Slade Cutter, one of the great submarine skippers of World War II and a member of the College Football Hall of Fame, said when he commanded the USS Seahorse (SS-304), he used his football experience to prepare his crew. "We were a team, and that is how we worked," he recalled. "We trained constantly en route to our patrol area. When we arrived, I would tell the crew that from then on, all calls to battle stations would be the real thing, and they cheered, just as we did before we went out and played a football game at the Academy after a week's hard practice."
When Hollywood's scriptwriters turned out movies built around the Pacific War during and after World War II, the hero usually seemed to be a former Navy football star. When we saw the movie hero jump back into his airplane moments after landing on besieged Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, roar into the sky, and shoot down five Japanese planes before his gas tank ran dry and his guns ran out of ammunition, we were watching Lieutenant Colonel Harold Bauer, a Marine Corps squadron commander who had won three varsity letters as a running back at Navy in the late 1920s. Later in the film, we saw that same hero, about to land his plane, spy Japanese planes attacking a U.S. destroyer. We watched him roar to the defense before being overwhelmed by superior forces and, compounded by his lack of fuel and ammunition, disappearing from the screen.
That was Bauer's final action, for which he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, one of six Navy football players to receive the nation's highest award for valor. Three of the honorees, Lieutenant Commander Alan Buchanan, Lieutenant (junior grade) Jonas Ingram, and Lieutenant Fred McNair Jr., were honored for gallantry during the Battle of Vera Cruz, Mexico, in 1914. Lieutenant Carlton Hutchins earned his medal for saving the crew of his airplane in 1938.
Commander Richard Nott Antrim, a fine halfback at Navy in 1930, was a senior prisoner of war officer who had helped save the survivors of his torpedoed destroyer, the USS Pope (DD-225), before they were captured. He and his men underwent brutal treatment, and he finally snapped as he watched Japanese soldiers continue to beat an officer who already was unconscious. Antrim leaped forward, screaming, "Stop it! Let him alone! If you want to beat someone, then beat me. Can't you see he's nearly dead?"
The guards were so taken aback by this sudden explosion of rage, they ceased the beating, and the camp commandant began improving the living conditions of the 2,700 POWs. Antrim's heroism earned him the sixth Medal of Honor given to a former Navy football player. He survived the war and later retired from the Navy as a rear admiral.
Gordon Underwood, also a football teammate of Bauer and Antrim, commanded the submarine USS Spadefish (SS-411) in World War II. On his first patrol, while working in a "wolfpack," he sank nearly 29,000 tons of a record 64,456 tons of Japanese shipping. Later in the war, while commanding the USS Queenfish (SS-393), Underwood's wolfpack attacked a Japanese convoy trying to reinforce troops in the Philippines. His boat sank an aircraft carrier, while the rest of the pack decimated the convoy. After the attack, Underwood's boat was on the surface, recharging her batteries, when she was attacked by a couple of Japanese sub chasers. The Queenfish submerged, and Underwood then attacked the enemy ships with four torpedoes; three explosions followed.
Such heroic naval action by former football players had its roots long before World War II. In the early 1890s, Worth Bagley won varsity letters each of his four years at the Naval Academy, and his field goals helped defeat Army in 1892. Seven years later, he was the first U.S. naval officer killed in action in the Spanish-American War, losing his life on the USS Winslow (TB-5) during an attack on gun batteries in Cardenas, Cuba.
In that war's first incident, the sinking of the battleship USS Maine in Havana harbor, Albertus Catlin, captain of the 1889 team, was cited for bravery as leader of the Marine detachment on board. He later was cited for bravery at Vera Cruz in 1914, and he led the Sixth Marines in the Battle of Belleau Wood during World War I. He later died of wounds suffered in that action.
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, three former Navy stars were among the officers on board the battleship USS Arizona (BB-39). Alan Shapley, the starting fullback on Navy's 1926 unbeaten national championship team, had commanded the Marine detachment. Another star running back from the 1930s, native Hawaiian Gordon Chung-Hoon, had just joined the ship's company as its top player and coach. And Ulmont Whitehead was star of the 1937-39 Navy teams.
As soon as "battle stations" were sounded, Shapley, who had been detached from duty on the ship but stayed to play for its softball team that afternoon, joined his former unit on the Arizona. Though the entire ship soon was ablaze, he directed the fire of five-inch guns until the forward magazine exploded, dealing the ship her ultimate death blow.
Shapley calmly led his men down a ladder to the quarterdeck, but another explosion blew him into the water, stripping him of everything but his trousers. The other men dove in after him, but he was uninjured, and he led his unit through thick oil, flaming debris, and exploding bombs to Ford Island. When a young Marine corporal named Earl Nightingale faltered, Shapley, though exhausted, dragged the lad by his shirt the last few yards to safety.
Shapley became one of the most decorated Marine officers of the war and retired in 1962 as a lieutenant general. Whitehead was one of nearly 1,200 who perished on board the ship, and Chung-Hoon later performed his own heroics when the destroyer he commanded, the USS Sigsbee (DD-502), was damaged so severely in a kamikaze attack she was flooded to the main deck level. Still, he managed to keep her afloat until she could be towed to Guam for repair. He retired from the Navy as a rear admiral.
Down Battleship Row on that infamous date in 1941, the USS West Virginia (BB-48) was ablaze topside from the Arizona's burning debris, and she was being blown apart below decks by Japanese torpedoes. One of Shapley's 1926 teammates, Claude Ricketts, ignored his place on the ship's sick list and quickly organized an ammunition-passing team that kept her antiaircraft guns firing.
Ricketts also was the West Virginia's damage-control officer, and he plotted how to activate flooding to counter the ship's list and allowed her to sink on an even keel. Thus, the "lost" West Virginia was much easier to raise, repair, and return on line, where she forged a tremendous battle record. Ricketts attained four-star rank and later had a destroyer and an athletic administration building at the Naval Academy named for him.
William "Killer" Kane was the base's officer of the day at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. A former tackle and also a teammate of Chung-Hoon, Kane stayed on duty for 48 hours, caring for the wounded, fighting fires, and organizing survivors into a cohesive unit to battle the disaster. He fought in the 1942 Battle of Santa Cruz and survived the Battle of Guadalcanal, even though he was forced to crash-land his crippled airplane on a carrier's flight deck. For his gallantry, he earned two Distinguished Flying Crosses and the Navy Cross.
Kane was a teammate of Edmond Konrad, who commanded Air Group 17 on board the USS Yorktown (CV-10) in 1945. He led an attack on the allegedly unsinkable super battleship Yamato. His airplanes fired four torpedoes into the ship, causing her to list, exposing her underbelly, and making her a juicy target the following day for the Yorktown's Torpedo Nine, which sank the mighty warship.
Joe Clifton, who had teamed with Bauer as a running back on the 1927-29 Navy teams, had the ideal "football personality"—a combative nature, courage, poise under adverse conditions, daring, and a competitive spirit, according to all who knew him. In World War II, Clifton commanded VF-12 of Air Group 12 on board the USS Saratoga (CV-3). His commanding officer was Howard Caldwell, whose spot Clifton had taken in Navy's backfield following Caldwell's graduation. Clifton earned two Distinguished Flying Crosses for heroism, as well as a reputation for fearlessly disregarding antiaircraft fire and fighter opposition.
In 1944, the Saratoga was detached from Task Force 58 to help train the British carrier HMS Illustrious in combined operations. Clifton and a fellow pilot flew their Hellcats to the British ship, but as Clifton approached for a landing, he could not locate the landing signal officer. On U.S. carriers, that officer stood on the port side of the fantail, but on British carriers, he was stationed on the port deck edge amidships. No matter, Clifton simply landed his aircraft without direction and went directly to the bridge, where he presented himself to a startled British admiral.
The brilliantly talented Fred "Buzz" Borries, considered the Naval Academy's greatest running back until Heisman Trophy winner Joe Bellino came along in the late 1950s (see interview), was in the same mold. Cutter said even as a midshipman football player, "he had a fighter pilot's temperament. . . . That's how he played football and how he flew his fighter plane."
Borries, also enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame, was on board two carriers sunk in World War II: the USS Lexington (CV-2) in the Battle of the Coral Sea, and later, when he was air officer, the USS Gambier Bay (CVE-73) in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. While the Gambier Bay was under heavy fire, he still managed to launch all her aircraft. Then, after leaving the ship, he took charge of 200 men in life rafts for 48 hours until they were rescued.
One supreme act of courage in that war came from Gus Lentz, a tackle and captain of Navy's 1925 team. He sacrificed his life to save his shipmates when the aircraft carrier USS Wasp (CV-7) was sunk during fighting in the eastern Solomon Islands. Lentz, who weighed nearly 240 pounds, was badly wounded and lay in sick bay, unable to move, when the order to abandon ship was given. He knew his size would jam the narrow escape route and endanger the lives of others trying to get topside. So Lentz ordered the medical staff to leave him behind, and he perished with the ship.
One member of Navy's 1930 team, Lou Kirn, commanded VS-3 on board the Saratoga in Task Force 61 in the eastern Solomons. Returning from an attack on the Japanese carrier Ryujo, his group encountered four enemy planes. Acting more like fighter planes than slow-moving scouts, Kirn's group doggedly fought the Japanese planes as low as 500 feet above the water before shooting down three and damaging the other.
One of the great heroes in the submarine force during World War II was Rear Admiral John "Babe" Brown, a Hall of Fame lineman and kicker at Navy in 1910-13. He first commanded Submarine Squadron 4 and later was deputy commander of Submarine Force Pacific Fleet. The force was responsible for sinking 5.7 million tons of Japanese shipping. But Brown was no desk skipper, once embarking on a 42-day patrol on board the submarine USS Narwhal (SS-167) that included a bombardment of the heavily fortified Kurile Islands.
Bill Millican, a running back on Navy's 1926 national championship team, commanded the USS Thresher (SS-200). Patrolling near the Marshall Islands, the submarine sank a Japanese torpedo tender, then survived an ensuing air attack. But unknown to Millican and his crew, his boat was struck by one of the bombs, and the hit caused a small air leak that emitted bubbles. The crew thought they were safely concealed in deep waters, when in fact the Japanese were tracking their bubbles.
Suddenly, the crew heard a banging and clanging on the boat's hull. A Japanese ship was attempting to attach a great grapnel to the Thresher. The sub's stern lifted, and she pitched severely. Millican ordered the Thresher to run in fast, tight circles to free herself, but he knew the odds against escape were so great that he quickly destroyed his code books and other secret documents. Finally, after ten frantic minutes of running in circles, which made secure winching by the grapnel impossible, the boat broke free and escaped.
Vito Vitucci, an all-East guard on the 1941 team, served in the submarines USS Tambor (SS-198) and USS Catfish (SS-339), which together sank a dozen Japanese ships. He was on board the Tambor when the boat attacked two ships and was subjected to an eleven-hour depth charge attack that destroyed her communication antennae. It took the crew a week of repair work at sea before the sub could receive intelligence reports, but she still maintained radio silence.
The Tambor also had unspent torpedoes, so she resumed the patrol and sank another enemy ship before finally returning to Pearl Harbor. "We had been out of contact for so long that we were declared 'overdue and presumed lost,'" Vitucci recalled. "You can imagine the effect that had on my wife, who then was six months pregnant."
One of Vitucci's teammates was John "Jake" Laboon, a strapping 6-foot 2-inch, 200-pound end who made the all-East team in 1942. His nickname was "Sleepy Laboon," a takeoff on Sleepy Lagoon, a popular song of that time, because he had been knocked almost senseless making a tackle during a scrimmage against the National Football League champion Chicago Bears.
Laboon was in the submarine USS Peto (SS-265) in World War II when he dived overboard to rescue a downed Navy aviator stranded on a reef while he and his submarine were being strafed by Japanese aircraft. He was awarded a Silver Star for his heroism. After the war, he resigned from the Navy and entered the Jesuit order to become a priest. He returned to the Navy as a chaplain, and for the next quarter-century, "Sleepy Laboon" was known as "Father Jake" to millions of Navy and Marine personnel. He served on the ground in Vietnam and earned the Legion of Merit with a combat "V."
Father Laboon was the first chaplain assigned to a ballistic-missile submarine squadron and was fleet chaplain of the Atlantic Fleet when he retired in 1980. While senior chaplain at the Naval Academy, he also helped coach the school's plebe football and lacrosse teams. Today, the USS John Laboon (DDG-68) is part of the Navy's surface force.
Laboon was not the only former Navy player who distinguished himself on the ground in Vietnam. Two team captains, Phil Monahan, who led the famed 1954 "Team Named Desire," and his successor in 1955, John Hopkins, were highly decorated Marines.
Monahan's football captaincy was marred by a string of knee injuries that limited his playing time to about 30 minutes in a season that Navy capped by winning the Sugar Bowl. But his coach, Eddie Erdelatz, summed up his efforts when he said, "He gave us 30 minutes of playing time, but he gave us 100 years of leadership." That spilled over into his Marine Corps service. After two combat tours in Vietnam, he was awarded the Silver Star and Bronze Star with a Combat "V," plus a host of other decorations. He later became a major general.
Hopkins, an All-American tackle at Navy, likewise became a major general and served as deputy commanding general of the First Marine Expeditionary Force in Operation Desert Storm. During one of his Vietnam tours, he was a senior advisor to a South Vietnamese Marine unit that was ambushed by the North Vietnamese Army. Hopkins donned the unit's radio backpack and directed an air-support operation. When mortar rounds severely limited the escape route, he directed a Navy A-4 attack aircraft to drop napalm on the enemy. Soon, the target area around his position became an inferno. Miraculously, Hopkins survived, though the handset on his radio was shot in half, and two bullets were lodged in his radio backpack. Had he not been wearing it, the bullets would have killed him.
Like every former football player who has been forced to compete on the field of unfriendly strife, Hopkins, Monahan, and all the others who represented the Navy and Marine Corps in wartime learned their lessons well in the rather benign atmosphere of blocking and tackling.