktown, Virginia, that would accommodate 14,000 men and feature its own 800-bed hospital.  Bids for the project opened on September 9, 1918, but the Yorktown project was cancelled in favor of a major expansion of the Naval Training Station at Sewells point on the east side of Boush Creek, across from the naval operating base as well as the training and air stations covering the northeast corner of Sewells Point.  According to the official history, War Activities of the Bureau of Yards and Docks (1921), "it is to-day the best example of a naval training camp constructed during the war period." 

The completed East Camp area in September 1919, looking east.  Willoughby Spit can be seen at the upper left.  (National Archives and Records Administration)

(Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

Anecdotal evidence suggests that East Camp ended up serving as a part of the air station instead of the naval training station as originally intended.  In any case, by the time a major expansion of the runways at what was by then Naval Air Station Norfolk was carried out during the late-1930s, the entire East Camp had been razed for some time. East Field (now the current Chambers Field of Naval Station Norfolk), opened at the former site of East Camp in 1941.

Editor's Note: Hampton Roads Naval Museum Curator Joe Judge conducted much of the original research that contributed to this post, and much of that research as well as many of the photographs of both early NAS Hampton Roads as well as the naval training station and naval operating base shown here can be found in the book Images of America: Naval Station Norfolk (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2014) published with the support of the Hampton Roads Naval Historical Foundation (HRNHF).  To order a copy, please call the HRNHF gift shop at (757) 423-8118.  

The Repulse off the Capes

August 31, 2018, 10:05 am

≫ Next: One Century Ago: Greetings from NAS Hampton Roads

≪ Previous: One Century Ago: Building Naval Airpower's First Permanent Home in Hampton Roads

$

0

0

Admirals De Grasse, Graves, and Hood at the Battle of the Chesapeake Capes

This famous oil painting depicts the Battle of the Chesapeake Capes, capturing the initial line engagement of the British and French vanguards during the battle. (V. Zveg/ Hampton Roads Naval Museum Collection)

By A.J. Orlikoff
Hampton Roads Naval Museum Educator

On September 5, 1781, at about 4:10 pm, the French ship Réfléchi received a broadside at close range from the British ship Princessa, killing the ship’s commander, Captain Brune De Boades. Moments later, other lead ships of both the British and French lines of battle opened fire on one other, beginning a two-hour engagement now known as the Battle of the Chesapeake Capes. Hundreds of cannons blazed away in the waning afternoon sun as the eight ships of the French vanguard exchanged volleys of thunderous fire with the six ships of the British vanguard. Solid cannon shots crashed into wooden planking, rigging, sails, and crew, leaving in their wake gore soaked decks and passageways. Deadly splinters of various sizes were created by cannon shots crashing through planking; they sliced across the deck killing or maiming unlucky crew.  

A model of Ville de Paris in the gallery of the Hampton Roads Naval Museum.

From the decks of the massive 104-gun French flagship Ville De Paris, the man who had organized, planned, and led the French watched as one of his ships fired a well-aimed broadside into the British line. Upon seeing this display of martial prowess, the man declared, “Now that’s what I call fighting.” Standing at the towering height of 6’2 and wearing the bright red flaming sword ribbon of the Order of St. Louis, Vice Admiral François Joseph Paul Comte de Grasse must have been a striking figure as he watched his ships continue their effective fire into the British line.

Francois Joseph Paul Comte de Grasse (or the Count of Grasse) stands as a noble, heroic, yet forgotten commander of the Revolutionary War. Serving in the French Navy for his entire career, De Grasse’s actions proved to be critical in the Yorktown campaign. De Grasse’s regalia is captured in this 1837 lithograph, including the signature bright red ribbon of his military order, the Order of St. Louis. (Antoine Maurin Lemercier/ National Maritime Museum)

De Grasse was leading the French fleet against the Royal Navy in one of the most important and consequential naval battles in the history of the world, The Battle of the Chesapeake Capes. French victory at this battle directly led to the isolation of British forces in Virginia, the concentration of Franco-American forces at the Siege of Yorktown, and the surrender of British General Charles Cornwallis’ Army. The Allied victory at Yorktown resulted in nothing less than theater wide defeat for British forces in the thirteen colonies, a shift of British strategic goals to India and the Caribbean, and ultimately the independence of the United States of America. And this victory would have been impossible if not for French victory at the Battle of the Capes. Two-hundred-thirty-seven years have passed since that momentous victory and there is no better time than now to reexamine how Battle of the Capes was won and lost.

Generals George Washington and the Comte De Rochambeau are depicted in this 1836 painting at the Siege of Yorktown. Through correspondence, Washington, De Grasse, and Rochambeau planned the Yorktown offensive. Though they differed in age and experience, all three men worked well together and had immense respect for each other’s abilities. (Auguste Couder/ The Palace of Versailles)

De Grasse was in the Caribbean with a powerful French fleet when he began corresponding with General George Washington and the Comte De Rochambeau in June 1781 and the three planned, over the following weeks, the Yorktown campaign. All three wanted to take advantage of French naval parity in theater to strike a blow at isolated British forces either in New York or Virginia. Washington favored striking British forces in New York under General Sir Henry Clinton but both Rochambeau and De Grasse believed that General Charles Cornwallis’ weaker forces in Virginia were the better target. Critically, it would be up to De Grasse to decide where the Allied forces should be concentrated, with Washington writing Rochambeau, “Instead of advising him [De Grasse] to run immediately into Chesapeak [sic], will it not be best to leave him to judge…which will be the most advantageous quarter for him to make his appearance in.” De Grasse carefully read the various dispatches and made one of the most momentous decisions in all of history, deciding that the Allied blow would be struck against Cornwallis in Virginia. On August 5, De Grasse sailed for the Chesapeake Bay with a powerful fleet of 28 ships and a crack strike force of 3,000 infantry equipped with mortars and siege guns.

On September 5, an overjoyed Washington learned of the news of De Grasse’s safe arrival in the Chesapeake Bay on August 30. Washington, Rochambeau, and Lafayette rapidly concentrated their forces in Virginia but not before launching a feint attack on Clinton in New York to fool the British into thinking the blow would land there. De Grasse had made the correct decision to concentrate allied forces in the Chesapeake Bay and, as Washington later wrote, De Grasse was “…the pivot upon which everything turned.” It would now be up to De Grasse to repel any British rescue force and ensure the destruction of Cornwallis’ army at the hands of the converging Allied armies. 

Unfortunately for the Allies, the British relief force arrived on the same day Washington learned of De Grasse’s arrival. The British, aware of the danger to Cornwallis’ army in Yorktown, rallied their available naval assets to sortie into the bay in force to defeat any French force which might threaten Cornwallis. Admiral Thomas Graves and De Grasse’s old opponent, Admiral Samuel Hood, combined their fleets to form a powerful force of 19 ships of the line. Graves, who had the overall command, was a steady if uninspiring naval commander while Hood was brash, energetic, and arrogant. The two did not like each other nor did they get along well. Furthermore, the combined British fleet was full of ships and captains who had never worked together and the British had little time to conference on the minutiae of naval warfare. Nevertheless, the British squadron was a force to be reckoned with.  

Admiral Samuel Hood (left), who seems to glower in this 1783 painting by James Northcote, was an aggressive and well-connected fleet commander of the Royal Navy. With a prickly personality, Hood was not well liked by his fellow admirals yet he was never the less respected as a talented naval commander. Hood had engaged De Grasse in the Caribbean several times in the months prior to the Yorktown Campaign and he would fight his old enemy again as a flag commander at the Battle of the Capes. Although his conduct during the battle was highly controversial, he went on to have a celebrated naval career. To his right is Admiral Thomas Graves, looking a bit more sanguine in this 1785 painting by Thomas Gainsborough, who served as a career naval commander and colonial official during his service to the British Crown. Although capable, Graves was often seen as not aggressive enough to command a fleet having once been court martialed and reprimanded for not engaging a French warship in a prior war. With Admiral George Rodney unable to command due to sickness, it fell to Graves to lead the British forces at the Battle of the Capes. (Wikimedia Commons)

Around 10:00 am on the morning of September 5, 1781 De Grasse’s fleet spotted a large fleet approaching the Chesapeake Capes. At first they thought it was an expected reinforcing squadron under the command of the Comte De Barras. However, they quickly realized that the ships were not French. Caught by surprise, De Grasse was forced to rapidly deploy his available fleet of 23 ships of the line from the Chesapeake Bay out into the Atlantic Ocean, lest De Barras’ expected squadron become isolated and destroyed by Graves’ fleet. Forced to exit the bay through a narrow passage ringed by shoals, portions of the French fleet were isolated as they exited the bay due to the general confusion caused by the surprise of the British attack. 

This period map and chart of the Chesapeake Bay region illustrates the geographic features critical to the Battle of the Capes. Note both the location of Yorktown, where Cornwallis’ Army was, and the narrow passage in which De Grasse was forced to deploy his fleet. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

Admiral Hood led the British vanguard and felt that the British had a golden opportunity to attack and destroy the isolated lead ships of the French vanguard as they exited the Bay. However, Graves signaled for the British fleet to wear together, essentially reversing their order, rather than “cross the T” by blocking De Grasse’s passage from the Bay. Thus, Hood found himself commanding the rear of the British line rather than the vanguard. Graves’ plan was to let De Grasse deploy from the bay and then, with the advantage of the wind gauge (wind direction), attack the French vanguard and center with the entirety of his fleet. The French rear, Graves thought, would be unable to rapidly respond to this maneuver due to the unfavorable wind direction. Graves’ plan was good in theory, as long as the British fleet was coordinated enough to bring the entirety of their firepower to bear on a portion of the French fleet.

In contrast, De Grasse’s plan was simple yet appropriate; he wanted to engage the smaller British fleet in a traditional line battle to allow his superior firepower to wear down and destroy the British ships. However, De Grasse’s fleet struggled to deploy due to the fickle wind. As a result, his vanguard was vulnerable to enemy attack. Graves gave the order to attack, which was communicated via flag order, to the British fleet. However, Graves briefly left the flag to stay in line formation flying simultaneously.

This period illustration shows a tactical overview of the Battle of the Capes. Shown sequentially, the map illustrates the different phases of the battle with De Grasse deploying his fleet, Graves reversing his line, and Hood’s failure to attack. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

The British vanguard, commanded by Admiral Samuel Francis Drake, attacked the French vanguard around 4:10 PM, and the opposing sides traded brutal fire. Close behind the lead ships of both fleets, the center lines of both fleets closed to attack each other at a range of a few hundred yards. However, the British center did not attack like Graves wanted them to as the British ship Montagu opened fire at too long of range, which forced the rest of the British center to fire at the same range to maintain formation. To make matters worse, the British rear commanded by Hood did not even attack. Thus, the British were fighting an already superior force with two thirds of their ships. Graves, again, sent the flag signal for close in attack yet Hood still held the British rear out of range.

This Harper’s Weeklydrawing by J.O. Davidson was published in 1881 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Capes. Due to the close range of the fighting, this drawing likely depicts the engagement of the British and French vanguards. The various flags flying from each ship illustrates how ships communicated with each other in the age of sail.  (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

The French vanguard and center, with De Grasse leading them from his flagship Ville De Paris, ferociously fought back the British attack. With advantages in numbers, firepower, maneuvering, and coordination, the engaged portions of the French fleet raked the ships of the Royal Navy with accurate fire, aiming for their rigging and masts. The British fought on bravely, effectively returning fire. The two sides continued to battle for around two hours and eventually the two fleets disengaged around 6:30.

In this bird's-eye view probably published in Britain not long after the battle shows the disjointed arrangement of the British line as it ultimately faced the French.  The two lines, with the larger French line extending towards Cape Henry and the shorter British line at bottom, violently came together at the, with Hood's and Graves' divisions at the rear sustaining the most damage, while Sir Samuel Hood's division at the van remains too far from their French opponents to effectively fight.(Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

The Battle of the Capes was over and the British clearly suffered more damage. The British scuttled the heavily damaged Terrible, suffered significant damage to 5 other ships, and sustained 336 casualties. The French suffered notable damage to 2 ships along with 220 casualties. Graves’ plan to concentrate all his firepower on the French vanguard and center completely backfired. The two fleets maneuvered for position over the next few days but ultimately the British ships were too heavily damaged and Graves’ retreated to New York on September 13. The retreat of the Royal Navy and the converging Franco-American armies sealed the fate of Cornwallis’ Army and on October 19, 1781, the British garrison at Yorktown surrendered after their besiegement. The British defeat at Yorktown was the single most consequential battle of the entire war and it eventually resulted in American Independence. 

This famous painting by John Trumbull depicts the surrender of British forces to Franco-American forces at Yorktown. Cornwallis, claiming illness, was not present for the surrender and sent his subordinate General Charles O’Hara in his stead who at first attempted to surrender to Rochambeau. However, Rochambeau’s subordinate directed him to Washington, stating “The Commander-in-Chief of our army is to your right.” Washington appropriately had his own subordinate General Benjamin Lincoln accept the surrender. De Grasse himself was too sick to attend the ceremony and his own subordinate, the Comte de Barras, went on his behalf. Thus, the second in command of the various forces officiated the most important surrender in American history. (Wikimedia Commons)

Contemporaries and historians have attempted to untangle the reasons for British defeat at the Battle of the Capes. Graves blamed Hood for his failure to attack the enemy fleet at all with his rear squadron, having raised the flag for close attack multiple times. Graves argued that if Admiral Drake and the rest of the fleet understood his orders, why didn’t Hood? Hood, conversely, blamed Graves for flying the flag to stay in formation simultaneously with the flag for close attack. Hood argued that these contradictory orders required him to obey the flag for line formation. Hood added to this excuse in a letter to his superior Lord Sandwich in which he argued that Graves had missed the opportunity to engage the French when they were disorganized, declaring, “Yesterday the British fleet had a rich and most delightful harvest of glory presented to it, but omitted to gather it…the enemy’s van was not closely attacked as it came out of Lynnhaven Bay.” Ironically, Hood blamed Graves for the very thing he had failed to do, attack the enemy. Some of Hood’s arguments have merit yet the fact remains that if Hood had attacked like the rest of fleet understood to do, Graves’ plan would have been executed as he intended and perhaps the engagement would have gone differently.

Hood vigorously defended his conduct at the Battle of the Capes to both the public and the Admiralty. Hood was largely successful in mitigating blame for his failure to attack due to his considerable political connections via his marriage, Graves’ less vigorous campaign to vindicate himself, and Hood’s far better conduct in future battles. In the years after his death in 1816, Hood was venerated as an aggressive naval hero in the same vein as his protégé, Admiral Horatio Nelson. The famous HMS Hood, sunk by the German battleship Bismarck in WWII, was named after Hood. (Pinterest)

Lost in the debates over reasons for British defeat are the reasons for French victory. First of all, the Comte De Grasse’s steady leadership and strategic vision put the French fleet in the right place at the right time to inflict a defeat on inferior British forces at the most critical juncture of the entire Revolutionary War. Secondly, French gunnery was simply better then British gunnery at the Battle of the Capes. Though they lost the tactical initiative due to the wind direction, the French fought bravely, honorably, and inflicted more damage on the British then the British did to them. The consequences of these French martial achievements on September 5, 1781 changed the world forever and directly led to the establishment of the United States of America.

The Comte De Grasse is not widely recognized as a major hero of the Revolutionary War. However, his conduct directly resulted in victory at Yorktown and American Independence. De Grasse’s naval career, personality, accomplishments, and service in the Revolutionary War will be explored in this author’s next article.  

---

One Century Ago: Greetings from NAS Hampton Roads

September 7, 2018, 6:45 pm

≫ Next: Seventy-Five Years Ago: Tragedy on the Tow Way

≪ Previous: The Repulse off the Capes

$

0

0

During your summer vacation, did you happen to pick up and mail any postcards?  Although not a widespread practice today, sending messages such as "Wish you were here" to friends and loved ones on the back of an inexpensive photograph or illustration of a favorite vacation scene became popular early in the last century, particularly after 1907, when areas for writing short messages became a common feature in the designs of postcards.   

There are a number of high-quality photographs of Naval Air Station Hampton Roads (later renamed NAS Norfolk) in the Hampton Roads Naval Museum collection, many of them taken 100 years ago to document construction work completed by contractors.  No official photo collections of NAS Hampton Roads' daily activities during World War I were mass-produced for public dissemination, however.  That is because official Navy photographers and other public affairs personnel were not yet stationed there.  Nevertheless there is an assortment of rare postcards in our collection made by enterprising civilian photographers who sold their wares, many in booklet form, to visitors or those stationed on the base.

The following is a selection of detachable post cards from a booklet that could once be found in souvenir shops and hotels in the area a century ago. In his book Greetings from Hampton Roads, Virginia (2008), postcard and paper collectables expert James Tigner Jr. pointed out that the height of postcard popularity in America spanned the years between 1906 and 1915.  More postcards were being produced around the times these postcards were made than ever before, yet they were being mailed more often than ever before as well, making these unused postcards something of a rarity today.

  

 

Seventy-Five Years Ago: Tragedy on the Tow Way

September 15, 2018, 12:11 am

≫ Next: One Century Ago: Naval Air Station Norfolk's First Skipper, Part 2

≪ Previous: One Century Ago: Greetings from NAS Hampton Roads

$

0

0

Within the picture files of the Hampton Roads Naval Museum are photographs from World War II that remained classified until 2009.  At first glance, they might look like pictures taken after the attack upon Pearl Harbor.  Surrounding a huge crater on one side, fires rage out of control within the blackened skeletons of hangars with the gnarled and twisted remains of aircraft nearby, while on the other side, other fires smoulder from within the piles of timbers that were once barracks and chow halls.  

A group of officers (center) including Rear Admiral (upper half) Herbert F. Leary, who had replaced Adm. Manley H. Simons as commandant of the Fifth Naval District in May 1943, along with his chief of staff, Captain E.C. Raguet, observe rescue and recovery efforts at Chambers Field with his staff after an accidental explosion of aerial depth bombs at Naval Air Station Norfolk on September 17, 1943. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

Looking east, a station wagon attempting to transport wounded personnel had crashed into the crater left by the detonation of multiple depth bombs being transported across NAS Norfolk on September 18, 1943.  The crater had been filled with water from a broken water main under Tow Way Drive.  Rear Adm. (upper half) Herbert F. Leary (believed to be the figure facing left in the photograph) and other officers from the Fifth Naval District staff are observing rescue and recovery efforts at Hangar V-30 (background) after the disaster, which killed 24 outright (including the first female Sailor to die in the line of duty during the war) and wounded 250 others, while another three died from their injuries in the ten days following the incident.  Thirty people are believed to have ultimately died from injuries sustained during the accident.  (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

Looking south-southwest, Sailors attempt to move a station wagon that had driven into the crater left by a massive explosion of 24 aerial depth bombs that were in transit from Pier 2 of Naval Operating Base Norfolk to a magazine area on the far side of the east runway complex.  Several World War I-era barracks and a Chief Petty Officers' club in the background were reduced to splinters, while a newer brick fire station (R-43, also known as Fire Station 2) had most of its windows blown out. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

As emergency personnel arrive, three casualties of the explosion at the southeast corner of Chambers Field at NAS Norfolk lie where they were felled by shrapnel from the explosion. Note the holes torn into the cowling of the TBF Avenger they were working on. The body of a dog caught by the explosion is obscured by the detached bomb bay door in the photograph.  (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

On a nearby aircraft ramp in front of the hangars, the bodies of Sailors lie where they had been standing moments before, felled in an instant by a wall of shrapnel that pierced the aircraft as though they were made of paper.

Another view of the heavily-damaged Avenger near the southeast corner of Chambers Field. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

The shock wave of the explosion has clearly stove in the side of the Avenger and blasted way most of the canopy.  A dog that was standing under the aircraft still lies where it fell.  An unknown number of animals died in the blast. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

Two survivors look at the body of a dog, possibly a squadron mascot, killed in the explosion. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

Although these photographs might look like they were taken in the aftermath of a devastating enemy attack, these pictures were not taken to document the carnage wrought by an enemy.  They were taken in the aftermath of a horrible accident that occurred near the main flight line of Naval Air Station Norfolk, right in the middle of Hampton Roads.

On the far side of the Avenger from the explosion site, a piece of shrapnel has torn clean through the center pontoon of a Curtiss SOC3 Seamew.  Thirty-three planes were affected by the blast, among those six were beyond repair, 15 required major overhaul and 12 were slightly damaged.(Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

Friday, September 17, 1943, started out  as a normal day at busy NAS Norfolk. Besides preparing American and Allied air wings for the complicated business of carrier-based combat, antisubmarine patrols constantly transited NAS Norfolk to scour thousands of miles of the open Atlantic for U-Boats that continued to threaten the east coast.  The threat had significantly abated from the year before, when the German submarines taking part in Operation Paukenschlag (Drumbeat) had attacked merchant shipping just off coastal Virginia and North Carolina virtually unopposed.  Navy destroyers and Coast Guard cutters equipped with secret radio direction-finding equipment and bristling with guns and and torpedoes now plied the coasts day and night.  The enemy submariners also faced a violent storm from the sky if they dared surface for long.  Navy dirigibles and seaplanes scanned thousands of miles of open ocean, and Army Air Corps Liberators, Navy Privateers, and other patrol aircraft would swoop in to strafe the subs if they were caught on the surface.  Diving did not automatically mean deliverance, however, as many of the aircraft were equipped with depth bombs equipped with hydrostatic fuses that were just as deadly as depth charges that the destroyers and cutters carried.

Within the hangar deck of the escort carrier Santee (CVE 29), en route from Hampton Roads to North Africa to take part in Operation Torch in November 1942, squadron ordnancemen check Mark 17 depth bombs that will be used against enemy submarines.  The Mark 17s, which weighed 325 pounds each, contained TNT explosive, but less than a year later, the Mark 47 depth bombs, which were the same size yet 30 pounds heavier and contained the much more powerful Torpex explosive, were being hauled around on the same support equipment. (Lt. Horace Bristol/ Naval History and Heritage Command image)

Naval Weapons Station Yorktown, across Hampton Roads and up the York River, kept the patrol aircraft well-supplied with these depth bombs.  Their lethality increased when the explosive within the mines was changed from TNT to the more powerful Torpex (derived from "torpedo explosive") after a new loading facility capable of handling the new explosive was established at Yorktown in December 1942.  Each 355-pound depth bomb carried approximately 252 pounds of Torpex.    

A depth bomb similar to the ones that exploded at NAS Norfolk, enclosed by its retaining brackets and held up by its hoisting lug. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

At about 11:00 am, a truck towing four dollies with six of these depth bombs enclosed in brackets and fastened to each one from Pier 2 on the naval operating base was passing the southeast corner of Chambers Field on the naval air station en route east towards weapons magazines on the far side of the larger East Field (today known as Chambers Field).  Though the exact chain of events is unclear, one of the 24 depth bombs partially slipped from a dolly and began dragging down Tow Way Drive.  A Marine sentry saw the wayward trash can-sized metal canister smoking, ordered the driver to stop, and either the driver or the sentry alerted the nearby fire station.  What is clear is that Assistant Fire Chief Gurney Edwards made a heroic but unsuccessful attempt to head off what would become the worst disaster in NAS Norfolk's long history.  

An investigative photo showing the depth bombs and the brackets that held them in place during transport.  (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

Many of the photographs taken in the hours and days after the accident by photographers from the air station's public relations office were marked "Confidential" and remained under wraps for decades, yet the Hampton Roads Naval Museum now holds over 100 of them, from pictures taken during the firefighting and first response to the investigative phase.  

An investigative photograph showing fatigue or damage to one of the depth bomb brackets. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

Along with the tragedy of those lives which were lost and possible clues to what might have caused the accident, the photographers also documented the heroic efforts to limit the damage caused by the tremendous explosion, look for and rescue the survivors, and treat the wounded.  

NAS Norfolk personnel pick through the remains of a barracks that was demolished in the explosion. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

In addition to Seaman 2nd Class Elizabeth Korensky, the only female killed in the explosions, there were other WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) probably injured, as well as female civilian employees of the nearby Assembly and Repair Department of the air station, which was also damaged.  Here an unidentified female is assisted into an official vehicle for transport away from the area of the explosion. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

Local delivery trucks were pressed into service to help deliver the wounded away from the accident scene.(Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

At the damaged NAS Norfolk dispensary roughly 100 yards from the site of the explosion, stretcher bearers await admittance with some of the hundreds wounded in the accident.  many would be rerouted to the new Norfolk Naval Hospital compound established just south of the naval operating base (and today home to Fleet Forces Command), as well as Portsmouth Naval Hospital.(Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

Sailors injured by the blast at nearby Chambers Field convalesce within the NAS Norfolk dispensary, which has itself been damaged.  Note the blown-out windowpane to the right. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

Navy doctors, nurses, and other personnel helping to assist the wounded (with the Sailor at the far left possibly wounded himself) at the NAS Norfolk dispensary discuss how to proceed while standing on the broken glass that covers the floor.  (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

One Century Ago: Naval Air Station Norfolk's First Skipper, Part 2

September 21, 2018, 4:18 pm

≫ Next: At HRNM: Scanning the Past, Printing the Future

≪ Previous: Seventy-Five Years Ago: Tragedy on the Tow Way

$

0

0

By Ira R. Hanna
HRNM Docent & Contributing Writer

Vice Admiral Patrick N.L. Bellinger was not only the single most important leader in naval aviation in Hampton Roads during World War II, but he was also one of the most important Navy-wide.  (National Archives and Records Administration)

P.N.L. Bellinger’s tour as the first commanding officer of NAS Norfolk was just the first of many times his Naval career brought him to the region. One of Bellinger’s additional assignments from October 14 to November 1, 1920, was to be the Naval observer of the Army’s bombing of the obsolete battleship Indiana (BB 1) in Tangier Sound in the Chesapeake Bay. After a series of air attacks by Army planes and planted explosives designed to test the effectiveness of her underwater compartments and double hull, the ship was sunk.

A plume from a near-miss dwarfs the predreadnought battleship Indiana (designated Coast Battleship 1) during aerial bombing demonstrations.  (William Mitchell Collection/ Library of Congress via Naval History and Heritage Command Flickr)

Bellinger determined that it was impressive, but not fully conclusive. He again was chosen to be the Navy’s witness of a similar test in July 1921 when the former German battleship Ostfriesland was sunk by Army Brigadier General “Billy” Mitchell’s planes in the Atlantic Ocean a few miles off the Virginia Capes. Although Mitchell claimed that the success of his land-based planes made naval aviation unnecessary, Bellinger disagreed and for the rest of his career fought to keep a separate naval air corps. In fact, in every billet he held, he sought to preserve and expand naval aviation.

SMS Ostfriesland is pummeled by Army aircraft during aerial bombardment tests conducted in July 1921. (William Mitchell Collection/ Library of Congress via Naval History and Heritage Command Flickr)

Whenever he got the chance, Bellinger stated that aircraft should be with the fleet to gain control of the air above it, prior to any naval battle. In 1925, President Calvin Coolidge named a lawyer, Dwight Morrow, to head a board of inquiry to determine the future of military aviation. In his testimony, Bellinger made nine recommendations including the need for naval aviation to be a combatant force within the fleet. Among other things he recommended that naval aviation be recognized as a permanent career for officers and enlisted men; that there be established a “flight line” to determine succession to command; that commanders of aviation activities including aircraft carriers and tenders only be officers permanently assigned to naval aviation; that seniority of officers in naval aviation be fairly integrated into the fleet; that a school of strategy and tactics be established for naval aviation; and that a separate naval aviation experiment and test station be established. Most of them were included in the board’s final report. In May and June 1926, Congress acted quickly to make them part of bills that authorized the restructuring of the military air forces. Not only was the Naval Air Corps permanently established, but a five-year, 1,000-plane program was approved. Also, the experimental test and repair facilities at NAS Norfolk that Bellinger had taken command of in 1918 were firmly established.

An Aeromarine 39B is taken aboard USS Langley (CV 1) at Naval Operating Base Norfolk on July 19, 1923. (National Archives and Records Administration via NHHC/Flickr)

In late 1926, as aviation aide to Admiral Charles F. Hughes, battle fleet commander and prospective Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), Bellinger was able to further influence future naval aviation policy, facilities, and ship development. He passed on to Hughes the ideas about carrier doctrine that Rear Admiral Joseph M. Reeves had developed as Commander Air, Battle Fleet. Even though Hughes was an engineer and a “big gun” sailor, his experience at the Naval War College with Bellinger had changed his mind. He even qualified as a carrier pilot at the age of 53 and flew his flag aboard the Navy’s first carrier, the Langley (CV 1), stationed in Hampton Roads.

USS Wright (AV-1) at Pier 2, Naval Operating Base Norfolk, in 1929. (Naval History and Heritage Command image)

On July 1, 1931, Commander Bellinger assumed command of the aircraft tender USS Wright (AV 1) and began his preparation for flag rank. He was known to follow “Navy regs” in meting out punishments at captain’s mast. On the other hand, he most enjoyed giving praise at commendatory masts. 

Friend to Sailor and animals alike, Cmdr. Bellinger is shown here with a kinkajou that served as mascot aboard USS Langley (CV 1). (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

In February 1932, Bellinger was ordered to command Langley. On board in one of the air squadrons was Ensign (later admiral) John T. Haywood. Haywood described the admiration the crew had for Bellinger – from boot seaman to young aviators and all his squadron commanders – by saying, “He never got excited when they [the pilots] made rather difficult landings on the flight deck [they were required to make seven safe landings to be qualified]. You must remember, in those days, when we came to the fleet, we had never seen a carrier, let alone landed on one.”

USS Langley (CV 1) at anchor, at Colon, Canal Zone, circa 1933.  Other ships present include USS Lexington (CV 2), USS Saratoga (CV 3), USS Texas (BB 35), USS New York (BB 34), USS Pennsylvania (BB 38), and an assortment of light and heavy cruisers. (Naval History and Heritage Command image)

On June 15, 1933, Bellinger was ordered to the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics (BuAer) as Admiral Ernest J. King’s Head of Plans Division. As such, he made recommendations to the Navy’s General Board (the Navy’s advisory board for strategy and planning) that oversaw all military spending. He recommended the types of aircraft the Navy should acquire and their rate of production, the scope of new construction at shore stations, and the distribution, organization, and assignment of all aircraft squadrons and detachments. The future of Naval aviation literally was in his hands. He made sure that Naval aviation in Hampton Roads not only survived in those lean times, but expanded.

Bellinger made captain on June 30, 1935, and when he was detached from King’s staff on June 23, 1938, he was ordered for the second time to command NAS Norfolk. At first, his tasks lay mostly in the supervision of civilians who repaired, overhauled and assembled aircraft. But he also commanded and trained 44 officers and 450 enlisted men assigned to Patrol Wing Five. These planes were later used to search for German submarines from the Eastern Shore of Virginia to Wilmington, North Carolina. He also had observation balloons, transport, and utility planes. As required, his station also serviced carrier air groups. While his PB2Y-2 seaplanes were much better than the Curtiss A-2, in which he learned to fly or the F5-L he had at Norfolk in 1917, the planes lacked armor and fuel tank protection. This he corrected very quickly.

When his old friend Rear Admiral Joseph K. Taussig, then Commandant, Fifth Naval District stationed at Naval Operating Base Norfolk, directed him to prepare for an inspection of his air station by President Roosevelt, Bellinger did not know what to expect. When Taussig introduced him to the President, Roosevelt said “Well Pat, I saved you for the Navy.” Bellinger was astounded that Roosevelt remembered that in 1920, when he was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, he had counseled Bellinger not to take the higher paid civilian job he had been offered. Even though Bellinger was disgusted with how Naval aviators were treated, Roosevelt said he was needed more by the Navy and to stay in the service. It was fortunate for Hampton Roads and the Navy that he took the future president’s advice.

Soon though, the mission of NAS Norfolk changed and Bellinger’s job became an important part of America’s preparations for war. The Naval Expansion Act of May 1939 increased the tonnage of aircraft carriers as well as other surface ships and authorized the president to increase the number of Naval aircraft to not less than 3,000. Congress soon raised that number to 15,000. Earlier that year, the Hepburn Board (appointed to survey Naval aviation shore establishments) had recommended the enlargement of the eleven existing air stations and the creation of sixteen new ones. On April 25, Congress appropriated sixty-five million dollars for military construction. Soon thereafter, the Board visited NAS Norfolk to determine how best to spend the ten million allotted to it. Although the station had two grass-covered outlying fields, these were not enough to accommodate the number of carrier squadrons expected to be based there as a result of the increase in the Naval air corps. The patrol wing assigned to the base also would be expected to increase its responsibility as a result of the Neutrality Patrol established after war broke out in Europe in September 1939.

On orders from BuAer, Bellinger sought to acquire at least four additional practice airfields near his station. He selected the sites and also recommended that they have hard-surface runways. The Board disagreed and the Navy Department upheld its decision. Even so, Bellinger got his way. When Virginia’s 2nd District (Norfolk and Portsmouth) Congressman Colgate Darden happened to call him, he told Darden what he needed. Darden had enlisted in the Navy in 1917, had taken Naval flight training, and served in Europe until injured. Darden said he would introduce the necessary legislation. It quickly passed Congress, and Bellinger received the land and paved runways he wanted. One of them was Oceana Naval Air Station that is now a Master Jet Complex that dwarfs its original purpose.

Bellinger was promoted to rear admiral on December 1, 1940 and took over Naval aviation in Hawaii. He was in the thick of the fighting on that “infamous day” in December 1941. Later, he helped plan the stunning victory at Midway. In July 1942, he left Pearl Harbor to deliver Admiral Chester Nimitz’s reorganization plan for Naval aviation in the Pacific to Admiral Ernest King, then the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO). Bellinger did not realize that he would not return. When he arrived in Washington, he was ordered to Bethesda Naval Hospital for a physical examination. Bellinger’s generally deteriorating physical condition from overwork had been noticed and a period of rest in the states had been ordered.

After his release from the hospital, he went to see King who ordered him to get out of town for a few days. After a week, King told Bellinger to report back to him. The CNO had called Nimitz and it had been arranged for Bellinger to be the CNO’s Deputy Chief of Staff. As such, he continued to fight for a better organization for Naval aviation. Finally, he got King to obtain presidential approval to create a new Deputy CNO for Air. When King asked who he would recommend for the position, Bellinger suggested Rear Admiral Alva D. Bernhard who at the time was Commander Naval Air Forces Atlantic (COMNAVAIRLANT.) He guessed correctly that King would approve of Bernhard because he had taken flight training with King as an over age surface officer in the 1920s. With the position vacant, Bernhard and Bellinger switched jobs and Bellinger came back to Norfolk as COMNAVAIRLANT.

At this time the major problem on the Atlantic coast was that German U-boats had sunk more than 5.7 million tons of merchant shipping. Improvement in Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) was paramount. It was the same problem Bellinger faced when he first came to N.A.S. Norfolk in 1917, but more intense. Naval historian Samuel E. Morison stated that “From his Hampton Roads office, Bellinger opened a new and brilliant chapter for Naval antisubmarine warfare.”

He established the Air Anti-Submarine Development Detachment Atlantic that taught pilots the latest ASW tactics, tested new devices, and equipped planes with a microwave search radar that even German Admiral Karl Doenitz acknowledged to be the greatest single factor in defeating the U-boats. In addition, Bellinger created Combat Information Centers and Fighter Director Officer Teams aboard his carriers. With the defeat of the U-boats, the safe passage of convoys of men and supplies to Europe made the success of our armies in Europe possible. On October 5, 1943, Bellinger received his third star and became a vice admiral. For his service as COMNAVAIRLANT, Bellinger received a Distinguished Service Medal from the U.S. Navy. He also was given the Legion of Honor with rank of Officer and the Croix de Guerre with Palm from Charles de Gaulle, the French President, and was made a Knight Commander of the British Empire by King George VI for his service overseas.

After his first wife’s early death of pneumonia in 1920, Bellinger married Miriam Benoist, daughter of a well-known St. Louis banker and aircraft manufacturer. When Bellinger was away on assignments, Miriam and their four children spent their summers at the 170-acre estate of her friend Mary L. Frederick, near Covington, Virginia, called Earlehurst. When Mary died, she left the estate to Mirian. On December 1, 1947, Patrick Bellinger, after forty years of valiant service to his country, and especially to naval aviation, retired to Earlehurst and became a gentleman farmer.

In April 1955, the Navy honored Bellinger by having the two-mile long road from Gate 3 to Gate 4 at NAS Norfolk renamed from East Field Boulevard to Bellinger Boulevard. In retirement, he was known as an amusing, witty and intelligent conversationalist who often spoke to local retired officer groups and loved to tell “sea stories.” Even though he tried to maintain his good health, his high blood pressure contributed to several mild heart attacks. He finally succumbed on May 26, 1962. In 1981, he was chosen as one of the first twelve pioneer naval aviators to be admitted to the Naval Aviation Hall of Honor at the Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida.

Patrick Bellinger spent 25 of his 40 years of Naval service in Hampton Roads. He started as a midshipman on two of the battleships of the Great White Fleet, one of which was the first Wisconsin. He spent two and a half years on the dreadnaught South Carolina, served aboard a cruiser to observe torpedo operations, and commanded a submarine. He commanded the aircraft tender Wright and the Navy’s first aircraft carrier Langley, both of which were stationed in Norfolk. He was the first commanding officer of NAS Norfolk and served again in that assignment from 1938 to 1940 to help prepare the Naval Air Force for WWII. As COMNAVAIRLANT, from 1943 to 1947, Vice Admiral Bellinger expanded the usefulness of naval aviation to the fleet as an anti-submarine weapon that helped to win the war.

Because of his numerous contributions to the birth of Naval aviation and its place today as one of the most powerful arms of the fleet, Patrick Bellinger certainly deserves to be called a hero. As the father of Naval Aviation in Hampton Roads, he should be remembered each time we enter the gates of Naval Station Norfolk or Naval Air Station Oceana. 

Commander Ira "Dick" Hanna (USNR, Ret.), one of HRNM's longest-serving docents, holds a masters degree in history from Old Dominion University and a doctorate in education administration from The College of William and Mary. Among the many leadership posts he has held in the educational field, he has served as superintendent of Mathews County Public Schools and has taught as an adjunct professor of history and education administration at Old Dominion University. His father, Chief Yeoman Ralph Hanna, worked directly for P.N.L. Bellinger during his naval career.  This article also includes published research from Professor Palo E. Colleta, who Cmdr. Hanna studied under at the U.S. Naval Academy. 

At HRNM: Scanning the Past, Printing the Future

September 26, 2018, 5:03 am

≫ Next: Navy Combat Camera, 1942-2018: A Reflection

≪ Previous: One Century Ago: Naval Air Station Norfolk's First Skipper, Part 2

$

0

0

By Joseph Miechle
Hampton Roads Naval Museum Educator

Recently at the Hampton Roads Naval Museum (HRNM) we had the opportunity to work with some local institutions in an exciting new capacity. We traveled to The National Museum of the Civil War Soldier at the Pamplin Historical Park in Petersburg, Virginia in order to 3D scan some rare Civil War artifacts.

HRNM Exhibits Coordinator Don Darcy sets up a 3D scanner in preparation of scanning objects at Pamplin Historical Park. Objects included a Costin Signal Gun and a quartermaster's telescope. (Photograph by Joseph Miechle)

We initially became aware of 3D scanning being used in historic institutions several years ago and have been trying to stay up with the technology as it evolves and incorporate it into our education programming. Scanning and printing of museum artifacts in 3D is a relatively new option but one that will certainly see more use as the technology becomes more viable and affordable. Here at HRNM we have purchased an affordable 3D scanner and our exhibits specialist had previously purchased his own 3D printer, which we utilize for printing our scanned objects. There are online companies that will print your scanned files for you and the Norfolk Public Library near our museum now has 3D printing capabilities.

HRNM Exhibits Coordinator Don Darcy scans a Costin Signal Gun. The black and white checkerboard pattern allows the scanner to track the image as it rotates and creates a better scan. (Photograph by Joseph Miechle)

Our 3D scanned images from Pamplin will be used to create faithful reproductions of artifacts that would normally not be permitted outside of the museum. This allows the public to hold and manipulate historic items they may not otherwise have the chance to do so. 3d printed objects are much more exciting for a learner than would be a traditional photograph. The use of 3D printed objects has other potential institutional uses as well.

Carly Elder, Collections Manager, of Pamplin Historic Park takes a turn at scanning 3D objects from their collection. The details in the USN buckle were difficult to capture. (Photograph by Joseph Miechle)

The 3D printed objects can be used to facilitate visitation by visitors to museums that are sight impaired. Visually impaired visitors may be discouraged from visiting an institution that houses their entire collection behind acrylic cases, but the availability of 3D printed materials for them to experience could surely enhance their visit as well as the enjoyment they take away with them. We have even attempted to scan a traditional painting and to reprint it in 3D. Much of the detail was lost during the printing process but the implications are there and as the technology evolves we hope to gain greater results.

HRNM Educator Joseph Miechle holds the plastic 3D reproduction (left) of a Blakely rifled shell recovered from the wreck of CSS Florida, which is much lighter than the original iron-and-lead shell (right), which is not only quite heavy but also fragile and requires two hands and gloves. (Photographs by Don Darcy)

At the HRNM we have partnered with another local institution, The Hermitage Museum and Gardens, and have several 3D printed artifacts from our collection (several not normally removed from storage) that are on display as part of their “3D Printing the Smithsonian” exhibit. We also have included some of our 3D-printed objects in the HRNM’s Civil War Traveling Sea Chest, which contains resources for teachers to use in their classes while teaching on the subject of the American Civil War.

The 3D-printed duplicate of a Bashley Britten shell from CSS Florida (center left) is among several 3D-printed artifacts from the Hampton Roads Naval Museum that are currently on display at The Hermitage Museum and Gardens in Norfolk. With it are (from right) facsimiles of a temple bell removed from a pagoda on Tinian Island after it was captured by American forces in 1944, and (just under the bell) a pipe bowl recovered from the wreck of the sloop-of-war USS Cumberland. To the shell's right is a reproduction of a painting of the Battle of the Capes. (Photograph by Max Lonzanida)

It is certainly exciting to see these items up close and the experience of holding an item that bore witness to great historic events may be limited to few people, but 3D printing may be closing that gap and changing how museums share their collections with the public. 

Visit The Hermitage Museum page on 3D printing here 

For more information about Pamplin Park visit their web page here

Navy Combat Camera, 1942-2018: A Reflection

October 1, 2018, 8:20 pm

≫ Next: The Military Exploits of Samuel Argall, Admiral of Virginia

≪ Previous: At HRNM: Scanning the Past, Printing the Future

$

0

0

Lieutenant Wayne Miller, combat photographer, wears flash mask and gauntlets while making photographs of combat action onboard USS Ticonderoga (CV 14) in November 1944. While working at the Bureau of Aeronautics in 1942, Miller's off-duty photographic work caught the attention of  Captain Arthur W. Radford, and he became the first man hand-picked by Lieutenant Commander Edward Steichen to join his Naval Aviation Photographic Unit.  (U.S. Navy Photograph, National Archives and Records Administration via Naval History and Heritage Command Flickr).

One of my primary tasks as historian and editor at the Hampton Roads Naval Museum is to select images that succinctly illustrate the stories I and a number of contributors write for the edification and enlightenment of the public.  These images are culled from a number of sources, including the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, and the Naval History and Heritage Command, which maintains thousands of images from both repositories in its files.  The originators of many of these key images were the men and women of Navy Combat Camera, which since 1942 has gone wherever our men and women in uniform have gone around the world.

The staff of the mobile photographic unit known informally as "Quackenbush's Gypsies," with their eponymous leader, Commander Robert Stewart Quackenbush (center right), pauses during the Pacific island-hopping campaigns of World War II.  Unlike Cmdr. Edward Steichen's photographic unit, composed mainly of civilian professionals who only donned Navy uniforms for the duration and went back to their former careers after the war, many of the men Cmdr. (later Rear Admiral) Quackenbush trained went on to found what later became Navy Combat Camera. (Naval History and Heritage Command image)

At an unrecorded location somewhere in the Pacific, members of of Combat Photographic Unit (CPU) 7 pause to have their picture taken.  According to Lieutenant Michael Larson, the last officer-in-charge of Expeditionary Combat Camera, nine CPUs, with four to six Navy photographers attached to each, were sent to combat theaters around the globe during World War II.  (Courtesy of Expeditionary Combat Camera)

Rather than just embedding with the troops, they were the troops.  While most had advanced training in photojournalism and videography, they also were qualified to operate most small arms and they had to graduate the survival, evasion, resistance, and escape (SERE) course before deploying into hostile-fire zones.  Others had specialized training as aircrewmen or divers. They were truly representative of the people they covered. 

Chef Photographer's Mate Kuhn, a combat cameraman, briefly thinks of home as he pets a mascot of the 1st Tank Battalion “C” Company somewhere in Korea, August 1952. (U.S. Navy Photograph, National Archives and Records Administration via Naval History and Heritage Command Flickr).

Aside from producing visual documentation of operations within the military, Navy Combat Camera units were also important incubators that produced versatile visual communicators who joined the ranks of their civilian counterparts after completing their service in the military.  Many of them have gone on to produce content we all consume from publications, wire services, and other news outlets in order to understand the goings-on around our world and their significance.  

A combat photographer readies his F-56 camera for shots from a U.S. Navy helicopter in March 1954. (U.S. Navy Photograph, National Archives and Records Administration via Naval History and Heritage Command Flickr)

Alas, this source of visual content for today's news editors and historians of the present and future is no more. On September 21, 2018, Expeditionary Combat Camera Atlantic held a decommissioning ceremony at Naval Station Norfolk, and Fleet Combat Camera Pacific held a similar ceremony at Naval Air Station North Island near San Diego.  The last official day of operation was October 1. 

Photographer’s Mate 1st Class David J. Graver operates an underwater D. B. Milliken sixteen millimeter motion picture camera with Underwater Sekonic Light Meter to film an underwater wreck off Fresh Creek, Andros Island, Bahamas, May 1974. (U.S. Navy Photograph, National Archives and Records Administration via Naval History and Heritage Command Flickr)

Members of the Navy Combat Camera Team videotape the activities taking place around an airfield on Grenada during Operation URGENT FURY, 1983. (Courtesy of Expeditionary Combat Camera)

Photographer’s Mate 3rd Class April Hatton from Navy Combat Camera videotapes US Marines from the 2nd Light Armored Infantry Battalion embarked aboard USS Nassau (LHA 4) entering the water in 1993. By the early-1990s, female members of Navy Combat Camera were routinely embarking on exercises and operations. (Courtesy of Expeditionary Combat Camera)

Photographers Mate 2nd Class Erin Waters, a photojournalist at Fleet Imaging Command, Combat Camera Group, Atlantic, loads 5.56mm rounds of ammunition into an M-16 magazine cartridge during a weapons qualification training period at an Army base in 1994. (Courtesy of Expeditionary Combat Camera)

It was fitting that Expeditionary Combat Camera's final mission was in support of a Naval History and Heritage Command survey mission of the USS San Diego (ACR 6) which is presumed to have been sunk by a mine deployed by a German submarine on July 19, 1918.  A Navy unit dedicated to short-notice deployments involving media support and historical documentation in the sky, on the surface, or under water was a valuable asset to have for such a mission. 

Chief Photographer's Mate Bob Sasek watches as Photographer's Mate 2nd Class Wayne French tapes events occurring during the multinational relief effort Operation RESTORE HOPE. The two are part of an 11-person combat camera team that deployed to Somalia in 1993 from Naval Imaging Command, Pacific.(Courtesy of Expeditionary Combat Camera)

The author with Fleet Combat Camera Group Pacific, Operation UNITED SHIELD, Mogadishu, Somalia, 1995. (Courtesy of the U.S. Marine Corps)

In a recent Virginian-Pilotstory about Expeditionary Combat Camera's closure, former CNN videographer and Navy Chief Photographer's Mate Skip Nocciolo, who logged two tours with Navy Combat Camera, asked, “Twenty years from now will there still be plenty of archival footage that can be drawn upon for documentarians and filmmakers to utilize to tell the story of the military?” 

It is a difficult question to answer, but it is safe to say that images and footage of American troops at work will not completely disappear, yet things will certainly never be the same.  Or, perhaps, they will be more like war photography was at the very beginning. The desire to document the battles that decide wars that change human history has been around since before Roger Fenton ventured out onto the Crimean peninsula in 1855.  It has been determined through painstaking research, however, that Fenton staged the most famous version of his most famous war photograph, perhaps to make more salable.  There is no doubt that intrepid and ambitious civilian visual communicators will make their way out into combat zones as long as armed conflict persists, and they will come back with the goods, by hook or by crook.  A new wrinkle exists, however, in that we live at a time in which the average Soldier, Sailor, Airman, or Marine carries a device capable of documenting their own daily activities, and many do, even in the thick of combat. 

However the fateful step to disestablish Navy Combat Camera plays out, I do not envy the task of those historians, documentarians and editors, decades from now, who will hunt and peck for just the right image of a particular operation only to find it behind a paywall, or perhaps not at all.