DEVELOPMENTS AT PEARL HARBOR

In the earlier invasions in the Pacific the Navy had been using 55’ patrol craft(LCCs) for radio control tasks off the invasion beaches. The LCCs would carry senior Army and Marine staffs close to the beaches so that these staffs could have both visual and radio contact with forces storming ashore. The enemy figured that if these LCCs were carrying out beach control duties—why else would 55′ boats have so many whip antennas?—then, they must be carrying senior U.S. officers aboard. Accordingly, these LCCs became priority targets, to be attacked and sunk.

The Navy knew that radio/visual control of an invasion beach at H-Hour was indispensable. But, if LCCs were being recognized by the enemy for what they were-radio control vessels-what could be done by the Navy to eliminate this problem?

I suspect that wise heads in the Navy came up with what I’d call the “Father brown” approach.

In one of G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown detective stories the murderer turned out to be the postman. “Who was present in the area at the time?” asked Father Brown. “No one,” was the reply, then, “Well, no one but the postman.” The postman, being on the scene, an expected figure in the neighborhood, had become, for the witnesses, a non-figure, blending inconspicuously into the background.

Very much like Father Brown’s postman, the Navy’s 136’ minesweeper (YWS) was always present in a given area, carrying out its perilous and wearisome chores quietly and without fanfare. The presence of a YMS in an invasion area created no interest whatsoever on the part of the D.S. forces: wasn’t it expected to be there? Any self-respecting enemy pilot or gunner, seeing the YMS silhouette, would ignore ±he minesweeper in favor of more important targets.

So, the U.S. Navy came up with the classically simple stratagem of using what looked like—and were—136’ YMS hulls but which, in fact, were radio control ships in disguise.

Once this concept was adopted, the Navy—very wisely, say I— placed a tight shroud of secrecy on the planning. A small number of 136′ hulls—with almost exact silhouettes of the YMS minesweepers—were built in the States, put into commission, and dispatched to Pearl, where, for the first time, the skippers of these craft were told the true mission of their vessels. Also, installation of additional radio gear—far beyond what had been installed at time of commissioning—was accomplished in secrecy in the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard by Navy communications specialists. Tight security, on a “need to know” basis was maintained.

As though it were yesterday, I recall the installation of additional radio gear aboard my ship. My ship, on commissioning, had a commodious chart room abaft the pilot house. I could lay out the largest charts on the chart table and had plenty of stowage spaces for our navigation books and other gear. Aft of the chart room was the radio/sonar shack, affording ample room for our radiomen and sonar operators and their equipment. No one was cramped in these areas —until the communication specialists began to install what seemed to be endless arrays and racks of radio rear, shrinking, foot by foot, what had been our spacious chart room and radio/sonar shack.

Finally, I protested, to the officer in charge of installation, that this was becoming intolerable! I remember his looking at me a little strangely, saying to me, “You’d better visit command afloat and find out what this is all about.” Acting on his suggestion, I was soon in the presence of the Navy Captain in charge of our group. He informed me that my ship was being out­ fitted as a secret radio control ship for the forthcoming invasion of Palau. He cautioned me not to discuss this with anyone, other than my officers, until we got underway from Pearl.

At last our ship had received its allotted radio gear-an astonishing count of 19 transmitters and 21 receivers, or, the radio capacity of a 10,000-ton cruiser. By now, our spacious quarters were gone, and we had to squeeze past rack upon rack of gear in getting to and from the pilot house, chart room, and radio/sonar shack. My former magnificent chart room was now so constricted that I was hard put to lay out any chart larger than a tabloid newspaper. As the Navigation Officer, I sure missed my former working areas!

THE SALTY OLD SEADOG

Although my experiences during the first week off Okinawa occurred almost 40 years ago, the total alertness and fierce determination to survive and to win -stifling the moments of sheer terror- and the action-packed occurrences telescoped into those first seven days-are permanently etched into my mind.

I had had, before the Okinawa campaign began, almost 3 years of uninterrupted experience as Commanding Officer, first, of a 110 wooden subchaser escorting convoys in the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Gulf of Mexico, and, later, of my radio control ship, participating in the invasion of the Palau Islands and in the final occupation of Leyte in the Philippines, surviving the rigors of the sea (including a typhoon) and enemy surface attacks, air raids, and mines.

When the Okinawa campaign began, I recalled a conversation which I had one night, about two months before, with a young naval fighter pilot whom I had met at the Officers’ Club in the Admiralties Islands. Our ship was, at the time, enroute to Leyte Gulf, from which he had just returned. He had obviously hoisted a few before we met. When I queried him about the conditions at Leyte, he stared at me with a far-off expression on his face, then proceeded to warn me about the Kamikazes, the Japanese suicide planes, which, he said, would be the biggest threat to any surface ships. He saw the disbelief on my face and cautioned me again to heed his words, adding that the Japanese were also using a BAKA (“It means ‘fool’ in Japanese,” he added)­bomb, a small piloted, engine-less plane secured to the belly of the mother suicide plane; and that, just before attack, the Baka bomb plane would be released from the belly of the mother plane and the two suiciders would then dive at the target from different directions. I was somewhat nettled by his outlandish story. Let this young, high-strung aviator, who’s had too much Scotch, save his wild stories for someone other than this salty old seadog, I thought. Little did I then realize that the old adage, IN VINO VERITAS, would be proven accurate at Okinawa.