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Posted on 04/29/2003 5:34:59 AM PDT by SAMWolf
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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"It was a disaster which lay hidden from the World for 40 years . . . an official American Army cover-up."  What was that terrible event so heinous as to prompt those accusations of perfidy 43 years later from the British news media from some American newspapers and in a particularly antagonistic three-part report from the local news of the ABC affiliate in Washington D. C. WJLA-TV? It was two hours after midnight on 28 April, 1944. Since the moon had just gone down, visibility was fair. The sea was calm. A few hours earlier, in daylight, assault forces of the U S 4th Infantry Division had gone ashore on Slapton Sands, a stretch of beach along the south coast of England that closely resembled a beach on the French coast of Normandy, code-named Utah, where a few weeks later U.S. troops were to storm ashore as part of history's largest and most portentous amphibious assault: D-Day The assault at Slapton Sands was known as Exercise Tiger, one of several rehearsals conducted in preparation for the momentous invasion to come. So vital was the exercise of accustoming the troops to the combat conditions they were soon to face that commanders had ordered use of live naval and artillery fire, which could be employed because British civilians had long ago been relocated from the region around Slapton Sands. Individual soldiers also had live ammunition for their rifles and machine guns.  In those early hours of 28 April off the south coast in Lyme Bay, a flotilla of eight LSTs (landing ship, tank) was plowing toward Slapton Sands, transporting a follow-up force of engineers and chemical and quartermaster troops not scheduled for assault but to be unloaded in orderly fashion along with trucks, amphibious trucks, jeeps and heavy engineering equipment. Out of the darkness, nine swift German torpedo boats suddenly appeared. On routine patrol out of the French port of Cherbourg, the commanders had learned of heavy radio traffic in Lyme Bay. Ordered to investigate, they were amazed to see what they took to be a flotilla of eight destroyers. They hastened to attack. German torpedoes hit three of the LSTs. One lost its stern but eventually limped into port. Another burst into flames, the fire fed by gasoline in the vehicles aboard. A third keeled over and sank within six minutes. There was little time for launching lifeboats. Trapped below decks, hundreds of soldiers and sailors went down with the ships. Others leapt into the sea, but many soon drowned, weighted down by water-logged overcoats and in some cases pitched forward into the water because they were wearing life belts around their waists rather than under their armpits. Others succumbed to hypothermia in the cold water.  When the waters of the English Channel at last ceased to wash bloated bodies ashore, the toll of the dead and missing stood at 198 sailors and 551 soldiers, a total of 749, the most costly training incident involving U.S. forces during World War II. Allied commanders were not only concerned about the loss of life and two LSTs -- which left not a single LST as a reserve for D-Day -- but also about the possibility that the Germans had taken prisoners who might be forced to reveal secrets about the upcoming invasion. Ten officers aboard the LSTs had been closely involved in the invasion planning and knew the assigned beaches in France; there was no rest until those 10 could be accounted for: all of them drowned. A subsequent official investigation revealed two factors that may have contributed to the tragedy -- a lack of escort vessels and an error in radio frequencies. Although there were a number of British picket ships stationed off the south coast, including some facing Cherbourg, only two vessels were assigned to accompany the convoy -- a corvette and a World War I-era destroyer. Damaged in a collision, the destroyer put into port, and a replacement vessel came to the scene too late.  Because of a typographical error in orders, the U.S. LSTs were on a radio frequency different from the corvette and the British naval headquarters ashore. When one of the picket ships spotted German torpedo boats soon after midnight, a report quickly reached the British corvette but not the LSTs. Assuming the U.S. vessels had received the same report, the commander of the corvette made no effort to raise them. Whether an absence of either or both of those factors would have had any effect on the tragic events that followed would be impossible to say -- but probably not. The tragedy off Slapton Sands was simply one of those cruel happenstances of war. Meanwhile, orders went out imposing the strictest secrecy on all who knew or might learn of the tragedy, including doctors and nurses who treated the survivors. There was no point in letting the enemy know what he had accomplished, least of all in affording any clue that might link Slapton Sands to Utah Beach. Nobody ever lifted that order of secrecy, for by the time D-Day had passed, the units subject to the order had scattered. Quite obviously, in any case, the order no longer had any legitimacy particularly after Gen. Eisenhower's Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force, in July 1944 issued a press release telling of the tragedy. Notice of it was printed, among other places, in the soldier newspaper, Stars & Stripes.  The long beach at Slapton and its evacuated hinterland was the great practice ground for the invasion of Europe. During many months U.S. forces attacked with heavy bombardment and live ammunition in large-scale maneuvers. With the end of the war, the tragedy off Slapton Sands -- like many another wartime events involving high loss of life, such as the sinking of a Belgian ship off Cherbourg on Christmas Eve, 1944, in which more than 800 American soldiers died--received little attention. There were nevertheless references to the tragedy in at least three books published soon after the war, including a fairly detailed account by Capt. Harry C. Butcher (Gen. Eisenhower's former naval aide) in My Three Years With Eisenhower (1946). The story was also covered in two of the U.S. Army's unclassified official histories: Cross-Channel Attack (1951) by Gordon A. Harrison and Logistical Support of the Armies Volume I (1953) by Roland G. Ruppenthal. It was also related in one of the official U.S. Navy histories, The Invasion of France and Germany (1957) by Samuel Eliot Morrison. In 1954, 10 years after D-Day, U.S. Army authorities unveiled a monument at Slapton Sands honoring the people of the farms, villages and towns of the region "who generously left their homes and their lands to provide a battle practice area for the successful assault in Normandy in June 1944." During the course of the ceremony, the U.S. commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Gen. Alfred M. Guenther, told of the tragedy that befell Exercise Tiger.  All the while, a detailed and unclassified account of the tragedy rested in the National Archives. It had been prepared soon after the end of the war by the European Theater Historical Section. For anybody who took even a short time to investigate, there clearly had been no cover-up other than the brief veil of secrecy raised to avoid compromise of D-Day. Yet, in at least one case -- WJLA-TV in Washington -- the news staff pursued its accusations of cover-up even after being informed by the Army's Public Affairs Office well before the first program aired about the various publications including the official histories that had told of the tragedy.
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Today's classic warship, USS Bowfin (SS-287)
Balao class submarine.
Displacement. 1526 t.
Lenght. 311'8"
Beam. 27'3"
Draft. 16'10"
Speed. 20.3 k.
Complement. 66
Armament. 1 5". 10 21" TT.
USS Bowfin (SS-287) was launched 7 December 1942 by Portsmouth Navy Yard; sponsored by Mrs. J. O. Gawne, wife of Captain Gawne; and commissioned 1 May 1948 Commander J. H. Willingham in command.
Bowfin departed New London, Conn., 1 July 1943 and arrived at Brisbane, Australia 10 August 1843. Between 16 August 1943 and 4 July 1945 she completed nine war patrols operating from the Netherlands East Indies to the Sea of Japan and the waters south of Hokkaido. Bowfin sank 15 merchantmen (including the french cargo ship Van Vollenhoven) and one frigate for a total of 68,032 tons. She is also credited with sinking a crane, bus and pier at Minami Daito on her sixth war patrol. She also shared credit with Aspro (SS-309) for a 4,500-ton merchantman.
Leaving Pearl Harbor 29 August 1945 Bowfin sailed to the east coast, arriving at Tompkinsville, N. Y., 21 September. She operated with the Atlantic Fleet until placed out of commission in reserve at New London, Conn., 12 February 1947.
Bowfin was recommissioned at New London 27 July 1951. Following a short training period she departed for the Pacific, arriving at San Diego 6 October 1951. She continued to operate from San Diego on local operations and training exercises until 8 October 1953 when she arrived at San Francisco to commence inactivation. Bowfin was placed out of commission in reserve at Mare Island Naval Shipyard 22 April 1954.
Bowfin received the Presidential Unit Citation for her second war patrol, the Navy Unit Commendation for her sixth war patrol, the Philippine Presidential Unit Citation for her first patrol and eight battle stars during World War II.
Of the 288 U.S. submarines which saw combat duty during WWII, 188 of them had JANAC officially credited sinking records. USS Bowfin remains a legend, for among these 188 submarines, Bowfin ranks 17th in tonnage and 15th in number of ships sunk. Fifty-two of 288 combat submarines (almost one out of five) and 3,505 out of 14,750 WWII U.S. submariners (almost one out of four) began their "eternal patrols" before Japan surrendered.
USS Bowfin is fortunate that she did not end up as scrap metal or as target practice for another military ship. BOWFIN is one of only fifteen U.S. WWII submarines that survived this dreaded fate.
In early 1972, World War II submariner and Pearl Harbor survivor ADM Bernard A. "Chick" Clarey (CINCPACFLT) and RADM Paul L. Lacy (COMSUBPAC) approached the Secretary of the Navy about acquiring BOWFIN as a memorial to the U.S. Submarine Force at Pearl Harbor. With the assistance of Hawaii Senator Daniel Inouye, the acquisition was secured. She was then towed to Pearl Harbor's Naval Inactive Ships Maintenance Facility.
In 1978, a non-profit organization, the Pacific Fleet Submarine Memorial Association (PFSMA), was formed and chartered. On 3 August 1979, they formally acquired BOWFIN from the U.S. Navy. This acquisition was made possible through an act of Congress passed on 10 August 1956. This act authorized the Secretary of the Navy to transfer by gift or otherwise, on terms prescribed to him, any obsolete vessel of the Navy to any U.S. non-profit organization who would promise to restore and preserve the vessel at no cost to the U.S. government and its taxpayers. There were also other conditions that had be observed in accordance with receiving BOWFIN. One condition mandated that no part of the submarine may be activated for the purpose of navigation or movement of the submarine under her own power. Another condition stipulated that BOWFIN must be maintained in a manner that would not be a discredit to the U.S. Navy or to the proud heritage of the submarine.
Later that month, the submarine was towed to Pier 39, near downtown Honolulu, where a group of volunteers from the civilian and military community alike, eagerly assisted in cleaning and restoring BOWFIN after years of neglect. The Dillingham Corporation did much of the preliminary restoration work as many Navy League members worked hard to secure the necessary funds to support the project. Meanwhile, PFSMA continued to search for a suitable permanent mooring site.
In December 1980, BOWFIN was moved to her present day location at Pearl Harbor, next to the Arizona Memorial Visitor Center -- a fitting location for the submarine that had been launched a year after the attack on Pearl Harbor and nicknamed "The Pearl Harbor Avenger." BOWFIN became the centerpiece of the new "Bowfin Park." On 1 April 1981, BOWFIN officially began her new career as a "museum ship," and welcomed her first visitors on board. By 1985, over one million visitors had walked on her decks, learning about what life was like for the submariners of WWII. In 1986, BOWFIN was named a National Historic Landmark by the U.S. Department of the Interior.
In 1987, BOWFIN was dry-docked in preparation for her role in the ABC Circle Films miniseries, "War and Remembrance." She would portray three different submarines in the miniseries.
Today, Bowfin Park includes a museum with mini-theater, outdoor exhibits, a gift shop, and other visitor facilities situated on four acres of park grounds. The Museum, housing the collection formerly on display at Pearl Harbor Submarine Base Museum, chronicles the history of the U.S. Submarine Force from its inception in 1900, to the modern nuclear fleet. In 1992, a dedication ceremony was held for Bowfin Park's new Waterfront Memorial, which pays silent tribute to the 52 U.S. submarines and the more than 3,500 men of the "Silent Service" who were lost in World War II.
The Pacific Fleet Submarine Memorial Association's mission is to preserve and restore the World War II submarine BOWFIN, as a tribute to all the submariners of WWII, and to all of the members of the U.S. Submarine Force, both past and present. To fulfill this mission, PFSMA relies solely on admission fees, donations, and gift shop sales, and receives no government funding.
Reminds me of the scene in "OPERATION PETTICOAT" where the USS SEA TIGER sinks a 2 1/2 ton truck instead of the docked tanker.
Army 1st Sgt. Joe Garza, 43, was killed on Monday when the Humvee in which he was riding swerved to avoid another vehicle, causing the soldier to fall out and be struck by a civilian vehicle, the Pentagon said.
Garza, of Robstown, Texas, was assigned to 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, at Fort Benning, Georgia, the Pentagon said.
The Defense Department lists 114 U.S. troops as killed by hostile fire and 24 killed in "non-hostile" circumstances such as vehicle accidents.
In his book "The Second World War," Winston Churchill stated: "The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-Boat peril."
The Battle of the Atlantic was not what one usually thinks of as a "battle," since it did not take place in one location over a limited period, such as the Battle of the Bulge. It was a Battle for CONTROL over shipping in the Atlantic and lasted from September 1939 until May 1945. Germany's submarines (U-Boats) tried to sink merchant ships faster than the Allies could build them. Starting in 1940, through the middle of 1942, U-Boats were very successful - they sank more ships than were built.
Convoys
Germany used the U-Boat (Unterseeboot) to great advantage early in World War I to isolate Great Britain from much of its food, oil, and raw materials. Several days before the outbreak of World War II, German U-Boats were already on the prowl against supply ships, and again Britain instituted convoys, which had been so successful in limiting losses 20 years earlier.
The downside to convoys were the delays involved: waiting to assemble; taking a common, but often longer route; reducing speed to match the slowest ship, and delays in unloading because of congestion. This cut cargo-carrying capacity by one-third.
U-Boat Happy Time
In September 1939, Germany had 46 U-Boats. By the end of the War, 863 U-Boats were commissioned. At first, the U-Boats went out individually, but changed tactics in September 1940, to travel at night in "wolf packs" preying on merchant ships. This was their first "Happy Time."
Eventually, the British beefed up convoy escorts and air support, and losses decreased. As soon as Germany declared war on the United States (Dec. 12, 1941), U-Boats headed for the U.S. Atlantic seaboard. From January to May 1942 was "Happy Time" again.
For inexplicable reasons, the U.S. did not arm the ships, nor provide escorts or air cover, nor organize convoys along the Atlantic or Gulf Coasts or in the Caribbean. Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King was responsible for this inaction. The U.S. Government did not order a blackout of seacoast cities until June 1942, leaving ships silhouetted against the shoreline. Allied ships were "sitting ducks" for the well-armed U-Boats lurking in U.S. coastal waters. U.S. beaches soon became littered with bodies and burned-out ships.
1942 was the most successful year in U-Boat history, with 1,200 Allied ships sunk. (Middlebrook, Convoy) Other sources count 1,664 ships sunk, 1,097 of them in the North Atlantic. (Albion & Pope, Sea Lanes in Wartime) Between December 1941 and May 1942, the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard sank only two U-Boats.
Late in the spring of 1942, the War Shipping Administration finally organized trans-Atlantic convoys, with American, Canadian, and British escorts to improve the odds for the slow, lightly armed ships. Along the seaboard, ships were herded into port overnight. However, the situation for merchant ships was still poor.
Germany often had advanced knowledge of ship movements through spies and interception of radio messages about planned convoy routes and cargoes, but even without that information, submarines would line up about 15 miles apart across the expected convoy route. The first to spot the convoy would fall in a few miles behind and signal for the rest of the "pack" to assemble for the night attacks. Groups of U-Boats would stage simultaneous attacks from several directions. A "classic" attack was to come in submerged ahead of the convoy, allow the escorts to pass, and to come up to periscope depth in the middle of the convoy!
Many battles between U-Boats and convoys took place in the "Air Gap," a wide band of the North Atlantic which was not patrolled by aircraft and took 4 or 5 days to cross by convoy. Airplanes could spot submarines at great distances and drop depth charges to keep the subs away from the convoy, so submarines rarely attacked while aircraft protected a convoy. The U.S. had 112 long-range aircraft which could have provided air cover across the entire Atlantic, but chose to put all 112 in the Pacific.
As U-Boat successes mounted, the British ignored internal suggestions to bomb the U-Boat ports in St. Nazaire and Lorient on the Bay of Biscay, France, concentrating on German factories instead. By October 1942, when U.S. and British Air Forces finally bombed the submarine pens, they had been reinforced with 12 feet of reinforced concrete. The Allies dropped 40,000,000 pounds of bombs, lost over 100 planes, and not a single U-Boat was damaged.
Greatest Convoy Battle of All Time
In March 1943, Convoys HX229 and SC122 with 88 merchant ships and 15 escorts, were bound for Europe from New York, via Halifax, on parallel courses. In mid-Atlantic, they were relentlessly attacked by 45 U-Boats operating individually and in "wolfpacks," who fired 90 torpedoes, sinking 22 ships, and resulting in 372 dead. Germany called it the "greatest convoy battle of all time."
British and U.S. escorts used 298 depth charges to sink one German submarine and to damage several others, while suffering 1 casualty. Escort vessels were overwhelmed by the simultaneous need to hunt submarines and pick up survivors.
Murmansk Run: Cold, Deadly Voyages
The most deadly of 40 convoys sent to Murmansk, USSR, above the Arctic Circle on the Barents Sea, was PQ17 which left Iceland carrying cargo worth $700 million. PQ17 comprised:
33 merchant ships plus 1 oiler to refuel the escorts
3 rescue ships
5 destroyers
3 corvettes
3 minesweepers
4 anti-submarine trawlers
2 anti-aircraft ships
2 submarines
A large battle fleet of British and U.S. Navy ships sailed on a parallel course. The Allies hoped to lure the Germans into an uneven battle. But when the British Admiralty mistakenly thought the German battleship Tirpitz with firepower superior to the British ships and the battle cruiser Scheer were on their way to intercept PQ17, the Admiralty ordered British and American warships to abandon the convoy to avoid heavy Navy losses. They told the convoy to: "Scatter fanwise. Proceed to destination at utmost speed." The merchant ships were thus abandoned to almost certain destruction, and an icy death for their crews.
The 5 destroyers were ordered to join the fleeing Navy ships. Some of the escorts ran for safety; many bravely tried to help the merchant ships the remaining 700 miles to safety. Between July 4 and July 14, 1942, Nazi torpedo-bombers and U-Boats launched repeated, devastating attacks on the lightly armed ships.
The Germans wanted to stop Allied aid to the Soviet Union and hoped that 100% annihilation of a convoy would do it. PQ17 was chosen for the "Knights Move."
Only 11 of the 34 merchant ships reached port. Twenty-four were sunk, along with 153 mariners and Armed Guard, 250,000 tons of war materiel, including 3,500 trucks, 200 aircraft and 435 tanks. Lifeboats brought some mariners to German-occupied Norway where they became POWs. Some survivors spent up to 3 weeks on rafts and open lifeboats and lost limbs to frostbite.
Ironically, the German battleships never did put to sea. Winston Churchill so aptly said, "PQ17 was one of the most melancholy episodes of the war."
Through the Murmansk Run, the United States supplied the Soviet Union with 15,000 aircraft, 7,000 tanks, 350,000 tons of explosives, and 15,000,000 pairs of boots. American boots made a difference on the Eastern Front, especially during the harsh winters.
U.S. Merchant Marine in World War II
One way to understand the Second World War is to appreciate the critical role of merchant shipping... the availability or non-availability of merchant shipping determined what the Allies could or could not do militarily.... when sinkings of Allied merchant vessels exceeded production, when slow turnarounds, convoy delays, roundabout routing, and long voyages taxed transport severely, or when the cross-Channel invasion planned for 1942 had to be postponed for many months for reasons which included insufficient shipping....
Had these ships not been produced, the war would have been in all likelihood prolonged many months, if not years. Some argue the Allies would have lost as there would not have existed the means to carry the personnel, supplies, and equipment needed by the combined Allies to defeat the Axis powers. [It took 7 to 15 tons of supplies to support one soldier for one year.] The U.S. wartime merchant fleet. . . constituted one of the most significant contributions made by any nation to the eventual winning of the Second World War....
Casualties
The United States Merchant Marine provided the greatest sealift in history between the production army at home and the fighting forces scattered around the globe in World War II. The prewar total of 55,000 experienced mariners was increased to over 215,000 through U.S. Maritime Service training programs.
Merchant ships faced danger from submarines, mines, armed raiders and destroyers, aircraft, "kamikaze," and the elements. Nearly 7,300 mariners were killed at sea, 12,000 wounded of whom at least 1,100 died from their wounds, and 663 men and women were taken prisoner. (Total killed estimated 8,380.) Some were blown to death, some incinerated, some drowned, some froze, and some starved. 66 died in prison camps or aboard Japanese ships while being transported to other camps. 31 ships vanished without a trace to a watery grave.
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