As the transport Susan B. Anthony (AP-72) stood toward the Normandy coast to disembark her troops early on a June morning in 1944, Chief Signalman David P. Fitzgerald, a 24-year-old Milwaukee, Wisconsin, native, wearily drew a mug of coffee from the urn in the chief petty officers’ mess. A veteran of operations off North Africa and Sicily, Fitzgerald sank into the nearest chair. Suddenly, a violent explosion shook the ship, sending the scalding beverage into the young signalman’s face. As the roar of a mine detonating beneath the after part of the transport died away, Fitzgerald instinctively headed for the bridge.
Instinct also governed other men’s movements at that moment. Indicative of the state of training on board the Susan B. Anthony, the repair parties had assembled on their own initiative and hastened to the damaged areas. Knowing that general-quarters instructions required the embarked troops—2,317, all told—to go below, Commander Thomas L. Gray, the commanding officer, decided not to sound that alarm. Instead, he sent every man, save the gun crews and damage-control people, “to fall in at abandon ship stations.” Keeping the ship on an even keel soon would not be a matter of moving inanimate ballast, but of choreographing the movements of flesh and blood.
Built at Camden, New Jersey, by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation and completed in March 1930, the twin-screw steamship Santa Clara carried passengers and cargo for the Grace Line from her home port of New York. For more than a decade she made port calls in Central and South America as well as California. A world war and American entry into the conflict, however, changed all that. At 2250 on 28 February 1942, the Grace Line turned the Santa Clara over to the War Shipping Administration. Hastily converted into a troopship, the vessel made two voyages for the Army Transport Service to the South Pacific before returning to New York.
Delivered to the U.S. Navy shortly after midnight on 7 August 1942, the Santa Clara was renamed the Susan B. Anthony, honoring the vigorous champion of women’s rights, and designated as a transport, AP-72. The ship underwent a hurried conversion, including, most importantly, the installation of Welin davits for landing craft. She was commissioned on 7 September 1942. Lieutenant Commander Gray, who had sailed as master of the Santa Clara before the war, was placed in command, pending the arrival of Captain Henry Hartley, a “mustang” (an officer commissioned from the enlisted ranks) who wore the Navy Cross and the Distinguished Service Medal for his work in submarine salvage. Hartley assumed command on 29 September.
Less than two months later, the Susan B. Anthony participated in Operation Torch, the invasion of French Morocco, during which Hartley’s command performed admirably in its first combat landing. The ship made a second voyage to Morocco before 1942 was out.
Following Torch, Captain Robert R. M. Emmet, commander Transports, Amphibious Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, contended that the Susan B. Anthony “is potentially the best combat loaded [i.e., equipment loaded in the order in which it was required in an assault] transport that, so far, has come to his notice.” He recommended that she “be made available, as soon as practicable, for final conversion.” Emmet’s assessment, however, contrasted markedly with the growing number of memoranda and accompanying route sheets, in the Bureau of Ships (BuShips) files concerning the transport’s stability.
During the first half of 1943, she made two voyages to Oran, Algeria, before taking part in Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily. Ensign Wilmer H. Cressman, a 23-year-old graduate of Muhlenberg College, had been, along with his shipmates, “hoping for a great Fourth of July or perhaps Bastille Day” as the date the invasion would unfold. “But the Allied war-planners,” he later wrote, “decided it would be 10 July . . . to knock Mussolini and Fascism out of Italy.”
Harried by frequent air attacks, the Susan B. Anthony emerged from Husky with only one man slightly wounded, but lost ten LCVPs (landing craft, vehicle and personnel) because of heavy surf breaking on rocks at Point Braccetto, where, Hartley wrote wryly, the boat crews “sailed boldly in where angels fear to tread.” The ship’s gunners shot down two low-flying enemy planes, while “quartermasters, signalmen, messmen, stewards’ mates, engineer’s force, and even hospital corps,” Hartley noted proudly, “volunteered to handle cargo for purposes of expediting unloading.” She was one of the first of her type to do so. Ensign Cressman, who had commanded the decidedly lucky LCVP number 13, concluded, “the job had been well done.”
More trooping followed in 1943, to Algiers and Oran, the British Isles, and Iceland, returning to New York on the last day of the year. After two weeks of upkeep and voyage repairs, the Susan B. Anthony made three voyages in the first four months of 1944 as preparations for the liberation of France proceeded at a quickening pace. On 13 May, she sailed for England once more, standing in to the River Clyde ten days later. On 7 June, one day after Operation Neptune began, the redoubtable transport encountered the mine that would prove fatal.
As the wounded Susan B. Anthony began to settle by the stern, U.S. Brigadier General Sam Williams, commanding the embarked troops, asked Commander Gray if his men could “return . . . to their quarters to recover arms and equipment.” The captain refused the general’s request, contending that the 2,317 soldiers “standing fast at their abandon ship stations, under perfect control and discipline” were serving as human ballast. As Yeoman First Class William E. Smith later recounted, Gray, employing a megaphone, “moved his men around like an expert ballet master” to correct the ship’s list. Chief Signalman Fitzgerald later marveled, “They were land forces, without much experience on the ocean, and yet they were [as] cool and collected about the whole thing as men who had been in the navy for years.”
Sailors in salvage parties passed up arms and equipment to the troops, while damage-control efforts continued. But within an hour of the mining, with his ship settling at an “accelerated pace,” Gray knew that she was doomed. Within the next hour, the transport was abandoned in good order. Eventually, at 0955, Gray told Lieutenant (junior grade) John C. Morrison, the only other man still on board: “Get the hell off.” After Morrison complied, Gray followed.
The Susan B. Anthony “disappeared completely” at 1010. Although one officer and 14 enlisted men had suffered injuries of varying degrees, not a man from the ship’s company lost his life. All 2,317 soldiers reached safety, along with 95 percent of their equipment. When she joined the fleet, BuShips had considered the transport a hurried conversion. But the Susan B. Anthony deserved the accolade Captain Wallace B. Phillips, commander Transports, Amphibious Forces, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, had accorded after Husky: “This vessel most successfully accomplished her mission, and . . . the Commanding Officer and ship’s company are deserving of great credit.”
Susan B. Anthony–class Transport
Displacement: 8,101 tons
Length: 505 feet, 2 inches
Beam: 63 feet, 6 inches
Draft: 25 feet
Speed: 14 knots (economical) 18 knots (maximum)
Complement: 565 officers and enlisted men
Troops: 2,430 officers and enlisted men
Armament: 1 5-inch/51-caliber single-purpose gun
4 3-inch/50-caliber dual-purpose guns
8 20-mm antiaircraft guns
2 .30-caliber machine guns