Naval History Blog

Today is the 87th anniversary of the 1923 grounding of seven destroyers at Point Perdanales, California, also called Honda Point. Following a day of maneuvers and a high-speed run south from San Francisco Bay, the fourteen destroyers of Destroyer Squadron 11 turned east toward the Santa Barbara Channel, soon entering dense fog. However, the force was north of where they thought they were, and a few minutes after the turn the flagship USS Delphy (DD 261) ran aground at 20 knots, quickly followed by six other ships. Twenty-three sailors died, and the seven ships were left in place to be pounded apart by the surf. The site is now part of Vandenburg Air Force Base, and a memorial marks the site.

On September 7, the NHHC Underwater Archaeology Branch (UAB), Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command, Naval Oceanographic Office, Office of Naval Research, and U.S. Naval Academy along with partners from Ocean Technology Foundation began the 2010 search and survey for Bonhomme Richard. The investigation will take place September 7 through September 21.

A SAAB Double Eagle MKII ROV being launched off the deck of CMT Cassiopée during the May 2010 search for Bonhomme Richard. Photo courtesy of Alexis Catsambis.

On September 23, 1779, Bonhomme Richard,  the flagship of the Continental Navy and commanded by Captain John Paul Jones, participated in one of the fiercest battles of the Revolutionary War against HMS Serapis off the coast of Flamborough Head, England. Although Jones emerged victorious from the battle, Bonhomme Richard was badly damaged and, after drifting for thirty-six hours, sank into the North Sea. If found, the final resting place of Bonhomme Richard could shed new light on US maritime history and would increase public awareness and appreciation for America’s maritime patrimony.

Photo of the USNS Henson, which will serve as the search vessel for the 2010 Bonhomme Richard survey. Photo courtesy of msc.navy.mil.

The survey area was determined using a computer program, developed by the U.S. Naval Academy, which integrates the weather and tidal data, crew actions and the vessel’s last known positions to establish where it might have gone down. The Bonhomme Richard Project teams will use an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) equipped with side scan and multibeam sonar, and a separate high-quality side scan sonar that will be towed behind the search vessel to create an image of the sea floor. NHHC will also be joined by a French Navy minehunter equipped with a robotic underwater video camera and teams of divers to further examine any targets warranting closer investigation. Dr. Robert Neyland, Head of UAB, will act as chief archaeologist and lead the investigation in authenticating and identifying any remains of the ship and its artifacts.

 Stay tuned for more updates as the search for Bonhomme Richard continues!

This color film of the Japanese Surrender was taken on 2 September 1945 by Commander George F. Kosco, USN. In 2010, the Kosco family restored the film and kindly presented the NHHC with a copy of the film.  Original film is silent.

On 11 September 1942, Pharmacist’s Mate First Class (PhM1/c) Wheeler B. Lipes agonized over the most difficult decision of his life. He had just diagnosed his shipmate, Seaman First Class Darrel D. Rector, with acute appendicitis. With their submarine Seadragon (SS-194) cruising in enemy waters, there was no way to get Rector to port in time. World War II submarines always carried a well trained corpsman, but their small, 55-man complement did not rate a doctor. Lipes could attempt an appendectomy, but the operation might kill his shipmate.

After joining the Navy in 1936, Lipes had received his medical training in the Navy hospital course in San Diego and had served at the Naval Hospital in Philadelphia and at the Naval Hospital in Canacao near Manila before entering the submarine service in 1941. Classified as an electro cardiographer, he had assisted Navy doctors during many operations, including several appendectomies.

On 8 September 1942, the Seadragon was several days and thousands of miles out from Fremantle, Australia, on her fourth war patrol, cruising off the Indonesian coast, when Rector first came to Lipes complaining of nausea and abdominal pain. Lipes told him to get to his bunk and rest. At first the corpsman thought something might be wrong with Rector’s gall bladder, but Rector soon began to display the classic symptoms of appendicitis: fever, rigid abdominal muscles, abdominal tenderness, and acute, localized pain. Lipes kept Rector in his bunk, packed his abdomen with ice, and restricted him to a liquid diet.

Nevertheless, Rector’s condition worsened. On the morning of 11 September, Lipes reported the situation to the commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander William E. Ferrall. Lipes said that unless Rector received an emergency appendectomy almost immediately, the 19-year-old seaman would die. The skipper asked the pharmacist’s mate what he intended to do. “Nothing,” said Lipes. Ferrall lectured him that everyone had to do the best they could and asked the 23-year-old pharmacist’s mate whether he thought he could do the surgery. “Yes sir, I can do it,” said Lipes, but “everything is against us. Our chances are slim.” The skipper explained the situation to Rector. Would the seaman allow the pharmacist’s mate to operate? “Whatever the doc feels has to be done is okay with me,” said Rector. Ferrall ordered Lipes to perform the surgery.

The skipper took the boat into relatively safe water and submerged to 120 feet to provide a stable platform. Every member of the crew, from the box-plane man to the galley cook, participated in the operation. Lipes boned up on the appendix from a medical book. The ship’s medical kit provided a few basics, including sulfa tablets, twelve hemostats, a packet of scalpel blades, catgut for sutures, and a limited quantity of ether. The rest of the instruments had to be improvised. A hemostat became a scalpel handle. Five tablespoons with the handles bent back served as retractors. Commercially-sterilized “Handi-pads” substituted for gauze sponges. A tea strainer covered with gauze served as a mask for administering the ether. Boiling water and torpedo alcohol provided sterilization. The operation would be performed on the wardroom table, barely long enough for the patient to stretch out on without his head or feet hanging over.

Lipes didn’t know how long the operation would last and whether there was enough ether. He had no way to do a blood count or urinalysis or to monitor the patient’s blood pressure, nor was there any intravenous fluid.

Nevertheless, with everyone at his assigned station, the operation began. Lipes began administering the anesthesia at 1046. Thereafter Lieutenant Franz Hoskins, the Communications Officer, served as anesthetist. With the skipper making and recording detailed observations at four to seven minute intervals, Lipes made the incision at 1107. At first he had difficulty finding Rector’s appendix. But then he slipped his fingers down behind the caecum, and there it was. The distal tip was black and gangrenous.

Lipes detached the appendix, tied it off, removed it, and preserved it in a jar of torpedo alcohol. He cauterized the stump with carbolic acid. He took sulfa, ground from tablets into powder and baked in the ship’s oven to kill off spores, and sprinkled it into the peritoneal cavity. Lipes finished suturing at 1322. Rector regained consciousness less than half an hour later.

The seaman’s three-inch incision healed nicely and he was back on duty in a few days. The Seadragon returned to port six weeks after the operation. The medical officer of the submarine squadron pronounced Rector okay. After examining the appendix, the medical officer concluded that Lipes and his shipmates had indeed saved Rector’s life. When the story broke in the press, Lipes became a national hero.

At bottom, it was training and leadership that saved the seaman’s life. The training Lipes had received had given him the know-how and confidence to perform at a level well above the normal expectations of his rating. The skipper’s decision to order Lipes to perform the surgery reflected his own confidence in the pharmacist’s mate’s training. And it was Lieutenant Commander Ferrall’s leadership that inspired Lipes to go above and beyond the call of duty and enabled him to organize the crew for an operation totally outside the realm of their experience.

The invasion of South Korea in 1950 nearly resulted in a Communist victory. UN forces were driven into a perimeter around the southeastern port of Pusan when General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, commanding U.S. and UN forces in Korea, decided to launch an amphibious landing against the North Korean flank at Inchon. A successful assault at Inchon and an advance to the nearby South Korean capital of Seoul would sever the main communist supply lines. An attack launched from Pusan would then batter the now cut-off North Korean forces. It was a bold plan.

The Navy knew little of the dangerous waters around Inchon despite the fact that the U.S. had occupied Korea south of the 38th parallel for four years. With a tidal range of over 30 feet, accurate intelligence of Inchon and its water approaches was vital to the success of the landing. No one did more to provide that information than the daring and resourceful Lieutenant Eugene F. Clark, USN, a geographic specialist on MacArthur’s intelligence staff. Clark had enlisted in the Navy in 1934, became a chief yeoman and earned a commission in World War II. He commanded an LST and a transport, and participated in several clandestine operations with the Nationalist Chinese against the communists after the war. Invasion planners needed detailed information about the harbor, the approaches and enemy defenses so they dispatched a reconnaissance team under Lieutenant Clark to get the answers. His small team included two South Korean officers who had fought in World War II and possessed sufficient arms to equip a small irregular force.

Clark’s team landed on Yonghung Do, an island only 14 miles from Inchon, on 1 September 1950. They quickly organized a force of local men and boys to watch the nearby enemy held island of Taebu Do. On the advice of his Korean officers, Clark had brought in rice and dried fish for the islanders, which brought much good will. Clark also equipped Yonghung Do’s one motorized sampan with a .50-caliber machine gun and armed his men with carbines and submachine guns. To acquire intelligence about the enemy, the team seized local fishing sampans-interrogating crewmen who generally professed loyalty to South Korea-and explored Inchon harbor. Clark’s young Korean operatives also infiltrated Inchon, Kimpo air base and even Seoul and returned with valuable information. Clark told the planners that the Japanese-prepared tide tables were accurate, that the mud flats fronting Inchon would support no weight and that the harbor’s sea walls were higher than estimated. Clark also reported that Wolmi Do, an island in Inchon harbor, was fortified with Soviet-made artillery.

The North Koreans, aware of Clark’s presence on Yonghung Do, sent only small parties to the island to investigate his hideaway. On 7 September, however, they sent one motorized and three sailing sampans loaded with troops. South Korean lookouts spotted the approaching boats, enabling Clark and his men to get their “flagship” underway. As Clark closed the enemy, a 37- mm anti-tank gun mounted in the bow of the Communist motorized craft opened up. A shell splashed well in front of Clark’s sampan. Undeterred by their poor shooting, Clark directed his flagship to within 100 yards of the enemy squadron. His .50 caliber machine gun raked two of the North Korean vessels, sinking one and demolishing another. Witnessing this slaughter, the two remaining boats fled the scene. After Clark reported that battle to headquarters, the destroyer Hanson (DD 832) arrived to take off the team. Clark, who had not asked to be extracted, instead requested Hanson’s skipper to pound Taebu Do. Hanson blasted the island with 212 5-inch rounds, covered by Marine Corsairs that bombed and strafed the North Korean positions.

The team stayed on the island and continued their mission. Clark scouted Palmi Do, an island centrally located in the approaches to Inchon, and reported that Canadian raiders had only damaged the lighthouse beacon. Clark was ordered to relight the lamp at midnight on the 15th. On 14 September, Clark’s team moved to Palmi Do and repaired the light. Meanwhile, the North Koreans sent a second contingent to wipe out the force on Yonghung Do that overwhelmed the defenders and executed over 50 men, women and children. Clark avenged their sacrifice when he activated the beacon atop the lighthouse at the appointed time on 15 September. With this light to guide them, the ships of the landing force safely threaded their way through the treacherous approach to Inchon. The Inchon landing was an incredible success and UN forces soon drove the remnants of the North Korean army across the 38th parallel.

In recognition of his heroic work, the Navy awarded Lieutenant Clark the Silver Star and the Army presented him with the Legion of Merit. Clark participated in several other special operations off Korea, earning a Navy Cross and an oak leaf cluster for the Silver Star. Commander Clark retired from the Navy in 1966 and died in 1998.

Heroism is not confined to the battlefield, and opportunities to demonstrate it occur as naval aviators train to be ready for war in time of peace.

On 31 August 1939, the day before war would begin in Europe that would eventually become a global conflict, it was business as usual for naval aviators at Hampton Roads, Virginia.

That morning, 27-year old ENS James H. Eoff, A-V(N), USNR, of Bombing Squadron Four, attached to the Ranger (CV-4) Air Group, took off in a Vought SB2U-1 [Vindicator] from NAS Hampton Roads, on what was slated to be a routine navigation and radio training flight.  Radioman 3d Class Joseph T. George rode in the after cockpit as his passenger.

At about 1022, a witness on the ground heard the sound of an engine cutting out. Eoff, apparently realizing that the plane was in extremis and the terrain below would not permit a forced landing, ordered his passenger to bail out.

Tragically, Radioman 3d Class George’s parachute became fouled on a part of the plane, for he seemed to be dangling some 15 feet behind and below it. Eyewitnesses then saw the SB2U-1 sway from side to side, as if Eoff was trying to dislodge his trapped passenger. In staying at the controls, however, the young pilot sacrificed his own chance to jump clear of the plane in its terminal dive as it plunged to earth in a near-vertical attitude near Stony Creek, Virginia, and crashed, killing both men instantly.

For his courageously remaining with his doomed plane in an attempt to save his passenger’s life, ENS Eoff was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, posthumously.

On 28 August 1917, the Navy commissioned a long-distance radio station at Otter Cliffs, on Mt. Desert Island, Maine. The station was the project of Alessandro Fabbri, a sportsman and inventor who was an early devotee of the then-new field of long distance radio communications. After World War I began, Fabbri cleared the site, built the station, and offered it to the Navy on the condition that he be commissioned and placed in charge. The Navy agreed, and the station’s first officer in charge was Ensign Fabbri, United States Naval Reserve Force.

The station’s isolation from radio noise and location far up the East Coast made it the best site in the Navy for trans-Atlantic communications. After the war the station continued in service, and then-Lieutenant Fabbri was awarded the Navy Cross for his service. Tragically, Fabbri died of pneumonia in 1922 at age 44.

The station continued in use into the 1930s, but the buildings were not maintained and eventually became an eyesore. A number of interested citizens, including John D. Rockefeller, Jr. asked the Navy to have the buildings removed, but the station was too important to consider closing it. The Navy did agree, however, that if Rockefeller could identify and outfit a similarly useful site somewhere within fifty miles of Otter Cliffs, the Navy would turn over the Otter Cliffs facility to him. He would then donate the site to Acadia National Park once the buildings were removed.

Rockefeller agreed, and built a new station to the tip of Schoodic Peninsula about five miles away. The buildings at Otter Cliffs were demolished and the property donated to Acadia National Park. A plaque commemorating the service of Alessandro Fabbri can still be seen there.

The new radio station was commissioned in 1935. After several name changes it ended up as Naval Security Group Activity Winter Harbor. NSGA Winter Harbor was disestablished in 2002, and the Schoodic Peninsula property was turned over to the National Park Service.