'The Atlantic Campaign'
(See pp. 12-36, June 2008 Naval History)
Rear Admiral Norman C. Venzke, U.S. Coast Guard (Retired)
• Congratulations on this issue. I read all the articles on the Battle of the Atlantic in one sitting. The piece on the Secretary-class cutters filled in a lot of gaps in the history of those fine ships. And the mention of USCGC Ingham (WHEC-35) triggered fond memories. With this having been my first ship after graduation from the Coast Guard Academy in 1950, I learned first hand that she might not have been that fast, but she could punch through the worst in the North Atlantic like no other ship.
Vice Admiral Charles S. Minter Jr.'s comments on the Hedgehog rounds were informative. Although I taught weapons at the Academy, I didn't realize that modified rounds were used as aircraft bombs by some PBYs. His mention of the relatively obscure Mousetrap is also interesting. These were mounted on small Coast Guard cutters and patrol boats where the weight and thrust of the Hedgehog could not be structurally tolerated. For that reason, the same basic 7.2-inch round was rocket propelled.
A typical installation might include two Mousetraps mounted side by side, each of which had rails for four or five rounds. Installations on larger cutters would include four of them mounted in two rows. I suspect that its name was derived from its appearance when rigged for firing—a baited and cocked mousetrap.
'Dangerous Duty in the North Atlantic'
(See M. G. Walling, pp. 30-36, June 2008 Naval History)
Captain Merle L. Harbourt, U.S. Coast Guard (Retired)
• As I recall the configuration of the 327-foot Secretary-class cutters, the small plane that they carried was not within "a main deck hangar" but was carried on the open after deck. There was no hangar on the Spencer (W36) when I served on her from October 1939 to July 1941.
Editor's note: Mea culpa. The hangar was a design feature that was abandoned before construction of the ships began.
'The Battle That Had to be Won' and 'The Navy's Atlantic War Learning Curve'
(See M. Milner, pp. 12-21, and J. Barlow, pp. 22-29, June 2008 Naval History)
John D. Barnard
• In reference to the Canadian ships being on their way out by January 1943, the four Royal Canadian Navy North Atlantic escort groups were only withdrawn temporarily from the battle for refresher training and much needed refits. By April all four were back on their normal escort duties, although during the April-May crisis Canadian-escorted convoys were routed well clear of U-boat patrol lines and Wolf Packs. Early in 1944, with the Atlantic U-boat threat essentially gone, the British gave Canada total responsibility for North Atlantic convoy escort. The Royal Navy concentrated on meeting the U-boat attacks then starting off the British coasts and in the English Channel.
More could have said about the approximately 80 Atlantic Fleet destroyers in early 1942. Most were unavailable at first for East Coast work because of commitments to North Atlantic convoy escort tasks, and protecting Army troopship convoys and Navy warships.
'Who Knocked the Enterprise Out of the War?' and 'In Contact'
(See K. Sugahara, pp. 38-45, April 2008, and L. B. Brennan, p. 7, June 2008 Naval History)
Master Chief Journalist Kingsley R. Woodhead, U.S. Navy (Retired)
• Captain Brennan's letter about being the "beer officer" on the USS Nimitz (CVN-68) reminded me of a similar incident on board the USS Oriskany (CV-34) in 1965. On the evening that we "chopped" from the Seventh Fleet and headed for North Island after several months of intensive air operations on both Dixie and Yankee stations, we enlisted men each received a chilled bottle of San Miguel as we passed through the chow line. We were both astonished and extremely appreciative. My boss said that the officers found wine on their wardroom tables. I don't know if this was done with authorization from above, but I wouldn't be surprised if Captain Bartholomew J. Connolly III did it on his own.
'Bernard Fall: Memoirs of a Soldier-Scholar'
(See C. Berube, pp. 69-70, April 2008 Naval History)
Major Allan C. Bevilacqua, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)
• While reading this book review, I was struck by the remarkable parallel between two lives and the manner in which a few brief moments on "The Street Without Joy" changed both. When Bernard Fall accompanied Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 9th Marines, 3d Marine Division on that February day in 1967, my good friend and brother Marine, Sergeant Donald L. "Don" Cahill, was a platoon sergeant in that company.
In the sudden rain of incoming fire that killed Fall, Cahill, only a few feet away, was gravely wounded and initially evaluated as dead. Only a hospital corpsman's chance discovery that Don still had a very faint, very weak pulse, kept him from being zipped into a body bag. Stabilized and evacuated, Don Cahill subsequently spent more than a year in hospitals before, much against his desires, he was medically retired.
Denied being a Marine any longer, through sheer willpower and determination, Don fought his way to meeting the qualifications to become a member of the Prince William County (Virginia) Police Department. The man who "died" beside Bernard Fall on "The Street" went on to a long career as a narcotics officer and homicide detective, retiring in 2001 as head of the Violent Crimes Unit.
'Kill and Be Killed? The U-853 Mystery'
(See A. Lynch, pp. 38-43, June 2008 Naval History)
Lieutenant Robert G. Bent, U.S. Navy Reserve (Retired)
• The sinking of the USS Eagle (PE-56) off Cape Elizabeth, Maine, on 23 April 1945 resulted in 49 dead crewmen and only 13 survivors. Many of the survivors believed they had been torpedoed and reported seeing the conning tower of a submarine with a distinctive insignia painted on it. The Navy, however, claimed the Eagle had exploded from a faulty boiler, and did not accept the U-boat sighting as factual.
Subsequent visits to the wreck of the U-853 showed the identical insignia still visible, and it was not until 2001 that the Navy accepted what had really happened. Purple Heart medals were awarded to surviving and deceased Eagle crew members.
'Bush Donated World War II Service Revolver'
(See M. L. Harbourt, p. 64, June 2008, and Naval History News, p. 9, October 2007 Naval History)
Chief Warrant Officer Third Chuck Berlemann, U.S. Navy (Retired)
• It isn't often I get steamed about something I read in Naval History, but Captain Harbourt's comments about former President George H. W. Bush donating his government-issue weapon fired me up. I spent 24 years in naval aviation and during that time I observed many aviators who chose to carry personal sidearms they provided at their own expense while flying combat missions. I have no idea what the source of George Bush's pistol was; however, I do know that he was a young man who put his life on the line to fly dangerous missions so I don't feel a need to question his honesty on such a trivial issue.
'Torpedo Eight: The Other Chapter'
(See H. Ferrier, pp. 58-62, June 2008 Naval History)
Lieutenant (junior grade) Richard G. Watson Jr., U.S. Naval Reserve (Retired)
• My wife, Nancy Langdon Watson, was married in October 1940 to Ensign John H. Langdon of VT-2, then on board the USS Lexington (CV-2). The following October he was transferred to Norfolk, Virginia, to join VT-8 for duty on the newly commissioned USS Hornet (CV-8). After reporting aboard he was chosen to determine if the squadron's new SBN-1s were carrier worthy. He was killed on 12 November 1941 during the plane's carrier qualifications on board the USS Langley (CV-1). His replacement was Ensign George H. Gay, who later was the sole survivor from VT-8's TBD Devastators at the Battle of Midway.
Gay was rescued on the afternoon of 5 June by a VP-44 PBY, 44-P-10, flown by Lieutenant (junior grade) Shelby "Pappy" Cole. After a heavy landing, the sea state was such that fuel had to be drained for takeoff. It took 30 minutes to drain enough to get airborne. The aircraft then returned to Midway.
'Historic Aircraft'
(See N. Polmar, pp. 14-15, April 2008 Naval History)
Captain Charles H. Brown, U.S. Navy (Retired)
• Your usually accurate proofreaders missed something in the table listing squadrons in 1954. I'm sure I'm not the first former Douglas AD Skyraider pilot to be insulted to see that there were only three AD squadrons in the Fleet that year. By my count there were at least 17 flying ADs in 1954.
There could also be an argument about the subtitle—The Navy's Frontline in Korea. While the poor little underpowered F9F-2/5s were going off with maybe four 250-pounders on a good day, the ADs carried at least that and up to 8,000 pounds easily.
Editor's note: "Fighter" was inadvertently omitted from the chart's headline. ADs equipped three fighter squadrons at the time.
'The Truth About Tonkin'
(See W. Buehler, p. 6, April 2008, and P. Paterson, pp. 52-59, February 2008 Naval History)
Rear Admiral Peter K. Cullins, U.S. Navy (Retired)
• In the continuing controversy over whether the second attack happened, I offer the following. I was the operations officer in the Long Beach (CGN-9) on the Piraz Station in the northern Gulf of Tonkin in 1966-67. This station was fixed for aircraft to get their position from TACAN, so we orbited closely around that position with never any support ship presence.
In the fall of 1966, our surface search radar picked up a contact at about 35 to 40 miles, coming from the direction of Hainan Island. We estimated it to be a fast-moving surface contact. We locked on to the contact with our Talos fire-control radars and confirmed the speed as around 40 knots. At that time we went to general quarters in case it continued to close. It did, and at about 15 miles or so we locked onto it with our Terrier fire-control radars and were prepared to fire a Terrier missile in surface mode (we only had 5-inch guns as secondary armament). Then it suddenly disappeared from all radars.
We chalked this up to strange atmospherics and dubbed it "The Phantom of the Tonkin Gulf."
It wasn't a one-shot deal, as the northern search-and-rescue guided-missile destroyers during our tours reported similar contacts, and we also had a few more, all coming from the east. I've seen strange radar phenomena before in other ships in Westpac tours, but never before a contact that tracked so straight, at a relatively constant speed, and with surface radar and fire-control systems all agreeing that they had a valid contact.
This is not to say that Commander Buehler didn't see what he says he saw. Only he knows what he saw. But this is offered as one of the possible mysteries surrounding whether or not the second attack actually occurred. By the time the Long Beach left Tonkin Gulf in 1967, the Phantom was well known.
'The Sculpin's Lost Mission'
(See C. R. Larson, pp. 28-35, February 2008 Naval History)
Rear Admiral Karl J. Christoph Jr., U.S. Navy (Retired)
• As the Sculpin tracked a trawler suspected of running arms to the Vietcong, it fell to the Naval Forces Vietnam headquarters in Saigon to work with the Vietnamese Navy. I was chief of staff to Vice Admiral Robert S. Salzer, the headquarters commander. At the time our headquarters was split, with the majority of the staff based at Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) headquarters at Tan Son Nhut and a small contingent located at the new, and only partially completed Vietnamese Navy (VNN) Headquarters on the waterfront.
Admiral Salzer received a call from the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Fleet (CincPacFlt) command center that they had a sub shadowing what was believed to be a North Vietnamese trawler. They would keep us informed but we were forbidden to tell our South Vietnamese counterparts that this surveillance was being conducted by a submarine. We were also directed to position the South Vietnamese Navy to engage the trawler if it neared the coast. We could tell them where the trawler was, but we couldn't tell them how we knew.
To make it more interesting, both our intelligence section and secure communications with CincPacFlt were at the MACV compound. With no secure phone link to the VNN headquarters, we were looking at exchanging information between our headquarters segments by way of an automobile messenger, a good half-hour drive in the best of times.
Since coordination with the VNN was considered the highest priority, Admiral Salzer decided to operate from their headquarters where we would have direct access to the South Vietnamese Navy Command Center. We chose a small room the size of a broom closet with just enough space for a plotting board and a maximum of four people. We created a cover story that a P-3 patrol plane had spotted the trawler and we were getting periodic fixes from the aircraft.
Their suspicions, however, were not easily allayed when they saw two admirals and two captains maintaining a continuous watch when it was rare for either admiral to spend more than a couple of hours a week at their headquarters. Admiral Salzer spent almost his entire time there, breaking only for short naps. It was an agonizingly long wait for the messenger car with the latest situation report to arrive from our MACV element.
When we received and plotted the latest trawler position, I would pass it to my former counterpart, Captain Son, a superb officer, who would then take the information and start positioning his units. The closest unit was the HQ-4, formerly the USS Forster (DER-334) and since renamed RVNS Tran Khanh Do. Captain Son directed HQ-4 on an intercept course.
As the HQ-4 made the sighting there was some confusion when they saw the trawler hoist the Chinese flag. After the Sculpin confirmed that the contact was in fact the trawler, this information had to be relayed from MACV headquarters to us by way of the car, then to the VNN, to the Fleet command, and finally to the HQ-4. Although there was some questioning in the Vietnamese command center as to how we knew it was a confirmed target, they accepted the fact and moved on.
The rest was history, as noted in a one sentence entry in the Naval Forces Vietnam diary: 24 April—The VNN DER HQ-4 sank a North Vietnamese SL-4 type trawler attempting infiltration operations off the Southwest coast of the Republic of Vietnam.
Captain Stuart D. Landersman, U.S. Navy (Retired)
• The words "Secret Vietnam Sub Patrol Revealed" jumped off Naval History's cover, and the title of the article confirmed that I knew immediately what it was about. As the surface operations officer on the Seventh Fleet staff in 1972, I was also the action officer of a highly classified long-time campaign directed at interdicting steel-hulled infiltration trawlers that carried arms and ammunition from North Vietnam to the Vietcong in the south. For years, U.S. success had been measured by turn-arounds: trawlers that changed course and went back to North Vietnam rather than face destruction.
It would be more definitive to destroy an infiltrating trawler rather than just send it home. After trying with P-3, destroyer, and destroyer escort resources we wanted a U.S. submarine, but the submarine force was engaged in operations more dramatic than chasing trawlers. The Sculpin mission so accurately described by Admiral Larson was the climax of the infiltration trawler campaign. It led to the termination of resupply by that means and was one of the very few—maybe the only—combat actions by a submarine in the Vietnam War. The trawlers' cargoes were vital to the Vietcong, and the Sculpin's operation led to denial of arms that would have been used by the Vietcong in the 1972 Easter offensive. U.S. intelligence analysis showed that a successful infiltration trawler delivery was always followed by Vietcong offensive action.
Twenty years ago I wanted to write the story of the infiltration trawler campaign and called on many potential sources to obtain documentation that I had either written or read—messages and reports that I had held in my hands—to give proof and credibility to what I could remember. Just as Admiral Larson found, all those documents had been destroyed.
The primary document I sought was a highly classified (as were all) book-length report by the Pacific Fleet Intelligence Center that traced the history of the North Vietnamese Trawler Regiment and our own operations. It also compared U.S. intelligence analysis with that gleaned from the survivors of the trawler that the Sculpin so successfully set up for destruction.
Much thanks to Admiral Larson for bringing the Sculpin's lost mission into the sunlight of naval history. Maybe now some reader can locate a hidden-away copy of that lost intelligence report and the whole story can be told. Perhaps then Commander Harry Mathis and the Sculpin crew can get the recognition and combat patrol pin they deserve.