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Rendezvous in Reverse
(Editor’s Note: The writer of this commefit is the well known author “Alec Hudson.”)
Captain W. J. Holmes, U. S. Navy (Ret.).—Captain Layton’s “Rendezvous in Reverse” conjures in my mind the awesome concept of the Japanese General Staff gathered around the conference table eagerly awaiting the current issue of The Saturday Evening Post and Alec Hudson’s newest fiction, so that they might plan their next operation. It is unfortunate that Captain Layton has allowed his imagination to mar an otherwise sound and important piece of historical research. He has uncovered much new material about the March, 1942, bombing of Pearl Harbor, and he has tied his data together in a very commendable manner. But the truth is that the Japanese did not have to depend upon Alec Hudson and The Saturday Evening Post for plans involving the fueling of seaplanes from submarines. Such possibilities were well known the world wide.
Any parallel between the plot of “Rendezvous” and Japanese operations may more plausibly be attributed to the sound tactical concept of both Alec Hudson and the Combined Fleet Staff. Allegations that “Rendezvous” directly inspired the Japanese plans for the March bombing of Pearl Harbor would be only amusing if it were not for the possible influence they might have on future naval censors. That that influence might be dangerous is exemplified by the sequence of events leading up to the publication of “Rendezvous” in the first place.
A story based on the refueling of seaplanes by submarines was first suggested to me by Erd Brandt, associate editor of The Saturday Evening Post, in April, 1940. I replied that although I had no access to information that any such operations were being practiced, I suspected that they were, and the very fact that they were treated as a secret ruled against my writing such a story. I then learned that the June 22, 1940, issue of the Post would carry as an illustration of Jamieson’s story “Attack,” the picture of a seaplane being refueled from a submarine. Yet even when I learned that “Attack” had been approved by the Navy Department for a motion picture production, I did not use the plot suggested.
Lieutenant Commander Mayers, R. N. published his book Submarines, Admirals and Navies in 1940. It included some interesting speculation on submarines and seaplanes, confirming that refueling operations were not alien to the Admiralty. Time on October 28, 1940, published a report that Italy was using submarines to refuel seaplanes. There were other outbreaks in public print. It appeared to me that there was no longer any virtue in treating the idea as a deep dark secret. I wrote the story “Rendezvous,” and I must repeat, it was pure fiction, without benefit of access to either our or the Japanese plans for the future.
The story was submitted for review to the Office of Naval Intelligence in November 1940, prior to submitting it to The Saturday Evening Post. A short time afterward, a Marine on a motorcycle drove up to my door, and I signed for a confidential letter. It regretted that the Navy Department considered it inappropriate at the time to give any publicity to the subject of refueling planes from submarines. The copy of “Rendezvous” which I had submitted was retained for Navy Department files.
This probably would have ended the matter had it not been that a certain well known
Navy Public Relations officer came to Pearl Harbor about that time, and through mutual friends, we met. He asked why he had seen no recent,stories of mine, flattering me by asserting that my stories were of great value to Navy public relations. I told him that my work at the University of Hawaii left only the summers in which to write, and that nearly all the past summer had been devoted to a story which Naval Intelligence had suppressed. He read the story (note for Naval Intelligence: any sensible author keeps a carbon!) and expressed the emphatic opinion that in the best interests of the Navy, the story should be published. At his suggestion I revised it and resubmitted it, calling the attention of the Navy Department to a few of the many occasions that refueling of seaplanes from submarines had appeared in public print.
In April, 1941, I was called to Pearl Harbor to receive a short communication from the Office of Naval Intelligence. After reconsideration, the story was released for publication provided two deletions were made. Both deletions were easily made, but one of the requested deletions was revealing of the state of Naval Intelligence at that time.
It was requested that I delete “any reference to reporting enemy position by ‘square’ i.e. grid position.” Now I had used a grid position mainly because I did not want to connect my story with any definite geographical area such as Captain Layton has assumed. The idea of a grid was suggested to me by the German use of such a system at the Battle of Jutland, and was, therefore, modern in the sense that the German grid had been widely publicized only twenty years before. But in a larger sense the use of a grid probably goes back to the dawn of navies, and it would not be surprising to find that Themistocles used some simple grid to make his rendezvous at Salamis. Perhaps a short course in naval history might be required of censors.
Anyway, the story was published in August, 1941. It subsequently appeared as a book published by Macmillan, and it was reprinted in Australia. The war came. I was back on active duty in the Navy and on watch in Combat Intelligence at Pearl
Harbor the night of the March bombing. I recall the conjecture that the bomb explosions were the result of careless jettisoning of a bomb load by one of our returning planes. In fact, if there had been no story “Rendezvous” to dramatize seaplane-submarine cooperation in the minds of a few key U. S. Naval officers, the whole thing might have been dismissed as just such an incident. Many Honolulu citizens think to this day that that is what really happened that night in March, 1942.
Secrecy is a two-edged sword. It must be used, and fearlessly used, of course, but censors are apt to concentrate on the edge toward the enemy and forget the danger of its other aspect. A censor is, after all, human. In cases of doubt he is apt to suppress a story simply because that decision can easily be reversed and is much less apt to get him into trouble. The decision to release a story shortly becomes irrevocable and lays the censor opent to everybody’s criticism. Suppression is a secret operation, and its harmful results are much more nebulous. In the case of “Rendezvous,” rather than shuddering at the improbability that the story may have suggested an abortive operation to the Japanese, consider this somewhat more plausible series of probabilities: (a) If “Rendezvous” had not been read by some of our key Navy personnel, the solution to the March bombing of Pearl Harbor might not so readily been determined, (b) We might not have so quickly connected up French Frigate Shoals with submarines and seaplanes. (c) We might not then have moved to deny French Frigate to Japanese submarines, and as Captain Layton has now disclosed, it was the presence of our forces at French Frigate that prevented a Japanese seaplane reconnaissance from there in the Midway campaign, (d) If the Japanese had used submarines at French Frigate to supply a seaplane reconnaissance they might have discovered our carriers, as Captain Layton has pointed out. Surprise was one of our greatest assets at Midway. Had we lost it, the results might have been far different.
A tenuous series of “ifs,” I will admit, but an example of the weight of responsibility undertaken by a censor when he suppresses a story for inadequate reason. Even if there was a direct connection between “Rendezvous” and “K Operation”—and it is most improbable that there was—the publication of that story still leaves a big balance in our favor. Who can say then, that if some future timid censor turns thumbs down on another story, for reasons no better than for which “Rendezvous” was first suppressed, he might be working most effectively for the enemy?
In conclusion, not everyone was in agreement with the Navy Department and with Captain Layton that “Rendezvous” was so plausible and authentic that there was danger that the Japanese might adopt it as their operation plan. I have in my files the following interesting letter to the Editors of The Saturday Evening Post.
August 2, 1941
Gentlemen:
I have just finished reading your serial “Rendezvous” by Alec Hudson.
It is so impossible, improbable, and inconsistent, I had to write you.
As a retired commander in the U. S. Navy would suggest you either have Navy man write your so-called fiction, as it is no article, or else have Mr. Hudson write about street cars, where he undoubtedly rides.
The facts, incidents, and exposures of this “blah” lead me to ask you to not print the second episode. Bill Upton’s dumb experiences show more knowledge.
Signed:______________________________
Oh well, a writer can’t please everyone.
A Japanese Q-Ship
(See page 533, May, 1953, Proceedings)
Caitain E. W. Grenfell, U. S. Navy.— I read the article on the “Q” ship by First Lieutenant Richard W. Smith, U.S.M.C., with some interest, particularly when I arrived at the part about the “Q” ship Penshurst being commanded by one Captain F. H. Grenfell, Royal Navy. A sequel to this story concerning one Captain E. W. Grenfell, U. S. Navy, may be of interest to you and the author.
On Friday, March 13, 1942, the U.S.S. Gudgeon under my command ran across a broken down tramp steamer of about 3,000 tons over in the Yellow Sea. He looked like duck soup to us, and as we had been warned not to waste torpedoes, we decided to end him with just one torpedo. At that time we were further instructed to fire our torpedoes with an estimated depth of 10 feet below keel. However, what we did not know at this time was that our torpedoes were running from 10 to 15 feet greater than depth set. We maneuvered ourselves into a highly favorable position about 750 yards off his track and fired one torpedo at him. Nothing happened! A few minutes later we fired another and still nothing happened. Finally a third was fired and this too proved to be futile. From the wake, I was sure that all passed beneath the ship. Needless to say, we were at a complete loss as to why there were no hits, and my very able torpedo officer, Commander “Dusty” Dornin, just about broke down and wept over the negative results.
We were to find out why exactly two weeks later, for on that day early in the morning damned if we didn’t run across this scoundrel again. Incidentally, I forgot to mention that in our first meeting due to choppy seas he apparently did not see our torpedo wakes. At this meeting we got in closer and again fired only one torpedo, but at a less depth setting. However, it is very likely that it too went much too deep to be disturbed by the magnetic field (if he had any) of the tramp steamer. In any event, nothing happened again, and I started to swing to give him stern contact shots because we were too close to him, when all of a sudden I noticed men running and pointing at my periscope.
I was not too concerned, for the only armament I could see that he had was a couple of 3-inch guns fore and aft. I was soon quite surprised, however, when I saw flashes from fore and aft and also from amidships; then, the next thing I knew there was a tremendous explosion which jarred the periscope, hitting me severely in the eye. I thought the lucky scoundrel had hit us with a shell and stated so to our fire control party in the conning tower. However, “Dusty” Dornin said, “Captain, that ain’t no shell, them’s depth charges,” and as he said so, I saw three of them being thrown from hidden throwers aboard the ship. We, of course, then went to depth charge quarters and submerged to a protective depth, but not before we took a terrific beating from eighteen or twenty depth charges all around us.
He also had very good sonar gear, as we found out later in the morning, for whenever we would try to take evasive action and made any noise at all, he was able to hear us readily. He called in the ASW forces in the form of a couple of tin cans, and we had a rough day of it. However, a typhoon came up later in the afternoon, which enabled us to get away that night. Thus, that was our meeting with the first Jap version of a “Q” ship in World War II. We later figured that he probably had degaussing gear and that, plus the extra unknown running depth of the torpedoes, probably made our torpedoes ineffective.
What to do with the U-505
(Editor’s Note: The writer of this comment is Head of the Department of Engineering at the U. S. Merchant Marine Academy, Kings Point, New York.)
Commander Lauren S. McCready, U. S. Merchant Service.—Having been connected with the Merchant Marine since shipping out first as wiper in 1935, it might be thought unlikely that I would have any particular interest in submarines. Such is not the case, however, and as a hobby I make models of them and find them well worth rather intensive study. They are fascinating craft, especially when viewed from an engineering aspect.
Since learning of the exploit of our Naval forces in capturing the German U-505 by boarding (All Hands, June 1945 and Clear The Decks! by Rear Admiral D. V. Gallery, U. S. Navy), this particular submarine has to me been the object of great interest. The extreme cunning displayed by her captors in boarding and later keeping afloat this nearly- foundering sub, the extreme bravery of those who poured down her hatch, then almost awash, to get her, have typified naval gallantry on a par with any of our most lustrous heroes of earlier times.
In my opinion this submarine deserves to be kept bright in the public view as a national trophy equal to any. My own interest led to an inspection of her last June at her berth at the U. S. Naval Shipyard, Portsmouth, New Hampshire; it was well worth it!
She lies intact, her bottle-tight hull taking
no water, but she is in need of routine painting and an occasional drydocking which she apparently hasn’t had for a long time. True, there is a surfeit of funds and campaigns for every imaginable cause these days but I can think of few better than a concerted national effort to maintain and display this submarine in good order. It would be my recommendation that she be kept up permanently by the Navy, but if this is not possible, then public support might well be roused to the same end.
(Editor’s Note: The Naval Air Reserve Bulletin for May, 1953, carries a story that Mayor Kennelly of Chicago is one of many citizens urging that the U-505 be moved to Chicago as a permanent war trophy for that city.)
An American Q-Ship
(See page 533, May, 1953, Proceedings)
Coleman W. Clarke.—By way of adding comment on Lt. Smith’s article on “The Q-Ship Cause & Effect” I would like to mention that the effect' was to carry on into World War II. I had the pleasure of serving aboard the U.S.S. Anacopa (A.G. 49) which was fitted out as a Q-ship.
After the oilfields were shelled near Santa Barbara, California, early in 1942, the idea of a Q-ship to operate along the West Coast was born. Accordingly, Lt. Cdr. Albert M. Wright, U. S. Navy (Ret.), was detailed to scout the West Coast harbors for a suitable ship and to serve as C.O. once the vessel had been commissioned. After several weeks the 336-ft. steel lumber schooner Coos Bay was bought and brought to the Destroyer Base at San Diego where she was secretly outfitted.
Two 3" 50’s were mounted in the forecastle behind hinged portions of the shell plating while on the boat deck and on the poop deck two 4" 50’s were mounted in false deck houses so constructed as to collapse. In addition, K guns were mounted in the after deck well and mouse traps on the forecastle. Sound gear, an earlyrmodel Canadian Radar, and enough radio gear to do a cruiser proud was also installed. Additional juice was provided by two flush deck destroyer generators and crew space for about 90 men and 12 officers was built. Her flank speed of 10 knots was produced by a triple expansion 1650 H.P. engine and two scotch boilers.
Our bible was the British Cdr. Campbell’s book on World War I Q-boats. We wore civies, ran with running lights, left ports cracked at night, practiced “the abandoned Ship” ruse, had perforated steam pipes in the engine room sky-light, “broke down” in steamer lanes, etc. About 2| million board feet of lumber were stowed below decks while false deck cargo was piled along the rail in the wells.
We had no luck in getting a submarine, although numerous whalers had headaches as well as many schools of sardines being rapidly dispersed. We felt that perhaps our secrecy had been compromised for after picking up the crew of the torpedoed tanker Larry Doheney, we used our echo ranging equipment to institute a search plan.
In the fall of 1943 our usefulness in this phase being over, we were directed to proceed to Pearl Harbor where we underwent the necessary changes to perform as advance base supply vessel. The Annie continued to serve in this capacity until after the end of the war when she was sold and is again a West Coast lumber schooner the George Olson.
It was my understanding there were at least two other Q-ships in the Navy, one a tanker and the other a tuna boat, both of which worked the Gulf Stream and the Gulf of Mexico. Perhaps someone can add something on these two vessels.
Disaster Through Air Power
(See page 216, February, 1953, Proceedings)
Captain W. A. Moffett, U. S. Navy.— It was a pleasure to note that Marshall Andrews’ Disaster Through Air Power was reviewed in the February issue of the Institute. However, as good and factual as this review was, in many respects, I believe that its unintended effect will be, not to stimulate a desire to read this outstanding book but the very reverse. It is for this reason that I write this letter since I do not believe that an opportunity to throw light in the dark alleys of bias and controversy should be diminished by any means. Rather than being a disservice to unification I sincerely believe this book does it a great service as does any discussion which reveals the several sides of any argument and relates those sides in a perspective which has truth at the horizon and facts in the foreground.
Rather than repeat the salient points of the previous review by Commander Rommel, I should like to invite attention to additional significant features. An almost unique feature of this book is the treatment of the General Billy Mitchell controversy, a subject which through the years has almost invariably been presented to the public as an example of Navy bigotry, blindness, and priesthood. One of the latest in a current series of such anti-Navy propaganda was most ably reviewed by Commodore Knox in the March issue of the Institute. If volume of propaganda is a measure of what the public may believe, then it is self-evident that the few books which present a less biased view to the public are of great interest to those, especially, upon whom falls the main burden of enlightening the people of the United States in these aspects of national security.
It is noted that the Institute indicated Disaster Through Air Power was published in 1952. The book was published in 1950 and I am informed that it is out of print. In fact, it is a very difficult book to locate, at least, in the book stores of Washington, D. C.
Another unusual feature of this book is considered to be that it tends to “offend” every branch of the military. Especially may this perhaps be said to be true, insofar as the Navy is concerned, in the last chapter. However, very aptly, this last chapter is entitled “One Man’s Solution” and if viewed in that light, in all honesty, it should not be allowed to detract from the self-evident truths which precede it. Had the author left out the last chapter, I feel certain his book would be more widely known and that he would have been plagued with requests to write a sequel.
Is China a Great Power?
(See page 29, January, 1953, Proceedings)
Editor’s Note: The writer of this comment, now a member of the staff of Brookings Institution of Washington, D. C., is a veteran of nearly forty years in the American Foreign Service. After serving in numerous consular positions in China and Japan, he became Chief of the State Department’s Far Eastern AffairsjDivision
and was a close associate of Secretary Hull during the all-important Japanese-American talks held in Washington for several weeks prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Joseph W. Ballantine.—I have found of great interest the article entitled “Is China a Great Power?” by Alexander DeConde. His conclusions are important and, I believe, in the main sound, but on certain points I should like to qualify somewhat.
In Section V the author correctly affirms that China cannot be considered a major economic and military power until she is industrially developed and organized to sustain a war effort beyond her own frontiers. Accordingly, in Section VI he contends that China is being sadly underestimated as a threat to our security, claiming that our prewar generals and admirals had similarly underestimated Japan and had “blatantly maintained that we could whip her, a backward Asiatic country, in a week or two if war were to come.”
My view is that, on the contrary, the author, along with many other Americans, is inclined to overestimate rather than underestimate the potentialities of Communist China. To be sure, the Western world generally has been amazed at the military prowess shown by the Communists on the Korean battlefields. But it is one thing to pick Chinese men possessing superior physical, mental, and moral qualities and organize and train them into an effective fighting force, and quite another thing to create in China an autonomous industrial base to sustain that force. China lacks many strategic resources, notably petroleum. She could be cut off by naval blockade, and the supplies that could be made available overland from the Soviet Union would be inadequate to support a significant military enterprise. China’s productive capacity, taking the country as a whole, scarcely suffices to keep her enormous population at subsistence levels, leaving little room for capital accumulation necessary for industrialization. Conversion might be accelerated somewhat by foreign loans, but Russia is in no position to make large scale . investments in China.
Again, it is questionable whether China, even with Russian assistance, can establish quickly the facilities for training a corps of
technical and managerial personnel adequate for nationwide industrial operations. Nor is it likely that the greater part of China’s hundreds of millions—ill-fed, ill-clad, illiterate—can easily or speedily be transformed into an intelligent, efficient, and disciplined labor force.
I think that we are inclined to exaggerate the potentials of the peasant masses of Asia. There is much to be said for the argument that the vastness of China’s population is a liability rather than an asset. A much smaller population working more efficiently could produce as much out of the country’s available resources as China’s present numbers are now doing, and with fewer mouths to be fed there would be a larger surplus for building up wealth and strength.
This does not mean, of course, that there is room for complacency on our part in regard to the seriousness of the menace which Communist China allied with Soviet Russia poses to the free world. Indeed, only by our military intervention have we averted the prospect of a much more serious menace —that of a taking over by Communist China of Japan with its industrial organization and skills. Who can doubt that this was the real goal of Mao Tse-tung when he threw his legions across the Yalu in the autumn of 1950? But nevertheless, it is important to keep in mind that Communist China is today a threat to neighboring countries largely because it has a powerful industrial ally in Soviet Russia and that consequently Russia should be the main target of our attention.
In conclusion, I should like to say a word in defense of our prewar generals and admirals. In 1941, as an officer of the Department of State, I had the opportunity to attend many conferences at which high officers of the Army and the Navy presented estimates of the military situation then existing in the Far East. I can personally testify that none expressed views belittling Japan’s capabilities.
The (Blue or Green) Flashes
(See pages 5S7, May, and 795, July, 1952 Proceedings)
Chief Gunner W. L. Montgomery, U. S. Navy.—Since reading the articles on “The Blue Flash” in the May and July 1952
Proceedings this writer has had many opportunities to observe the setting sun off the coast of California and on numerous occasions has seen the “Blue Flash.” Some flashes were very dim; others relatively bright.
Notwithstanding the numerous explanations—scientific or otherwise—of this phenomenon, I would like to set forth a simple and obvious theory of my own. This theory might have been raised in one or more of the various articles and references on this subject, but has not to my knowledge. The flash is an optical illusion.
Several years ago I read of and since have practiced a simple optical phenomenon. By staring at one portion of a colored object under a strong light for about thirty seconds and then closing the eyes, the object will appear outlined and in its complementary color. The time this image will remain is in proportion to the brightness of the object and the time spent staring at the object. The “Blue Flash” is another manifestation of this phenomenon. In this instance the brightness of the sun compared to its surroundings and the fact that observers are staring at it as it disappears causes a complementary image to appear briefly at the point the sun has vacated.
There is an experiment which can be performed with simple materials if one wishes to observe the “Blue Flash” at home. Cut out a disc of colored paper (any shade from red to yellow) about two inches in diameter. Place this disc behind a sheet of white paper leaving about one eighth exposed over the upper edge. Place in a strong light and against a neutral or white background. Stare at the upper edge of the disc as you slowly slide it down behind the sheet of paper. Just after the colored paper disappears you will see the “Blue (or Green) Flash.” The illusion will be much brighter if you will cause the disc to hesitate momentarily at the last moment in the manner in which the sun sets on the horizon.
A red disc will give a green flash and a yellow disc a blue flash. Therefore the varied colored flashes reported by observers throughout the world would be explained by the various shades of red to yellow of the setting sun. Naturally, my theory would be invalid for a flash someone has captured on film but I believe it will account for the vast majority of “Blue (or Green) Flashes.”
Those Old Flush Deckers
(See page 201, February, 1953, Proceedings)
Lieutenant Robert Maitland, Royal Navy, Ret.—I was particularly interested in Captain Parker’s letter on the seaworthiness of your “Fourstack” flush deckers.
I served in the U.S.S. Foote from 1941 until 1943, under the White Ensign and the name of H.M.S. Roxborough. She was one of the fifty transferred to the Royal Navy in 1941.
We were in pretty continual patrol and escort duty between Londonderry and Halifax and New York in those years, and the North Atlantic kept up to its best standards of un-ship-worthiness whenever it could. Roxborough and the other four-stackers with whom we were in company, stood all this exceedingly well.
In January, 1943, just after midnight, she was going head-on into some pretty vile weather when she shipped a terrific green sea—possibly it would be closer to the truth that she got tired of riding the crests of waves and decided to go straight through. The bridge was stove in, pushed back bodily about six feet, crushing the Commanding Officer in his cabin, wrecking the wheel- house, putting the radio out of action. All but one on the bridge lost his life, either washed overboard or dying of multiple injuries. What remained of the C.O. had to be cut out when the ship got to port. And get to port she did, steered from the tiller flat and conned from the after superstructure, after two days’ steaming. I am sure that many more modern hulls would not have survived that punishment.
She was indeed an excellent craft in a seaway, once you knew her habits.
★