Wreck Likely a German Aircraft Carrier
Poland’s Navy announced in late July that it has identified a sunken shipwreck in the Baltic Sea as almost certainly being Nazi Germany’s only aircraft carrier, the Graf Zeppelin. The Polish oil company Petrobaltic discovered the shipwreck about 38 miles north of the port city of Gdansk. Suspecting it could be the wreckage of the Graf Zeppelin, the Polish Navy sent out a hydrographic survey vessel, the ORP Arctowski.
Commander Dariusz Beczek, commander of the survey ship, stated soon after his return from the two-day expedition to the wreck that “we are 99 percent sure—even 99.9 percent—that these details point unambiguously to the Graf Zeppelin." Experts used a remote- controlled underwater robot and sonar photographic and video equipment to gather digital images of the 850-foot-long ship, according to Polish Navy spokesman Lieutenant Commander Bartosz Zajda. “The analyses of the sonar pictures and the comparison to historical documents show that it is the Graf Zeppelin,” Zajda told The Associated Press. He said a number of characteristics of the shipwreck exactly matched those of the Graf Zeppelin, including the ship’s measurements.
The Graf Zeppelin was launched on 8 December 1938, but never saw action. After Germany’s defeat in 1945, the Soviet Union took control of the vessel and eventually used her as a target ship.
Pearl Harbor Debt Repaid
On 18 May 2006, nearly 65 years after it was earned, one of our nation’s forgotten heroes posthumously received his long overdue recognition. Admiral Harry Ulrich, Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe, presented the Medal of Honor to the family of Chief Water Tender Peter Tomich in a ceremony on board the USS Enterprise (CVN-65) off Split, Croatia.
Tomich lost his life when he went to secure the USS Utah’s (BB-31/AG-16) boilers to prevent them from exploding and to evacuate his shipmates from the space during the 7 December 1941 Pearl Harbor attack. He is among 58 men who still remain on station on board the Utah. For his actions, he earned the medal, and a destroyer escort—Tomich (DE-242)— was later named in his honor.
The Medal of Honor, however, never got to his family. Little was known of Tomich other than he was born in 1893 in Prolog, Austria, immigrated to the United States with his cousin, John Tonic, in 1914, and had served in the U.S. Army, during which time he became a naturalized citizen under the name Peter Tonich. Ten days after his 1919 discharge, he joined the Navy, and, during the period up to Pearl Harbor, he changed his name to Tomich.
Unable to contact his only listed next of kin, the medal was presented on 4 January 1944 to the commander of the Tomich. After the ship was decommissioned, the medal went to the state of Utah—where Tomich was made an honorary citizen—until 1963, when it was returned to the Navy. It was later put on display at the Navy Museum in Washington, D.C.
Rear Admiral J. Robert Lunney, New York Naval Militia (Retired), in 1997 undertook a personal quest to get the medal—the only Navy Medal of Honor since the 1880s to go unclaimed—to Tomich’s family.
Lunney determined that Tomich’s birth name was Petar Herceg-Tonic and, through church records, was able to document that retired Lieutenant Colonel Srecko Herceg-Tonic, a highly decorated veteran of the Croatian Army, is Tomich’s grand-nephew.
Once Lunney shared his findings with the Navy in March 1998, an eight- year battle ensued over the medal. The Navy maintained that it was its property because it had been duly presented to the Tomich’s commander, whom President Franklin D. Roosevelt had designated as Tomich’s representative. Lunney petitioned President Bill Clinton with no success. In May 2000 he was appointed administrator of Tomich’s estate and initiated a federal lawsuit, which a judge dismissed, stating that the President’s denial of Lunney’s request was the only final action needed affecting the custody of the medal. The ruling was appealed and rejected in February 2003. (Lunney’s efforts were published in the August 2005 issue of Naval History.)
A recent encounter in Croatia between a high-ranking Pentagon official and a representative of the family, however, prompted the Navy to reconsider. In March 2006, Navy Secretary Donald Winter verified the records uncovered by Lunney and approved the presentation of a replica medal to Srecko Herceg-Tonic.
Tom O’Brien
Free to a Good Home
Two unique vessels—with equally distinctive places in American naval history—have been offered up by the Navy for placement through the Ship Donation Program. The Sea Shadow (IX-529) and the Hughes Mining Barge 1 (HMB-1) are being offered, but only as a package deal.
The Sea Shadow, with a small water- plane area tri-hull design and resembling a sea-going version of the Air Force’s F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter, was built in 1985 to examine the application of stealth technology to naval vessels. She was developed at Lockheed’s Redwood City, California, facility inside the Hughes Mining Barge, which functioned as a floating dry dock during construction and testing.
While Sea Shadow may be the more interesting of the two visually, the barge clearly has the history. The 4,700-ton vessel was originally built for the top- secret CIA Project Jennifer in the early 1970s to recover the Soviet nuclear- powered submarine K-129 that sank off Hawaii in 1968. The barge features a 180-foot-long, 70-foot-high arched- roof enclosure. This was the “garage” for Clementine, a giant hook that was lowered by a huge pipe string from the Hughes Glomar Explorer. When her ballast tanks were flooded, the HMB-1 submerged and she was floated beneath the Explorer. The barge’s roof was opened and the Explorer's pipe string was attached to Clementine.
For many years after the mission, the barge sat dormant until the Navy decided to use it for the stealth project. Construction of the Sea Shadow took place inside the barge, apparently between 1983 and 1985. Night tests were conducted in 1985 and 1986, with the barge keeping the ship under cover for repairs and replenishment during daylight. The tests were suspended in 1986 and not resumed until 1993, when the ship’s existence was revealed to the public.
Other ships available through the Ship Donation Program include the aircraft carrier Ranger (CV-61), guided-missile cruiser Ticonderoga (CG-47), destroyers Conolly (DD-979) and Edson (DD-946), guided-missile destroyer Charles F. Adams (DDG-2), submarine Trout (SS-566), and the patrol gunboat Canon (PG-90).
USNI Author Named to Committee
The White House and Navy Department in mid-August appointed long-time U.S. Naval Institute author and Naval History contributing editor Norman Polmar to be a member of the secretary of the Navy’s History Advisory Subcommittee, which recommends policy and projects to the secretary of the Navy and chief of naval operations.
Polmar is also a member of the secretary’s other advisory panel, the Naval Research Advisory Committee (NRAC). The NRAC, consisting of 15 members from the scientific, engineering, and corporate communities, provides advice to the secretary, the chief of naval operations, and the commandant of the Marine Corps in the science and technology fields. He was a member of NRAC from 1982 to 1986, and has again served as a member since December 2002. He recently chaired a study looking at potential threats to the Navy and Marine Corps in the period 2015 to 2020 and recommended actions to initiate countermoves.
Polmar is the only person to have served on both advisory committees.
Naval History Symposium Call for Papers
The History Department of the United States Naval Academy invites proposals for papers to be presented at its 2007 Naval History Symposium in Annapolis, Maryland, from 20 to 22 September 2007. For decades, the symposium has been a hallmark of the Academy’s History Department, though the conference was curtailed in recent years because of the 9/11 attacks. The 2007 Symposium will mark its full resumption.
Proposals dealing with any aspect of naval and maritime history are welcome. They should include an abstract not exceeding 250 words and a one-page vita. Panel proposals are also encouraged and should contain an abstract and vita for each panelist. Mail proposals to Dr. Maochun Yu, History Department (12C), The United States Naval Academy, 107 Maryland Avenue, Annapolis, Maryland 21402-5044, or send electronic proposals to yu@usna.edu. The deadline for submitting proposals is 19 January 2007. The program committee expects to finalize the program in March 2007, and final versions of papers are due by 1 August 2007.
A limited number of travel stipends are available to scholars residing outside the United States and to graduate students living within it. Indicate your desire to apply for a travel stipend with your proposal.
The program committee will award prizes to the best papers presented at the symposium. As in the past, selected papers will be published at a later date.
All inquiries should be sent to yu@usna.edu. For more details and updates, visit the Web site at http://www.usna.edu/History/Symposium.htm.
Is She, or Isn’t She?
The USS Slater (DE-766), the sole remaining destroyer escort still afloat in the United States, is in the midst of a total restoration at her Albany, New York, home, with a completion deadline of her 65th anniversary in 2009. While the work is basic to the ship’s survival, more basic than that is the question: Is she the Slater?
The DE was one of four transferred to the Greek Navy in 1951, where, as the Aetos, she served for more than 40 years and steamed more than 700,000 miles. In 1993, she was donated to the Destroyer Escort Sailors Association (DESA) as a memorial and museum.
Among the many who have toured the ship as she undergoes restoration was one crewmember of another DE who claimed that the vessel was his former ship and not the Slater. After 40-plus years of wear, tear, and modification, one can be excused for believing that one ship is another. Is there any incontrovertible proof that the Slater is the Slater?
Ed Simpson, a member of the Slater’s crew during World War II, believes he has it. He recalls being awakened early one morning in 1944 by two yard workers when the Slater was in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. “Are you Simpson? Is your space the IC [information center] and gyro room? Well, you better roll out and come with us, because the yard fire watch has spotted smoke and we think it’s coming from the IC room and we don’t have a key.”
Simpson almost immediately knew what the problem was. Finding space on board the little ship to press a uniform was always difficult, but he had a perfectly-sized wooden bench tucked between the ship’s gyroscope and an amplifier in the IC room that he shared with two buddies. He led the way down through the hatch in the mess deck to the IC room, unlocked the door, and sure enough, a red-hot iron had burned through the wooden work bench. There was no fire, and the compartment was soon cleared of smoke, but there was still the matter of the hole.
Simpson recalled thinking, “My division officer will find out about this tomorrow, he’ll tell the Captain, I’ll get a mast, busted, and won’t get a liberty until 1950.” The yard workers had a brief conversation after which one of them told Simpson, “Well, nobody but the three of us needs to know about this, meet us on the pier at 0800.” Six hours later, Simpson is on the pier and the two workers arrive with a steel plate they had fabricated to fit over the hole in the bench. The plate was discreetly installed, covering the evidence, and nobody was the wiser for the next 55 years.
During a Slater crew reunion on board the ship, Simpson made his way down to the IC room to see if the bench—and the conclusive evidence that this ship was the Slater—was still there. There, undisturbed, just as it was more than a half century earlier was the wooden workbench with the steel patch hiding the evidence. Simpson still isn’t telling which of the three left the iron on the bench.
If that isn’t proof enough, when the destroyer escort’s upper hull was scraped and repainted, it was discovered that the welding guidelines for her original “766” bow numbers were still in place.
Over the past 13 years the volunteers have taken a ship that was ready for the scrapyard and turned her into one of the most authentically restored historic naval ships in the country. When she arrived, the interior of the ship had been thoroughly gutted with the exception of the machinery spaces. With the support of the Navy, Maritime Commission, and many other historic naval ships, all the parts needed to restore the DE to her 1945 configuration have been located, restored, and backfitted. The Slater is on the register of National Historic Places and the museum is chartered by the New York State Department of Education.
The DESA is seeking funding and a facility to complete the restoration’s final stage—work on the underwater hull, which can only be done in dry dock. The Slater, as a private 501c non-profit operation, does not receive operating funding from local, state, or federal sources except for occasional awards for project grants. Located on the Hudson River in Albany, the ship is open Wednesday through Sunday, 1000 to 1600 from April to November. For links to other destroyer escorts and more details of the Destroyer Escort Historical Museum visit the ship’s Web site at www.ussslater.org.
Don Montrym
Archives Access Curtailed
The National Archives, like other Federal departments and agencies, has entered a period of fiscal austerity. On 3 July, they imposed a hiring freeze and, on 25 July, an interim final rule was published in the Federal Register regarding their hours of operation. The rule became effective 2 October.
For research, the Washington, D.C., area facilities will be open 0900 to 1700, Monday through Friday, and no longer have evening or Saturday hours. The National Archives regional archives around the country will continue to operate during core hours, but will modify their extended hours.
Research-room usage during calendar 2005 showed that an average of only 16 percent of all researchers at the two Washington, D.C., area facilities used the reading rooms in the evening, including those who had been there during the day and stayed on. Moreover, an average of only 7 percent of the researchers used the facilities on Saturdays.