Naval Institute Celebrates A Century and a Quarter
All through 1998, the U.S. Naval Institute, publisher of Naval History magazine, will be celebrating its 125th anniversary. Events have been planned to commemorate the illustrious history of this professional society, which has been heralded as one of the most respected and emulated military-oriented organizations in the world. Look for Naval History’s own tributes in future issues.
Boomer Ride Highlights Historic Ships Meeting
Last October, more than 80 delegates of the Historic Naval Ships Association convened their 32nd Annual Meeting, hosted by the USS Bowfin Submarine Museum, with assistance from the staff of the USS Arizona Memorial, at the Hawaii Maritime Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. Formal sessions covered ship and collection security, managing reunion groups, fund-raising, developing elder hostel programs, ship preservation, curatorial issues, attracting nonmilitary visitors, strategic planning, and much more. Delegates visited the Arizona Memorial, with a full-circle tour of Ford Island, and spent an evening at the Bowfin and its museum. And the U.S. Army Museum of Hawaii provided an appropriate venue for the opening “aloha” reception.
Certainly the highlight of this meeting for 25 of the delegates was an underway on a major “boomer,” the USS Henry M. Jackson (SSBN-730). The delegates boarded in Pearl Harbor channel, went to sea, had an escorted tour, fired water slugs from the torpedoes, dived to an unspecified depth, sighted a “friendly” submarine on the surface, and climbed up inside the conning tower all the way to the top deck. Captain Frank W. Stewart and his crew could not have been more hospitable and informative.
—James W. Cheevers, Historic Naval Ships Association
Museum Launches Drive to Save U-505
Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry wants to save one of the world’s last authentic German U-boats from World War II, but it will take $11.45 million to get the job done.
On 4 June 1944, the Type IX-C submarine became the only enemy vessel captured on the high seas by U.S. forces since 1815, and in the end, it took an entire U.S. Navy task force to reel her in.
Permanently drydocked at the museum since 1954, the U-505’s constant exposure to the elements has taken its toll. Keith Gill, the museum’s collections coordinator, explains that, “the submarine is a machine of war and was never intended to last this long in the first place. It also was never intended to sit completely outside the water, standing up to temperature changes that range from 100° in the summer to below-zero in the winter.”
Rust is now the U-boat’s most feared enemy, especially where the metal was stressed during construction. The deck is in rough shape as well, a victim of bleaching from the sun alternating with freezing from the cold. The sub’s quarter- million or so visitors per year also take their toll.
Gill says the rust was chemically stabilized for a while, but the boat’s constant exposure to the weather has brought it back. So she needs to be brought inside, where a controlled environment can help stop the deterioration. “That’s why we’re anxious to get this endowment going,” says Gill.
Christened at the height of Germany’s power in August 1941, the boat’s first war patrol the following year was successful. But as the Allies built up their antisubmarine forces and deployed more escorts for merchant shipping, the U-boat inflicted less damage until, by the end of 1942, she was almost cut in half by a bomb from a U.S. warplane. The following year, as Allies built up a preponderance of surface forces in the Atlantic, the U-505 was stopped twice from its war patrols by withering depth- charge attacks.
By 1944, Allied naval forces had squeezed U-boats to the point where an entire task force was able to close in on the lone U-505 and force her to the surface as a prize of war. In fact, the commander of Task Force 22.3, Captain Daniel V. Gallery, had his attacking planes and ships use antipersonnel ammunition instead of armor-piercing bullets so the sub would not be damaged badly.
Comprised of the escort carrier Guadalcanal (CVE-60) and five destroyer escorts, Task Force 22.3 detected the U- 505 about 150 miles off the coast of French West Africa on 4 June 1944. Having made the first sonar contact, the destroyer escort Chatelain (DE-149) dropped a full pattern of depth charges. When the explosions subsided six-and-a- half minutes later, the German sub was on the surface. As her crew jumped over the side, a party of U.S. Navy sailors prepared to board the enemy boat.
Hastily heading below decks, engineer’s mate Zenon B. Lukosius put the cover back on an eight-inch sea strainer, stanching the flow of sea water into the boat. Capture of the German sub remained secret until after the war, as the Allies recovered a secret radio code for U-boat operations and several of a new type of torpedo.
Ten years later, the U-505 was hauled through the St. Lawrence Seaway to her current location. She was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1989, and now the vintage sub needs to be rejuvenated into a more integral part of the Chicago museum’s “Navy: Technology at Sea” exhibit. A fundraising strategy calls for $6 million to preserve, relocate, and build a climate-controlled shelter. Additional funds totaling $5.45 million will be needed for future operating and maintenance endowments.
Ann Goldman, the museum’s director of corporate and foundation relations, says that visitors will be able to see the conning tower and deck through a transparent cover and that most of the submarine will be situated below ground level. Visitors will continue touring the sub’s interior and may even be able to walk on the main deck and explore the conning tower within the enclosure. New exhibits about World War II will also be built around the U-505.
Fundraising efforts began in June 1996, and many people have helped by writing letters to members of Congress, urging them to grant funds for the project; the museum has also received strong lobbying effort from the Illinois congressional delegation. The museum has requested $6 million from the Department of Interior, and Goldman is cautiously optimistic. But the key to saving the U- 505 is still the support of individuals. “We feel the U-505 is public property,” Goldman says. “Our children and grandchildren should have a chance to see and learn from it.” The late Admiral Gallery put it another way: “This captured sub now serves as a tribute to the heroism of our Navy men, as a memorial to the dead and as a stem reminder to the living that control of the sea, so vital to our existence, has been won at a great price.”
For more information on the U-505, write to: U-505 Restoration and Relocation Project, Museum of Science and Industry, 57th Street and Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60637-2093.
—Philip M. Callaghan
Marine Corps Historian Ends 43 Years’ Service
Chief Historian of the Marine Corps Benis M. Frank has retired after 43 years of combined military and civilian service. A veteran of both World War II and the Korean War, he became a Marine Corps historian in 1961, pioneered its Oral History program, and was designated Chief Historian in 1991. He also was a noted author and editor of Marine Corps historical subjects.
At a recent retirement ceremony, Frank was presented with the Department of the Navy Distinguished Civilian Service Award and received a retirement gift from his many friends and colleagues. The presentation was a photo reproduction of “Boarders Away,” a painting by Jack Gray depicting War of 1812 Marines boarding a British ship under fire.
Maine Report to Appear in Naval History
Naval history enthusiasts probably will note that this issue of Naval History does not include a 100th anniversary article on the sinking of the USS Maine. This was not an oversight.
In a cooperative effort for the March/April issue, Naval History will publish an edited version of a report commissioned by the National Geographic Society regarding the sinking of the fabled ship, one incident that sparked the Spanish-American War.
Based on new side-scan radar data, a private underwater research team has reached a conclusion that will—to say the least—stimulate further discussion on this traditionally controversial subject. Because National Geographic magazine could not publish the entire report in a February article written by Thomas B. Allen, the Naval Institute and the National Geographic Society concluded that Naval History would be a perfect outlet for such a document. Therefore, look for this special report, accompanied by rare period photos and other documentary data, in the next issue.
Fate of USS Maine Memorial in Question
National media outlets reported last summer that a small Key West, Florida, cemetery—the burial site of 27 sailors who lost their lives in the explosion of the USS Maine 100 years ago this February—was in danger of being sold by the U.S. Navy. While the disposition of the small plot, which includes a sailor memorial, still has not been resolved, Congressman Peter Deutsch (D-FL) has pledged that it will not fall into neglect. According to Deutsch’s Press Secretary, Karen Frey, the memorial probably will be placed under local care, if the Navy opts out of its control under the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) process. The Navy has been responsible for the Maine Memorial since taking it over from the city of Key West in 1964, but the BRAC apparently has deemed it inappropriate as a Navy charge.
The Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Park Service have been named as possible stewards, but the most likely outcome at this time seems to be a transfer of the memorial and cemetery to city or county hands by way of the Federal Lands-to-Parks Program.
In the meantime, the Key West Naval Air Station has prepared the site for the Centennial commemoration of the incident, while Congressman Deutsch’s office is determined to find a way to preserve it.
Cats, Dogs, Pigs, and a Goat Named Bill
The Hampton Roads Naval Museum in Norfolk, Virginia, has opened a new exhibit entitled “The Sailor’s Best Friend: Animals and the U.S. Navy.”
Through actual photographs and artifacts, the exhibit pays tribute to more than 200 years of animals and their relevance to the Navy they served.
The animal stories, pictures, and artifacts in the exhibit are grouped into four basic themes. The first highlights the animals’ utility or working roles; second is pets as mascots (i.e., “Bill the Goat” of the U.S. Naval Academy); third is the “floating zoo,” which tells stories of how several ships turned into contemporary Noah’s Arks; and the fourth theme is animals as symbols.
The exhibit is located just outside the museum’s permanent gallery on the second floor of the Nauticus complex in downtown Norfolk. It runs until 5 May, and several special events and demonstrations are planned in conjunction. The museum is open daily, Mondays from 0900 to 1600 and Tuesday through Sunday from 1000 to 1700—closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day. For more information, call 757-322-2987.
In Memorium: Professor E. B. “Ned” Potter
Naval history has lost one of its greats. Professor Emeritus Elmer B. Potter, known to his many friends and colleagues as “Ned,” died 22 November 1997 of congestive heart failure at the age of 88. Ned was most widely known as a historian and biographer. His works—the monumental Sea Power: A Naval History (which, in the words of Emeritus Naval Academy Professor and Museum Director Kenneth Hagan, “completed the metamorphosis of Pacific warfare into classic or mythic status”), Nimitz, Bull Halsey, and Admiral Arleigh Burke, among others—have been published in many languages and earned him numerous accolades, including the Alfred Thayer Mahan, Samuel Eliot Morison, and John Lyman awards.
Professor Potter is a legend at the U.S. Naval Academy as well. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Richmond, he was commissioned in the Navy and assigned to the Academy in 1941. Leaving Annapolis to serve in the Pacific theater during World War II, he achieved the rank of commander and then returned to the Academy at war’s end, where he eventually became chairman of the history department, a post he held for two decades. Professor Potter taught at the Army, Naval, and National War Colleges and can be seen' in several recent television productions airing on the Arts Si Entertainment Network and The History Channel. He was also a 51-year member of the U.S. Naval Institute.
Ned left his mark on the history profession, the Naval Academy, and indeed the Navy itself, and none will be quite the same without him.
—Lieutenant Commander Thomas Cutler, U.S. Navy (Retired)
Mariner’s Museum Showcases Photos
An exhibit entitled, “A Maritime Album” is now open at the Mariner’s Museum in Newport News, Virginia. Sponsored in part by Paine Webber Group, Inc., and Newport News Shipbuilding, it showcases 100 photos selected by guest curator and photographic historian John Szarkowski from the museum’s archives of more than 600,000 images. Called “the most influential figure in the field of modern photography, Szarkowski began culling photos in 1996, and now the exhibit fills two galleries of the museum and spans the history of photography and its record of life at sea. The exhibit runs through 31 May 1998 and is slated to travel across the country through the year 2000. For more information, call 757- 596-2222 or visit the museum’s website at www.mariner.org.
Constellation Restoration Effort Unveils Coin
While replanking was under way on the 1854 sloop-of-war Constellation last autumn, Gail R. Shawe, Constellation Foundation Chairman of the Board, unveiled a newly minted commemorative coin. The coins are made in part from original copper fasteners pulled from the ship during her restoration and are being sold for $20.00 each. Bearers of the coin are granted a lifetime pass to tour the ship.
In a ceremony at the Fort McHenry Shipyard in Baltimore, board members placed the Constellation coin and a coin honoring the city’s bicentennial on the knee of the ship’s stem. The stem extension was then lowered onto the knee, locking the coins in place. For more information on how to purchase coins—the proceeds of which all go toward the restoration project—write to Constellation Foundation, Inc., Pier 1, 301 East Pratt Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21202-3134, or call 410-539-1797.
Strategic Services Vets to Build School
U.S. Army and U.S. Navy veterans of Detachment 101 of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) are expressing their gratitude to the 10,000 natives, mostly Kachin, who fought with them in intelligence-gathering and guerrilla operations behind enemy lines during World War II in Burma, what is now Myanmar. After the war, they decided to build a school of agriculture, forestry, and vocations for the descendants of their native comrades.
Recently, the government of Myanmar granted Detachment 101 permission to build the school at Lashio, the end of the rail line and the last town on the old Burma road that runs from Rangoon to Mandalay and on to Kunming, China. Myanmar also donated 21 acres for the school and earmarked 200 more for future use.
Aside from the obvious goodwill benefits of such a school, it should also help to woo the highland people away from growing opium in the Golden Triangle where China, Burma, and Thailand meet, an area that produces more than 80% of the heroin that reaches the United States.
For more information about the OSS- 101 Association and the school project, contact Roger Hilsman, Chair of the OSS Detachment 101 School Committee, at P.O. Box 1208, Arlington, Virginia 22310.