The U.S. Army in the early 20th Century did some research and field trials on several early silencers for use on the M1903 Springfield. Suppressing a .30-06 is no easy task even today but two companies were ready to tackle it.

Between 1908 and 1910, the Army’s Ordnance Bureau purchased 100 Maxim models in .30 caliber as well as another 100 from a chap named Mr. Robert A. Moore. Both of these were by default the M1910 Silencer in the Army’s parlance.

The Moore (top) compared to the Maxim on a U.S. M1903. (Photo: Springfield Armory NHS)

Tests of the Maxim at the School of Musketry found the Silencer gave the following advantages:

(1) The lesser recoil of the rifle with Silencer operated in two ways: It greatly facilitated instruction of recruits in rifle firing. It materially lessened the fatigue of the soldier in prolonged firing, such as would occur in modern battle, which is a distinct military advantage.
(2) The muffling of the sound of discharge and the great reduction in the total volume of sound which permits the voice to be heard at the firing point about the sound of a number of rifles in action, greatly facilitate the control of the firing line, and extends the influence of officers and non-commisoned officers. It was found where the tactical conditions required a quick opening of fire, a sudden cessation of the fire and several quick changes of objective – all of which are difficult with several rifles firing – that verbal commands could easily be heard, and that it was possible to give perfectly audible instructions when the Silencer was used.

While a few were acquired, most were disposed of through the Director of Civilian Marksmanship by 1925, (yup, today’s CMP!) with a few of both kind kept at Springfield Armory for reference.

One is also at the Cody Museum in Wyoming, and in a rare treat, here it is close up from The Armorer’s Bench:  (stay tuned for confirmation in the video that at least some made it “Over There” in WWI)

The below images are from the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum, depicting Doughboys of the newly formed National Army’s 38th “Cyclone” Infantry Division preparing at Camp Shelby outside of Hattiesburg for overseas service in WWI. The photos give a window into the equipment, men and animals of an ammunition train, a vital service which kept the Army fighting longer than 30 minutes.

Field marching order, note the M1917 Enfield

Pup tents and Army mules

Note the pioneer tools

As anyone familiar with the training area around Shelby should know, the roads there was good practice to those rutted muddy paths on the Western Front.

The 17-page scrapbook was donated to the museum in 1990 by TD White of Purvis, MS, and sadly the names of the men and mules in it are lost to history.

These two images, of U.S. infantrymen some 100 years apart, show just how much the basic job of a foot soldier endures throughout time. You still feel exposed no matter what the cover is. You are still there for the Joe next to you. Your uncomfortable equipment is still made by the lowest bidder. You still just want to get through the day.

A soldier with 30th DIV sniping from a trench in Belgium on July 9, 1918. Note his Springfield M1903 rather than the more commonly-issued M1917 Enfield. Signal Corps image 18708

10th Mountain troops working the trench complex at Fort Drum, New York, Nov. 2018. For those who have experienced upstate NY this time of year, the pain is real.

“Two of the large and better grade of draft horses used for siege artillery held by Captain L. Victor Fromont, commanding the 339 Regiment Field Remount Station. Quartermaster Remount Depot No.7 at Merignac, Bordeaux, France. December 10, 1918.”

Photo via U.S. Army Veterinary Corps Historical Preservation Group

Although the artillery phased out animal-based prime movers for motor vehicles in the interwar period, the last U.S. horse-mounted cavalry units did not dismount until 1942. The Remount Division still used, bred and cared for tens of thousands of horses– to include Triple Crown winner Sir Barton who was “enlisted” in the 1930s at age 17.

The horse did return in a number of limited roles throughout WWII– for instance in the case of Army troops in New Guinea, the 112th Cavalry Regiment in New Caledonia in 1942, and constabulary units in Germany in 1945– a counterpoint to those who think the horseshoe was replaced by the pneumatic tire back in the Great War. In additon, the Remount Service put a division’s worth of Coast Guardsmen on beach patrol duty.

In all, the “mechanized” U.S. Army used a whopping 140,000 horses and mules in WWII.

According to the Army:

“The animals actually procured included the 60,000 purchased in the Zone of Interior, the 6,000 purchased or obtained by reverse lend-lease in Australia, and the many thousands which were captured, requisitioned, or received from the Allied military forces in the China-Burma-India, Mediterranean, and European theaters. In China, animals were procured for the Chinese military forces by a Sino-American Horse Purchasing Bureau whose U.S. veterinary officers were sent into far-distant Tibet. Additional animals were purchased by the U.S. Army in the Hawaiian Islands, New Caledonia, and Fiji Islands.”

Paratroopers on borrowed local horses in France, 1944

The lid did not close fully until the Atomic era when hundreds of thousands of jeeps, trucks, tractors, and vehicles of all sizes and shapes were in storage and a reason for hanging on to the noble horse for operations was non-existent. The vaunted U.S Remount Program was finally disbanded in 1948 after more than two centuries of service, its assets liquidated or turned over to the Department of Agriculture.

The Army does, nonetheless, today maintain a number of horse-mounted ceremonial units and a few Special Forces ODAs, of course, put horses to good use in Afghanistan in for more than a decade.

Col. Donald Bolduc, third from left, commander of the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan, with U.S. Special Forces personnel, patrols a village on Jan. 16, 2011, in Khas Uruzgan District, Uruzgan province, Afghanistan (Photo: U.S. Army)

Emperor Karl (Charles) I of Austria-Hungary inspecting troops of the newly formed Polish Auxiliary Corps (Polski Korpus Posiłkowy) in Bukovina, 10 December 1917. The officer on horseback is probably Lt. Col. Michał Rola-Żymierski, formerly commander of the 2nd Infantry Regiment of the Polish Legions.

The Corps was formed after Col. Józef Piłsudski, who started the Polish Legion from the pre-war Rifleman’s Association, in the summer of 1917 forbade Polish soldiers in the Austrian Army to swear a loyalty oath to the future (Austrian or German) king of Poland and the Central Powers but instead only to a planned independent Poland. The Germans arrested Piłsudski and locked him up in Magdeburg along with his followers while the men who still wanted to fight the Russians were enrolled in the new unit.

While the old Polish Legion numbered eight infantry and three cavalry regiments organized in three separate brigades, the “Corps” only numbered about 6,000 at its peak. In February 1918, when the Germans and Austrians gave large parts of ethnically Polish land to the new puppet Ukrainian government as a part of the carve-up of the old Russian Empire that was the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Corps mutinied and about 1,500 made good as escape for White Russian lines while the remaining 5,000 ended up disarmed and in Austrian internment until that Empire, in turn, collapsed in November 1918.

As for Kaiser Karl, Hapsburg king for less than two years, he passed away in Portugal of pneumonia in 1922, aged 34. At the same time Karl took his last, Rola-Żymierski was serving as a general in the Polish Army while Piłsudski was the defacto head of the Polish state.

“U.S. Signal Corps photograph. American 155 mm Artillery Cooperating with the 29th Div. in Position on Road Just Taken from the Germans. Bat[tery] A 324th Artillery, 158[th] Brig[ade] in France.” Showing a stumpy Schneider M1917 155mm howitzer at play. A total of 3,008 were bought or built with U.S. guns made under license by the American Brake Shoe Co. on carriages by Osgood-Bradley Car, using recoil mechanisms made in Detroit by Dodge, although the one in use below is almost certainly a French-made example.

National Photo Company Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (118.00.00) https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsca.40789/

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday), Dec. 13, 2018: Franz Ferdinand’s Pacific platypus slayer

Photographed by B. Circovich of Trieste, Via Capuano 17, Trieste, NH 88933, colorized by my friend Diego Mar at Postales Navales https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Community/Postales-Navales-100381150365520/

Here we see the Kaiser Franz Joseph I-class “torpedo ram cruiser,” SMS (Seiner Majestät Schiff =His Majesty’s Ship) Kaiserin Elisabeth, of the Austro-Hungarian k.u.k. Kriegsmarine, probably soon after her completion in November 1892 while in the Adriatic. She would have a history filled with oddities.

Laid down at Marinearsenal Pola in June 1888 for the dual monarchy’s navy, her only sister, SMS Kaiser Franz Joseph I, was named for the country’s tragic emperor. Old Franz Josef, had lost his brother, Maximillian, after the Mexicans stood him up against a wall in 1866. His only son, Rudolph, died in 1889 in the infamous Mayerling Incident. His wife, Elisabeth, a German princess, had been Empress of Austria for 44 years when she was stabbed to death by the Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni in Geneva in 1898.

A picture made available 04 September 2008 shows the triangular file with which Austria Empress Elisabeth (1837-1898) was murdered, in the Sisi Museum at the Vienna Hofburg, 03 September 2008, in Vienna, Austria. EPA/ROBERT JAEGER

It was for said consort that our cruiser was named, although she was very much alive at the time of the ship’s construction.

Just 4,500-tons, the 340-foot (overall) torpedo ram cruiser named for the ill-fated Empress earned her designation from the fact that she carried a ram bow (a weapon the Austrians had used to good effect at the Battle of Lissa just two decades earlier) and four 14-inch deck-mounted trainable torpedo launchers for early Whitehead-style fish. That is not to say that she did not carry a decent gun armament, as it should be noted that she carried a pair of 9.4-inch Krupp breechloaders as well as a number of short-barrel 5.9-inch guns.

Photographed early in her career, probably in about 1892 at Pola. The hulk in the right background is unidentified. The layout of the ship’s armament-two single 24cm (9.4 inch), one forward and one aft, and six 15cm (5.9 inch) guns, three to a side, can be seen clearly. NH 88908

However, being a steam warship for the 1880s, she was not very fast, capable of only 19-knots when all 8 of her boilers were aglow with Bohemia’s finest coal. Her bunkers could carry over 600-tons of the latter, which enabled her to steam some 3,500nm between station. This set up Kaiserin Elisabeth for overseas service.

Note that big 9.4-inch gun forward, looking right at home on a boat the size of today’s light frigates. Photographed while on trials. Note temporary rig NH 87329

How she looked when complete, notice different rig. KAISERIN ELISABETH Austrian Cruiser NH 87337

Commissioned 24 January 1892, by the next year she was headed to wave Austria’s flag in the Far East.

KAISERIN ELISABETH Photographed early in her career, possibly during her round-the-world cruise of December 15, 1892, to December 19, 1893. Notice her extensive awnings, common when the ship was in the Far East. NH 92041

Although the country had no colonies, Austria was allied to Germany who had several territories in both Africa and the Pacific, which allowed the cruiser ample opportunities for coaling.

Her first mission: take the Kaiser’s cousin and then second in line to the throne, a young Franz Ferdinand, on a world tour that included stops in India, Ceylon, and other points East. (Franz Ferdinand’s father, Karl Ludwig, was at the time first in line to the throne but died of typhoid fever in 1896, leaving Franz to become Archduke).

Franz Ferdinand and his hunting companions pose by a dead elephant in Ceylon, from the Austrian National Library / Ehzg Franz Ferdinand und vier Jagdbegleiter beim erlegten Elefanten

In May 1893, Kaiserin Elisabeth made port at Sydney, where aboard was Ferdinand, along with other such personages as the Archduke Leopold of Tuscany. As told The Monthly, an Australian magazine, in a 2011 issue, for the next several weeks Ferdinand and company, “accompanied only by his personal taxidermist, three counts, a major-general, the Austrian consul,” et.al. took over 300 animals on a series of great hunts across the Australian continent including kangaroos, koalas, wallabies and at least one likely very surprised platypus for which the Archduke had a “burning desire” to take.

Kaiserin Elisabeth went on become involved in Chinese politics and landed forces in 1900 along with the Austrian cruisers Zenta, Maria Theresia and Aspern to take part in the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion as part of the Eight-Nation Alliance.

Sailors from the SMS Kaiserin Elisabeth in the streets of Tsingtau. The four Austrian cruisers would land a 300-man force for duty ashore.

The two-year conflict netted Vienna a paltry 150-acre concession from the failing Manchu Dynasty in the city of Tianjin in 1902, which was duly protected by a platoon of Austrian marines. During the Boxer Rebellion, the commander of the Austrian force, RADM Count Rudolf Monecuccoli, used Kaiserin Elisabeth as his flagship. He would in 1904 go on to become Marinekommandant (Navy Commander) and Chef der Marinesektion (Chief of the Naval Section of the War Ministry), so it was evidently a good stepping stone for him.

Photographed at Pola on 1 October 1901 on her return from East Asia and the Boxer Rebellion, in a grey scheme. NH 87336

Returning to Europe, Kaiserin Elisabeth underwent a major two-year refit and modernization starting in 1905 after more than a decade of hard service including two extensive world cruises. This saw the replacement of her dated Krupp 9.4-inch guns with a pair of long-barreled 5.9-inch L/40 K.96s. This gave her a broadside of five 5.9-inch guns on each side, with three ahead and three astern. Her sister, which became a harbor defense ship at Cattaro, had a similar refit.

Photographed after reconstruction of 1906. NH 87341

Photographed at Kobe, Japan on 18 August 1909 with her decks almost completely covered in canvas. The ship had been rebuilt in 1906. NH 87339

Her 1914 entry in Janes

Caught in the German Chinese colony of Tsingtau when the Great War kicked off, Kaiserin Elisabeth originally didn’t have anything to fear from the growing Japanese fleet that was massing just offshore. This changed when Japan declared war on Austria-Hungary on August 25, 1914– two days after the Empire of the Rising Sun did so on Germany.

While the Germans managed to evacuate most of the ocean-going warships from the harbor during the Japanese ultimatum prior to the balloon going up, the elderly and, by 1914 obsolete, Austrian cruiser was left behind along with the small German coastal gunboats and torpedo craft Iltis, Jaguar, Luchs, Tiger, and S-90. The stripped and crewless old German Bussard-class unprotected cruiser SMS Cormoran (2,000-tons), was also in the harbor, but her crew had already beat feet with the condemned ship’s guns and vital equipment in a captured Russian steamer that assumed the latter’s name.

When the Japanese siege began, Kaiserin Elisabeth‘s 5.9-inch and 3-pounders were removed and mounted ashore in what became known as “Batterie Elisabeth.”

SMS Kaiserin Elisabeth’s guns as part of the defenses at Tsingtau, August-Nov 1914

During this period, as the largest ship in the defender’s hands, she suffered no less than three ineffective air raids including the first documented attack by a ship-based airplane when Japanese Navy Maurice Farman seaplanes from the seaplane carrier Wakamiya dropped small bombs around her. If the curiosity of French balsa-wood flying machines piloted by English-trained Japanese pilots bombing an Austrian warship crewed largely by Yugoslavs (and commanded by Hungarians) in a German-held port in China doesn’t make you shake your head, I don’t know what will.

An abortive sortie out of the harbor by the partially disarmed cruiser failed, although it did allow the crew of the German torpedo boat S-90 to escape to nearby Nanking– after she sank the Japanese mine cruiser Takachiho (3,700-tons).

One by one, as the Japanese grew closer, the bottled up Austro-German ships were scuttled and Kaiserin Elisabeth was no exception, being sent to the bottom by her own crew on 2 November 1914, just two days before the city fell.

In all, more than 300 members of Kaiserin Elisabeth‘s crew that survived the siege became Japanese prisoners, with most of them held at Camp Aonogahara, near Kobe, for the duration of the war. They only returned to Europe in 1920– to a country that no longer existed. As for Franz Josef, he died in 1916 while Elisabeth‘s crewmen were in Japanese EPW camps. As for Tianjin, it was indefensible and the Chinese took it over in 1917 after the formality of a bloodless declaration of war.

For our cruiser, she is remembered in maritime art:

S.M.S. Kaiserin Elisabeth in Tsingtau by https://fmarschner.myportfolio.com/sms-kaiserin-elisabeth-in-tsingtau Fritz Marschner, shown with the Austrian naval ensign on her stern and the German ensign aloft.

Specs:

Photographed at Pola Courtesy of the International Naval Research Organization NH 87342

Displacement: 4,494-tons FL
Length: 340 ft 3 in
Beam: 48 ft 5 in
Draught: 18 ft 8 in
Propulsion: 2 triple expansion engines, 8 boilers, 8,450 ihp at forced draft, two shafts
Speed: 19 knots (near 20 on trials)
Range: 3,500 nm on 600 tons coal (max)
Complement: Listed as between 367 and 450, although only had 324 at Tsingtau.
Armor: Up to 4 inches at CT, 2.25-inches deck
Armament:
(As designed)
2 × 9.4 in (24 cm)/35
6 × 5.9 in (15 cm)/35
2 × 66 mm (2.6 in)/18
5 × 47 mm SFK L/44 Hotchkiss guns (3 pdr)
4 × 4.7 cm L/33 Hotchkiss guns (3 pdr)
3 × 3.7 cm L/23 Hotchkiss guns
(1906)
2 x 5.9 in (15 cm)/L/40 K.96
6 × 5.9 in (15 cm)/35
16x 47 mm SFK L/44 Hotchkiss guns (3 pdr)
1 MG
4 × 360mm (14 in) torpedo tubes

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

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

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

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Savage Arms during the Great War made Lewis guns for the Canadians (in .303), the Tsar of Russia (in 7.62x54R), and the U.S. Army & Navy (in .30-06), the latter in both M1917 (ground) and M1918 (air) variants.

In all, it was a thing of beauty as far as light machine guns went.

Fold-out. Lewis Machine Gun 30-U.S. Government Airplane Model 1918, in Papers on Aeronautics. L’Aerophile Collection, Science, Business and Technology Division, Library of Congress 

Here we see the Arkansas-class monitor USS Tonopah, Monitor #8, in her submarine tender role, sporting a complex geometric “dazzle” camouflage at Boston Navy Yard, 21 December 1917.

This image was taken just before she set out for the Azores in February 1918 to shepherd the early submarines K-1, K-2, K-3, K-5, and E-1 along with a host of wooden submarine chasers and armed yachts operating out of that near-Europe strategic crossroads in the last nine months of the Great War.

This was the pinnacle of monitor development by the U.S. Navy, able to float in 12 feet of water yet packing a pair of 12″/40cal Mark 3 guns and as much as 11-inches of Harvey Armor. However, they were slow (12kts), poor sea boats, and had short legs, which meant they would never be any good in a fleet engagement but could serve well as coastal defense boats.

This relegated these craft to sideline support missions as tenders for equally maligned early submarines as their names were taken from them to be given to “real” battleships. You see Tonopah had originally been laid down as USS Connecticut, 17 April 1899, then commissioned as Nevada in 1903 when the former name was recycled for use on BB-18. In 1909, she picked up the monicker Tonopah, after the small Nevada town, when that state name was set aside for BB-36.

Post-war, Tonopah (ex-Connecticut, ex-Nevada) was decommissioned at Philadelphia, on 1 July 1920 and sold for scrap two years later, aged just 19 years.

With the holidays coming up and the loss of my mother who hailed from the Harz Mountains this year, it fell to me to make the standard-issue Pfeffernüsse to the old family recipe just as it fell to her some 30 years ago on the passing of my oma. To keep it as throw-back as possible, I made sure to drink a nice Doppel Bock out of my grandfather’s stein while wearing a surplus Einheitsmütze (the Pickelhaube is too heavy!) as my GSDs watched from afar.

I’m digging it. All they needed after this was the powdered sugar before they were packed up for my two adult kids and my brother in Pittsburgh. Made with black pepper (hence the name) anise, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, and nutmeg, they are spicy and really do smell and taste like no other cookie. They have always meant Christmas to me.

With all this being said, here are two 101-year-old German Red Cross posters from WWI. The first, drawn by Walter Püttner, shows a Christmas angel (Christkind) pulling a sleigh loaded with bundles and delivering one to a German soldier.

Text: Christmas collection by the Bavarian Red Cross for the armed forces. Rehse Archiv für Zeitgeschichte und Publizistik. Via the Library of Congress

The second, by Adolf Franz Theodor Münzer, has a Christmas tree (Weihnachtsbaum) decorated with candles in front of a red cross.

Text: Christmas in the field! 1917. Contribute money and gift packages for our warriors! Via LOC

Sorry, though, no Pfeffernüsse left to share.

Digging out a Dunsterforce armored car after a river crossing, 1918 (National Army Museum)

In 1918, the Brits sent a crackerjack force consisting of a few troopers, some White Russian Cossack allies, and a couple of armored cars under one Maj. Gen. Lionel Dunsterville from their fighting against the Ottoman Turks in Mesopotamia into northern Persia (now Iran) and the Caucasus. Their goal was to meld the various anti-Bolshevik and anti-Turkish groups there into some sort of actual military unit. This is their story…

A 154-page (free) PDF just released by the Army University Press

I was able to get into one of the scarce (sold out) showings of “They Shall Not Grow Old” yesterday and just absolutely loved it. Peter Jackson– who it turns out is a big WWI nerd and has access to Great War-era artillery pieces (“as one does”) was given access to 100 hours of WWI footage in the Imperial War Museum’s archives, 600 hours of oral history interviews with 120 Commonwealth military veterans from the Western Front done in the 1950s and 60s, and took four years of coming through them all to compile the feature documentary.

The twist is, he balanced and corrected the film (some were too dark, some overexposed, and due to the nature of hand-cranked field cameras of the era was wildly either too fast or too slow) then correctly colorized the selected scenes and made them 3D. While the bulk of the voices you hear are from the Tommies themselves– all now speaking from beyond the grave– others are regional dialect-correct actors dubbing in dialog discerned by professional lip readers from the silent pictures.

It really was amazing, making you both laugh and cry alternatively. I left the theatre humming “Mademoiselle from Armentieres.”

It was a top-notch film, as much military art as history, and if you get a chance to see it, please make the effort. If it were up to me, all high school students, especially in the UK, would have to watch it.

( Photos: New York State Military Museum)

In these photos from the book “Official Pictures of the World War” National Guard Soldiers of the 42nd Division make their way through the snowy French countryside during December 1917 in what became known as the “Valley Forge Hike”. The troops marched 100 kilometers in the snow from the Vaucouleurs to Rolampont France from 27-29 December.

Missouri National Guard Soldiers of the 117th Field Signal Battalion, 42nd INF

The 42nd Division was activated in August 1917, four months after the American entry into World War I, drawing men from 26 states and the District of Columbia and was dubbed the “Rainbow” division after that fact, at the suggestion of then-Maj. Douglas MacArthur, at the time on the division’s staff.

The “Buckeyes” of Ohio’s 166th Infantry Regiment of the 4nd. They are still in the Ohio National Guard today, though merged with the older (c.1846) 148th Infantry Rgt as part of the 37th Infantry Brigade Combat team today

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2019: Splinter No. 330 of 448

Collection of George K. Beach, U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 91189

Here we see the mighty 110-foot Submarine Chaser No. 330 of the U.S. Navy en route across the Atlantic, circa September-October 1918, to take the fight to the Kaiser’s unterseeboot threat. The hearty little class, more akin to yachts or trawlers than warships, were hard to kill and gave unsung service by the hundreds, with SC-330 one of the longer-lasting of the species.

In an effort to flood the Atlantic with sub-busting craft and assure the U-boat scourge was driven from the sea, the 110-foot subchasers were designed by Herreshoff Boat Yard Vice President, the esteemed naval architect Albert Loring Swasey (Commodore of the MIT Yacht Club in 1897) on request of Asst Naval Secretary Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1916 and rushed into construction the next year. It was believed the vessels could be rushed out via commercial boat yards at $500K a pop.

Submarine Chaser SC-49 parading with other Sub Chasers off an unknown East Coast port

Derided as a “splinter fleet” the SCs were built from wood (the most excellent Subchaser Archives says “Frame/floors: white oak. Planking: yellow pine. Deck planking: Oregon pine”), which, when powered by a trio of Standard 220-hp 6-cylinder gasoline (!) engines, a 24~ man crew could get the narrow-beamed vessel underway at a (designed) top speed of 18 knots, which was fast enough for U-boat work at the time.

View in the engine room, looking aft, circa 1918. Taken by Louis Harder, at The Naval Experimental Station, New London, Conn NH 44355

Armed with a 3″/23cal low-angle pop gun forward– which was still capable of punching a hole in a submarine’s sail or pressure hull out to 8,000 yards– a couple of M1895 Colt/Marlin or Lewis light machine guns for peppering periscopes, and assorted depth charges (both racks and projectors), they were dangerous enough for government work.

3-inch gun drill, Submarine Chaser operating in European waters, 1918 NH 124131

Deck scene aboard a U.S. Navy Submarine Chaser during World War I. Caption: This photo, taken from the top of the pilot house, shows the boat’s “Y” gun depth charge thrower aft of amidships and a 12-foot Wherry dinghy coming alongside (each chaser carried one as well as a liferaft stowed on the engine room trunk). The submarine chaser in the picture is not identified but may be USS SC-143. Original photograph from the collection of Mr. Peter K. Connelly, who was Boatswain on the SC-143 in 1918-1919. NH 64978

For finding their quarry, they were equipped with hydrophones produced by the Submarine Signal Company of Boston (which today is Raytheon), of the C-tube and K-tube variety.

As noted by no less authority than Admiral William S. Sims in a 1920 article reprinted in All Hands in 1954:

“The C-tube consisted of a lead pipe-practically the same as a water pipe which was dropped over the side of the ship fifteen or
twenty feet into the sea; this pipe contained the wires which, at one end, were attached to the devices under the water, and which, at the other end, reached the listener’s ears.”

When a cavitation submarine was near it “showed signs of lively agitation. It trembled violently and made a constantly increasing hullabaloo in the ears of the listener.”

C-Tube Illustration #2 Caption: This diagram shows the inner workings of a C-tube listening device. Original Location: Submarine Signal Company Descriptive Specifications of General Electric Company’s “C” Tube Set, RG 45, Entry 520, Box 338, National Archives, Washington, DC

C-Tube Illustration #1 The C-Tube over the side

“At work aboard a U.S. Navy submarine chaser (SC),” at the U.S. Naval Experimental Station, New London, Connecticut, circa 1918. Photo by Louis Harder, New London. NH 2460

Besides escorting coastal convoys (subchasers had short legs) and watching for surfaced boats, 3-packs of the hardy little vessels would drift and listen, their K-tubes and C-tubes in the water, depth charges at the ready.

From Sims:

The three little vessels, therefore, drifted abreast-at a distance of a mile or two apart-their propellers hardly moving, and the decks as silent as the grave; they formed a new kind of fishing expedition, the officers and crews constantly held taut by the expectation of a “bite.” The middle chaser of the three was the flagship and her most interesting feature was the so-called plotting room. Here one officer received constant telephone reports from all three boats, giving the nature of the sounds, and, more important still, their directions. He transferred these records to a chart as soon as they came in, rapidly made calculations, and in a few seconds, he was able to give the location of the submarine. This process was known as “obtaining a fix.”

This photograph captioned “Battle Formation of Sub-chasers”, seems to depict the vessels in a columnar formation, which would be unusual for engaging with a submarine. The battle formation was most commonly ships arranged in a line abreast. From the T. Woofenden Collection at subchaser.org. https://www.subchaser.org/battle-formation via NHHC

The first of the class, SC-1, was built at Naval Station New Orleans and commissioned in October 1917. Others were built at Mare Island, New York (Brooklyn), Charleston, Norfolk and Puget Sound Naval Yards; by Matthews Boat in Ohio, Hodgdon Yacht in Maine, Hiltebrant in Kingston, College Point Boat Works, Mathis Yacht in New Jersey, Barrett SB in Alabama, Great Lake Boat Building Corp in Milwaukee…well, you get the idea…they were built everywhere, some 448 vessels over three years.

110-foot subchaser under construction in Cleveland. Photo by Cleveland Parks

110-foot wooden submarine chaser being built at an unidentified shipyard. NARA 165-WW-506a-111

Our subject, SC-330, was handcrafted with love by the Burger Boat Co., Manitowoc, Wisconsin— the only such craft built by the yard– and commissioned 8 February 1918. Of note, Burger is still in the yacht biz today.

She cut her teeth with the early submarine hunter-killer group centered around the Paulding-class four-piper destroyer USS Jouett (DD-41) on the East Coast.

Assigned to Division 12 of Submarine Chaser Squadron 4 for service overseas during the Great War, SC-330 headed overseas in September 1918, ending up in the Azores.

U.S Navy Submarine Chasers at sea in August 1918. NH 63449

Submarine chasers at sea in European waters during World War I NH 2687

Rushed into service, at least 121 of the 110s made it “Over There” before Versailles, including no less than 36 that operated in the Med from the island of Corfu. Not bad for ships that only hit the drawing board in late 1916.

The boat carried two officers, a CPO, five engine rates, three electricians (radiomen), a BM, a QM, 3 hydrophone listeners, a couple of guys in the galley, and 5-7 seamen. Crews were often a mix of trawlermen serving as rates, Ivy League yachtsmen as officers, and raw recruits making up the balance. In many cases, the Chief was the only regular Navy man aboard. Life was primative, with no racks, one head and hammocks strung all-round.

Most crews went from civilian life to getting underway in just a few months. The fact that these craft deploying to Europe did so on their own power– effectively in a war zone as soon as they left brown water on the East Coast– with very little in the way of a shakedown is remarkable.

Subchaser refueling, on the voyage from the Azores to Ireland

Fueling sub chasers at sea, 1918. Capable of an 880-mile range on their 2,400 gallons of gasoline, each chaser needed to refuel 4-5 times while on a crossing of the Atlantic. Pretty heady stuff in the day. NH 109622

In an Azores harbor with other ships of the U.S. and foreign navies, circa October 1918. The six sub chasers in the left center of the view, with bows to the camera, are (from left to right): SC-223, SC-330, SC-180, SC-353, SC-331 and (probably) SC-356. Ships nested with them, to the right, include a bird type minesweeper and two converted yacht patrol vessels. The four sailing ship masts to the extreme right probably belong to the French Quevilly, which was serving as station tanker in the Azores. Collection of George K. Beach, who was a crewmember of USS SC-331 at the time. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 99742

Mosquito fleet U.S. Navy submarine chasers of the “Mosquito Fleet” at the Azores, circa 1919. Naval History and Heritage Command NH 67714

The ships did what they could and, when used in a littoral, performed admirably. For example, a squadron of 11 of these chasers screened the British-French-Italian naval forces during the Second Battle of Durazzo in Oct. 1918, destroying mines that threatened the bombarding ships and driving off an Austrian submarine trying to attack the Allied fleet.

However, when in open ocean, things could get really real for them.

As noted by an Irish site referencing the 30 110s under Capt. A.J. Hepburn that arrived in August 1918:

The 110 foot subchaser was a fine sea boat, but was never designed to withstand the wild Atlantic seas off Ireland. Constant leaks from decks and windows, choking petrol fumes in the officers quarters, and constant seasickness from the rolling motion, were the lot of crews of these craft.

In heavy weather they would be almost awash, with only the pilot house showing above the waves. The depth charge racks were felt to be too heavy and made the vessels prone to taking seas over the stern. Many reports of German submarines from coastwatchers and others were actually subchasers ploughing through heavy seas.

Subchaser in heavy seas, showing how, from a distance, it could be mistaken for a u-boat

Once the war ended, SC-330 was sent back to the states, served in Gitmo for a time, and was laid up in the Gulf Coast in 1919.

Submarine chasers awaiting disposition. Caption: Part of the hundreds of World War I submarine chasers tied up at the Port Newark Army Base, New Jersey, awaiting disposition, 13 May 1920. Those identified include: USS SC-78, USS SC-40, USS SC-47, USS SC-143, and USS SC-110. Description: Courtesy of the San Francisco Maritime Museum, San Francisco, California, 1969. Catalog #: NH 69166

SC-330 caught a reprieve. In the summer of 1920, she was sent up the Mississippi River system and served on semi-active duty through the 1920s and 30s, training Naval Reservists in the Midwest. As such, the little boat and those like her cradled the USNR through the interwar period, and, without such vessels, WWII would have looked a lot different.

S-330 underway in Midwestern waters, during the 1920s or 1930s. Sign on the building in the right distance reads Central Illinois Light Co. Note that she has lost her depth charges and Y-gun, not needed for use on the Mississippi River. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 41996

Three of the 110s that made it to WWII service: USS SC-330; USS SC-412; and USS SC-64, in port, circa the 1920s or 1930s. The original image is printed on postal card stock. Note the difference in lettering, with some using abbreviations (“S.C. 64”) and some not (“SC412”) Donation of Dr. Mark Kulikowski, 2005. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Photo #: NH 103096

Of her 448 sisters, more than 100 were transferred to the French during the war, some to the Coast Guard in the 1920s, and most liquidated by the early 1930s as they grew long in the tooth. Wood vessels with gasoline engines weren’t highly desired by the Navy at the time, after all.

USCGC Vaughan, ex-USS SC-152, was built by the Gibbs Gas Engine Co., Jacksonville, FL but served her career in Coastie White off Key West and San Diego during Prohibiton. With Volstead on its way out, she was decommissioned 28 March 1928 and sold. Her end is similar to most SCs., discarded before they had 10 years on their rapidly deteriorating wooden hulls.

Few of the 110s survived the Depression on Uncle’s inventory and SC-330 was the only one of her 100-ship block (from SC 301-400) to serve in WWII, likely continuing her role as a training ship. As most of her life had been spent in freshwater– usually wintering ashore to keep out of the ice– the likely contributed to her longevity.

SC-330 out of the water for maintenance, from an article in the Marengo-Union Times relating a 1940s interaction with the vessel at St. Louis, MO http://marengo-uniontimes.com/news/1567-what-did-you-do-in-the-war-daddy

Only about a dozen or so 110s were carried on the Naval List during the Second World War. (The other 12 were: SC-64, SC-102, SC-103, SC-185, SC-412, SC-431, SC-432, SC-437, SC-440, SC-449, SC-450, SC-453, one of which was lost and three were retired before the end of the war. In addition, SC-229 and SC-231 were in USCG service as the cutters Boone and Blaze, respectively). Most were in YP or training duties, although some did mount ASW gear to include mousetrap bomb throwers and depth charges, just in case.

SC-330, was one of the last four of her type in service, decommissioning and struck from the Navy Register 22 June 1945, then transferred to the War Shipping Administration on 8 October 1946. (The only longer-lasting 110s were: SC-431 transferred to WSA on 12/9/46, SC-437 on 3/21/47, and SC-102 on 1/3/47).

While these craft are all largely gone for good, extensive plans remain of the vessels in the National Archives.

For more on these craft, please visit Splinter Fleet and The Subchaser Archives.

Specs:

Displacement: 85 tons full load, 77 tons normal load
Length: 110 ft oa (105 ft pp)
Beam: 14 ft 9 in
Draft: 5 ft 7 in
Propulsion: Three 220 bhp Standard gasoline engines (!) as built, replaced by Hall & Scott engines in 1920.
Speed: 18 kn as designed, 16 or less in practice
Range: 880 nmi at 10 kn with 2,400 gallons fuel
Complement: Two officers, 22-25 enlisted
Sonar-like objects: One Submarine Signal Company C-Tube, M.B. Tube, or K Tube hydrophone
Armament:
1 × 3 in (76 mm)/23-caliber low-angle gun mount, fwd (2 designed, only one mounted in favor of Y-gun aft)
2 × Colt/Marlin M1895 .30-06 caliber machine guns (some seen with Lewis guns)
1 × Y-gun depth charge projector, depth charge racks

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

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

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2019: That time an icebreaker took on a (pocket) battleship

Here we see the hardy Soviet steel screw steamer/icebreaker Alexander Sibiryakov with a homemade sail rig somewhere in the frozen Northern Sea Route in 1932. Built as a Canadian sealer, she sailed into maritime history when it came to polar exploration and met her end at the hands of a bruiser who was many times her match.

Ordered from the Scottish shipbuilding firm of D & W Henderson & Co., Glasgow as the SS Bellaventure by the Bellaventure S.S. Co. Ltd. of St. John’s Newfoundland in 1908, she was not very large (1132 grt / 471 nrt, 241-feet overall) but was designed to withstand the rigors of the polar seal trade. Completed the next year, she made seven trips searching for the lucrative marine mammals. Steam heated and electric-lighted, she could steam at 10 knots, burning through 13 tons of coal per day until her 292-ton bunker was bare. With accommodations for a 15-man crew, she could also accommodate 10 passengers in five staterooms that had access to a separate saloon that was “handsomely fitted up.”

“SS Bonaventure. First arrival from the seal fishery, March 28, 1911, with 26,289 old and young seals” via Newfoundland Quarterly”

Image from page 24 of “Newfoundland Quarterly 1909-11” (1909) https://archive.org/stream/nfldquart190911uoft/nfldquart190911uoft#page/n24/mode/1up

The S.S. Bellaventure, 467 tons, was engaged in the Canadian seal fishery for seven springs, 1909-1915. Her record year was 1910, 35,816 seals; her total was 112,135. Source: http://bonavistanorth.blogspot.com/2007/08/ss-bellaventure.html

When the Great War erupted, the Tsar was soon looking for ice-protected ships as the Ottoman Turks’ entry into the conflict shut off the Black Sea and, with the Baltic barred by the Germans, Russia was a proverbial boarded-up house that could only be entered by the chimney– the frozen Barents Sea harbor of Murmansk (then just a hamlet with primitive facilities) and the White Sea port of Arkhangelsk.

Purchased by Russia in 1916, she was renamed Alexander Sibiryakov in honor of a gold mine magnate who financed a number of improvements in Siberia as well as various scientific expeditions and historical research projects. As a shooting war was on, she was given a high-angle 76mm gun, largely for appearance sake as German U-boats and surface raiders were scarce in the Barents during WWI.

Note her gun tub forward. She would pick up a 45mm gun on the stern in 1942 as well as a couple of machine guns

Briefly used by the White Russians of Lt. Gen. Eugen Ludwig Müller (also often seen as “EK Miller” in the West) during his control of the Kola Peninsula where he had declared himself Governor-General of Northern Russia in the resulting power vacuum that followed in the wake of the Russian Revolution in 1917, Sibiryakov was operated for a time commercially by the British Ellerman’s Wilson Line concern (the British were propping up the Whites) and helped evacuate Muller and his bunch to Norway when the Bolsheviks captured his former fiefdom in 1920.

Sibiryakov was returned to the Reds who, from 1921 onward, sent her into the White Sea to support the Russian the hunting industry, and provide the various Soviet polar stations wintering of the Arctic Ocean with food, equipment, and fuel.

Academian and Hero of the Soviet Union Otto Schmidt, somewhere in the icepack, more about him below

The icebreaker managed to become the first ship in history to complete the 2,500-mile Northern Sea Route in one season when it was traveled by Otto Yulievich Schmidt’s expedition in 1932. The expedition left Arkhangelsk on July 28 commanded by CPT. Vladimir Voronin who, along with Schmidt and his deputy, Prof. Vladimir Wiese, rounded the North Land archipelago from the north and reached the Chukchi Sea in August. From there they had to power through solid ice, repair the hull in several places, free the prop (breaking her shaft) and finally sail the final leg out into the Bearing Strait at about the speed of flotsam on homemade sails made from tarps, old blankets and sheets after total engineering casualties, reaching Yokohama from there with the assistance of a tow from a Soviet fishing trawler in the Northern Pacific on 1 October.

When WWII came to Russia in 1941, courtesy of Barbarossa, Sibiryakov was taken up from academic and commercial service and placed in the Red Navy for the duration of the Great Patriotic War or her destruction, whichever came first.

Speaking of which, her still armed only with some machine guns and her 1915-vintage Tarnovsky-Lender 76mm popgun, she bumped into the Deutschland-class heavy cruiser (Panzerschiffe= armored ship, but commonly just termed “pocket battleship”) Admiral Scheer one day while out among the ice.

German Pocket Battleship DEUTSCHLAND Drawing of 1941 rig. Inset ADMIRAL SCHEER. German – CA (DEUTSCHLAND Class) 1941 NH 110853

The big German, at 15,000-tons, carried a half-dozen 28 cm/52 (11″) SK C/28 naval guns and knew how to use them.

Stern 28 cm/52 Turret on Admiral Scheer in mid-1939. U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph # NH 80897.

Sailing as part of Operation Wunderland with three destroyers and a number of U-boats, Scheer aimed to penetrate the Kara Sea where they knew Soviets shipping tended to congregate as it was somewhat of a Russian lake, akin to the Gulf of Mexico and the U.S.– only a lot colder.

Encountering Scheer off Belukha Island near Middendorff Bay, the 13-knot icebreaker could not run and, rather than strike their flag, engaged the cruiser on 24 August. It was a short fight as Scheer‘s belt was 3.1-inches of armor while Sibiryakov‘s was – zero – in addition to the gross imbalance in armaments. It was all over within an hour.

Russian Icebreaker ALEXANDER SIBIRIEKOV Afire and sinking in the Barents Sea North of Murmansk after being attacked by the German cruiser ADMIRAL SCHEER in August 1942 survivors on the raft at right. NH 71384

Of the icebreaker’s 100~ man crew, only her skipper, 32-year-old Senior Lt. Anatoly Alekseevich Kacharava, and 18 crew members were pulled from the water by the Scheer while one man, a stoker by the name of Vavilov, was able to make it to shore on a leaky liferaft where he survived for a month among the polar bears on Belukha Island before he was finally rescued by a passing seaplane.

NH 71385 Sinking Of The Russian Icebreaker ALEXANDER SIBIRIEKOV as seen from Scheer, note rescued Soviet sailors on deck. The men would spend the next decade in German and Soviet camps.

Many of the Soviet mariners captured never made it home from German POW camps.

Worse, those who survived long enough to be repatriated after the war were sent to the gulag (thanks, Uncle Joe!) for several years as were many returning Soviet POWs. In 1961, Kacharava, along with the other survivor, was declared “rehabilitated” and awarded the Order of the Red Banner nearly two decades after their pitched battle. He returned to the merchant service, skippering ships along the Northern Sea Route, and headed the Georgian Shipping Company in the 1970s, retiring to Batumi.

Kacharava (1910-1982)

He died in 1982.

However, the act of trying to fight it out with a beast of a cruiser landed the humble Sibiryakov a solid spot in Russian naval lore and relics of the ship are venerated today in the country while she has been repeatedly portrayed in Soviet maritime art.

The battle of the icebreaker Alexander Sibiryakov with the cruiser Admiral Scheer by PP Pavlinov, 1945.

The last fight of the icebreaker Alexander Sibiryakov 25 August 1942. By Michael Uspensky

As for Scheer, she was sunk by British bombers in 1945 and partially salvaged, with her remains currently buried beneath a quay in Kiel.

Specs:

Displacement: 1132 grt / 471 nrt (as designed)
Length: 241-feet
Beam: 35.8-feet
Draft: 16.9-feet
Engines: T3cyl (22.5, 37, 61 x 42in), 347nhp, 1-screw
Speed: 13 knots
Crew (1942) 100
Armament: 1 x 76mm Tarnovsky-Lender M1914/15 8-K gun, 1x45mm gun (added 1942), machine guns

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

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

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

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

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Here we see the 96-foot long section patrol craft USS Vester (SP-686), photographed circa 1917-1919 during The Great War, probably in a Delaware Bay-area port.

According to DANFS, “the ship appears to have spent most of her active duty alongside a pier with her engines out of commission.” U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph NH 42437

Note the two 1-pounder 37mm guns mounted amidships and the sign on the building in the left background, advertising “The Best $3.30 Shoe.”

Adjusted for inflation, that is about $65 in today’s dollars.

Built in 1876 as a wooden-hulled menhaden fishing boat, Vester was taken over by the Navy on 24 May 1917 from her owners (the Delaware Fish Oil Co.) and placed in commission on 2 June. She was decommissioned on 15 May 1919 after almost two years in the Navy and sold on 15 January 1920– 99 years ago today.

The company she was sold to, Hayes & Anderson of NYC, a fishing operation, was subsequently fined for using unlicensed boats to harvest menhaden. Vester‘s trail goes cold shortly after.

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2019: The avenger of Toulon

U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 80-G-202752

Here we see the Marine Nationale’s Bretagne (Brittany)-class dreadnought (cuirasse d’ escadre) Lorraine in Casablanca Harbor on 13 November 1943, when she was the only afloat French battleship in the world capable of fighting—a sobering thought when you remember that the country counted over 20 battleships in their fleet in WWI. Laid down in 1912 to mix it up with the potential battleships of the Italian, Austrian and Imperial German fleets in the looming Great War, she ironically wound up facing her biggest challenges from fellow French guns three decades later.

The trio of Bretagne-class warships, at about 26,000-tons, were built on the same hulls of the previous French battleship class, the Courbets, but mounted a heavier broadside in the form of 12 34 cm/45 (13.4″) Model 1912 guns in six twin turrets as opposed to the Courbets’ dozen 305mm/45 Modèle 1910s. However, due to space limitations, this was later adjusted to five turrets mounting 10 guns.

Note the five turrets of the Bretagne, vs the six of the Courbets in the same hull as compared in these plans from the 1914 ed. of Janes. The new ships were estimated at the time to cost of about £3 million per hull.

The guns could fire a 1,200-pound shell to 15,000 yards, limited due to the 12-degree elevation of their turret. This was later modified to 18 degrees in a 1920s refit, which produced a range of 20,000 yards.

In the 1930s, the Bretagne-class received the slightly more modern Model 1912M version of the guns originally intended for the scrapped Normandie-class battleships, and their elevation was increased again, to 23 degrees, allowing for 25,000-yard shots. Each tube could fire every 35 seconds and the magazine held 100 shells per gun

She also carried 22 5.5-inch guns, some 3-pdrs on her fighting tops and, like most battleships of the time, a quartet of torpedo tubes.

Laid down in April 1912 at At.&Ch de la Loire in St. Nazaire, Lorraine joined the French Navy 27 Jul 1916, which, as it turned out, was some two years into WWI.

Her sisters, Bretagne and Provence, were likewise tardy to the conflict. By the time they had become operational, Italy had switched her pre-war allegiance from Germany and Austria to the Allies, which effectively bottled up the Austro-Hungarians in the Adriatic. Likewise, the Germans were shut in the Baltic and were licking their wounds from Jutland and would never effectively sortie for a fleet action again.

THE FRENCH NAVY IN THE MEDITERRANEAN, 1914-1918 (Q 69694) The French battleship LORRAINE in dry dock at Toulon, 27 December 1916. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205028711

With no one ready to fight the trio of powerful (for 1916) new French battleships, Provence was sidelined as a fleet flagship while Bretagne and Lorraine sailed for Corfu as part of the 1st Battle Squadron to lend their muscle to any Allied effort to smash the Austrians should they try to break out into the Med.

It was a low-morale job and the French fleet, who had lost almost a third of their personnel to shore up the Army’s losses on the Western front, were rife with discontent.

After the Austrian Kaiser left Vienna and turned over his vessels to the newly formed Yugoslav Navy in November 1918, Lorraine sailed for Cattaro to guard the former Austro-Hungarian fleet until it could be doled out as prize ships– of which the Yugoslavs received few. Lorraine was to sail for the Black Sea in March 1919 to take part in the Allied intervention in Russian during the Civil War there, but a series of paralyzing pro-Bolshevik (red flags and everything) mutinies in the French fleet (to include her sister Provence) forced a recall back home, where many of the rank-and-file were furloughed by the nearly bankrupt government.

Once peace broke out, the barely-used battleship spent the next 20 years in a series of reduced commissionings (she went through at least four extensive refit/modernization periods between 1921 and 1935 alone, chalking up over 68 months in the yard), reserve status, and training cruises. During this time, some of her casemate guns were removed to free up weight, as was her torpedoes and amidships 13.4-inch turret (replaced by aviation facilities for spotting planes). Further, her coal-burning boilers were replaced by oil-fired ones, which raised both her speed and range.

Seen in 1917 in her original scheme, note all five turrets are there

Modernized scheme, note large fire control tower on main mast, gunfire clock, new 75mm DP guns, and lack of amidships turret

All these improvements came as France was whittling their battleship force down considerably between the wars to meet the 175,000-ton mark (parable with Italy) set by the Washington Naval Treaty in 1922. The Republic started WWI with 16 pre-dreadnoughts and shed all of them in the 1920s. Of the four Courbet-class dreadnoughts, France was wrecked in 1922 and the other three relegated to hulks or training ships. The nine planned Normandie & Lyon class battleships were aborted with just one of the hulls, Bearn, converted to an aircraft carrier.

The result was that the Bretagne-class were the default heavy-hitters of the French Navy for the two solid decades from 1916 until 1936 when the new 35,000-ton Dunkerque and Strasbourg were completed.

French Warships at Brest, France, 1939. In the foreground are the large destroyers Le Terrible (12-), L’Audacieux (11-) and Le Fantasque (10-). Next are three La Galissonnière-class light cruisers. In the upper center are three battleships (Bretagne, Provence, and Lorraine). In the distance are the hulks of at least three old cruisers (upper left), and three Chacal class destroyers (upper right). U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 90001

When France once again found itself at war with the Germans in 1939, Bretagne and Provence were in Toulon with the 2nd Squadron, while Lorraine was assigned to the Atlantic Squadron. Sailing from Casablanca in November 1939, she took on a load of 1,500 boxes of gold (some 100 tons!) at Brest from the national treasury and took it across the Atlantic to Halifax, from where it was sent by rail to New York and later lent legitimacy to the Free French government in exile once the country got knocked out of the war.

Dubbed Operation Macaroni, Lorraine‘s “Force Z” was joined by a number of escorts in case she ran into German surface raiders or U-boats while in the North Atlantic. These included the light cruisers Marseillaise and Jean de Vienne, alongside the destroyers Aigle, Fortuné, Railleuse, Lion and Simoun. On the way back across after making their deposit abroad, the task force escorted Allied merchantmen carrying war supplies to Europe.

Operating with the British from Alexandria in the Med after April 1940, she was in that port when the Blitzkrieg end-game was playing out at Dunkirk and the Third Republic was forced to negotiate their surrender to the Germans. Nonetheless, Lorraine was involved in one of the last French efforts of the period in support of the Allies when she sailed on 21 June along with the British light cruisers HMS Orion (VADM J.C. Tovey’s flagship), HMS Neptune, the Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney, and the destroyers HMAS Stuart, HMS Decoy, HMS Dainty, and HMS Hasty to conduct a bombardment of Italian positions around Bardia, Libya.

Lorraine fired 53 rounds of 13.4-inch and another 37 of 5.5-inch, credited with silencing an anti-aircraft battery in the area. It was her first shots in anger but would not be her last.

Less than two weeks later, the British ordered her disarmed and defueled, interning the vessel along with others in Alexandria in early July, as France had signed the armistice with Hitler at Compiegne. She was joined by the rest of French Adm. René-Émile Godfroy’s Force X: three 10,000-ton heavy cruisers (Duquesne, Tourville, Suffern), the 7,500-ton light cruiser Duguay-Trouin, the three torpedo boats Basque, Forbin, and Fortuné; and the submarine Protée. This effectively took a large portion of the French fleet out of the possibility of falling into German hands.

Sadly, on July 3, the British attacked their former allies, striking the French anchorage at Mers-el-Kébir where they sank Lorraine‘s sisters Bretagne and Provence as well as the new battleship Dunkerque. Bretagne was hit by several British 15-inch shells and exploded, killing most of her crew. Provence, also hit several times, burned and settled on the harbor but did not explode. She would later be raised and patched up enough to sail for Toulon.

On the same day, the old French training battleships Paris and Courbet, then docked in Plymouth with evacuees aboard, were seized by the British as well and later used as barracks ships and targets. In effect, the only battleships left to the Republic on July 4, 1940, were the marginally functional Richelieu (which the British tried repeatedly to sink at Dakar) and the incomplete Jean Bart in Casablanca, as well as Strasbourg and the wrecked Provence at Toulon.

Meanwhile, back in Egypt, half of Godfroy’s 4,000 men chose to be repatriated to France after the indignation of Mers-el-Kébir and were in turn sent to nearby Beirut, then under Vichy control. The remainder of the Alexandria-interned vessels, Lorraine included, remained there under a British flag as impounded “Vichy” ships, while the Crown picked up their remaining crews’ pay– for three years!

VICHY NAVAL FORCE H UNDER ADMIRAL GODEFROY’S COMMAND, IN ALEXANDRIA HARBOUR. 22 AND 24 APRIL 1942, ALEXANDRIA. (A 9852) The Battleship LORRAINE in Alexandria Harbour. Note French markings on the turret Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205143635

VICHY NAVAL FORCE H UNDER ADMIRAL GODEFROY’S COMMAND, IN ALEXANDRIA HARBOUR. 22 AND 24 APRIL 1942, ALEXANDRIA. (A 9853) The Battleship LORRAINE in Alexandria Harbour. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205143636

Meanwhile, when the Allies landed in French North Africa in November 1942, the Germans moved into Vichy, France and occupied the Mediterranean port at Toulon, but not before the French scuttled what was left of their fleet there, sending Strasbourg and the repaired Provence to the bottom:

Le Strasbourg sabordé, derrière lui le croiseur Colbert est en feu

On 30 May 1943, the three French dreadnoughts in Allied control– Lorraine in Alexandria, the battered Jean Bart in Casablanca, and Richelieu in Dakar– finally came over to De Gaulle’s Free French side and were rearmed. While JB and Richelieu were in no condition to fight and sailed for the U.S. to be repaired/completed, Lorraine was able to join the effort against the Axis more quickly and was, at the time, the only combat-capable French battleship anywhere in the world (although just four of her 13.4-inch guns could be made functional again.) Luckily, the long-ago hulked Paris and Courbet, in possession of the Brits since 1940, provided some spare parts as the three vessels shared much machinery.

FRENCH FLEET LEAVES ALEXANDRIA. 23 JUNE 1943, ALEXANDRIA. (A 18293) The French battleship LORRAINE, with her Tricolour flying before leaving Alexandria harbour. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205151055

The French battleship LORRAINE passing through the Suez Canal towards Suez Bay. June 23, 1943. As she was short on crew and lacked anti-air capabilities while the Germans were still very much capable of running air strikes in the Med, she would sail the long way around Africa to Dakar, where she would be used as a training ship for a few months, before heading to Casablanca. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205151044

Up-armed with 14 40mm Bofors and 25 20mm Oerlikons for AAA protection, her crew–most of which had left during her stint in Alexandria, to either return home or fight for De Gaulle– were reformed and retrained. She also ditched her aviation facility as, cut off from French suppliers, her seaplanes could no longer be supported.

80-G-202753: French battleship, SS Lorraine, in Casablanca Harbor. Note she still has her seaplanes in this photo. Photograph released November 13, 1943.

By August 1944, she was part of the Allied fleet aiming to liberate Southern France, Operation Dragoon. Largely due to the tough nut that was the Normandy invasion on D-Day, Dragoon gets lost in the history books, but have no mistake that it was no lay-up.

Importantly to the Free French, Lorraine was in the thick of the liberation of both Toulon and Marseilles. Of note, the Cross of Lorraine was the symbol of De Gaulle’s forces.

The powerful symbology of having a battleship named “Lorraine” in the Free French Navy, a movement that used the Cross of Lorraine as a symbol, was a no-brainer.

Operating in conjunction with Kingfisher floatplanes from the Baltimore-class heavy cruiser USS Quincy (CA-71) correcting her shot, Lorraine was part of TG 86.4, consisting of the fellow battlewagons USS Nevada and Texas, the cruisers Augusta, Cincinnati (CL-6), Marblehead (CL-12), Omaha (flagship), Philadelphia, Georges Leygues and Montcalm, and large French destroyers Le Fantasque, Le Malin, and Le Terrible. Starting on 18 August, Nevada, Lorraine, and Augusta shelled the harbor and batteries at Saint-Mandrier-sur-Mer and Cap Sicié. where they also engaged the floating wreck of the German-held battleship Strasbourg, hitting the ex-French battleship aft and causing her to list to starboard in the Bay of Lazaret.

Lorraine and Quincy in tandem fired at hard-to-kill Target J-15 (Y-856/973), a German railway battery, silencing it.

Then came a running fight with emplaced two 13.4-inch guns from the French battleship Provence, Lorraine’s old sister, on the fortified crest of the headland on Cap Cépet, not far from the village and naval arsenal at Saint-Mandrier-sur-Mer, overlooking the approaches to Toulon.

Nevada, Ramillies, Lorraine, Augusta, Philadelphia, Aurora, Émile Bertin, Georges Leygues, Quincy and Montcalm all fought the well-defended 13.4-inch battery at times over the next week, 19–26 August 1944, with Lorraine taking a break on 21 August to fire the first shots in the actual attack on Toulon itself. The big 13.4-inch battery, which had one of its guns knocked out by the Allied ships, eventually surrendered at the orders of German Konteradmiral Heinrich Ruhfus, who commanded the garrison in the Toulon area, on 28 August.

The destroyed French 13.4-inch turret A at Cap Cépet, from Lorraine’s former sistership, Provence.

As noted by DANFS:

“Bombs and shells plowed the ground around the turret, and French ordnance specialists investigated the position after the Germans capitulated and noted that the larger craters carved out by the heavy naval gunfire stood out compared to the bombing impact holes. When Contre-Amiral André-Georges Lemonnier, the French Navy’s chief of staff, questioned one of the battery’s officers, the German told him that the shelling stunned many of his gunners and they refused to man the guns during the final stages of the battle.”

Lorraine was the first Allied ship into Toulon.

Lorraine and Gloire in Toulon Harbor, France, 15 September 1944. Taken by USS Philadelphia (CL 41). 80-G-248718

First major units of French, British, American warships entering Toulon, France. Shown FS Lorraine, FS Emile Bertin, FS Duguay, FS Montcalm, FS Gloire, HMS Sirius, 13 September 1944. Taken by USS Philadelphia (CL 41) 80-G-248719

Following the fall of Toulon, the aging French battlewagon went on to plaster the Germans at Sospel, Castillon, Carqueiranne, and Saint-Tropez for the first two weeks of September until the fighting moved into the interior. She then got to take a few months off and refit.

French Battleship LORRAINE in the English Channel in 1944, photo taken from HMCS MAYFLOWER via Royal Canadian Navy

In one of the last battles in Europe during WWII, Lorraine was made the biggest hitter in the 10-ship task force assigned to Operation Vénérable, a mission to rout the remaining German holdouts from the approaches of Brittany in April 1945, where they had been bypassed in 1944 and lingered on even after the Soviets were fighting in Berlin.

It was largely a French naval operation, with our battleship joining the heavy cruiser Duquesne, destroyers Alcyon, Basque and Fortuné, destroyer escort Hova, frigates Aventure, Decouverteand Surprise, and sloop Amiral Mouchez, in support of the Black Panthers of the U.S. 66th INF Div. and the French 2ème Division Blindé.

Opération “Vénérable” à bord du croiseur Le Duquesne: Passage à proximité du cuirassé La Lorraine

Festung Girondemündung Nord, on the north bank of the Gironde estuary on the Bay of Biscay, which had four 240mm/50 Modèle 1902 guns taken off the old Danton class semi-dreadnought Condorcet following the scuttling of the French fleet at Toulon in late November 1942. Commanded by Konteradmiral Hans Michahelles, the position was held largely by Kriegsmarine sailors acting as infantry, namely the unit formed by the destroyermen of the 8. Zerstörer-Flottille sunk in the 1940 Norway campaign, Marine-Bataillon Narvik. Starting her bombardment on 14 April, in conjunction with massive airstrikes, Lorraine and company reduced the fortress by 20 April, when Michahelles threw in the towel.

The war in Europe only had 18 more days.

During Venerable, Lorraine fired 236 13.4-inch shells, 192 5.5-inch shells, and 538 75-mm shells

ADMIRAL BOROUGH INSPECTS FRENCH BATTLESHIP. 1945, ON BOARD FS LORRAINE. THE VISIT OF INSPECTION TO THE BATTLESHIP OF ADMIRAL SIR HAROLD MARTIN BORROUGH, KCB, KBE, DSO, WHO SUCCEEDED THE LATE ADMIRAL RAMSAY AS ALLIED NAVAL COMMANDER EXPEDITIONARY FORCE. (A 28383) Admiral Borrough inspecting divisions on board the FS LORRAINE. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205159741

One of only three French battleships to make it through the war, Lorraine served as gunnery training vessel from June 1945, then as an accommodation hulk, and was only finally stricken in February 1953 after giving 37 hard years to both the Third and Fourth Republics, while politely refusing to take part in that whole Vichy thing.

A patriotic postcard from 1917. She is in her original scheme, note amidships turret

She was sold before the end of the year and towed to Brégaillon outside Toulon in January 1954 where she was broken up for scrap.

Today, Toulon is still the main home of the French Navy, including the flagship carrier, Charles de Gaulle (R91).

Specs:

Displacement:
Normal: 23,230 metric tons (22,860 long tons), 25,000 fl
Length: 544 ft 7 in
Beam: 88 ft 3 in
Draft: 32 ft 2 in
Machinery:
(As built)
4 shafts, Parsons steam turbines, 29,000 shp (22,000 kW)
24 Bellville coal-fired water-tube boilers with oil spray
(After 1931)
4, shafts, steam turbines, 43,000 shp
16 Indret high-pressure oil-fired boilers
Speed: 20 knots as built, 21.4kts after 1931
Range: 4,700 nmi at 10 knots on 2,700 tons coal +300t oil (as designed)
Crew: 1124–1133
Armament:
(As built)
5 × 2 – 340mm, 13.4″/45cal Modèle 1912 guns, 100 rds. per gun
22 × 1 – 138.6 mm, 5.5″/ 55cal Mle 1910 guns, 275 rounds per gun
7 × 1 – 47-millimetre (1.9 in) guns
4 × 450 mm (18 in) torpedo tubes
(1945)
4 × 2 – 340mm/45 Modèle 1912M guns (only four working after 1940)
12 × 1 – 138.6 mm, 5.5″/ 55cal Mle 1910 guns, 275 rounds per gun
4 x 2 – 100/45
4 x 1 – 75/63 M1908 AA
14 x 1 40mm/56cal Bofors singles
25 x 20mm/70cal Oerlikon singles
Armor:
Belt: 270 mm (11 in)
Decks: 40 mm (1.6 in)
Conning tower: 314 mm (12.4 in)
Turrets: 250–340 mm (9.8–13.4 in)
Casemates: 170 mm (6.7 in)

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

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

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

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

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2019: The ‘$2 million Fighting Monster’

NH 108456 (2000×1043)

Here we see the S-class submarine USS S-49 (SS-160), one of the last class of “pig boats” commissioned with letters rather than names, in heavy seas during her brief time in the Navy. Somehow, after a short and unlucky naval career, S-49 was sold to a huckster who turned her into a (sometimes) floating tourist trap that wound up taking his case to the Supreme Court.

True story.

The S-class, or “Sugar” boats, were actually three different variants designed by Simon Lake Co, Electric Boat, and the Bureau of Construction and Repair (BuC&R) in the last days of the Great War in which U.S.-made submarines had a poor record. Looking for a better showing in these new boats, of which 65 were planned, and 51 completed in several subgroups. These small 1,000~ ton diesel-electrics took to the sea in the 1920s and they made up the backbone of the U.S. submarine fleet before the larger “fleet” type boats of the 1930s came online.

The hero of our tale, USS S-49, was 231-feet oal, could dive to 200 feet and travel at a blistering 14.5-knots on the surface on her two 900hp diesel engines and two Westinghouse electric motors for 11-knots submerged. Armament was a quartet of 21-inch bow tubes with a dozen fish and a 4″/50 cal popgun on deck for those special moments. Crew? Just 42 officers and men.

Laid down on 22 October 1920 by the Lake Torpedo Boat Co., Bridgeport, Conn., she commissioned on 5 June 1922 and soon joined New London’s experimental unit, Submarine Division Zero, operating in that role in a series of tests and evaluations into 1926.

U.S. Submarine S-49, during launching NH 108460

This made her one of the most well-photographed of these early submarines.

USS S-49 (SS-160), 1922-1931. NH 108464

USS S-49 (SS-160) NH 108465, on the surface, note her 4″ gun

NH 108462 USS S-49 (SS-160), at periscope depth

NH 108463 USS S-49 (SS-160), with decks awash

NH 108455 USS S-49 (SS-160), looking like she could beat her 14.5-kn max speed

NH 1374 USS S-49 (SS-160). What is the bluejacket on her bow doing?

Then, in early 1926, all hell broke loose.

Per DANFS:

At about 0750 on Tuesday, 20 April, S-49’s engines were started. Seven minutes later, just as a pilot cell cover was removed to test the specific gravity of the electrolyte, the forward battery exploded. The hydrogen gas explosion destroyed the cells in the forward half of the battery and forced up the battery deck. Ten men were injured. Two others were gassed during rescue operations. Four of the twelve died of their injuries.

The battery compartment was sealed and kept shut until mid-afternoon when the outboard battery vent was opened. During the night, the submarine took on a slight list to port and air pressure was used to keep ballast. At about 0515 on the 21st, a second explosion occurred in the battery room when wash from vessels departing for torpedo practice rocked S-49. The compartment was resealed for another few hours, after which the work of clearing the wreckage was begun.

Sub S-49 in drydock, Boston Navy Yard, by Leslie Jones. Boston Public Library

Repaired and operational again by early 1927, S-49 made a cruise to the Florida Keys that Spring for exercises and then, on return to New London, was sent with her twin sister S-50 to red lead row in Philly in March to be placed in mothballs. Decommissioned 2 August 1927, she was stricken in 1931 to help bring down the Navy’s tonnage after the London Naval Conference.

S-49 was subsequently sold to the Boston Iron and Metal Co., Baltimore, Md., on 25 May 1931– but she was not to be scrapped.

You see, a Florida man by the name of “Capt. F.J. Christensen” purchased the gently-used boat as a hulk for a cost of $25,000 (about $400K in today’s dollars) in 1936 and soon put her to work as a privately-owned tourist attraction in the Great Lakes and East Coast, shuffling her between Baltimore, Philadelphia, Newark, Chicago, Cleveland, Buffalo, Boston, and New York, among others.

For this purpose, she was disarmed, her engines disabled, most of her bunks pulled out (the class was notoriously cramped), registered as a “yacht” to comply with Canadian regulations on warships on the Lakes, and billed as “The $2,000,000 Fighting Monster.”

(Archives of the Supreme Court)

Admission to, “See how men live in a Hell Diver!” was 25-cents for adults, 15 for kiddies, with a souvenir book and other trinkets for sale on board for an added fee.

Privately owned sub S-49, open to the public at Point-o-Pines in Revere, near Boston, Aug 1931. Via Leslie Jones: The Cameraman

Ashore at Revere by Leslie Jones. Note that her torpedo door is open

U.S. Submarine S-49, at Great Lakes Exposition- Cleveland. NH 108461

From her souvenir keepsake book:

USS S-49 was only the second U.S. Navy submarine to be privately owned after naval service– with the first being former Warship Wednesday alum, the O-class diesel-electric submarine USS O-12 (SS-73), which was stricken on 29 July 1930 and leased for $1 per year (with a maximum of five years in options) to Simon Lake’s company for use as a private research submarine. Dubbed the Nautilus, O-12 was to explore the Arctic but instead only made it as far as Norway before the venture tanked and she was sunk in deep water on the Navy’s insistence.

As for Christensen, he flew under the radar and continued in his operation for almost four years until he crossed paths with NYPD Police Commissioner Lewis “Nightstick” Valentine who, appointed in 1934 by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, ran the agency for over a decade before heading to Post-War Tokyo to take over the Metropolitan Police Department there with MacArthur’s blessing. The fuzz brought the submarine owner’s “sandwich men” on charges in 1940 of distributing illegal handbills (the above advert) in a case that went all the way to the nation’s high court in 1942– with the Supremes backing Valentine.

With a war on and Christensen facing mounting legal bills, after all, you can’t fight city hall, he sold the immobile submarine back to the Navy who dubbed it floating equipment and intended to use it for experimental work at the Naval Mine Warfare Proving Ground, Solomons, Md.

However, she sank on the way in 132-feet of water while under tow off Port Patience in the Patuxent River.

She is an active, though advanced, dive site today.

As for her sisters, though obsolete, several S-boats remained on the Navy List and served the Navy well in both the Atlantic and Pacific (including several lost to accidents) during WWII. A half-dozen were even transferred to the Royal Navy as Lend-Lease including class leader and the former submersible aircraft carrier, USS S-1.

None of these hardy, if somewhat unlucky, craft endure though Pigboats.com keeps their memory alive.

Specs:

Displacement: 876 tons surfaced; 1,092 tons submerged
Length: 231 feet
Beam: 21 feet 9 inches
Draft: 13 feet 4 inches
Propulsion: 2 × MAN diesels, 900 hp each; 2 × Westinghouse electric motors, 447 kW each; 120-cell Exide battery; two shafts.
Speed: 14.5 knots surfaced; 11 knots submerged
Bunkerage: 148 tons oil fuel
Range: 5,000 nautical miles at 10 knots surfaced
Test depth: 200 ft. (61 m)
Armament (as built): 4 × 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes (bow, 12 torpedoes)
1 × 4 inch (102 mm)/50 caliber Mark 9 “wet mount” deck gun
Crew: 42 officers and men

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

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

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

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

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2019: The final Four-Piper

NH 64543

Here we see the Clemson-class “four-piper” flush-decker torpedo boat destroyer USS Hatfield (DD-231) in dry dock at the Philadelphia Navy Yard on May 23, 1932, with a newly-fitted bow. One of a tremendous class of vessels some 156-strong, she had a long and varied career, ending it as the very last of her type in U.S. service.

An expansion of the almost identical Wickes-class destroyers with a third more fuel capacity to enable them to escort a convoy across the Atlantic without refueling, the Clemson’s were sorely needed to combat the pressing German submarine threat of the Great War. At 1,200-tons and with a top speed of 35 knots, they were brisk vessels ready for the task.

“They kept the sea lanes open” – Invest in the Victory Liberty Loan WWI, poster from 1918 by LA Shafer, Niagara Litho Co. Buffalo, NY, showing a four-piper destroyer armed with 5-inch guns dressed in dazzleflauge jumping between a merchantman and a dastardly German U-boat, the latter sent by the Kaiser to send passenger liners to the bottom.

However, they were was built too late for the war.

The hero of our story was named after naval hero John Hatfield, a young man who volunteered for service and, appointed Midshipman 18 June 1812, served on the small armed schooner USS Lady of the Lake as part of the force commanded by Lt. Isaac Chauncey on Lake Ontario. During the assault on York (now Toronto) in April 1813, Hatfield was killed while leading his ships small boats in a combined arms attack that netted the giant British Royal Standard taken from the Parliament House (and currently in the USNA collection).

Laid down 10 June 1918 at New York Shipbuilding Corp., Camden, N.J, Hatfield just missed her Great War and commissioned 16 April 1920. Her early career included a fleet review by President Harding at Hampton Roads and training cruises in the Caribbean. Interestingly, although almost every four-piper carried a battery of five 4″/50 cal singles, she was one of a handful (DD-231 through DD-235) that were commissioned instead with four 5″/51 cal guns. Due to the extra weight, no depth charge racks were installed on these more heavily gunned sisters

Hatfield Launching at The New York Shipbuilding Corporation, Camden, New Jersey. NH 53688

With the Allied High Commission in the former Ottoman Empire needing muscle, on 2 October 1922, Destroyer Division 40, composed of the destroyers Bainbridge (DD-246), Fox (DD-234), Gilmer (DD-233), Hatfield (DD-231), Hopkins (DD-249), and Kane (DD-235), and Destroyer Division 41, composed of the destroyers Barry (DD-248), Goff (DD-247), King (DD-242), McFarland (DD-237), Overton (DD-239), and Sturtevant (DD-240), sailed from Hampton Roads, Virginia, for Constantinople.

The destroyers arrived there on 22 October, under the command of RADM Mark Lambert Bristol, who had his flag on the humble station ship USS Scorpion, a Warship Wednesday alum, who spent years in the Bosporus moored to the quay and connected by telephone with the Embassy. Hatfield remained in the region until 31 July 1923, when she was given orders to proceed back to the West Coast.

NH 803

Assigned to the U.S. Scouting Fleet, her stomping ground ranged from New York to Panama including a tour of gunboat diplomacy off the coast of Nicaragua throughout February and March 1927, during the civil war in that country in which the U.S. backed the conservative Solórzano government. For this, Hatfield picked up the Second Nicaraguan Campaign Medal.

The next year, Hatfield was part of the squadron that carried President Coolidge to Cuba and Haiti for the Pan-American Conference.

U.S. Navy destroyers moored side-by-side after a day’s maneuvers in Haitian Waters, circa the later 1920s or the 1930s. These ships are (from front to rear): USS Kane (DD-235); USS Hatfield (DD-231); USS Brooks (DD-232); and USS Lawrence (DD-250). The first three destroyers carry 5″/51 cal guns mounted on their sterns, while Lawrence has the more typical four-piper popgun, a 4″/50 cal, mounted atop her after deckhouse, with a 3″/23 anti-aircraft gun on her stern. Note bedding airing on the ships’ lifelines. NH 52227

USS Hatfield (DD-231) In San Diego Harbor, California, during the early 1930s. She was one of only five flush-deck destroyers to carry 5/51 guns. Donation of Franklin Moran, 1967. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 64542

USS Hatfield (DD-231) and sister USS Humphreys (DD-236) circa 1928

Hatfield had a crack up with the USS Sands (DD-243), a sistership, during maneuvers 40 miles off Newport, Rhode Island, 13 September 1930. Damage control was quick and she was towed to Brooklyn Navy Yard by tugs Sagamore (AT-20) and Penobscot (YT-42) for repairs.

Photo via Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection. 08_06_006245

Transferred to San Diego in 1932 after a brief stint in ordinary, by April 1936 she was deployed to friction points once again, serving off Spain in the neutrality patrol during the Spanish Civil War as part of Squadron Forty-T commanded by RADM Arthur P. Fairfield. This special task force, initially comprising the old cruiser Raleigh, fellow four-piper USS Kane, Hatfield, and the Coast Guard cutter USCGC Cayuga, saved hundreds of U.S. and foreign nationals during the conflict. In all, she would spend 19 months there, returning to the U.S. at the tail end of 1937, returning to mothballs for a few months.

USS HATFIELD (DD-231). (1920-1947). Collection of Gustave Maurer. NH 2216

When WWII erupted in Europe, Hatfield was dusted off once more and recommissioned 25 September 1939 for assignment to FDR’s East Coast Neutrality Patrol looking for U-Boats, a mission she would continue through August 1940 when she was sent to the West Coast, arriving at Bremerton for operations in the Northern Pacific as part of the rusty old tin cans of DESDIV 82.

In the days immediately after Pearl Harbor, the obsolete flush decker was sent to sparsely defended Alaska, where she spent her “shooting days” of WWII. Even equipped with sonar, radar, and a smattering of machine guns for AAA use, destroyer technology had passed her by.

Destroyer evolution, 1920-1944: USS HATFIELD (DD-231), USS MAHAN (DD-364), USS FLETCHER (DD-445). NH 109593

Hatfield 26 May 1942, at Puget Sound, Navy Yard, Bremerton, Washington. Note rafts, torpedo tubes, boat, radar at mainmast. Also, note barrage balloons 19-N-30086

Hatfield on 26 May 1942, at Puget Sound, Washington 19-N-30085

As noted by DANFS: “In the uncertain early months of the Pacific war, Hatfield convoyed merchant ships to Alaskan ports, helping to carry the supplies necessary to establish bases in the North. She continued this vital duty in the bleak and dangerous northern waters until 13 March 1944, when she returned to Seattle.”

Relegated to work as an auxiliary (AG-84) in October 1944, she finished her military service towing targets and assisting with underway training. Hatfield decommissioned 13 December 1946 and was sold for scrap 9 May 1947 to National Metal & Steel Corp., Terminal Island, Calif, the last of her kind in the Navy. Only spending about 36 months of her 26 years out of commission — a rarity for her class– Hatfield had some 22 skippers in her long career.

Some of her original builder’s plaques are on display at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum.

(Photo: Ed Zajkowski/Navsource)

And of course, there are a number of postal cancelations from this far-traveled greyhound.

As for her sisters, seven Clemson’s were lost at the disaster at Honda Point in 1923, and 18 (including six used by the British) were lost in WWII including one, USS Stewart (DD-224), which was famously raised by the Japanese and used in their Navy only to be recaptured by the USN and given a watery grave after the war. Those four-pipers not sold off in the 1930s or otherwise sent to Davy Jones were scrapped wholesale in the months immediately after WWII. Besides Hatfield, the penultimate Clemson in US service was USS Williamson (DD-244) which was decommissioned 8 November 1945 and sold to the breakers on 4 November 1948.

The final Clemson afloat, USS Aulick (DD-258), joined the Royal Navy as HMS Burnham (H82) in 1940 as part of the “Destroyers for Bases” deal. Laid up in 1944, she was allocated for scrapping on 3 December 1948.

None are preserved and only the scattered wrecks in the Western Pacific, Honda Point, the Med and Atlantic endure.

Specs:

Displacement:
1,215 tons (normal)
1,308 tons (full load)
Length: 314 ft. 4.5 in
Beam: 30 ft. 11.5 in
Draft: 9 ft. 4 in
Propulsion:
4 × boilers, 300 psi (2,100 kPa) saturated steam
2 geared steam turbines
27,600 hp (20,600 kW)
2 shafts
Speed: 35.5 knots (65.7 km/h)
Range: 4,900 nmi (9,100 km) @ 15 kn (28 km/h)
Crew: (USN as commissioned)
8 officers
8 chief petty officers
106 enlisted
Armament:
(1920)
4- 5″/51cal guns
12 × 21 inch torpedo tubes (4 × 3) (533 mm)

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

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

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

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

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong. I’m a member, so should you be!

The below shows the interesting sight of American Wayne Anderson’s replica Fokker Dr.I Dreidecker triplane in Australia for a trans-Australia air race, cuddled among camouflaged Royal Australian Air Force Mirage IIID and IIIO(A) strike fighters at RAAF Base Williamtown, New South Wales, October 1976.

RAAF Photo A6180

The Mirages in the back of the photo are from No. 2 Operational Conversion Unit, the RAAF’s storied fighter training unit, and sport their traditional flash and striking period camo.

A left side view of a Mirage IIID (top) and Mirage IIIE aircraft of No. 2 OCU in flight during a combined U.S.-Australian Air Force exercise, Pacific Consort. (USAF photo)

The Mirages in the foreground belong to 77 Sqn, which formed in 1942 and flew Curtiss P-40E Kittyhawks over Northern Australia, downing the first Japanese Betty ever shot down over the continent. They later moved with the tide of the war over New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, flying the borderline obsolete P-40 right until the last days of the war. They later switched to P-51 Mustangs and Gloster Meteors over Korea before switching to Australian-made F-86 Sabre variants that they flew during the Malayan Confrontation and on to the Mirage, which they flew from 1969 to 1988 when they transitioned to the F-18. They are still stationed at Williamtown.

As for Anderson and his Fokker, I can’t find much information on him other than the fact that his was one of some 179 private planes, mostly light single-engined aircraft, that took part in the 1976 Benson & Hedges Australian Air Race from Perth to Sydney, covering some 2,400 miles in four days between 19-23 October.