Naval History Blog

This silent film, shot circa 1930, contains footage of aircraft squadrons from the first aircraft carriers of the United States Navy: USS Langley (CV-1), USS Lexington (CV-2), and USS Saratoga (CV-3).

In September 1942, the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics interviewed Col. R.F.C. Vance, the Senior Army Air Corps Staff Officer at Port Moresby, New Guinea. Vance primarily spoke about the role of Intelligence Officers, and the difficulties they experienced in debriefing Allied plane crews after combat missions. He noted the most difficult problem was when the officer did not “get along with the crews of the aircraft,” which was “fatal.” After all, the crew often comes in “very shaken up – the only way you can get information is just to wait awhile and let them quiet down.”

The same applied to interrogating captured Japanese air crews. Col. Vance noted that once you got the right psychology going, “there’s no question that, given the opportunity, they’ll talk.” And it was a simple approach – all they had to do was treat them well so the prisoners understood they weren’t about to be tortured and killed. Since the Japanese had been taught not to be captured, and that once captured they believed they could never go back to Japan, they would talk in great detail.

Col. Vance explained one case where a prisoner talked for almost three months on the details of fighter squadron operations. They then “found we had more questions” and brought him back again for another month long series of interviews. As he put it, “You can get a lot out of them, because the Japs [sic] can’t very well teach them what not to say when they’re not supposed to be captured.”

Piracy in the West Indies has long been the stuff of tall and romantic tales. In the first few decades of the 19th century seafarers operating under the dubious authority of short-lived revolutionary South American governments fighting for survival against a vengeful Spain claimed to be legitimate privateers, but more often acted as cutthroat pirates, stealing from all nations and murdering merchant crews with cold-blooded indifference.

 On 3 March 1819, Congress authorized the United States President to employ the Navy to protect commerce and seize the vessels committing depredations, authorizing the death penalty for those found guilty of piracy. For three years Commodore David Patterson at New Orleans struggled to control a small U.S. squadron attempting to protect American commercial interests in the region.

Early in 1822, the United States became determined to suppress piracy in the West Indies and sent a large naval force under the command of Captain James Biddle in the 36-gun frigate Macedonian. Cuba turned out to be a particularly thorny problem, because despite the Spanish governor’s willingness, out of embarrassment, to cooperate, there was little he could do to prevent pirates from using the numerous islands and inlets under his authority to carry out their operations. The American squadron focused on this problem area throughout the remainder of the year.

Stephen Cassin took the 18-gun sloop Peacock sixty miles west of Havana, off Bahia Honda, on 28 September 1822 and captured a pirate vessel of eighteen men. Learning from a British schooner that more pirates had gone up a shallow river, Cassin assembled a force of boats, a revenue cutter (Louisiana) and a prize schooner carrying fifty armed men in pursuit.

The first expedition proved unsuccessful, but with the assistance of the British captain, Cassin ordered the force to set off again the next morning. Spotting a sail inshore, the shallow draft boats set off after the pirates and soon returned with four schooners. Cmdr. Stephen Cassin exercised his authority to act on intelligence and pursued pirates inshore, and developed an ad hoc force than ensured his men would overwhelm the enemy.

In flogging, the most common means of enforcing discipline in the early U.S. Navy, a cat-o-nine-tails, a whip composed of nine knotted ropes, was applied to the bare back. Its defenders considered flogging swift and effective, while, in contrast to confinement, it quickly returned a sailor to duty. The majority of naval officers, and probably most enlisted as well, believed that flogging was the only practical means of enforcing discipline on board ship.

Reformers, on the contrary, maintained that seamen were rational beings capable of being persuaded to obedience by appeals to patriotism and pride. Punishments that degraded men, reformers contended, were undemocratic and encouraged sullen compliance rather than ready obedience.

On September 28, 1850 Congress abolished flogging in the Navy but failed to substitute another system of discipline. The 1850 legislation outlawed flogging specifically, but did not outlaw all forms of corporal punishment. Immediately after the disuse of the cat numerous complaints reached the Navy Department of insubordination and serious irregularities among the seamen. Desertions increased, and many good seamen, concerned about the lack of discipline, refused to enlist. Naval officers searched for alternative forms of punishment for malefactors, including tattooing, branding, wearing signs of disgrace, confinement in sweatboxes, lashing with thumbs behind the back, tricing up by the wrists, continuous dousing with sea water, straight jackets, and confinement in irons on bread and water. Officers objected to long confinement as a punishment because it removed the sailor from the work force and increased the workload of the innocent.

Naval officers sought guidance from the Department of the Navy on the punishments they were to substitute for flogging, and early in 1853 President Millard Fillmore responded by issuing a “System of Orders and Instructions.” The executive system did not last long, for the attorney general determined that it was an unconstitutional infringement on Congress’s authority to make rules and regulations for the Navy.

When Commodore Matthew C. Perry sailed on his famous mission to Japan to open that nation to contact with the west (1852—54), he did so without benefit of a new set of disciplinary regulations. Naval personnel on the mission numbered approximately 2,000, about twenty percent of the Navy’s manpower. Despite the absence of the cat-o-nine-tails and the lack of a substitute system of discipline, as well as few opportunities for shore leave, discipline was not a significant problem. Knowing that a high order of discipline was essential to the success of his delicate diplomatic negotiations Perry worked to maintain high morale. He encouraged theatrical productions, issued extra rations of spirits, allowed visits between ships, and insured uniformity and regularity of courts-martial.

In 1855 Congress provided a new system of discipline based on rewards and punishments. Congress established the summary court-martial for minor offences and prescribed a set of punishments, including bad-conduct discharge, solitary confinement in irons for up to thirty days, confinement for up to two months, reduction in rating, deprivation of liberty, extra police duties and loss of pay. For well-behaved sailors, Congress established honorable discharges, reenlistment bounties, and leaves of absences.

 The new system of rewards, by encouraging well-behaved sailors to stay in the Navy, or to reenlist, were the foundations of a career enlisted service.

USNS Henson at work searching for Bonhomme Richard. Photo courtesy of Dr. Robert Neyland.

 The second survey this year for Bonhomme Richard has been successfully completed. Dr. Robert Neyland, NHHC’s Underwater Archaeology Branch Director, together with the Ocean Technology Foundation , Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command  Naval Oceanographic Office, Office of Naval Research , and U.S. Naval Academy worked aboard the USNS Henson to survey a 70 sq nautical mile area and analyze several high priority targets. Hopefully, one of which may uncover the elusive wreck. 

Dr. Robert Neyland, Underwater Archaeology Branch Head, on the deck of USNS Henson. Photo courtesy of Robert Neyland.

The 25-knot winds and ten-to-twelve-foot waves in the North Sea paused operations for merely a day, leaving the USNS Henson adequate time to undergo a repair to its winch. The challenges created by the stormy seas are a sobering reminder of Bonhomme Richard’s final struggles as Captain John Paul Jones worked in similar conditions to transfer three hundred and fifty men from the ship to HMS Serapis shortly before Bonhomme Richard sank into the North Sea. 

HMS Victory, a ship contemporary with Bonhomme Richard and HMS Serapis. Photo courtesy of Dr. Robert Neyland.

 The survey continued despite persistent rough seas, and the crew is pleased to report that over 60 sq nautical miles were covered. USNS Henson scientists and midshipmen worked diligently processing the sonar data, categorizing targets, and selecting those for further investigation. A number of interesting targets have been identified and several have been tagged to be further investigated in future surveys. Overall the survey was very successful and put us one step closer to discovering the final resting place of Bonhomme Richard! 

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) on the deck of USNS Henson. Photo courtesy of Dr. Robert Neyland.

Lieutenant (j.g.) Kenneth Martin Willett, D-V(G), had been born in Overland, Missouri, on 9 April 1919. He had attended Sacramento Junior College, majoring in Business and Geology, and had enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve on 9 July 1940. Accepting an appointment as Midshipman, USNR, on 10 August, and Ensign, D-V(G), on 14 November, he received instruction on board the miscellaneous auxiliary (ex-battleship) Illinois, being detached on the same day to report his first ship, the battleship California (BB-44), reporting on board on 1 December 1940. Detached on 24 November 1941, Willett left Honolulu on board the liner Lurline on 5 December, just two days before the Japanese attack upon Oahu. Following instruction at the Armed Guard Center at Treasure Island, he received assignment as Armed Guard Officer; he accepted an appointment as Lieutenant (j.g.) on 16 July 1942.

On the morning of Sunday, 27 September 1942, Lieutenant (j.g.) Willett was serving on board the Stephen Hopkins, a 7,181-ton Liberty ship, a freighter indistinguishable from hundreds of her mass-produced sisters, as she steamed at 12 knots through a smooth sea in the South Atlantic.  She sailed in ballast, bound from Capetown, South Africa, to Paramaribo, Dutch Guiana, with a crew of 42 merchant mariners and one passenger.

With visibility poor, five lookouts peered into the mist, three from the bridge, one at the bow of the ship, and one on the platform aft that contained the Stephen Hopkins’s main battery, a 4-inch gun. The rest of her armament consisted of two 37-millimeter anti-aircraft guns, four .50-caliber and two .30-caliber machine guns, the battery the responsibility of the 15-man U.S. Navy Armed Guard under Lieutenant (j.g.) Willett’s command.

Although the area was one “through which no ship ever passed,” the Stephen Hopkins encountered two: the German auxiliary cruiser Stier (Schiffe 23) and the blockade runner Tannefels lying-to and engaged in a transfer of supplies. The Stier’s main battery consisted of four 5.9-inch guns, two 37-millimeter and four 20-millimeter guns, in addition to two 21-inch torpedo tubes. The Tannenfels mounted one 5.9-inch gun and several smaller caliber weapons. The Americans and the Germans sighted each other almost simultaneously, but the Germans, who got underway soon thereafter, opened the battle at 0856 at a range of about two miles.

Lieutenant (j.g.) Willett emerged on deck just as the first German 5.9-inch shell exploded.  Suffering severe abdominal wounds at the outset of the action, the 23-year old officer continued aft to the freighter’s 4-inch gun. The Stephen Hopkins began bravely answering the enemy’s attack at 0900 at a range of 1,000 yards as she maneuvered to enable her after gun to bear upon the enemy.

For almost 20 minutes, the Stephen Hopkins exchanged fire with her more heavily armed adversary and her consort, taking a heavy beating from the enemy’s heavier caliber guns and more numerous automatic weapons.  Lieutenant (j.g.) Willett’s gunners, however, scored 15 hits of the 35 shells fired, disabling the Stier’s rudder and setting her fuel oil bunkers afire. Damage to the Stier’s electrical system prevented her from employing her torpedo battery.  

The Stephen Hopkins, her speed reduced to barely steerageway by a hit on her main boiler, her topsides raked by machine gun fire and shell fragments, her sides and deck houses holed, nevertheless kept up the fight until the overwhelming firepower of the enemy silenced her. When a German shell exploded the magazine, Lieutenant (j.g.) Willett finally abandoned his gun and, although covered with blood, descended to the main deck. Although “obviously weakened and suffering,” he was last seen “helping to cast loose the life rafts in a desperate effort to save the lives of others…” 

The Stephen Hopkins’s gallant gunners, however, both naval and merchant marine, had inflicted mortal damage on the Stier.  Holed and ablaze throughout her length, the German auxiliary cruiser began listing to port, down by the stern, having suffered three dead and 33 wounded.  The fires consuming her fuel and ammunition rendered the ship beyond saving, and her survivors transferred to the Tannenfels.

The Stephen Hopkins sank at 1000, and her drifting survivors saw the Stier abandoned, and later heard an explosion in the distance some time later, signaling the enemy’s destruction. Of the 58 souls on board the Stephen Hopkins – 42 merchant sailors, the one passenger, and 15-man Armed Guard – only 15 (10 merchant seamen, 5 Armed Guard sailors) survived the harrowing 31-day, 2,200-mile voyage to the Brazilian coast. Lieutenant (j.g.) Willett was, sadly, not among them.

“The extraordinary heroism and outstanding devotion to duty off the officers and crew of the Armed Guard and the ship’s company,” one chronicler has written of the Stephen Hopkins’s battle, “were in keeping with the highest tradition of American seamanship. Their fearless devotion to fight their ship, and perseverance to engage the enemy to the utmost until their ship was rendered useless, aflame and in a sinking condition, demonstrated conduct beyond the call of duty.”

Lieutenant (j.g.) Willett was awarded the Navy Cross (posthumously).  The Stephen Hopkins had fought like a man-of-war, and her adversaries believed her to be a “camouflaged enemy auxiliary cruiser.”  The Navy commemorated Willett’s “extraordinary heroism and conspicuous courage” in naming the destroyer escort Kenneth M. Willett (DE-354) in his honor.

Late in the evening on September 25, 1860, while patrolling the waters off West Africa, USS Constellation captured the slave ship Cora with 705 Africans imprisoned on her slave deck. From 1859 to 1861, the sloop of war Constellation (1854) served as flagship of the United States Navy’s African Squadron, a fleet of eight vessels with orders to protect American commerce and suppress the transatlantic slave trade. After eighteen years of poor performance, the squadron started showing signs of life due to the introduction of steam-powered vessels, a supply depot closer to the Congo River (the center of slaving activity at the time), a constricted cruising ground, and better cooperation with the Royal Navy’s West African Squadron.

Cora flew no flag but when she ignored Constellation’s warning shots, the flagship gave chase. The 431-ton barque raced along the coast in a frantic attempt to make it out to the open water. Her crew threw over hatches, spars, and boats to lighten her load but could not out-sail the sloop. After firing several more shots, the last of which cut away part of Cora’s running rigging, the slaver finally hove to and was boarded. The boarding party, led by Lt. Donald McNeil Fairfax, immediately discovered the slave deck and the human cargo within.

Ordinary Seamen William Ambrose Leonard recalled, “The scene which here presented itself to my eyes baffles description. It was a dreadful sight. They were all packed together like so many sheep; Men, Woman, and Children entirely naked, and suffering from hunger and thirst. They had nothing to eat or drink for over 30 hours. As soon as the poor negroes were aware that we were friends to them, they commenced a shouting and yelling like so many wild Indians. They were so overjoyed at being taken by us that I thought they would tear us to peices [sic].”

Master Thomas Eastman and a prize crew of eleven sailors and three marines sailed Cora to Monrovia to deliver the 694 surviving Africans to Reverend John Seys, the United States Agent for Recaptured Africans in Liberia. Many of them were apprenticed to saw mills and  cared for by local Liberian families. As captured Africans were forcibly taken from all over the interior of the continent, there was no single “home” to return them to and American officials feared that returning the Africans to the Congo River basin would result in their recapture.

Cora’s captain and mates were brought to New York to stand trial. The first mate, Morgan Fredericks escaped as soon as Eastman anchored Cora at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in December of 1860. The captain, John Latham, later escaped from prison during a furlough. The other two mates were charged with voluntary service aboard a slaver. Sentenced to ten months in prison and fined $500 each. Cora was confiscated and auctioned only to be stopped once again under suspicion as a slaver in March of 1861.

Constellation stayed on station until August of 1861, capturing one more slave ship, the brig Triton. After the Civil War erupted, all naval vessels on foreign station were needed for service elsewhere. The Lincoln Administration quietly granted the Royal Navy the right to search American vessels suspected as slavers in 1862 and the US African Squadron was no more. While Constellation was flagship of the US African Squadron, the squadron captured fourteen slave ships and freed almost four thousand Africans from a life of servitude in the Americas. One hundred and fifty years ago 705 of those Africans were freed by Constellation.

The former flag ship of the African Squadron is part of Historic Ships in Baltimore and is open for visitation year-round.

While on a test flight in a British Sopwith Camel on 24 September 1918, Lieutenant Junior Grade David S. Ingalls sighted a German two-seat Rumpler over Nieuport, Belgium. In company with another Camel he aggressively dove in and scored his fifth aerial victory in six weeks to become the Navy’s first ace.

Born to a life of privilege in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1899, Ingalls had matriculated at Yale University when WWI erupted. As a young man he enjoyed tinkering with aircraft, and enlisted as a machinist mate second class as a member of the First Yale Unit, a group of aviation pioneers, just before the United States entered the war.

Ingalls qualified as a Naval Aviator, commissioned, and exchanged with the Marines and the British to fight the Germans along the Western Front, where he shot down four German planes and at least one balloon to become the Navy’s first ace. Ingalls received the Distinguished Service Medal, the British Distinguished Flying Cross and the French Legion of Honor.

“He is one of the finest men” the British subsequently evaluated his service, “[No. 213] Squadron ever had.” They further noted that he was an “Excellent officer…exceptionally good pilot…bold and aggressive…made enviable record…” After WWI Ingalls completed his education at Yale and Harvard and practiced law. He served during WWII, returned to law and became involved in politics following that conflict. The intrepid pilot retired to Chagrin Falls, Ohio, with his wife Louise, where he died in 1985.