“A National Treasure on the Brink”
(See D. Hutchinson, pp. 30-31, February 2002 Naval History)
John Carter, President, Independence Seaport Museum
I am of two minds concerning Mr. Hutchinson’s article. On the one hand, I would like to thank him for what I assume was his well-intentioned attempt to call attention to the condition of the Olympia (C-6). Unfortunately, his descriptions are somewhat dated and generally uninformed. What troubles me greatly about the article is his one-sided description of the state of the Olympia, the use of unauthorized photographs, and the failure to get timely comments from the museum to be used as a sidebar or companion article.
What was not mentioned in the article is that the museum did not have responsibility for the Olympia until January 1996. We never had any intention of managing the vessel, but we took steps to assume control of the Olympia—and the World War II submarine Becuna (SS-319)—when the independent Cruiser Olympia Association declared it no longer could care for the vessel or carry out the necessary restoration needed to repair four decades of neglect.
The Olympia represented an immense responsibility, considering the museum had just completed a major fundraising campaign, renovated a 120,000-square-foot waterfront site, and moved its entire operation to a new site in 1995. As a maritime preservation organization, however, the trustees and staff believed the museum had to step in, raise necessary funds, and stabilize the vessel while long-term preservation plans were formulated.
Our first priority was to protect the vessel from further deterioration. After careful assessment in 1996 (and the removal of asbestos in public spaces), the entire exterior fabric was water blasted and recoated by an expert large-structure painting firm with funding from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Second, a new waterproof membrane was added to the decks to stop harmful water penetration that was causing further deterioration to the hull. Had Mr. Hutchinson stopped by the vessel in 1997 he would have seen the gleaming white hull and buff superstructure the vessel has presented to the public since that date. So, I can only assume he indeed is “writing history” and has not visited the vessel recently.
The Ship Donation Program Office of the Navy’s Sea Systems Command makes annual inspections (an underwater survey was conducted in 2001) and seems to be satisfied with the work the museum is doing. Other agencies such as the State Historic Preservation Office and the Historic Landmark Office of the National Park Service also are satisfied. We all would hope for faster progress, but these things take time and extraordinary amounts of money.
In 1998, the museum began removing the outdated and unprofessional exhibits—most of which had nothing to do with the Olympia’s history. These exhibits were not removed because of the deteriorating conditions of the deck and hull (we had repaired these problems), but because they had little to do with the Olympia, hid significant parts of the vessel that had their own story to tell, and because, after years on display in a poor environment for artifacts, the few remaining Olympia-related documents and artifacts were in need of preservation.
The museum’s interpretive plan is to let the ship tell her own story by restoring her to an appearance of being in service. Minimal signage in the form of small descriptive labels will be the general rule, and an audio tour will be developed to allow visitors to learn as they self-tour. A permanent exhibition within the main museum building about the Olympia, which opened in 2001, will be maintained. Here, visitors can see objects associated with the ship’s history, and learn the broader story of the ship and associated events and personages.
In 1998, the museum also engaged a ship preservation consultant, Donald Birkholz, who has worked in ship preservation projects all over the United States and beyond, to spend a year at the museum and write a historic structures report for the Olympia. Don and his crew pored over the ship from stem to stern and produced a 160-plus-page “bible” for the restoration of the vessel. The management synopsis lays out a six-year plan for restoration and relocation of the vessel that in 1999 dollars would cost an estimated $20 million.
The museum’s long-range planning committee examined Mr. Birkholz’s report and incorporated the basic plan into the museum’s latest five-year, long-range plan, which was approved by the board in December 2000. Fundraising on a serious scale already has begun on the plan, which now has grown to nearly $30 million— caused by an increased scope of work and inflation.
It is important to remember several things. As early as the museum’s last long- range plan in 1995, the Olympia was not even in the picture—much less her side- kick, the Becuna. The museum’s plan was to complete all three phases of development of its building and focus on its exhibits and programs. The Olympia, owned and cared for by a totally separate organization in 1995, was going to be an interesting adjunct for our visiting public. Instead, the museum has spent more than $1.5 million stabilizing the vessel, developing a sound plan for restoration, and hiring the expertise to take care of this significant asset.
Mr. Hutchinson and I can agree the Olympia is a national treasure. The museum worked hard to ensure she was awarded official project status by the Save America’s Treasures Program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. But context is important when discussing preservation issues, and Mr. Hutchinson falls short in both understanding (and talking with) museum officials and updating his knowledge about the Olympia before writing this article.
I do urge readers to write their congressional representatives about the Olympia and the preservation effort under way. In 2001, we thought we might see some serious federal dollars come to the project, before 11 September seemed to change everything for everyone.
“Stoofs, Trackers, and Hunter-Killers”
(See N. Polmar, pp. 12-14, October 2001 Naval History)
Robert W. Cermak
This article ended by listing the foreign countries still flying S2F Trackers. In addition to these, the S2 still is flown extensively in California during fire season. Years ago the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection acquired a fleet of S2s from the Navy and modified them into aerial tankers. This aircraft is well suited to the job because of its capacity, speed, visibility, and maneuverability. Flying air tanker missions is dangerous because of smoke, heat, mountainous terrain, and unpredictable winds. Most tanker pilots have extensive experience and consider flying air tankers a challenge equal to flying during military operations. As of this year, 17 air tanker pilots have died on the job in California in the past several decades.
Other Navy aircraft have been converted to air tanker use as well. In the 1960s the PBY, TBM, and Bearcat were used. In 1962, another firefighter and I were attacking the head of a fire on the Plumas National Forest. We had only 50 feet of line to complete, but we were exhausted by our efforts. We thought we had lost it, when a TBM air tanker roared overhead and laid a retardant drop right on the head of the fire. This gave us a few minutes rest and allowed us to complete the line. That one drop probably prevented a 40-acre fire from becoming a 1,000-acre fire. One of the favorite large air tankers used today is the PV Ventura, two of which fly often from Chico Air Base 40 miles north of our home.
Vice Admiral Jerry Miller, U.S. Navy (Retired)
Norman Polmar always has the facts. History demands, however, that his account of the demise of the antisubmarine carrier receive some elaboration. When Admiral Elmo Zumwalt became the Chief of Naval Operations in 1970, he launched an aggressive program to fix a lot of things. One key program was a rejuvenation of the surface warfare community, an admirable objective and one where he had a lot of success. To pay for some of that rejuvenation, he took on the aviation programs of the Navy. The antisubmarine carrier had been proved during the submarine battles in the Atlantic during World War II. Three decades later, the strategy embracing their role was sound. The aircraft on board (the Stoofs), however, were outdated and needed replacements—the new S-3s. It originally was planned to place these new planes on the antisubmarine carriers. The program had been approved and was well under way. Because of the money crunch, however, Admiral Zumwalt gave naval aviation a choice: give up the S-3 and keep the antisubmarine carriers, or keep the S-3 and scrap the carriers. It was a tough choice. Vice Admiral Thomas Connolly was the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Air at the time.
The proposal to add the S-3’s antisubmarine role to the fighter/attack missions of the attack carriers was not very attractive. Nonetheless, the S-3 was vital to countering the increasingly effective Soviet submarine threat. So, reluctantly, it was decided to give up the antisubmarine carriers. At the time it was recognized that in case of actual conflict, many of the fighter and strike aircraft on the attack carriers would have been offloaded and replaced with S-3s. That scenario never presented itself, but it always was in the back of the minds of most operational commanders.
Captain Lefteris Lavrakas, U.S. Navy (Retired)
In 1965 I reported on board the USS Yorktown (CVS-10) as chief of staff to the admiral who commanded Antisubmarine Warfare Group 3. The Yorktown carried S2Fs and SH-3s that, along with the accompanying destroyers, formed a pretty impressive hunter-killer force. I found Norman Polmar’s article highly accurate in its description of the strategy and tactics associated with antisubmarine warfare in the decades after World War II. A deployment of an antisubmarine carrier to the Vietnam Theater was not as dramatic or as effective in a fighting sense as the attack carriers that provided strike aircraft. Our carrier, however, with her twin-engine S2Fs and sonar-dipping SH-3 helicopters, was indeed a force to be reckoned with, and would have been more so had Russian or Chinese submarines participated in the war. Perhaps the most important of all our units to the campaign against North Vietnam were our armored helicopters, which picked up any downed pilots. While on station in the Gulf of Tonkin, we requisitioned a friendly submarine that permitted both fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft to engage regularly in antisubmarine exercises. One of the unit’s practices included exercises against the submarine in shallow water. A number of Mk-44 and -46 torpedoes that were used against the sub ultimately were sent to China Lake laboratories for their evaluation. The data from this was of signal importance, and the training was great for morale.
“River Raid on Korea”
(See M. Bartlett and J. Sweetman, pp. 43-45, December 2001 Naval History)
Richard S. Greeley
Colonel Bartlett and Dr. Sweetman have written an extremely well-researched and accurate story. My source for saying this is the diary of Daniel Williams, a Marine who served with the expedition to Korea in 1871, which came down intact to my grandson Daniel Hotis Greeley, through Donald H. Williams, the diarist’s grandson. Daniel Williams served as a drummer boy with the Union Army in the Civil War starting at age 11, then joined the U.S. Marine Corps, and after the raid on Korea joined the U.S. Navy. His diary gives an almost day-by-day account of his activities on board the steam frigate Colorado,beginning with her commissioning in February 1870.
Williams cites one additional reason not mentioned by the authors of this article for the entry of U.S. naval forces into Rose Roads. In 1870, the Sherman, a U.S. merchant vessel, had foundered in a severe storm off the coast of Korea, and local villagers had picked up the crew. Previously, the Korean government had for many years declared its territory off limits to foreigners. The villagers, “brutes, bent upon destroying their [captives’] lives in the old cannibalism style,” butchered the Sherman’s survivors. The Colorado was under sealed orders upon her commissioning in Brooklyn, New York, to rendezvous with the U.S. Asiatic Fleet in Nagasaki, Japan, and proceed to Seoul to investigate the fate of the Sherman’s crew and obtain satisfaction from the Korean government.
Upon reaching Nagasaki, Rear Admiral John Rodgers found, as Williams’s diary continues, “the English Standard papers both from Hong Kong and Shanghai and our leading newspapers from NY ... in which full accounts were published showing that Korean hostile natives were continuing butchering our American sailors whenever any were unfortunately shipwrecked and picked up by those hostile natives." It is no wonder the admiral ordered a full attack on the forts along the Salee River when his fleet was fired on, after the low-level Korean delegation had been assured that the U.S. fleet had come “on a friendly mission to talk to their King on the basis of a treaty which we hoped would be in a spirit of good friendship and be accepted.”
“The Ultimate Helldiver”
(See N. Polmar, pp. 12-14, December 2001 Naval History)
Captain Theodore L. Stoddard, U.S. Naval Reserve (Retired)
Norman Polmar noted that “a young SB2C pilot . . . recalled that the plane ‘was predominant for running out of gas and landing in the water,”’ and that the Helldiver’s nickname was “the Beast.” As a former radioman/gunner in Martin PBM Mariner seaplanes, I recall my shipmates’ slightly more pejorative sobriquet: SB2C stood for “SonovaBitch2ndClass.”
A. R. Banks
In a recent phone conversation with former shipmate Steve Puttera, a former flight deck chief in the Enterprise (CV-6), I asked Steve if he remembered the occasion when “Big E” took aboard her first batch of SB2Cs. I witnessed that first “landing” from the inboard catwalk of the island structure. The date was 16 August 1944. Steve told me he never would forget it: When the first plane’s tailhook engaged the arresting cable, the engine separated from the firewall and careened into the crash barrier and the landing gear collapsed. The pilot and rear seat man were unscathed. That first Helldiver landing on the Enterprise left Bombing Squadron 20 aviators and flight deck personnel forever leery.
“Flagship Portsmouth”
(See W. Galvani, p. 72, October 2001 Naval History)
William M. Kendall
A minor addition to William Galvani’s article on Portsmouth might encourage U.S. visitors. Do not rent a car, since adding the time of getting a car, fighting London traffic, and coping with driving on the other side of the road will discourage almost anyone with only a few days of holiday from getting down to Portsmouth. It is far easier to take the train; take one direct to Portsmouth Harbour. An express takes about an hour, and as the train pulls into the station you can see HMS Warrior almost alongside, as well as HMS Victory behind the Navy yard wall. The trip is a perfect day out from London.