Naval History Blog

Today is the 85^th anniversary of the day in 1925 when the first intended flight from California to Hawaii stopped being a flight and became a sea voyage.  CDR John Rodgers and a crew of four left San Pedro on 31 August but developed fuel problems and landed their PN-9 seaplane on the water.  While Navy ships searched for the plane, Rodgers and his crew rigged a sail from the aircraft’s wing fabric and sailed for nine days to within fifteen miles of Kauai before being met by the submarine R-4, which towed the airplane into port.  CDR Rodgers was killed the next year in a plane crash.

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.

Charles Ellet, Jr.

Charles Ellet, Jr. gained early fame as a civil engineer and designer of suspension bridges in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. The Navy Department initially mocked the frail engineer for his design of an unarmed steam vessel used for breaking blockades in the 1850s. Determined, Ellet went so far as to submit plans to Imperial Russia during the Crimean War. Seeing the success of the CSS Virginia’s ramming blows at Hampton Roads, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton grew convinced and offered Ellet a commission as an Army Colonel and money to construct the United States Ram Fleet for operations on the Mississippi River in coordination with the Western Gunboat Flotilla. Each steam-powered ram was braced with iron bars along the bow, creating a powerful and centralized force utilizing the weight of the vessel and flow of the fast-moving Mississippi River. His design quickly proved adequate at the June 1862 Battle of Memphis, where Ellet’s Ram Fleet decimated the Confederate River Defense Fleet. Fortune did not smile for Ellet, however, as he died two weeks later from a leg wound received during the melee.

James Eads

Indiana native James Eads made a name for himself in St. Louis, Missouri as a civil engineer, boat builder, and salvager. At the beginning of the war, the government contracted him to quickly construct seven shallow-draft gunboats for riverine warfare. These ships, with flat-bottoms, wide-beams, and 2.5 inch armor plating, became known as the “City” class ironclads. City class ships were a revolution in design, as the casemates constructed by naval constructor Samuel Pook helped earn their nickname “Pook’s Turtles.” These ships became some of the more famous Union ships during the war, including the St. Louis, Carondelet, and Cairo, which was sunk by a naval mine during the first attempt to take Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1862. Eads would earn greater fame after the war for his construction of the Mississippi River bridge, also known as the Eads Bridge, in St. Louis. Eads held more than fifty patents at the time of his death in 1887.

For more information on Charles Ellet, Jr. and his rams, please go here.

For more information on James Eads, please go here.

The submarine USS Stingray (SS 186) landed fifteen Philippine personnel and six tons of supplies on the island of Luzon on 27 August 1944. This operation was in support of guerilla operations in advance of the U.S. landings in the Philippines. This mission was one of dozens of “special transport” missions carried out by submarines to land, support, or evacuate people ashore on Japanese-held islands throughout the war.

A historical marker near the landing site was dedicated in 2007. Two Stingray sailors and one Blackfin (SS 322) sailor—all in their eighties—attended the ceremony at which the marker was dedicated not only to the Stingray landing, but to all the submarine landings in the Philippines. One Stingray sailor, Basil Wentworth, said that he had been told after the mission that the landing party had been killed soon after arriving, and he did not find out until the year 2000 that the landing had been successful.

This landing mission occurred on the twelfth of Stingray’s sixteen war patrols. Stingray was at Manila on 7 December 1941 when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and began her first war patrol immediately. After a wartime record that included numerous special missions and four confirmed sinkings of Japanese merchant vessels, Stingray was decommissioned in late 1945 and sold for scrapping two years later.

The U.S. brig Washington was one of a number of vessels employed by the Navy to survey and map the coasts and harbors of the United States for the Coast Survey. The Coast Survey (predecessor to today’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) was part of the Treasury Department, but employed officers of the U.S. Navy. A number of young, scientifically minded naval officers were assigned to survey duty when their services were not needed for naval operations.

The brig Washington, under the command of Lieutenant Thomas R. Gedney, was employed in summer 1839 in surveying and sounding operations off the eastern end of Long Island, New York. While working between Gardiner’s Island and Montauk Point on 26 August, the ship’s crew spotted and captured a suspicious vessel lying at anchor off Culloden Point. They found her to be the Spanish schooner Amistad, which had set sail from the coast of Africa a few months previously carrying two white passengers and 54 slaves, bound for Guanaja, Cuba. Four days out of port the slaves rose and murdered the captain and his crew, saving the two Spanish passengers to navigate the ship back to Africa. Instead the Spaniards sailed the vessel northward and westward by night in hopes that Amistad  would be intercepted. During two months of aimless sailing the ship ran low on food and water, and nine slaves died. Lieutenant Gedney took possession of Amistad, taking her first to New London, Connecticut, and then turning her over to authorities in New Haven, the closest port with a U.S. District Marshal.

The brig Washington was transferred to the Coast Survey on 23 April 1840, but was called back to naval service during the Mexican War. The vessel was stationed at New Orleans at the outbreak of the Civil War and was taken over by Louisiana authorities soon after that state seceded from the Union on 31 January 1861. Little is known of the ship thereafter. In June 1861, Commander David Dixon Porter reported that the ship was being fitted out at New Orleans and was almost ready for sea, but no clues to the ship’s subsequent career thereafter have been found.