Missouri Memorial Honors Veterans
The 70th anniversary of the signing of the Instruments of Surrender ending World War II was honored in a ceremony on board the USS Missouri Memorial in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on 2 September. The original surrender ceremony had taken place on 2 September 1945, in Tokyo Bay, Japan, on board the battleship Missouri (BB-63), the ship having been selected to host the surrender by Missouri-born President Harry Truman. On that historic day, an estimated 2,000 sailors and Marines crowded into every conceivable topside space on board the ship to witness the signing of the surrender documents.
The anniversary event featured traditional military pomp and circumstance as well as a Hawaiian blessing and song. Speeches were delivered by representatives from the USS Missouri Memorial Association; a local high school essay winner, Isaiah Casintahan; Congressman Mark Takai (D-HI); Admiral Scott H. Swift (commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet); and Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI), who gave the keynote address. Among the 700 in attendance were several national, state, and local politicians as well as a number of foreign dignitaries from several nations, including Japan.
Perhaps the most notable attendees were the 11 veterans who were also on board the Missouri for the actual surrender, their ages now ranging from 89 to 94. One veteran, Ray Morse (seaman second class, fire control technician), was in a prime position on board the ship on 2 September 1945 to witness both the arrival of the various national delegations signatory to the surrender and to observe the signing ceremony as well. He attended the 70th anniversary reunion in his original uniform. Veteran Jack Brock (seaman first class) who served as a sideboy during the surrender, shared vivid memories of the “nervous excitement” he experienced as the Japanese delegation boarded the Missouri. He remembered how “the cloudy skies cleared immediately after the surrender was signed and just in time for the huge aircraft flyover that took place immediately afterwards.”
One especially interesting highlight was a display of several items from the surrender, including both pens used by Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz to sign the Instruments of Surrender on behalf of the United States. One of these pens, the Woo “Victory” Pen, is truly a rare artifact in that its whereabouts had been virtually unknown by Western historians since the end of the war. However, it was recently “rediscovered” in a museum in Nanjing, China, where it had been for many years. As it happens, this pen had originally been given to Nimitz before the end of the war by his close friend Y. C. Woo, who did so with the wish that the admiral might someday sign a Japanese surrender with it. And sure enough, Nimitz remembered his friend’s request and used the pen to sign the first copy of the surrender. On returning to the United States, Nimitz returned the pen to his friend, who later gifted it to Chiang Kai-shek.
—J. J. Harding
New Bragging Rights for Old Ironsides
The U.S. Navy’s oldest ship made her newest headlines in September with the emergence of a unique statistic: As of now, the venerable frigate Constitution is the only ship currently in the American fleet to have sunk an enemy vessel in action.
The milestone came with the decommissioning of the Oliver Hazard Perry–class guided-missile frigate USS Simpson (FFG-56) on 29 September. In retaliation for a Harpoon missile launched her way, the Simpson sank the Iranian Kaman-class missile patrol boat Joshan on 18 April 1988, during Operation Praying Mantis in the Persian Gulf (see “One Day of War,” April 2013, pp. 26–33). The Simpson garnered a Joint Meritorious Unit Award and Combat Action Ribbon as a result of the engagement.
It is perhaps as remarkable a testament as any to the superiority of the current U.S. fleet that its only remaining vessel that ever had to send a challenger to the bottom of the sea is a cherished vestige from the Age of Fighting Sail.
The unusual new stature now enjoyed by “Old Ironsides” was first noted on her crew’s Facebook page, then was quickly picked up and spread far and wide by The Washington Post, CNN, and other major media outlets. And so an old verse about the Constitution thus still rings true: “Long may she baffle all their skill/ And as a stubborn bulwark stand/ And what she has been, be so still/ The boast and glory of our land.”
Park Service Grants Funds to Restore Historic Hangar
Damage from Hurricane Sandy to historic Hangar B at Gateway National Recreation Area’s Floyd Bennett Field is being repaired with a $5.5-million National Park Service (NPS) grant. Built by the Navy in 1941, the hangar was pummeled by more than an inch of floodwater during the October 2012 storm, said supervisory park ranger John Daskalakis. But the bigger problem was damage to the roof, doors, and windows from the high winds and driving rain.
“The building was in rough shape,” Daskalaskis said. “There were big openings in the roof where you could see the sky where we previously had some water from leaks.”
The NPS closed the building to the public in March “because the roof was falling in in places,” said Daskalakis. The roof repair was critical to protecting the collection of historic aircraft, including a JRF Goose, UF-1 Albatross, F-4 Skyhawk, PBY-5A Catalina, and a C-47 Skytrain. A group of volunteers from the Historic Aircraft Restoration Project are restoring the planes. The NPS expects to have the work completed and the building reopened by the end of this year.
After Charles Lindbergh’s nonstop 1927 flight from Roosevelt Field on Long Island to Paris, New York City officials wanted an airport within the city limits. A committee selected Barren Island on Jamaica Bay in Brooklyn as the location for the city’s first municipal airport. It was named Floyd Bennett Field in honor of the naval pilot for Commander Richard E. Byrd’s flight over the North Pole in 1926. The airport opened on 23 May 1931, and through the 1930s it was the site of many important record-setting flights.
In 1941 Floyd Bennett Field was sold to the Navy and became Naval Air Station New York. During World War II, it reportedly was the busiest naval air station in the country. The field was used for training and antisubmarine patrol flights. It was also the home of the Naval Air Ferry Command, responsible for the acceptance, commissioning, and ferrying of seaplanes and flying boats from the factories to the fleet.
The Navy turned the property over to the NPS in 1971.
—Bill Bleyer
Navy Opts to Scrap, Rather than Trap, the Barry
A farewell departure ceremony for the Forest Sherman–class destroyer USS Barry (DD-933) will be held at the Washington Navy Yard on Saturday, 17 October. The Barry has been a D.C. fixture as a display ship on the Anacostia River since 1984, two years after she was decommissioned. While the destroyer has inspired naval enthusiasts and schoolchildren for three decades, the Navy deemed the renovations necessary to keep her afloat as a museum ship too expensive. Furthermore, due to the pending replacement of the Fredrick Douglass Memorial Bridge, a swing bridge downriver from the ship, with a fixed-span bridge, the Navy has decided to scrap the Barry this winter rather than have her stuck indefinitely at the Navy yard.
Cold War–Era Secret-Salvage Ship Headed for Scrapyard
One of the most famous “spy ships” in history will soon become scrap metal. No, not the USS Liberty (AGTR-5), scrapped long ago, nor the Pueblo (AGER-2), still held by the North Koreans. The Hughes Glomar Explorer—built by the Central Intelligence Agency—was designed for one mission: to secretly salvage the remains of a Soviet ballistic-missile submarine from a depth of three miles.
The Soviet diesel-electric missile submarine K-129 sank in 1968 in the North Pacific. The remains were located by an U.S. Air Force seafloor system and carefully photographed by the U.S. submarine Halibut (SSN-587). The K-129 was far beyond any existing salvage capability, but presidential adviser Henry Kissinger wanted the one-megaton nuclear warhead remaining in the submarine. Never had a salvage effort of this scope been even seriously considered—attempting to raise a flooded submarine weighing up to 2,000 tons from so great a depth. And the Soviets, who did not know the location of the wreck, would be carefully watching any U.S. activity in the region.
Thus, with the cover story of a seafloor-mining endeavor sponsored by billionaire Howard Hughes, the CIA built the battleship-sized Hughes Glomar Explorer. The engineering challenge, given the codename Project Azorian, was mind-boggling. But using oil-drilling technology, the ship was fitted with a massive lift capacity to hoist the 2,000-ton submarine using a 2,000-ton “claw” to grasp the wreckage, and raised to the surface by steel piping weighing 4,000 tons—an 8,000-ton lift. The secret-salvage ship was 619 feet long and displaced 63,000 tons with her internal docking well (“moon pool”) flooded.
The Hughes Glomar Explorer was on station in the North Pacific in July 1974. Almost immediately she was under surveillance by Soviet vessels. With a complex navigation and station-keeping system, she was able to lower the claw precisely on the K-129 remains. Unfortunately, the ocean floor was harder than expected, and improper pressure loading of the claw led to damaging of the capture device. As the submarine was being raised, the hulk broke because of the damage to the claw, and only the forward 38 feet was recovered—containing two nuclear torpedoes and the remains of several crewmen.
Although the CIA planned to return with the Hughes Glomar Explorer the following year to capture the amidships section of the K-129 with the surviving missile and its nuclear warhead, the secret operation was revealed in the press and had to be abandoned. The ship was transferred to Navy control on 30 September 1976, renamed the Glomar Explorer, and designated a miscellaneous auxiliary (AG-193). Officials in the Navy and CIA looked at potential roles for the behemoth vessel. None materialized: She was too large, too specialized, and too “obvious” for the roles suggested.
In 1978 she was leased for a commercial seafloor-mining venture—which had been the Howard Hughes cover story! The mining effort failed, and the vessel was returned to Navy control in 1980. In 1997 she was modified for use as a commercial drill ship for oil and gas exploration, being configured to drill in water 11,500 feet deep. She was leased from the Navy in 2001 by the Global Santa Fe Corporation on a 30-year agreement to operate as the GSF Explorer. On 19 November 2007, the ship was stricken from the Navy List and in March 2010 the GSF Explorer was purchased outright from the U.S. government for $20 million.
The ship worked on contracts for various oil corporations, drilling around the world. Today, with oil reserves at an all-time high—and hence limited interest in finding new oil sources—the one-time Hughes Glomar Explorer is being scrapped.
—Norman Polmar, coauthor, Project Azorian: The CIA and the Raising of the K-129 (Naval Institute Press, 2010)
What’s Up at the NHHC
Airship Artifact Undergoing Conservation
After 80 years under the sea, a piece of the rigid airship USS Macon (ZRS-5) is finally seeing daylight. Tucked away in the Underwater Archaeology and Conservation Laboratory at the Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC), the three-foot-long duralumin girder framework piece is resting in a solution of citric acid and sodium hydroxide.
Recovered during an August 2015 survey, the girder was one of many pieces riveted to others in the shape of long boxes or triangles, with those boxes forming the structure of one of the world’s largest flying airships. When the zeppelin’s top tail fin was ripped away during a wind shear on 12 February 1935, causing the helium-filled gasbags to rupture, the massive airship with her four FC9-2 Sparrowhawk biplanes and 83 crew members sank into the Pacific waters off Point Sur, California. All but two survived the crash.
Megan Lickliter-Mundon, a PhD candidate at Texas A&M University and researcher with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is working with the NHHC Underwater Archaeology and Conservation Laboratory to stabilize, document, and preserve the girder sample. Results will be compared to another one previously recovered in 1992 so conservators and researchers can better understand the corrosion processes on the aluminum at the site and post-recovery.
The citric acid–sodium hydroxide bath helps bring the metal into a passive state while encouraging salt, which created black-colored pits, to diffuse out of the artifact. Small water pumps gently circulate the solution that is kept at a constant pH level of 5.4 as it gently flows above and beneath the propped-up framework. With pH 7 considered neutral, the ocean’s surface pH level generally tips upward to 8.1.
Along the length of the artifact are sections where the surface appears brighter. “Those are unhappy spots,” explained Lickliter-Mundon. “Those spots indicate where living organisms attached themselves to the frame.” Lickliter-Mundon and Kate Morrand, senior conservator at the NHHC Underwater Archaeology and Conservation Laboratory, are working to boost the long-term stability of the Macon artifact.
What makes the Macon site unique among the thousands of ship and aircraft wrecks managed by the NHHC is its depth and expedient location. At 1,500 feet, it is beyond recreational dive limits and requires remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to access it.
Despite the depth, the Macon remains U.S. government property, is a military grave site, and is protected from unauthorized disturbance under the Sunken Military Craft Act. The wreck site, which is in two distinct fields, is also within the federally protected Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, which encompasses 5,322 square miles of ocean and 276 miles of shoreline. These two layers of protection have potentially saved the four (relatively) intact biplanes from the swipe of a commercial net and helped preserve the wreck for the past eight decades.
“Deep water sites are particularly fascinating,” Morrand said. “The deeper you go, there are cooler temperatures, less light, less oxygen, less chance of disturbance from human interaction so you can have excellent levels of preservation. A site like the USS Macon’s can yield some very interesting information.”
Besides the NHHC and NOAA, a third organization involved in the 2015 survey was Ocean Exploration Trust, which provided the exploration vessel Nautilus using the ROV Hercules. Lickliter-Mundon was on board the Nautilus for the dive, describing the view as Hercules’ light scattered brightly colored fish. The distress in Lickliter-Mundon’s voice is evident in the audio feed (available at www.nautiluslive.org/video/2015/08/18/exploring-uss-macon-dirigible-aircraft-carrier) when she realized the No. 4 biplane’s starboard wing had lost its ribs when the aft spar collapsed onto the ocean floor. The deterioration allowed for a better view of the plane’s fuselage, though, and the remaining biplanes remained roughly in the same condition as they had been nine years earlier. The Navy insignia is still visible on the No. 1 biplane starboard wing. Two of the planes still have their skyhooks in place on top of the airframes.
It is sometimes easier to connect to an aircraft wreck because “you know what you’re looking at,” Lickliter-Mundon explained. “When you come into this wreck site you can immediately see it was a biplane. And at this site, the level of preservation, even with 80-year-old aircraft, you can still see fabric on the wings. I’ve been to World War II aircraft wrecks and there’s no fabric left on the wings. The level of preservation at this site, even with the deterioration to biplane No. 4, is unlike anywhere we’ve seen for aircraft and continues to impress us.”
For more about the 2015 survey and history of the Macon, please see Megan Eckstein’s 19 August article at usni.us/QTy4j.
—Devon Sorlie, NHHC, Communication and Outreach Division