USS PORCUPINE AND THE IX-TANKERS

The Allied island-hopping drive across the Pacific in WWII created logistical problems for our Navy.  Not the least was the need to fuel our massive naval and air fleets.  Rather than build fixed tank farms ashore that would become targets for enemy action, the Navy elected to pre-position stores of fuel aboard old tankers, converted for duty as mobile storage facilities.  Approximately 40 tankers, some from civilian WWI vintage, were purchased and filled with bunker oil or avgas.  These were anchored in strategic Pacific island harbors and moved forward as the fighting progressed.  All were given IX hull numbers, signifying the “miscellaneous” category.  The seventeen Armadillo­-class (IX-110 to 128) tankers were converted from Liberty ship hulls purchased from the Maritime Administration–all named for small American animals.

USS PORCUPINE (IX-126) had served at Noumea, New Guinea and the Admiralty Islands before moving forward with the invasion of the Philippines in late 1944.  After the successful recapture of Leyte Allied attention shifted to Mindoro, a large island just south of Luzon.  On 15 December US forces landed near the town of San Jose on Mindoro with the hope of establishing an airbase there.  The last week in December a major supply convoy of over 100 vessels departed Leyte for the Mindoro landing beaches.  Among the ships was PORCUPINE carrying thousands of gallons of 120 octane aviation gasoline.  The overcast weather hampered US air cover efforts, and the enemy kamikaze pilots flying from Cebu plagued the convoy all the way into Mangarin Bay.

Here at 1540 this day a low-flying Val bomber approached PORCUPINE off her port beam.  Her quills bristled, but PORCUPINE’s gunners could not knock this kamikaze out of the sky.  It released a bomb just before crashing into the after main deck.  Avgas tanks erupted in a giant mushroom cloud, the engine room flooded, and the entire after section was engulfed in flames.  The engine of the attacking plane crashed completely through the ship, blowing a large hole in the hull below the waterline.  Seven sailors disappeared in the explosion and fire; the rest abandoned ship.  The nearby destroyers GANSEVOORT (DD-608) and PRINGLE (DD-477) were hit by kamikazes as well, but when the forward section of PORCUPINE was in danger from the fires, the wounded GANSEVOORT was ordered to torpedo PORCUPINE’s  flaming stern in hopes the explosion would blow-out her fires.  But Mangarin Bay proved too shoal for torpedoes and despite one hit, PORCUPINE’s forward tanks exploded.  She burned to the water line as spreading flames chased the rest of the convoy from the bay.  PORCUPINE was the only IX-tanker to fall to enemy action in WWII.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  4 JAN 23

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 5 “N-Q”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1979, p. 353.

Grover, David B.  “IX Ships:  The Navy’s Forgotten Flotilla.”  Sea Classics, Vol 40 (8), August 2007, pp. 44-49, 67.

Morison, Samuel Eliot.  History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol XIII  The Liberation of the Philippines: Luzon, Mindinao, the Visayas.  Little Brown and Co., Boston, MA, 1959, pp. 42-47.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  The convoy of which PORCUPINE was a member was called “Uncle plus 15.”  “Uncle” was code for the Mindoro D-Day, and “plus 15” was the date the convoy was to arrive off the landing zone.

Duty aboard such tankers as PORCUPINE was filled with thankless heavy labor, punctuated by long periods of boredom.  Such is illustrated well in the Hollywood movie Mr. Roberts, about an officer aboard a similar pre-positioned supply ship in the Pacific.

PORCUPINE was abandoned where she lay and struck from the Navy list on 19 January 1945.

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                                            27-28 OCTOBER 1855

                                      USS DECATUR vs. The Indians

The Oregon Treaty with England in 1846 deeded that portion of British Columbia south of the 49^th parallel to the United States–the area that would become our States of Washington and Oregon. Settlers who had been trickling into the area for decades, began appearing in greater numbers.  Those who came by sea settled in the fertile valleys of the rivers draining into Puget Sound.  Here, in a scenario that would be repeated many times in the American West, the intrusion of the white man stirred some Native Americans to violence.  In fact, it was just such escalating tensions that sent the sloop-of-war DECATUR, 16, to investigate the Northwest Territory in 1855.  DECATUR was then patrolling under CAPT Guert Gansevoort with the US Navy’s Pacific Squadron.  She entered the Straits of San Juan de Fuca on July 19^th, but finding things quiet after several weeks of surveying, she turned toward San Francisco for re-provisioning.

In her absence, on September 27^th, hostile Indians attacked and burned the cabin of a settler named A.L. Porter in the White River Valley near Tacoma.  Though Porter escaped by sleeping in the nearby woods, he and his frightened neighbors hurried north to Seattle, in whose harbor DECATUR shortly dropped anchor.

Friendly Indians began filtering into that town bearing warning of an all-out attack in the very near future.  Preparations commenced immediately.  Food and water enough for a lengthy siege were stocked in the blockhouses protecting the town.  Gansevoort took the women and children aboard DECATUR and to aide in the town’s defense, landed a Dahlgren howitzer.  This was positioned behind the henhouse of a Mr. Plummer (near modern-day Fifth and Jackson Streets) to command the approaches from a hill overlooking the town.

On the night of October 27^th the Indians struck more cabins further inland.  War whoops could be heard from the hills above Seattle, and musket shots from the trees peppered the town.  Gansevoort landed Marines and bluejackets to bolster the townsmen, then loosed DECATUR’s guns at the hill overlooking town.  When Indians next appeared at the edge of the timber, crewmen serving the howitzer opened with langrage that proved more than that for which the attackers had bargained.  The staunch defense put up by the townsmen and the sailors and Marines of DECATUR turned back the first wave.  Heavy fighting continued through the next day, finally ending when the outgunned Indians parleyed for peace.  DECATUR lingered until a formal treaty was signed in January.  Except for the 2^nd Seminole War two decades earlier, the incident represents one of the rare encounters of our Navy with hostile Indians.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  3 NOV 22

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Brandt, John H.  “The Navy as an Indian Fighter”.  Proceedings of the US Naval Institute, Vol 56 (8), August 1930, p. 691.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 2 “C-F”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, p. 249.

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, p. 56.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  A decade earlier, in the 1844 Presidential election, the Democratic Party adopted the slogan, “Fifty-four Forty or Fight!” reflecting the desire in some circles that the northern border of the Oregon Territory be 54⁰ 40′.  Though this more northern boundary was never adopted, to the northern plains Indians the 49^th parallel came to be known as the “Medicine Line,” as US cavalry would not pursue beyond it.

The Dahlgren howitzer mentioned above is the same type of gun as that displayed in the central courtyard of Naval Medical Center San Diego.  Made of brass, it was lighter and more easily wrestled about than conventional iron guns of pre-Civil War era.  Dahlgren designed the gun to be mounted on a carriage for shipboard use, or mounted on a limber (two-wheeled carriage) for use ashore.  In addition, most launches and small boats were constructed to accept a Dahlgren howitzer in a bow-mounted position.  The weapon was commonly used as an anti-personnel device, being loaded with grapeshot or canister.  Langrage is ordnance usually fired to shred sails consisting often of scrap iron, nails, and other debris loaded into a case.

CAPT Gansevoort went on to serve in the Civil War Union Navy, commanding the triple-turreted ironclad USS Roanoke.  Unfortunately, Roanoke proved top-heavy in rough seas, and her hull was too weak to stand the firing of her guns.  Gansevoort retired in 1867 and died 18 months later.  He is remembered with the WWII Benson-class destroyer GANSEVOORT (DD-608).

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