Fitting Way to Finish
Thunder and lightning heralded the Navy's unique NR-1 as she pulled into port at the New London, Connecticut, submarine base on 23 July. The occasion was the end of her final voyage capping a nearly 40-year service career. The tiny nuclear-powered submarine is the Navy's only deep-diving ocean engineering and research boat. Although her reactor core is good until 2012, the Navy has not budgeted for maintenance to run the sub to the end of the core's life, and there are no plans to replace her. The boat will be inactivated by the end of the year.
The NR-1's skipper, Commander John P. McGrath, said that he and his 12-man crew completed three successful missions during their final four-month deployment. He could not discuss two of them for security reasons. The third, however, was another story: They helped in the search for John Paul Jones' legendary Bonhomme Richard.
"I couldn't think of a more fitting way to write the final page in this ship's history than by searching for the Bonhomme Richard," the commander said.
What they found, however, remains a secret—for the time being. Neither the researchers at the Ocean Technology Foundation in Groton, which is overseeing the search, nor the NR-1 crew are certain whether one of the shipwrecks they saw off Flamborough Head, England, is in fact Jones' flagship. "We investigated 26 wrecks," McGrath said, "and we have one candidate that is very intriguing and probably warrants further investigation."
The NR-1 crew will remove the submarine's equipment from her support ship, the Carolyn Chouest, in preparation for the inactivation process at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, which will culminate in a 21 November ceremony in Groton.
There is an official request for the NR-1 to remain in Groton as a museum ship at the U.S. Navy Submarine Force Museum, home of the first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus (SSN-571).
Significant Trafalgar Find
A recently discovered log put up for auction in July provides an eyewitness account of the Battle of Trafalgar by one of its heroes. William Hargood was captain of the 74-gun HMS Belleisle, which was at the heart of the 1805 battle—the second ship in the lee column—when Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson defeated the Franco-Spanish fleet. Nearly a quarter of Hargood's crew, men and officers, were killed or injured before the ship-of-the-line was taken out of the fight. Overall, the battle claimed the lives of 449 British sailors and marines, including Nelson's.
The document, dated the day of battle—21 October 1805—and verified by the National Manuscripts Department at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, is believed to be Hargood's personal log of the battle. It also describes the conditions prior to the combat. The log notes that the fight would take place in "light airs and hazy weather, with heavy swell."
Hargood later wrote:
At daylight we saw the enemy's fleet bearing east nine miles, consisting of 33 sail of the line, five frigates and two sloops.
5.40: Answered the general signal to form the order of sailing.
6.00: Answered the general signal to bear up and sail large and prepare for battle. Made all sail, bearing down on the enemy. Answered the general telegraph signal from Lord Nelson that England expected every man to do his duty.
The author's descriptions of the battle are brief and clinical:
12.08: Commenced fire on the enemy.
12.10: Cut the stern of a Spanish 80-gun ship.
1.30: Heavy fire on both sides. Our ship became totally unmanageable. Most of the sails and rigging being cut away.
3.15: One of our ships passed our bow and took the fire of an enemy's ship.
3.25: The Swiftsure passed our stern and cheered us.
He further describes the scene after the battle: "The action ceased. People were employed securing the guns, cleaning and pumping ship. Strong gales and squally at the end."
The Belleisle, closely following HMS Royal Sovereign into the enemy line, was at one time firing at the Fougueux and the Santa Ana simultaneously. Despite capturing the Argonauta, the Belleisle was eventually dismasted with 33 dead and 93 wounded, but kept flying her flag for 45 minutes until other vessels came to her rescue. Hargood survived the battle and later rose to the rank of admiral.
Under New Leadership
On 24 June retired Rear Admiral Jay A. DeLoach took the reins as the U.S. Navy's director of Naval History and director of the Naval Historical Center.
"I have always loved history, and this is a job I have always wanted," he said. "At the Naval Academy I wanted to major in history, but the need at the time was for engineers, particularly nuclear engineers, and that is what I became. But my first love has always been history."
Less than a month after taking charge, the admiral revealed his 2008 Roadmap for Naval History. It is the result of research conducted before taking his new positions. He consulted with the Navy's history stakeholders, the leadership of the other services' historical organizations, and key members of the Naval Historical Center.
"The central theme of the roadmap is putting out historical products with a purpose," said the admiral. "These products must be accurate and relevant, world-class history for a 21st-century Navy and reflect the Navy's one message, many voices, philosophy." DeLoach believes that the term "naval history" includes both the Navy and Marine Corps and wants closer ties with all the Sea Services.
The roadmap calls for greater coordination and outreach by the historical center and from the highest levels of the Navy, such as the Secretary of the Navy and Chief of Naval Operations, to the deck plate forces in the Fleet and the Marine Corps.
Save Ewa Field
A resident of Ewa Beach, Hawaii, is on a one-man quest to save from development the former Ewa Marine Corps Air Field, one of the preliminary targets of the 7 December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Zero fighters strafed the nearly 50 Marine aircraft at Ewa Field before the first raid on Pearl Harbor minutes later. Four Marines were killed during three waves of attacks.
"Despite the recommendations that [it] qualifies for the National Historic Register, qualifies for national monument status, qualifies for national battlefield status, and the National Battlefield Protection Program," John Bond said, the Navy has other plans.
Bond, an amateur historian, is pursuing a suggestion from a Pearl Harbor survivor for the field to become a new national veterans cemetery. The National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl has no more space for in-ground burials.
He is trying to rally last-minute support as the Navy, which owns the land, finalizes plans to lease nearly 500 acres to a development company for 40 years with an option to take title to the property. Much of that land includes the old field's runways.
For information on how you can help save Ewa Field, visit Bond's Web site, www.december7.com.
Significant Contributions Honored
Historian Allan R. Millett has been selected to receive the 2008 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing. The $100,000 honorarium, citation, and medallion, sponsored by the Chicago-based Tawani Foundation, is to be presented at the library's annual Liberty Gala on 4 October at Chicago's Drake Hotel.
The award recognizes a living author for a body of work that has profoundly enriched the public understanding of American military history. Dr. Millett, director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies and Ambrose Professor of History, University of New Orleans, and the Major General Raymond E. Mason Jr. Professor Emeritus of Military History at Ohio State University, is a specialist in the history of America's military policy, 20th-century wars, and military institutions.
A retired colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, he is author of many books, including Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps (Macmillan, 1980); The Politics of Intervention: The Military Occupation of Cuba, 1906-1909 (Ohio State University Press, 1968); and co-author of For the Common Defense (Free Press, 1984) and A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War, 1937-1945 (Belknap Press and Harvard University Press, 2000).
Up from the (Not So) Deep
In late July, U.S. Navy and Army divers raised a former Russian cruise missile sub that had sunk in the Providence River, Rhode Island, during an April 2007 storm. The heavy storm surge combined with the exhaust flow of nearby pumps flooded the former K-77, known as Juliett 484, with an estimated 575,000 gallons of water through weather proof—but not watertight—hatches installed to make the boat accessible to tourists. She rested in 30 feet of water, with the bottom 15 feet of her hull trapped in mud.
Members of the Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit Two, a Navy expeditionary salvage unit out of Little Creek, Virginia, and a contingent of Army divers had been working at the Providence site since May, using the project as a training mission. The divers patched the hatches and tunneled through the mud to put bands beneath the submarine that were then attached to inflatable pontoons. The water was pumped out as the pontoons were inflated, refloating the boat.
Frank Lennon, director of the Russian Submarine Museum, said he would have to assess the sub's condition before deciding what to do with the recovered boat. His options range from restoration to scrapping.
The Juliett 484 was launched in 1965 and served in the Soviet Union's Northern Fleet until her decommissioning sometime between 1991 and 1994. She was used as a restaurant in Helsinki, Finland, and a museum ship in St. Petersburg, Florida, before being purchased in 2002 by the USS Saratoga Museum Foundation and moved to Collier Point Park in Providence. The Russian Submarine Museum opened to the public in August 2002.