In the waning months of World War II, U.S. Sailors and Coast Guardsmen trained Soviet naval personnel in the handling of vessels scheduled for transfer to the Soviet Pacific Ocean Fleet for use in the climactic fight against Japan. When the war ended abruptly, the special deal proved to be less than the bargain that it first seemed.
When the U.S. declared war on the Axis powers following the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked the Soviet Union to enter the war against Japan. Instead, Stalin and his USSR steadfastly remained neutral. Finally, in October 1944, with Hitler's Third Reich doomed to defeat, Stalin acquiesced to American requests and set the price for Soviet involvement in the war against Japan. He stipulated that the Allies must establish a reserve of supplies and equipment in the Soviet Far East and endorse the Soviet Union's territorial claims in East Asia. These included transfer of the Kuril Islands to Soviet control and acknowledging what amounted to U.S. and Soviet spheres of influence in northern China, Manchuria, and Korea. At the February 1945 Yalta Conference, President Roosevelt secured Stalin's promise to enter the war two to three months after the defeat of Germany by accepting these terms.
American planners wasted little time in creating a special project (code-named Milepost) to stockpile the requested war materiel. Milepost had a large naval component, known as Project Hula, which comprised not only a substantial Soviet shopping list of aircraft and equipment, but also 250 naval vessels. The vessels would augment existing Soviet naval units and support amphibious operations against Japanese outposts on Sakhalin and in the Kuril Islands.
To help Soviet officers and men make the best use of their warships, the U.S. Navy established a special unit (Navy Detachment 3294) of Navy and Coast Guard personnel to train some 15,000 Soviet sailors and transfer 180 of these vessels to Soviet custody by 1 November 1945, the original target date for the invasion of Kyushu (Operation Olympic). Based at Cold Bay, at the extreme tip of the Alaskan Peninsula, the secret operation was designated Hula-2. Captain William S. Maxwell, U.S. Navy, was in command. Commander John J. Hutson, U.S. Coast Guard, was his deputy and training officer. The Coast Guard presence at Cold Bay was considerable, because of the presence of the frigate crews. This entire vessel type, throughout the Navy, was crewed exclusively by Coast Guard officers and men.
Beginning on 10 April 1945, a Soviet merchant ship carrying 500 men arrived at Cold Bay each day for five days, launching the program. Rear Admiral Boris D. Popov, commander of the 5th Independent Detachment of Soviet Navy Ships, the official unit designation of the Soviet naval contingent at Cold Bay, arrived on 11 April. Captain Maxwell attributed Project Hula's success, in part, to Admiral Popov's cooperative attitude.
Training began immediately. Despite miserable weather, a lack of Russian linguists, and eager but woefully unprepared Soviet trainees, the Russian sailors mastered their tasks, first in a shore-based training program, and eventually in their vessels. Some of the more outstanding personnel became instructors themselves. The Soviet navy men lacked experience in radar and sonar technology, but were good engineers and proficient gunners.
Minor delays occurred because of equipment shortages on board the transfer vessels, inadequate training materials, and damage done to the vessels, often the lightly constructed subchasers, but the Soviet-American team kept to a tight schedule. The May and June departures of convoys leaving for Petropavlovsk on Kamchatka comprised landing craft and large minesweepers. Prior to Soviet entry into the war on 9 August, the Soviet navy had received 100 vessels: 10 frigates (PF), 30 landing craft (LCI(L)), 18 large minesweepers (AM), 19 wooden-hulled minesweepers (YMS), 20 subchasers (SC), and three floating repair shops (YR).
Until ordered by Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations and Commander-in-Chief U.S. Fleet, on 5 September, to cease transfers, crews hoisted the Soviet naval ensign over another 49 vessels: 18 frigates, 6 large minesweepers, 12 wooden-hulled minesweepers, 18 subchasers, and one floating repair shop. Of note, the U.S. crew of USS Hoquiam (PF-5), transferred in August, included African-American Coast Guardsmen. In total, Navy Detachment 3294 had trained some 12,000 Soviet officers and men, including at least one future admiral. The last of the Soviet-manned vessels, a frigate, didn't depart Cold Bay until 17 September.
The atomic attacks, combined with the Red Army's multi-pronged attack on Japanese forces in Manchuria and Korea, starting on 9 August, brought the war in Asia and the Pacific to an abrupt end, precluding a costly U.S.-led invasion of the Japanese home islands. Anglo-American offensive operations halted on 15 August, but fighting between Soviet and Japanese forces continued.
The American-Soviet political relationship had deteriorated since the spring. With Roosevelt's death on 12 April 1945, new president Harry S. Truman inherited a variety of contentious political issues connected to postwar Europe. The successful test of the atomic bomb in July 1945 (and the diplomatic advantages it offered) led the Truman administration to reconsider the desirability of wide-scale Soviet participation in the war, particularly if it meant Soviet involvement in the administration of postwar Japan.
Soviet forces—in some cases, hastily—organized attack and occupation forces, so that their territorial ambitions would not be denied. Vessels obtained at Cold Bay were in the thick of the action, as Soviet naval forces supported ground operations against enemy positions on southern Sakhalin Island (11 August), northern Korea (12 August) and in the Kuril Islands (17 August). While tens of thousands of Japanese surrendered to the Red Army in Manchuria, Japanese defenders at these maritime centers fought tenaciously, giving the Russians a taste of what U.S. Marines and soldiers had experienced during the island campaigns.
The Kuril Islands represented the major objective. On 15 August, Marshall A. M. Vasilevsky, commander-in-chief in the Soviet Far East, ordered the commander of the Kamchatka Defense Zone—flying his flag in T-334 (Hula's ex-USS Augury [AM-149])—to begin the occupation of the chain immediately, starting with an assault on Shumshu, the northernmost island, on 17 August. The ubiquitous LCI(L)S made the occupation possible, but five were lost during the attack, victims of shore batteries. The frigates and large minesweepers, with a main battery of three-inch guns, proved inadequate in the role of gunfire support. Nevertheless, one by one, the islands fell. Stalin considered a Soviet occupation of Hokkaido, but ordered such preparations halted on 22 August. Fighting in the Kuril archipelago ended the next day.
Project Hula satisfied President Roosevelt's enduring objective to link U.S. and Soviet military interests in the North Pacific in opposition to Japan. Yet, even while the last frigates got up steam to depart Cold Bay, Soviet fighters fired on a Navy PBM Mariner seaplane that had flown into restricted airspace over Port Arthur, offering a symbolic end to wartime collaboration. As Soviet-American tensions worsened, Project Hula slipped into obscurity, a footnote to Roosevelt's diplomatic and political legacy. Still, it had a major impact on individual lives, as participants on both sides would later suffer during the Cold War for having once embraced a former ally in cooperation. Even more significant, the Soviet Union and Japan never signed a peace treaty, given the dispute over the "northern territories" (four small islands off Hokkaido that Soviet naval forces equipped with U.S. lend-lease vessels seized in August 1945). Regardless of post-war events, however, Project Hula remains an unparalleled example of wartime allied cooperation.
Richard Russell is associate publisher at Potomac Books, Inc. (formerly Brassey's, Inc.) and the author of Project Hula: Secret Soviet-American Cooperation in the War Against Japan (1997), from which this article was derived. From 1989-1999, he was a historian in the Contemporary History Branch of the Naval Historical Center.