CHAPTER 4

The Fitting Out and Workups of USS Atlanta

8 Feb 1942

Left N. Yd. N. Y. for “shakedown.” Lay in Gravesend Bay 8th–10th, taking on ammunition and cleaning ship. Then down to Chesapeake Bay for target practices. Fired about 700 rounds of 5", in AA [antiaircraft] and surface practices; also lots of machine gun stuff.

Then went to Casco Bay, Me. for anti-sub practice. Not much accomplished, uneventful in general.

14 March 1942

Arrived N. Yd. N. Y. again for final trials, etc. Came down from Casco via Cape Cod Canal and Hell Gate. Much sub activity in Atlantic coastal waters, which the Capt decides it’s damn well for us amateurs to stay clear of. Had had trouble through all practices, due to lousy installation work. Circuits grounded, phones dead, gear broken. No tools, spares, drawings, etc.

29 March 1942

All final trials complete, and underway for sea. Lots of work items remain undone, and some original installation work uncomplete. Still have only 2 1".1 gun directors, instead of 4, and 1 SC Radar. But lots of ships have zero of either.

No way has been found to get the 5" twins (enclosed) onto close-range AA targets. They can’t pick them up, being too blind.

Em came to N.Y. 25th thru 28th. Very swell for a goodbye. Ship is going to Pacific Fleet, which I know but which still cannot tell; when home next, there’s no knowing. A sort of 2nd honeymoon, using a windfall check from the Germantown Trust Co.

Went to Gravesend Bay, again, to top off with ammunition and to await orders. We have been definitely assigned to CruDiv 10, Atlantic Fleet, all along, so the Pacific stuff will surprise the troops.

***

During Atlanta’s first three months in commission, Lloyd Mustin’s entries into his little green log book were few, likely due to trips to Washington and a busy in-port schedule that involved the continuous tweaking of the ship’s sensors with her gun platforms.

Though entries in Lloyd’s log were thin, the entries in Atlanta’s official deck log were voluminous. Tradition has it the deck log entry for the first watch of the new year be in rhyme. One stanza of Atlanta’s entry read:

To comfort our ship, ere she goes forth;

Be it Tropic Clime or the frozen north;

To blast our foes from their evil thrones;

We receive from the dock steam, juice, water, and telephones.

Throughout January the crew worked “high speed, early and late” to address the many deficiencies noted by Lloyd in his diary entry.¹ On January 9 shore connections and lines were disconnected to allow for Atlanta to be transferred into Dry Dock No. 4. For the next 11 days, the light cruiser would sit on keel blocks as yard workers and ship’s company tackled issues within the engineering plant, interior communications, and electronics. During the drydocking Lloyd traveled to Washington, where presumably he visited the Naval Research Laboratory and Naval Gun Factory. At the Naval Research Laboratory, one of Atlanta’s newly assigned officers, Lt. (jg) J. A. Wallace, was spending the first month of 1942 learning all he could on the latest radar technology.²

As the officer having the challenge of installing and calibrating the ship’s radar systems, Lloyd would welcome Wallace’s help. Lloyd took pride that the Atlanta was the first cruiser to get the Mark 37 fire-control radar system. Atlanta would have two of these directors. The Mark 37 had first appeared on the Sims-class destroyers and was being placed on the new construction battleships North Carolina and Washington. He described it as “an enclosed turret-like structure that sat on top of a cylindrical barbette, and this structure really carried only the optics, the pointer’s and trainer’s telescopes, and a third telescope for the director-officer plus the range finder, which was a stereoscopic range finder.”³

In contrast to previous gun director systems that had the fire-solution computing mechanisms collocated at the director, the Mark 1 computer was situated below decks in a plotting room. Designers calculated that the previous Mark 33 system that incorporated the computer in the topside enclosure had too much weight, and with the addition of radar antennas, there was a potential of putting top-heavy ships to sea. As designed, the two towering barbette-mounted gun directors located just aft of the bridge and the second stack made for a recognizable feature of the class.

Lloyd noted that when the radar components were built, they could not be fitted within the barbette, and as with the computer, they also were placed below. Since the void wasn’t filled, it provided a perfect lookout perch, featuring protection from the weather, and with the barbette’s 1.5-inch-thick plating, flying shrapnel.⁴

Indeed, the Atlanta did receive fire-control radar for its gun batteries—the FD. In Navy nomenclature, F stood for “Fire Control” and D meant the fourth model. Again, Atlanta seemed chosen for special attention, as the Bureau of Ordnance allocated two of the first eight sets of this model to the light cruiser. Other sets were placed on the battleships North Carolina and Washington. For Lloyd, the arrival of these new devices caused some trepidation. For the past three years he had become one of the Navy’s foremost experts on gunnery. “These radars included some features that were absolutely, of course, quite new to me compared to the bed spring things that I had seen at the Naval Research Laboratory in that introductory indoctrination in 1940.”⁵

After installing the antennas on the Mark 37 directors and additional equipment below, training commenced. No schools existed, so Lloyd employed “seat of the pants, trial and error” training to include tracking subway cars rolling across the nearby Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges across the East River. In addition, Atlanta was one of the first ships to receive the new SC air search radar. Lloyd recalled the radar operated at 200 megacycles, versus 400 megacycles for the FD. The antenna was a flat array placed on the masthead, and the transmitter and modulator were installed on the bridge level in back of the charthouse, perhaps 80 feet below the antenna.⁶

As the diary noted, on February 8 at 0912, personnel at pier C, berth 3 cast away the final lines, which were pulled aboard by Atlanta’s deckhands as tugs pulled the light cruiser out into the East River. With a pilot providing speed and rudder directions, Atlanta passed under the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges. After a pilot boat extracted the pilot as the ship passed the Statue of Liberty, Captain Jenkins took the conn and guided Atlanta through the Verrazano Narrows and turned the ship to port and coasted toward an anchorage spot in Gravesend Bay on the Brooklyn waterfront just northwest of Coney Island. The ship’s anchor settled in the mud below at 1012.⁷ At 1250 a barge came alongside. Working parties worked well into the night and through the next day to haul aboard 5-inch shells, powder cartridges, and smaller caliber ammunition onto the ship. While much of the ammo found its way into the forward and aft magazines deep below, sailors placed 20mm and 1.1-inch ammo in small ready service rooms dubbed “Clipping Rooms” adjacent to those gun mounts.

On the afternoon of February 10, tugs came to remove the barge, and at 1459 the anchor cleared the Gravesend Bay floor and “Underway, Shift Colors” was announced as Captain Jenkins took the conn. As Atlanta’s shafts began to turn, the now-armed cruiser passed through open netting through the narrows and steamed by the Ambrose Lightship. As the cruiser cleared Ambrose Channel, Jenkins ordered General Quarters, and the crew remained at their battle stations for 42 minutes as “manned and ready” reports slowly filtered to the bridge. With the present threat of U-boats, Jenkins ordered the speed increased to full, and a zigzag plan was implemented as the ship proceeded on an overnight journey to Norfolk. As the cruiser sped down the Jersey coast, a blimp based out of Lakehurst patrolled overhead, keeping a lookout for U-boats. As the sun set, the blimp veered off, and Atlanta continued through choppy seas under darkened ship conditions.⁸

With the waves bobbing the light cruiser along, many of the new sailors felt woozy. The next morning at 0630 General Quarters was sounded, a practice that would continue in coming months at dawn and sunset when the light cruiser was most vulnerable to being attacked by enemy submarines. After securing from GQ at 0742, Atlanta proceeded on, picking up a pilot as the ship held the Cape Henry lighthouse abeam to port. Under the pilot’s guidance, Atlanta turned up the Thimble Shoal Channel, into the Chesapeake Bay, and up into Hampton Roads, where she dropped her hook at assigned anchorage berth 21 at 1411. That afternoon a small boat came alongside transporting two physicists and a radio engineer from the Naval Research Laboratory.⁹

Atlanta spent much of the following day running back and forth 17 times over a degaussing range that had recently been placed off Cape Charles. German magnetic mines exploited a natural occurrence, as ships’ hulls became magnetized over time as they steamed over the Earth’s magnetic fields. Embarked Naval Research Laboratory technicians evaluated the readings of underwater sensor measurements that gauged the light cruiser’s magnetic footprint. Upon concluding the degaussing runs at 1730, Captain Jenkins turned north into Chesapeake Bay and dropped anchor at 1847 off Nassawadox Creek along the eastern shore.¹⁰

Atlanta conducting a high-speed run during Navy acceptance trials prior to commissioning. (Archives Branch, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, D.C.; NH 51382)

Underway the next day at 0748, Atlanta once again plied in protected waters, buffeted by bitterly cold winds blowing across the Chesapeake. For Lloyd Mustin, February 13 would mark a milestone, as he stood the first of many, many watches as the officer of the deck underway. During his 8–12 watch, Atlanta steamed in what seemed to be endless circles. The navigator, Lieutenant Commander Smith, and his quartermasters took readings off the gyro and the magnetic compasses to determine the deviation on the latter in the wake of the degaussing. In addition, tests were conducted to calibrate Atlanta’s radio detection finding gear. Once the maneuvers were completed, the light cruiser turned up the Potomac River and arrived and anchored that afternoon off Mattawoman Creek adjacent to the Indian Head Naval Powder Factory, presumably to drop off the Naval Research Laboratory physicists.¹¹

On Valentine’s Day, Atlanta returned to Hampton Roads. For the following two days Atlanta would get underway for the primary purpose of calibrating the radio detection finding gear. Reception of wavelengths of 485 kilocycles was followed by 380 kilocycles and so on. Meanwhile, the first lieutenant, Lieutenant Commander Sears, assisted by Lieutenant Perkins, ran the crew through an exhausting series of damage control drills simulating fire, flooding, and collision. In addition to practicing firefighting, shoring bulkheads, and dewatering spaces, the ship’s sick bay staff gave first aid lectures and trained the crew to set splints, apply bandages, and administer morphine.

Having anchored overnight in the Chesapeake on the evening of February 16, it was now time for Atlanta’s gunnery department to swing into action. Recently promoted Lt. Cdr. Bill Nickelson, assisted by Lloyd Mustin and the division officers, worked on calibrating the guns and radars and training the men. Gunnery was labor intensive. The green gun crews slowly went through the motions of loading and actually firing the guns for the first time. The eight 5-inch 38 mounts each had a crew of 13. Working together, the crew could fire a salvo every four seconds. However, for that to happen, men in the upper handling rooms below the gun mounts had to keep the electro-hydraulic hoists moving, with shells coming from the magazines below. However, before you could run, you needed to crawl and walk. On the afternoon of February 17, each of the 5-inch 38 twin mounts systematically fired test shots. A total of 64 rounds broke down to four rounds per barrel. Besides breaking in the virgin gun crews, the test shots determined if gunfire could cause inadvertent structural damage or affect interior communications. Lloyd expressed frustration about many of the phone circuits going dead.¹²

After another night of anchorage in the Chesapeake Bay, Atlanta got underway at 0749 on February 18 and reported for duty to the Commander in Chief, Atlantic Fleet. That day the smaller 1.1-inch were broken in, and on the following day the 20mm guns fired for the first time, expending some 480 rounds. Having spent two nights anchored off Nassawadox Creek, Atlanta got underway at 0754 on February 21, and within an hour Captain Jenkins had the ship at General Quarters. Included in this morning’s series of drills was transfer of ship control to Battle II, the backup bridge that the ship’s designers placed just aft of the second Mark 37 gun director. From Battle II, Commander Emory was able to take control of the rudder and transmit orders to the engine rooms to adjust speed.¹³

Finally, having operated around Chesapeake Bay for a week, Atlanta again made the trek up Thimble Shoal Channel to anchor at berth 25. Among the notable ships in port that day was the carrier Hornet. Following the dispatch of a contingent of shore patrol, Captain Jenkins authorized liberty for his crew.¹⁴

After the short respite, at 0916 on Sunday morning the first lieutenant reported the anchor had cleared the bottom, and Captain Jenkins once again took the conn and aimed his ship toward Thimble Shoal Channel. Turning up into Chesapeake Bay, the light cruiser anchored off Tangier Island that evening in anticipation of a week of intensive training. Underway the next morning, the crew went to General Quarters for 1 hour and 12 minutes to conduct on-station training before breaking for the midday meal. At 1202, the crew again went to General Quarters, and throughout the afternoon 5-inch rounds were systematically fired, starting with Mount One, all the way forward to Mount Eight back on the stern where Seaman Dunaway patiently waited for his chance to load shells. Overall, 127 rounds were expended. During the exercise, Bill Nickelson’s and Lloyd Mustin’s gun crews had to deal with two hang-fire incidents on the left barrels of Mount One and Seven as a shell failed to fire. In both cases the crews were able to extract the shells and toss them over the side.¹⁵

After anchoring again off Tangier Island, Atlanta again raised her hook just before 0800 on February 24, and with the crew at GQ an hour later, Bill Nickelson’s and Lloyd Mustin’s 5-inch 38 gun crews engaged in their first antiaircraft training as a plane towed a target sleeve that was tracked from the forward and aft gun directors. On the first pass, the light cruiser fired four shells at the sleeve. The exercise abruptly ended on the second pass after six shots when the sleeve parted and came fluttering down into the bay. To give the 1.1-inch and 20mm gun crews something to shoot at, balloons were released into the wind to enable them to fly in the path of the smaller caliber AA guns. Lloyd recalled that most of the balloons got away.

Such became the routine for the rest of the week. As Lloyd indicated in his diary, the Atlanta expended approximately 700 rounds of 5-inch ammunition in AA and surface modes first at stationary targets and then at moving targets.

What challenged Lloyd and his shipmates was getting the ordnance on target using the fire-control radar. The FD radar was quite primitive, and it required teamwork to operate. The “trainer” had the job of sweeping the antenna across the horizon toward targets that were reported by lookouts or the long-range search radar:

By changing the phase of feeding the antenna successive pulses of energy went out in lobes which were deliberately displaced off the electromagnetic axis of the antenna. The successive lobes scanned for different quadrants and the trainer saw the target pips. Instead of a single target pip he was shown two pips. One came from the lobes that were displaced to the right and the other came from the lobes that were displaced to the left. Of course, if the target were off the central axis of the antenna one lobe would give a stronger echo than the other and the way he got his alignment on the target was to equalize the size of the two pips.¹⁶

With the trainer determining the approach axis, the “pointer” controlled the elevation, and “got the same sort of thing for the lobes that were displaced above and displaced below. He lined up on the target in elevation by matching the size of the two pips.”

Once the approach axis and vertical angle was determined, a radar range operator took charge. Lloyd recalled:

He was in the back of the director right alongside of the range finder operator where in the original design space had thoughtfully been left for an additional man. No explanation, just a space. But the upshot of the whole thing was that the optical range finder operator and the radar range finder operator were shoulder-to-shoulder back there. On visible targets you could cross check with the optical range finder.¹⁷

That the radar range operator and the Mark 37 optical range finder worked in tandem was critical to the air defense operation. While the FD radar operators could track a target, they had no ability to determine if the target was friend or foe. Assuming it was daylight and the skies were clear, the optical range finder had the benefit of a tremendously high-quality, high-capability optical instrument. Lloyd recounted, “The radar fellow could tell you more accurately than the optical guy what the range was to the target, but the optical guy could tell you what the target was … he was seeing the actual thing, and this helped in discriminating occasionally between friendly and enemy.”¹⁸ During those cold mornings over the Chesapeake that February, the pilots of the aircraft towing the target sleeves were counting on the optical range finders to keep them alive.

Four decades later, Lloyd reflected that the FD had many shortcomings:

It was primitive indeed. I think Bell Telephone Laboratories designed it for the Navy, and Western Electric built it. It was a relatively low frequency thing, about 400 megacycles, which is a relatively low radar frequency. Therefore, the wave length, of course, varies inversely with frequency so it had a relatively long wave length, and thus it was not capable of very high orders of discrimination between the two targets at nearly the same range and things of that sort.¹⁹

Lloyd recalled that “this was a fairly cumbersome way of doing things, but it worked. It took a lot of training of your crew to enable them to perform this sort of awkward function and do it in the split seconds that you have available.”²⁰ Lloyd also made the following observations about the SC air search radar:

The feed from the transmitter to the antenna was by co-axial cable and it just wouldn’t work. It just wouldn’t work. It didn’t have the power to feed that antenna through that length of transmission line and get enough power out into the air to get an echo back from a target and back down the wave guide and give you a usable signal down in the radar room.²¹

Lloyd expressed frustration about the lack of capability to detect aircraft at the ranges needed to adequately prepare for fleet defense. Furthermore, though the radar was not intended to detect ships, Lloyd figured it should be able to pick out vessels located inside of visual range—a capability that would be useful at night or in inclement weather.

For Lloyd, the arrival of Ensign Wallace just prior to Atlanta departing for her shakedown cruise was cause for hope. A graduate of a three-month course at MIT and follow-on orientation at the Naval Research Laboratory, the newly trained arrival had studied the technical and practical maintenance aspects of the radars that were being installed out in the fleet. However, “Our young radar officer did his best to tune and re-tune and sharpen everything up to absolute performance to the best of our ability to get it to perform, and it wouldn’t perform.” A continuing dialogue with the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington ensued. “Some modifications appeared eventually. Before too many months, literally preamplifiers and other things to multiply many fold the output power and to improve many fold the receiver sensitivity and all of these things made it capable of picking up aircraft at useful ranges.” Lloyd finally expressed satisfaction that Atlanta could acquire aircraft at 50 and 60 miles out and could pick up ships at 15 or 20 miles distant.²²

On February 27, following early gunnery drills, the sailors of Atlanta were treated to the spectacle of America’s two newest battleships as the light cruiser passed North Carolina steaming by to port and Washington which passed to starboard.²³

Crewmembers experienced a short weekend off Norfolk with limited liberty time as the cruiser once again raised her hook for a midday Sunday to engage in power runs. As Atlanta approached her designed speed there was excessive vibration within the stern.²⁴

On March 3, Captain Jenkins took the conn as Atlanta got underway after sunset in the Chesapeake to spot targets at night, a skill the Japanese had demonstrated over the previous week in the battle of the Java Sea and the battle of Sundra Strait where the Imperial Japanese Navy twice triumphed over a combined flotilla of Australian, British, Dutch, and American warships. With the loss of the heavy cruiser Houston along with the Australian cruiser Perth early on the morning of March 1, the pre-war American Asiatic fleet had been effectively eliminated.²⁵

After an overnight anchorage in Chesapeake Bay, Commander Emory took the conn on Wednesday morning as Atlanta got underway; after gunnery exercises and a brief rendezvous with North Carolina, the light cruiser made one final run up Thimble Shoal Channel. After a temporary anchorage, Atlanta was allowed to berth port side to pier 7 to take on some additional ammunition and supplies. For those who were authorized liberty that evening, the in-port berth spared them the boat ride. On March 6, Atlanta departed Hampton Roads estuary. Clearing the entrance to Chesapeake Bay, the ship turned on a northeasterly course into the North Atlantic headed to Portland, Maine.²⁶

As Atlanta passed east of Cape Cod, she found herself heading into high winds and heavy seas. Green water broke over the bow, and the weight of the sea pounding down on the deck caused the ship to shudder. For crewmembers spoiled by three weeks of steaming in the protected waters of the Chesapeake, the 25-degree rolls tossed loose gear and weakened the stomachs even of Old Salts. With the bridge of the ship well up on the superstructure, the officer of the deck, which rotated between Lieutenants Perkins, Smith, Mustin, and Wulff, and their respective watch teams, had a heck of a ride.²⁷

Unlike the trip to Norfolk, there was liberty most evenings, with half the crew being allowed to go ashore. For the enlisted, Portland didn’t offer much. Many of the bars were crowded with sailors from other ships, including the carrier Wasp. No doubt the weather was a factor in Lloyd’s comment about not getting much accomplished at Casco Bay. On March 13, Atlanta cleared Casco Bay and conducted some gunnery and engineering “crashback” drills to see how fast the Black Gang—a term that hung on from the days of coal—could get the ship’s screws to reverse their spin. The light cruiser took a coastal course down to Boston for a brief stop and then out into Massachusetts Bay and down through the Cape Cod Canal, passing under the raised railroad lift bridge at 1838. Clearing the canal, the cruiser turned right and headed into the Long Island Sound for a nighttime transit. After passing under the Bronx–Whitestone Bridge at 0731 the next morning, the ship passed through Hell’s Gate and traversed the waters of the East River to return to the Brooklyn Navy Yard and tie up at pier G, berth 13. Across from Atlanta floated her sister ship, Juneau.²⁸

Once back at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, workers poured aboard to correct additional deficiencies unveiled during the shakedown and make necessary alterations. Life rafts were redistributed around the ship, strapped to the sides of gun mounts and other exterior bulkheads. Workers installed additional scuppers on the bridge wings to allow for better drainage to prevent lookouts from having to stand in pools of water during and following rainstorms.

The ship received additional armament. K-Guns, capable of firing 300-pound depth charges abeam, were installed on the stern to augment the two racks containing 600-pound depth-charge barrels designed to roll off the fantail. Also back aft, an additional 1.1-inch gun was positioned to protect the ship from enemy aircraft sneaking in from directly astern.²⁹

Technicians worked to improve the SC radar, and the Mark 37 gun directors were modified to incorporate a “sluing sight.” Lloyd described the sight in these terms:

… very crude open sight mounted outside of the shield of the director in a position so that the director officer by standing up in his position with his head and shoulders out of the hatch above him could use this sight as an alignment device. It was connected into the director’s power drives in such a way that in whatever direction you moved the sight you caused the director to move that way and at very high rates if necessary. It gave him a means for looking around with the wide field of view of the eye, seeing a target and quickly getting the director around and on to that target.³⁰

Atlanta was one of the first ships to receive the modifications as Lloyd recalled receiving a telephone call from the Bureau asking if he would have an interest in having the modification installed. “I seized the opportunity.”³¹

As the ship underwent alterations, the rumor mill churned out dope on Atlanta’s future assignments. Many crewmembers, based on their experience in Maine and the distribution of cold-weather gear, assumed that the cruiser would join the war against the Nazis, escorting convoys across the Atlantic fending off attacks from Luftwaffe bombers and Kriegsmarine U-boats and surface combatants. Lloyd Mustin was one of the few on board who knew the ship’s ultimate destination.³²

Knowing what lay ahead, Captain Jenkins granted leave and liberty to allow crewmembers to spend time with their families. As Lloyd noted in his diary, “Em” (short for Emily) visited for three days for what would be a “second honeymoon.” Still, work continued on readying the ship for sea, and from March 24 through March 26, the light cruiser once again found herself high and dry in drydock number 4. During the drydocking, yard workers removed the two huge three-bladed monstrosities and installed two smaller four-bladed variants. Though the smaller screws could only get the light cruiser up over 30 knots, the high-speed vibration was drastically reduced.³³

Returned to pier G, Atlanta took on fuel on March 28. As Lloyd wrote in his diary, the ship pulled away the next morning from the pier for the last time as the announcement “Underway, Shift Colors” was made at 0803. However, the cruiser loitered in New York waters at Gravesend Bay for a few more days to load additional ammo, and run a degaussing range. For many of the wives, the pain of watching the ship depart Brooklyn was rubbed in by seeing the ship off Coney Island for three days thereafter before being gone for good.³⁴