NAZI POWs IN AMERICA

On this day, German POWs Wolfgang Kurzer and Karl Tomola quietly slipped away from the camp at Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, and headed north.  They crossed the Canadian border where they found employment washing dishes or working on farms.  Within several months they were ready to try for Germany and in November re-crossed the border at Rouses Point, New York.  They wended their way to New York City, either by luck or design having chosen one of only two US ports open to neutral shipping (New York and Philadelphia).  Here they attempted to ship aboard a neutral freighter as deck seamen, but their accents and their lack of proper credentials not only waylaid their plans but probably tipped the local authorities.  They were found a short time later stowed away in 55-gallon drums aboard the Spanish freighter Castilla Ampudia with a two-week supply of food and ten pounds of chocolate.

Throughout the course of WWII, Axis prisoners of war were confined in 686 POW area camps and branches across the United States.  Upwards of 420,000 POWs were being held on American soil by 1945.  Good treatment and ample recreational pursuits reduced the desire to escape.  Indeed, the massive size of our country and the oceans to the east and west gave little hope of reaching Germany.  Yet all POWs are bound by a code of conduct obligating them to attempt escape.  Many tried, though news of such was usually suppressed for fear of public panic.  Most found themselves unprepared for the language and culture they encountered, and most were caught within a day or two.  POWs on the lam often sought the perceived safety of Mexico or Canada, traveling at night or in rail cars and avoiding the local populace.  A few occasionally managed to remain at large for some time in this manner. 

As an example of how escaped Germans often suffered from unfamiliarity with American ways, witness the case of a trio of Germans, one of whom had been a submariner aboard U-162.  They walked away from a work detail at Camp Crossville in eastern Tennessee.  After several days of hiding in the backwoods, the trio stopped beside a mountain cabin for a drink from the pump.  Their libations were interrupted by a cantankerous old crone who told them in no uncertain terms to “git!”  Unfamiliar with mountain ways, the three were unmoved–at which the old granny drew a bead and shot one of them dead.  The deputy sheriff soon arrived and informed the old lady to her horror that she had shot an escaped German prisoner.  The penitent granny confessed she never would have pulled the trigger had she known they were Germans.  “What in thunder did you think you were aiming at?” the sheriff asked.

“Why, I reckon’d they wuz Yankees!”

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  16 JUL 24

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Krammer, Arnold.  Nazi Prisoners of War in America.  Chelsea, MI: Scarborough House, 1991, pp. 114-46.

Moore, John Hammond.  The Faustball Tunnel:  German POWs in America and Their Great Escape.  New York, NY: Random House, 1978, p. 64-65.

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                   THE “UNITED STATES FLEET”

Since the Revolution, our national security interests had concentrated on the Atlantic Ocean, and our Navy operated the majority of her warships in those waters.  Only a handful of frigates or cruisers patrolled such far-flung locations as the Pacific, the Mediterranean, or the West African coast.  The Atlantic-based operations of subsequent conflicts, such as the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and World War I, reinforced our Atlantic orientation.  By the decade of the 1920s, 180 of our Navy’s finest ships, including 16 battleships, were in the Atlantic Fleet.  The titular Pacific Fleet was squadron-sized at best, with vessels nearing the end of their service life.

But Japan’s post-WWI mandate over Germany’s former Pacific island possessions, indeed their militarization of these islands, spurred US planners to consider a threat from that direction.  The opening of the Panama Canal eight years earlier facilitated rapid movement between the two oceans, and strategists decided to shift our naval defenses whence they could readily address what was then conceived to be our most credible threat.  On this day, CNO ADM Robert Coontz merged the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets into the “United States Fleet,” and the bulk of our warships were moved to bases along our Pacific coast.  The single fleet mentality prevailed–only a small cruiser/destroyer training squadron remained in the Atlantic.

At the time, our major west coast facilities were in San Francisco and Puget Sound, but neither was robust enough to service the entire US Fleet.  San Pedro, near Los Angeles, offered a harbor deep enough for battleships, while San Diego’s shallow, curving channel could accommodate destroyers and gunboats.  This latter harbor, by virtue of its position as the first American port north of Panama, received immediate improvements and would eventually grow to its modern size.  San Pedro persisted as a base for battleships into the 1990s; the last Pacific battleships in active service during Vietnam and Desert Storm were homeported at nearby Long Beach.

But Germany’s aggressions in the late 1930s forced American planners to consider simultaneous threats from two directions.  On 17 June 1940, CNO ADM Harold R. Stark introduced the (then) novel concept of a “Two-Ocean Navy” to Congress, and a month later President Franklin Roosevelt signed a $4 billion Naval Expansion Act into law.  On 1 February 1941, the Pacific-based United States Fleet was re-divided into separate Atlantic and Pacific Fleets, this time of more equitable strength.  This dual fleet orientation is that which we take for granted in the 21^st century.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  13 DEC 22

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Baer, George W.  One Hundred Years of Sea Power:  The U.S. Navy, 1890-1990.  Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 1996, p. 106.

Love, Robert W.  History of the US Navy, Vol 1  1775-1941.  Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1992, 524-26, 541-43.

Sweetman, Jack.  American Naval History:  An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 3^rd ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 2002, pp. 133, 142, 143, 146, 149.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Despite this re-division of the fleets on 1 February 1941, the “United States Fleet” continued as an administrative umbrella overseeing both arms.  ADM Ernest J. King was the last independent CINCUSFLEET, appointed on 20 December 1941 after Pearl Harbor.  Then on 12 March 1942, the duties of CNO and CINCUSFLEET were combined under ADM King.

The Naval Expansion Act of 1940 also expanded the 1^st and 2^nd Marine Brigades into the modern 1^st and 2^nd MarDiv’s, headquartered in Camp Pendleton and Camp Lejeune, respectively.

Though in hindsight one might criticize the single fleet mentality, it had one under-appreciated benefit.  The shifting of the single fleet from coast to coast required robust basing facilities on both coasts.  As a result, the infrastructure necessary to support the dual fleet re-organization, and indeed the “Two-Ocean War,” was already in place in 1941.

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                                        NAVAJO CODE TALKERS

On the night of 26 October 1918 two WWI companies of the Army’s 142^nd Infantry became trapped near Chufilly, France.  To affect their withdrawal in the face of German radio code breaking prowess, the Army turned to several officers who were members of the Choctaw nation.  These radioed instructions to the beleaguered companies in their native language.  The withdrawal went unusually smoothly, prompting Army officials to investigate the regular use of Native American languages for secure tactical transmissions.  The idea was abandoned however, after realizing that no such dialect contained words for modern military innovations like “machine gun” or “tank.”

Decades later, after Pearl Harbor, Marine Corps MGEN Clayton B. Vogel, Commanding General, Amphibious Forces, Pacific Fleet, rekindled interest in Native American tongues.  The Comanche, Sioux, Chippewa, and Pima-Papago languages were all considered, however on February 28^th, 1942, four volunteers from the Navajo reservation near Flagstaff, Arizona, were brought to MCB Camp Elliot (modern NAS Miramar) for an experiment.  These four successfully translated, sent, and received five simple telephone messages between adjoining rooms.  Vogel was impressed enough to call for the recruitment of a cadre of Navajos, and on this day, the “First 29” reported for boot camp to MCB San Diego (modern MCRD).  None dropped out, and after graduation these 29 were whisked away to top secret quarters at Camp Elliot.  Here, they worked for weeks to devise standard Navajo language substitutions for non-Navajo military concepts.  “Submarine” became “iron fish,” “grenade” became “potato,” and “sailor” became “white cap.”  In practice this system evolved to a code-within-a-code that, in final form, sounded unintelligible even to an uninformed Navajo.  For example the message, “Request artillery and tank fire at 123B, Company E move 50 yards left flank of Company D” would have been transmitted by the code talkers as, “Ask for many big guns and tortoise fire at 123 bear tail drop Mexican ear mouse owl victor elk 50 yards left flank ocean fish Mexican deer.”

The Navajo code talkers served in every Pacific campaign from Guadalcanal to Okinawa.  They were uniquely Marine (the Army dismissed a similar idea early in WWII) though they also served on US Navy ships supporting amphibious operations.  Indeed, on more than one occasion they were challenged by overzealous fellow Marines who mistook them and their language for enemy infiltrators.  Despite nearly four years of continuous use, there’s is the only battlefield code in Western military history that was not broken by the enemy.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 10 MAY 22

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

McClain S.  Navajo Weapon.  Boulder, CO: Books Beyond Borders, Inc., 1994.

Molnar, Alexander, Jr.  “Navajo Code Talkers:  World War II Fact Sheet.”  AT:  www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq61-2.htm, 11 April 2007.

“Navajo Code Talker’s Dictionary.”  AT: www.history.navy.mil/faqs/ faq61-4.htm, 11 April 2007.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  The Navajo language proved ideal for this purpose.  Like many Native American languages, it is completely oral, with no written alphabet or characterizations.  Fluency in Navajo can only be gained through having been raised in the Navajo culture, (whites conversant in Navajo speak only a “pidgin” form of the language). 

There were 380 known code talkers who served in the Marines in WWII.  Ten were killed in action and one spent three years as a prisoner of the Japanese.  For a quarter century after the war their work remained strictly classified.  It was the Reagan administration that finally acknowledged their contribution publicly when 14 August 1982 was declared National Navajo Code Talkers Day.  The encoding dictionary developed during WWII has been declassified, below are several more interesting items:

English word        Navajo Code equivalent

aircraft carrier       bird carrier

destroyer              shark

battleship              whale

cruiser                  small whale

PT boat                 mosquito

Brigadier General one star

Colonel                 silver eagle

dive bomber          chicken hawk

fighter plane          hummingbird

Coast Guard          shore runner

Australia               rolled hat

India                     white clothes

China                   braided hair

America                our mother

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                         “JOHNNY” MOORE

John Anderson “Johnny” Moore was born on 12 January 1910 in central Texas.  By age 18 he was living near Memphis, from whence he was appointed to the US Naval Academy.  Here, his thundering right hook earned him boxing prowess and a reputation for action.  The 1932 “Lucky Bag” describes, “Wherever Johnny is, there will be something going on.  He is never lacking in enthusiasm, energy or ideas.”  After junior officer tours aboard USS Arizona (BB-39), several submarines and the destroyer Sands (DD-243), Moore transferred to the Bureau of Navigation, Personnel Command, at whose desk he sat during the Pearl Harbor raid.  Then on 19 July 1943 the demand for submarine officers in the Pacific led to Moore’s selection to command the Tambor-class submarine Grayback (SS-208).

Moore’s first war patrol was Grayback’s eighth in September 1943.  It tested a new tactic SUBRON TWO’s commander, CAPT Charles “Swede” Momsen, borrowed from German U-boats.  Rendezvousing off Midway with Shad (SS-235) and Cero (SS-225), the three cruised the East China Sea as a “wolfpack.”  They searched independently, but when one spotted target she would radio the others and converge as a group.  These tactics allowed Moore to sink the transport Konron Maru in early October, followed by the freighter Kozui Maru and the auxiliary cruiser Atawa Maru weeks later.  The three subs returned in November, out of torpedoes, to a rousing welcome home that included the Navy Cross for Moore.

Grayback’s ninth patrol was even more successful, if short.  Moore sank seven enemy freighters, an armed trawler, and an escorting sub-chaser.  Out of torpedoes after only a month on patrol, he returned for his second Navy Cross.

On 28 January 1944 Grayback began her tenth patrol off the Bonin Islands.  Two more freighters, Taikei Maru and Tonshin Maru, succumbed to Moore’s torpedoes.  Moore then spotted Japanese convoy Hi-40, and on 25 February the tanker Nanho Maru became his next victim.  Moore surfaced later that day to message SUBPAC.  He was ordered to return.  It was final word from Moore.  Grayback’s estimated arrival day of 7 March came and passed with no sign of the submarine. 

Japanese records revealed Grayback’s fate after the war.  Her sinking of the freighter Ceylon Maru while in transit with her last two torpedoes alerted a nearby carrier.  Enemy aircraft from that carrier caught Grayback on the surface.  In a phenomenal stroke, one of their #500 bombs struck the submarine directly behind the sail.  She snapped in half and sank.  Follow-up aircraft found only an oil slick to mark the spot.

Watch the POD for more “Today in Naval History”

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Rehabilitation Medicine

Blair, Clay, Jr.  Silent Victory:  The U.S. Submarine War Against Japan, Vol 2.  New York, NY: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1975, pp. 511-13.

Hall of Valor Project website.  AT: https://valor.militarytimes.com/hero/20707, retrieved 29 December 2021.

Heslar Naval Armory.  AT: https://indyencyclopedia.org/heslar-naval-armory/, retrieved 26 December 2021.

Holmes, Harry.  The Last Patrol.  Shrewsbury, England: Airlife Publishing, Ltd., 1994, pp. 91-93.

Naval History and Heritage Command. Lucky Bag 1932  “John A Moore, CDR, USN.”  AT: https://usnamemorialhall.org/index.php/ john_a._moore,_cdr,_usn, retrieved 29 December 2021.

Naval History and Heritage Command.  “Japanese Naval and Merchant Shipping Losses During WWII by All Causes.”  AT: https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/j/japanese-naval-merchant-shipping-losses-wwii.html, retrieved 29 December 2021.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  In a strange twist, American interpreters at the end of the war mistranslated the Japanese records by one digit.  The position of the sinking was thus recorded as 100 miles in error.  Grayback lay undisturbed until 2019 when the translation error was discovered and corrected by researchers from the Lost 52 Project.  She was subsequently found, sitting upright in 1400 feet of water about 100 miles off Okinawa.  Moore and 79 Grayback crewmen remain on board today.

For this final mission, Moore was posthumously awarded his third Navy Cross.  An empty grave in the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines remembers CDR Moore, as does the Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate John A. Moore (FFG-19).  Grayback is honored with a memorial at the Heslar Naval Armory in Indianapolis, Indiana.  The Hesler Armory was decommissioned in 2015 and the Grayback Memorial was removed to government storage.

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                      CDR GEORGE F. DAVIS

Since October 1944, the Allied assault on the 7000 islands of the Philippines had been steadily progressing.  Leyte, Samar, and several more of the Visayans had fallen, though the main island of Luzon remained to be retaken.  Here, the Allies planned the same approach the Japanese had used so successfully three years earlier, landing on the less populated western shore of Luzon at the Lingayen Gulf then sweeping southward toward Manila.  From 2-8 January advanced elements of Task Force 77 approached the Lingayen Gulf to sweep mines and soften-up shore defenses.

The enemy resistance was expected to include their deadly new weapon, the kamikaze.  WWII was the first time American sailors faced an enemy bent on suicide attacks, and initial incredulousness had given way to determined countermeasures.  Kamikazes were part of the reason the van of the advancing force this day included a four-destroyer section of pickets.  USS Walke (DD-723) was one of these destroyers, captained for the recent six weeks by CDR George Fleming Davis.  Davis had been born to American parents in Manila in 1911 and was familiar with the territory his Navy was about to attack.  He had served as a LT aboard USS Oklahoma (BB-37) at Pearl Harbor and had become a seasoned combat veteran in the Aleutians, Guadalcanal, and Guam campaigns.  His reputation for steadfastness was about to be reaffirmed.

Around noon, a massed flight of kamikazes appeared on the horizon.  They began diving toward the battleship New Mexico (BB-40), the van of destroyers: Walke, Allen M. Sumner (DD-692), Richard P. Leary (DD-664) and the former destroyer, now minesweeper, Long (DMS-12).  Four “Oscars” turned toward Walke, whose gunners came alive.  Forty millimeter and 5-inch shells filled the air in a massive anti-aircraft defense.  The first kamikaze broke up and landed close aboard.  Likewise, the second was deflected from its path.  But the third, following close on the tail of the second, crashed into the base of Walke’s superstructure.  The bridge was splashed with liquid gasoline and in a millisecond was aflame.  Comms, power, radar, and fire control were knocked out.  Neither was CDR Davis spared, crewmen pounded the flames that engulfed him from head to foot.

Despite his burns, he remained on the bridge conning the destroyer to put the fire to leeward.  He directed AAA defenses, splashing the fourth kamikaze.  He then coordinated the damage control efforts, indeed, only when his ship and crew were safe did Davis allow himself to be carried below.  But it was too late.  His life could not be saved.  Davis was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions this day. 

Watch the POD for more “Today in Naval History”

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Rehabilitation Medicine

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 2 “C-F”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, p. 244-45.

Goodspeed, M. Hill.  U.S. Navy:  A Complete History.  Washington, DC: Naval Historical Foundation, 2003, pp. 501-02.

Morison, Samuel Eliot.  History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol 13  The Liberation of the Philippines: Luzon, Mindinao, the Visayas.  Little Brown and Co., Boston, MA, 1959, pp. 104-05.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Walke’s damage did not preclude completing her mission as the vanguard of the invasion force.  She was detached shortly thereafter for repairs.  She returned to action in time to see preparations for the final invasion of Japan.

The Forrest Sherman-class destroyer Davis (DD-937) honors CDR Davis.  The John C. Butler-class destroyer escort of WWII, George E. Davis (DE-357) honors a different hero.  LT George Elliot Davis, Jr. was the No. 3 turret officer aboard USS Houston (CA-30) when that vessel was attacked off Borneo on 4 February 1942.  LT Davis was killed in the action.

USS Walke is one of three warships that honors CDR (later RADM) Henry A. Walke, USN, a hero of combat in the Mexican War and the Civil War.

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