War Stories III (27 page)

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Authors: Oliver L. North

BOOK: War Stories III
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The USS
Menges
, DE-320, was one of more than 500 destroyer escorts built in U.S. shipyards between 1943 and the end of the war. Captained and crewed by the U.S. Coast Guard, the
Menges
—with Lt. (JG) Ed Nash aboard as gunnery officer—was assigned to convoy escort duty shortly after she was commissioned in the autumn of '43. The experiences Nash and his shipmates had aboard the
Menges
were typical of the perils faced by merchantmen and the crews of the little ships that protected them.
Nash was a green young officer just out of OCS and advanced training at the Navy School in Miami. He joined a crew of the newly commissioned USS
Menges
in late fall of 1943, and took the ship for its shakedown cruise
out of Bermuda during the next two months. By early April 1944 he was still getting used to the rigorous life of a seaman on the
Menges,
doing convoy escort duty from the Norfolk to Gibraltar and back.
LIEUTENANT (JG) EDGAR “ED” NASH, USCG
USS
Menges,
DE-320
Atlantic-Mediterranean Convoy Escort Duty
3 May 1944
The
Menges
was just 306 feet long, had a beam of thirty-six feet, seven inches, and could make about 22 knots. We had a crew of fifteen officers and 200 enlisted—and were armed with three 3-inch guns, and three 40 mm anti-aircraft mounts—one “quad” and two twin mounts. We also had sonar, radar, depth charges, and assorted smaller caliber weapons, and of course, three-eighths-inch-thick welded steel to protect us from whatever the enemy or the sea threw at us.
Right after our shake-down cruise and some specialized ASW—anti-submarine warfare training—we were assigned to escort duty for convoys, crisscrossing the Atlantic. Depending on the size of the convoy, there would be anywhere from six to fifteen escorts—and the whole convoy could only go as fast as the slowest merchantman. Depending on where we were in the screen we would be zig-zagging constantly—usually at about twelve to fifteen knots.
If any of the ships in the screen detected a U-boat or picked up aircraft on radar, we would go to General Quarters instantly—and stay that way—with all the watertight doors dogged shut and the men in their gun mounts for six to eight hours at a time.
As soon as we got far enough east, so that we might be in range of German aircraft, we usually went to GQ as a matter of routine just before dusk. The U.S. and British air forces owned the sky during the day, but after dark, the Luftwaffe would come out hunting for unescorted merchant
ships—and of course, convoys. That problem didn't get better until after France was liberated in the fall of '44.
On 30 March 1944 we were escorting a big convoy from Norfolk into the Mediterranean. At Gibraltar, ComNavNAW—Commander, Naval Forces in North African Waters—had warned us that German torpedo bombers were making forays over the shipping routes looking for targets. Sure enough, that night, just at dusk, thirty planes hit our convoy.
Two or three planes came over at very high altitude dropping flares to illuminate the convoy. This was a huge concentration of ships—carrying reinforcements and supplies for the battles in Italy—and the build-up for the invasion of southern France later in the summer.
As the flares were dropping, about ten Ju-88s came in low from dead in front of us, trying to get inside the escort screen and at the “softer” transports and merchant ships to drop their torpedoes and bombs. Only a few from the first wave made it through—but they followed up with a second and then a third wave.
We were shooting at anything we could see—and we nailed one with our 40 mm twin-mount—square in the nose of the bomber—and it crashed into the water. One of our 20 mm mounts also damaged another—so we weren't doing too badly. I wanted to use the 3-inch battery but the German planes were so low the skipper told us not to fire because he was worried that our shots might hit one of our ships.
My combat station was on the wing of the bridge, giving me an extraordinary view of the battle. It was during the third wave of the attack that one of the German planes got through and suddenly the
MV Paul Hamilton
—about 800 yards off our beam, exploded in one huge fireball. She was full of ammunition—and had aboard almost 500 soldiers from an army ordnance unit—plus the ship's crew and the navy armed guard detachment—over 580 men.
One of the escort ships behind us was sent to pick up survivors. They didn't find a soul. Three other ships suffered damage from torpedoes and bombs but none of the others went down.
We had another serious air raid on the convoy but this time we had some warning. A radar picket well out in front of the convoy picked up the inbound raid and alerted us. But even then, some of the planes got through and a Navy destroyer, steaming just ahead of us and off to port, took a torpedo amidships and went down in a hurry. We picked up 107 of her men and another Coast Guard DE behind us picked up more. We also picked up two German airmen who had survived being shot down.
By the spring of '44 we thought we had taken the worst that the Germans could throw at us—but we were wrong. On the night of 3 May '44 we were at the front of the screen, escorting a convoy of mostly empty merchantmen back to the U.S. when our radar watch saw a blip on his scope, and guessed—correctly it turns out—that it was a U-boat.
German U-boats could do up to 18 knots on the surface—but only about 6 knots submerged. They preferred to loiter about on the surface waiting for a target—and only submerge when they had to. But this U-boat was already submerged—apparently thinking that he could let the convoy pass by and then attack from the rear—where there was only one escort. But our radar operator was so good he had picked up the sub's periscope at 12,000 yards. That was the good part.
We had been warned that the U-boats were now using a new T-5 naval acoustic torpedo—guided to its target by the sound of a ship's propeller blades and engine. To counter this new threat, the
Menges
had been equipped with what's called “foxer” gear—a tremendous noise-maker that is towed on a cable about 200 yards aft of the stern. It's designed to make a real racket so that acoustic torpedoes will home in that sound instead of the ship.
We should have been streaming our “foxer” gear but the skipper didn't want me to because it interferes with the sonars on our ships—making it harder to detect a submarine. He also said he was concerned that the noise of our foxer gear would attract U-boats. Well,
that
didn't matter—
this
U-boat already knew where we were.
We went to General Quarters and immediately informed the convoy and the rest of the escorts that we were closing the contact to attack.
We were at our battle stations for about twelve minutes and making about 20 knots when it hit us. An acoustic torpedo homed in on the sound of our screws and quite literally, blew the stern of the
Menges
right off the ship.
Thirty-one of the crew were killed instantly—and twenty-five more were wounded. Some of the crewmen on the fantail were thrown into the water by the force of the explosion. With our engine room gone we quickly went dead in the water—but our emergency generators kicked on—powering up our radars, pumps, and emergency lighting. Our combat watch—still on duty even though the ship could sink at any second—spotted the sub on radar just off our port beam. So the radioman passed the sub's position to two other Coast Guard DEs—the
Pride
and the
Mosley
—and they immediately took off after the U-boat.
Amazingly, our ship held together. The seams and water-tight doors held. She didn't take much water at all forward of the engine room and our damage control parties kept her afloat. We put one of our boats in the water to rescue those in the crew who had been blown over the side and most of them survived.
Just before dawn one of the other escorts came alongside and we transferred our wounded. A short while afterward a French tug arrived, took us under tow, and brought us into Oran for temporary repairs.
Later in the day, our sister ships, USS
Pride
, DE-323 and USS
Mosley
, DE-321, hunted down the German U-boat that had hit us. Just before noon the sub fired another of his acoustic torpedoes and damaged a Free French DE, but
Pride
,
Mosley,
and two other escorts finally hounded the German U-boat so long and damaged it so badly with depth charges and “hedgehogs” that it had to surface. The sub was taken under fire immediately, causing the crew to scuttle her. The Coast Guard escorts captured about half of the crew, including the skipper and learned that our assailant was U-371
.
It turned out that the captain of U-371 was just twenty-five years old—and that he had intended to fire another torpedo and finish us off. But when he heard the small motor of our lifeboat—which we had put in
the water to rescue our guys in the water—he thought we were abandoning ship and he decided not to “waste” another torpedo.
The USS
Menges
was eventually towed back to the Brooklyn Navy Yard where the stern of another damaged DE was welded to her hull. She finished the war as she had started it—doing convoy duty in the Atlantic. Ed Nash was reassigned to an 83-foot Coast Guard cutter and participated in the invasion of Normandy on D-Day.
The German U-boat fleet that had been such a prominent threat to the survival of Britain earlier in the war was slowly ground down by Allied convoys, long-range patrol aircraft, and eventually, by the introduction of escort carriers and “hunter-killer” units—dispatched not to defend convoys, but to hunt down and destroy enemy submarines.
Though the U-boats sent to sea by Admiral Dönitz would attack combatants like the USS
Menges
when necessity or opportunity arose, their preferred targets were merchant ships. By the end of the war 4,786 merchant vessels flagged to the nations of the British Empire would lie on the bottom of the world's oceans, along with 578 U.S.-flagged merchant ships. More than 80,000 Allied Merchant Mariners were missing, dead, or prisoners of war. The carnage was horrific—but it was the only way to win the Battle of the Atlantic.
There is one other sad footnote to the blood-sacrifice made by the American Merchant Mariners. When the war was over, the survivors who had “delivered the tools of war” weren't accorded the status of veterans. Though they had been subject to all the hardships, dangers, and privations of any man in uniform, they were denied the benefits afforded veterans—including the GI Bill. In 1988 President Ronald Reagan finally awarded the recognition that the World War II Merchant Mariners deserved—forty-three years after the war.
CHAPTER 10
WAR ON THE HOME FRONT 1941–1945
W
hen Hitler started World War II by invading Poland in the summer of 1939, America was lagging behind the rest of the western world in emerging from the chronic, decade-long economic upheaval that had begun with the stock market crash of 1929. The worldwide “Great Depression” had created massive unemployment, bank failures, and the collapse of market value for nearly every commodity. Millions of Americans lost jobs, homes, farms, and businesses as banks foreclosed on loans and mortgages in an effort to survive.
In the United States, the effects of the global economic collapse were aggravated by a severe drought that ruined agricultural productivity in the southwestern plains. Hundreds of thousands of farmers and their families lost everything in the “Dust Bowl.” By the mid to late 1930s, many of these farm families had migrated west, searching vainly for jobs and a homestead.
The Roosevelt administration's response to the economic crisis may well have exacerbated and prolonged the crisis in the United States. FDR's National Recovery Administration, colossal federal spending—and debt—along with make-work programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps,
the Works Projects Administration and “New Deal” social programs were far less effective in stimulating the U.S. economy than more conventional, market-based initiatives undertaken in Britain and France. And unlike Britain and France—which both initiated economically invigorating military build-ups as Hitler became more threatening in 1936—the U.S. made no such significant investments.
In Germany, Hitler applied his National Socialist theories to mobilize the nation to his grand design. Like Roosevelt, he too created massive public-works projects—the
Autobahn,
upgraded railways, new bridges, and enormous stadiums and parade fields to showcase his Third Reich. As with military conscription, most of these projects—like the industrial expansion necessary for the production of weapons, munitions, aircraft, and ships—had an almost immediate, positive effect on the German economy.
In the U.S., Roosevelt's public works projects—the Tennessee Valley Authority being the largest—had the effect of creating upwards of 40,000 jobs. But the full economic and military benefits of these colossal endeavors on the broader population would not be realized until the 1940s.

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