1. Walter L. Roberge Jr., interview with the author, 29 February 2004; James Graham, interview with the author.
2. Terry Thomas, interview with the author; Terry Thomas, Everybody Has a Story: This Is Mine (Linden, Mich.: Leader Printing, 2006), 55–56.
3. Lee Kennett, GI: The American Soldier in World War II (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1987), 19–20; Lt. T. A. Larson, History of the U.S. Naval Training Center, Great Lakes, Illinois in World War II (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Navy Department, 1945), 163–64. Standards for military service were stringent, and the Navy was always more selective than the other armed services in choosing recruits. Critics complained that the Navy tried to skim the best, leaving the remainder to be drafted into the Army. As manpower needs escalated, the Navy became less selective and, eventually, drew its manpower from the Selective Service system, although still maintaining a more selective process. A so-called prosthetic regiment was established in June 1943 at the Great Lakes Training Center in Illinois. Incoming recruits requiring dental prosthesis were segregated in the 31st Regiment, where training was longer to allow for completion of dental work.
4. Samuel I. Rosenman, Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1940 (New York: Macmillan, 1941), 428–31; Kennett, GI, 4. In Kennett’s excellent account of the American soldier in World War II, the author notes that by the end of the war, the Selective Service had recorded the names of 50 million American males, between the ages of eighteen and sixty-four, feeding 11 million into the armed forces.
5. William Riemer, interview with the author.
6. John “Bo” Keally, interview with the author.
7. Lee Kinnett, G.I.: The American Soldier in World War II (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1987), 19.
8. Ibid., 20; “Veterans of the Navy’s V-12 Program,” U.S. Navy Memorial, http://newsite.navymemorial.org/v12history.php/.
9. Donald Kruse, interview with the author.
10. Ernest J. King, U.S. Navy at War, 1941–1945 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Navy Department, 1946), 25; New York State Military Museum Web site, http://www.dmna.state.ny.us/historic/mil-his/.
11. Charles M. Hatcher, “Great Lakes Today: The Expansion of a Training Base in Wartime,” Our Navy, mid-October 1943, 16–17.
12. Larson, History of the U.S. Naval Training Center, 1.
13. Committee of Friends of the Navy, Gates to Glory: An Illustrated History of the U.S. Naval Training Center (Zion, Ill.: Committee of Friends of the Navy, 1996), 15.
14. Ibid., 25; Richard Lara, “Great Lakes, the Golden Thirteen, and the Two Ocean War,” 3, Commander Navy Installations Command, https://www.cnic.navy.mil/greatlakes/.
15. Committee of Friends of the Navy, Gates to Glory, 3; The Navy in the Heartland: The Great Lakes Story (Great Lakes, Ill.: Great Lakes Naval Museum Foundation, 1991), 28.
16. Larson, History of the U.S. Naval Training Center, 29.
17. Ibid., 33; Martin Davis, Traditions and Tales of the U.S. Navy (Missoula, Mont.: Pictorial Histories, 2001), 11. The term “boot” originated during the Spanish-American War when recruits wore canvas leggings called boots. Once their training was complete, they could remove the canvas leggings and be full-fledged apprentice seamen.
18. Robert Holman, interview with the author.
19. Manuel Maroukis, oral history, 19 November 2002, Guggenheim Memorial Library, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, N.J.
20. Leonard Bulwicz, oral history, 12 November 2002, Guggenheim Memorial Library, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, N.J.
21. Larson, History of the U.S. Naval Training Center, 33; Lara, “Great Lakes,” 3.
22. Larson, History of the U.S. Naval Training Center, 35–36.
23. Committee of Friends of the Navy, Gates to Glory, 26; Larson, History of the U.S. Naval Training Center, 125.
24. Committee of Friends of the Navy, Gates to Glory, 27.
25. Bluejackets’ Manual, 1943 (Annapolis: United States Naval Institute, 1943), 263.
26. Lara, “Great Lakes,” 3; Hatcher, “Great Lakes Today,” 77.
27. Jarvis Baillargeon, interview with the author.
28. John Acer, oral history, 23 November 2002, Guggenheim Memorial Library, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, N.J.
29. Eleanor Roosevelt, “My Day” newspaper column, January–March 1948, Box 3150, Speeches and Articles File, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y. (hereafter cited as FDRL).
30. Jerry Hammon, interview with the author; “Events of Interest in Shipping World,” New York Times, 1 August 1943. Jerry Hammon realized his twin ambitions: He rose quickly through the ranks to become an executive officer and later captain of a destroyer escort. After the military, he went back to college and became a physician.
31. Martin Davis, oral history, 14 November 2002, Guggenheim Memorial Library, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, N.J.; Martin Davis, interview with the author.
32. Thomas interview.
1. Geoffrey C. Ward, Closest Companion (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1995), 278–79.
2. Samuel I. Rosenman, Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1944–1945 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950), 70–72; John H. Crider, “President Salutes France’s Millions of ‘Underground,’” New York Times, 13 February 1944; “Roosevelt Salute to France,” New York Times, 13 February 1944; “President Going on Radio,” New York Times, 11 February 1944; “Destroyer Escort Is Given to French,” New York Times, 3 January 1944; “Algiers Plays Up Speech,” New York Times, 14 February 1944.
3. Destroyer Escort Sailors Association (hereafter cited as DESA), http://www.desausa.org/.
4. Lewis M. Andrews Jr., Tempest, Fire and Foe (Charleston, S.C.: Narwhal Press, 1999), 1; Robert Greenhalgh Albion and Robert Howe Connery, Forrestal and the Navy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), 117; Norman Friedman, U.S. Destroyers: An Illustrated Design History (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1982), 141.
5. J. Armand Burgun, interview with the author; Joseph Alexander, correspondence with the author; Jim Larner, correspondence with the author, in the possession of Jim Larner; Jim Larner, “All in a Day,” personal war diary, 1944.
6. Robert Abraham and Lucas Bobbitt, “When Ships Go Down: The Loss of the Leopold,” Sea Classics, July 2002, 15.
7. Andrews, Tempest, Fire and Foe, 27–31.
8. Burgun interview.
9. Abraham and Bobbitt, “When Ships Go Down,” 16; Andrews, Tempest, Fire and Foe, 27.
10. Andrews, Tempest, Fire and Foe, 28–30.
11. Burgun interview.
12. Thomas interview; Thomas, Everybody Has a Story; Daniel Farley, interview with the author; Andrews, Tempest, Fire and Foe, 43.
13. Edmond J. Anuszczyk, “Task Force 65 Escort Convoy UGS 37,” n.p., Destroyer Escort Historical Museum, Albany, N.Y. (hereafter cited as DEHM); Naval History Division, Department of the Navy, Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, vol. 3 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977) (hereafter cited as DANFS 3), 334; biography of the USS Hissem, prepared by ship’s quartermaster, DEHM; Charles Berry Grunewald, “The USS Holder, My Point of View,” 1990, unpublished personal recollection, courtesy Destroyer Escort Historical Museum; Joseph Carinci, correspondence with the author.
14. Clay Blair, Hitler’s U-boat War: The Hunted, 1942–45 (New York: Modern Library, 2000), 522–23; Samuel Eliot Morison, The Atlantic Battle Won: May 1943–May 1945, vol. 10 of History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, by Samuel Eliot Morison (Edison, N.J.: Castle Books, 2001), 256–57; Naval History Division, Department of the Navy, Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, vol. 4 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969), 323; Robert McMichael, correspondence with Victor Buck, 19 August 1999, DEHM; New York Navy Yard shipworker, “Menges-Holder Kill,” 19 June 1945, 4, DEHM. Despite a third of its stern being blown away, the USS Menges lived to fight another day. Towed to the New York Navy Yard, it joined the USS Holder, which had been torpedoed by a German bomber. In one of the more unusual repair jobs in naval history, the Navy decided that one complete destroyer escort could be salvaged from the two wrecked vessels. It was decided to weld the 94-foot section of the stern of Holder onto the forward section of the Menges. The Coast Guard crew nicknamed the new ship Mender, a tribute to the repair crews at the naval yard. In March 1944 Menges, as part of a hunter-killer group, assisted the USS Lowe (DE-325) in sinking U-866 about one hundred miles east of Halifax.
15. Blair, Hitler’s U-boat War: The Hunted; Naval History Division, Department of the Navy, Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, vol. 4.
16. Daniel Sileo, interview with the author; Naval History Division, Department of the Navy, Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, vol. 2 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977), 288–89; Blair, Hitler’s U-boat War: The Hunted, 510; Bruce Hampton Franklin, The Buckley-Class Escorts (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1999), 102; Andrews, Tempest, Fire and Foe, 25–26. Franklin notes that six other DEs—four American and two British— later served as permanent power supply ships: DE-59, DE-634, DE-667, DE-669, and British ships DE-563 and DE-574.
17. Howard R. Bender, correspondence with Victor Buck, 12 April 2002, DEHM; Blair, Hitler’s U-boat War: The Hunted, 525; Burton Kyle, correspondence with Victor Buck, 17 May 2002, DEHM; Action Report, USS Fechteler, 12 May 1944, Office of Naval Records and Library, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md.
18. William Quackenbush, correspondence with Victor Buck, 8 and 10 May 2002, DEHM.
19. “Coffee Mugs Help in U-boat Sinking,” New York Times, 30 May 1945; E. J. Kahn Jr., “Hand to Hand,” New Yorker, 8 February 1988, 73; Blair, Hitler’s U-boat War: The Hunted, 546; Morison, Atlantic Battle Won, 284–85. U-188, the “milk cow,” actually was close enough to witness the gun flashes and beat a hasty retreat, returning to Bordeaux.
20. Kahn, “Hand to Hand,” 73.
21. Ibid.,74.
22. Blair, Hitler’s U-boat War: The Hunted, 548; Kahn, “Hand to Hand,” 74; New York Times, 30 May 1945. After repairs and a refresher training course at Casco Bay, Maine, in July 1944, the Buckley escorted two convoys to North Africa. Later it performed antisubmarine and convoy duty along the eastern coast and in the North Atlantic. In April 1945 the Buckley and USS Reuben James (DE-153) sunk U-548.
23. Joseph Alexander, correspondence with the author; Harold Peterson, correspondence with the author.
24. Robert White, interview with the author; Action Report, USS Fiske, 8 August 1944, U.S. Navy, DEHM; White interview; Robert White, correspondence with Victor Buck, 21 December 2001, DEHM; Blair, Hitler’s U-boat War: The Hunted, 595; Philip Karl Lundeberg, “American Anti-Submarine Operations in the Atlantic, May 1943–May 1945” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1963), 389.
25. Leo F. Stinson, correspondence to Victor Buck, 27 December 2002, DEHM.
26. Harold Newman, correspondence to Victor Buck, 9 January 2002, DEHM.
27. Capt. John Comly, Action Report, 31 August 1944, excerpt courtesy of DEHM; “Sub Sinks Ship of Phila. Officer,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 12 August 1944, courtesy of Cdr. E. Andrew Wilde Jr.
28. George Brodie, report of sinking, DESA News, July 1982, DEHM; “Destroyer Escort Is Sunk in Atlantic,” New York Times, 13 August 1944, 19; William Geiermann, correspondence with Victor Buck, 10 January 2002.
29. Morison, Atlantic Battle Won, 32–33; Andrews, Tempest, Fire and Foe, 4; Franklin, Buckley-Class Escorts, 6. Some historians trace the earliest origins of DEs to 1939, when Cdr. Robert B. Carney, USN, recommended their construction based on a design prepared by Capt. E. L. Cochrane of the Bureau of Ships. Interestingly, Knox, Roosevelt’s new secretary of the Navy, had been in Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders and was the 1936 Republican candidate for vice president, running against FDR’s ticket. He was a staunch New Deal critic, calling FDR’s programs “a complete flop.”
30. Rosenman, Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1940, 375–90; Harold G. Bowen, Ships, Machinery and Mossbacks (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1954), 59.
31. Morison, Atlantic Battle Won, 32–33; “Two Swedish Ships Victims of U-boats,” New York Times, 4 January 1940, 4; “Britons Laud a German,” New York Times, 18 February 1940, 29; John Malcolm Brinnin, The Sway of the Grand Saloon: A Social History of the North Atlantic (New York: Delacorte Press, 1971), 509–10; “Ship Defies U-boat,” New York Times, 7 March 1940, 1.
32. Francis L. Loewenheim, ed., Roosevelt and Churchill: Their Secret Wartime Correspondence (New York: Saturday Review Press/E. P. Dutton, 1975), 122–26.
33. Robert F. Cross, Sailor in the White House: The Seafaring Life of FDR (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2003), 134–35.
34. Presidential Press Conferences, 1940 (New York: DaCapo Press, 1972), Press Conf. No. 702, sec. 350–56.
35. Russell D. Buhite and David W. Levy, eds., FDR’s Fireside Chats (New York: Penguin, 1993), 163–73.
36. Ibid.
37. Loewenheim, Roosevelt and Churchill, 131.
38. Frederic C. Lane, Ships for Victory: A History of Shipbuilding under the U.S. Maritime Commission in World War II (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 3–10.
39. Winston Churchill, The Hinge of Fate (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950), 376.
40. Proceedings of Conference in the White House, 23 June 1942, Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conferences at Washington, 1941–42 and Casablanca, 1943 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1968), copy in FDRL.
41. Thomas Buell, Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1995), 285–86.
42. Theodore R. Treadwell, Splinter Fleet: The Wooden Subchasers of World War II (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2000), 9–15; Donald Scott Carmichael, FDR: Columnist (Chicago: Pellegrini & Cudahy, 1947), 61–63.
43. Henry Stimson, On Active Service in Peace and War, vol. 2 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1948), 508–9.
44. Samuel Eliot Morison, Battle of the Atlantic, 1939–1943 (Edison, N.J.: Castle Books, 2001), 310; “Protection for Convoys,” New York Times, 7 December 1942.
45. Morison, Battle of the Atlantic, 8–10, 25, 318.
46. Ibid., 286–89; Cross, Sailor in the White House, 70–71, 74–76.
47. Loewenheim, Roosevelt and Churchill, 196, document 110; Morison, Battle of the Atlantic, 288.
48. Morison, Battle of the Atlantic, 268–76.
49. Arthur D. Camp, “At Sea with the Picket Patrol,” Yachting, December 1942.
50. Ibid.
51. Morison, Battle of the Atlantic, 273–75.
52. Wayne G. Broehl Jr., Cargill: Trading the World’s Grain (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1992), 593–94.
53. Morison, Battle of the Atlantic, 290–91; Knox to FDR, 10 November 1941, FDRL; FDR to Knox, November 11, 1941, Naval Building Folder, FDRL; Presidential Press Conferences, 1942 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950), 190–92.
1. Richard Warner, interview with the author, 31 January 2004; Richard Warner, correspondence with the author; Richard Warner, oral history, 17 October 1994, East Carolina Manuscript Collection, Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, N.C. While ice cream machines were not standard issue for DEs, it turns out another DE—the USS Day—also was outfitted with one. According to Jim Larner, the fire-control striker on board the Day, Capt. Kendall E. Read noticed a large crate on the dock while his ship was in Boston in September 1944. The skipper told the crew to haul the crate, which contained an ice cream machine destined for a cruiser, on board. They cut a hole through the deck above the crew’s mess and lowered the machine through it. While some cruiser lost its ice cream machine, the crew on board the USS Day, nicknamed “Lucky Day,” could not have been more pleased.
2. Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1948), 684–85.
3. Herbert A. Werner, Iron Coffins (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969), xv–xvi.
4. Axel Niestle, German U-boat Losses during World War II: Details of Destruction (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1998), 4.
5. Loewenstein, Roosevelt and Churchill, 262–64, 287–92.
6. Alva Johnston, “The Mysterious Mr. Gibbs,” Saturday Evening Post, 20 January 1945.
7. Ibid.; Walter C. Bachman, William Francis Gibbs, 1886–1967, in National Academy of Sciences, Biographical Memoirs, vol. 42 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), 54–55; history of Gibbs & Cox, Gibbs & Cox, Inc., http://www.gibbscox.com/index.htm/.
8. Frank O. Braynard, By Their Works Ye Shall Know Them (Gibbs & Cox, 1968), 9–11.
9. Ibid., 12. In 1916 William Francis described his plan to build the ocean liners to Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels. Although it is assumed that Assistant Navy Secretary Franklin Roosevelt attended, this could not be determined because Daniels’ diaries for 1914 and 1916, if they ever existed, are missing.
10. Ibid., 19–22.
11. John Maxtone-Graham, The Only Way to Cross (New York: Macmillan, 1974), 166–69.
12. John Malcolm Brinnin, The Sway of the Grand Saloon (New York: Delacorte Press, 1971), 474.
13. Braynard, By Their Works, 35–41; Bachman, William Francis Gibbs, 50.
14. Johnston, “Mysterious Mr. Gibbs,” 10; Richard Austin Smith, “The Love Affair of William Francis Gibbs,” Fortune, August 1957, 140.
15. Winthrop Sargeant, “The Best I Know How,” New Yorker, 6 June 1964, 62–63.
16. Office of War Information, War Production Board, press release WPB-2259, 18 December 1942, Mariners’ Museum Library, Christopher Newport University, Newport News, Va.
17. William Francis Gibbs to C. E. Wilson, Vice Chairman, War Production Board, 14 December 1942, William Francis Gibbs Papers, 1910–1969, MS179, Mariners’ Museum Library, Christopher Newport University, Newport News, Va.
18. “The Work of Gibbs & Cox,” November 1946, 1–50, report prepared by Gibbs and Cox, courtesy Gibbs and Cox; “The Big Ship” Smithsonian, Spring/ Summer 1990; Bowen, Ships, Machinery and Mossbacks, 61, 124–25.
19. Cochrane to Gibbs & Cox, telegram, 12 June 1943, Mariners’ Museum, Newport News, Va.
20. Jerome C. Hunsaker, Edward Lull Cochrane (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), 33–36; Bowen, Ships, Machinery and Mossbacks, 69.
21. Compass Points (Gibbs and Cox newsletter) 5, no. 6 (June 1947): 5–12; Johnston, “Mysterious Mr. Gibbs,” 20.
22. “Events of Interest in Shipping World,” New York Times, 1 August 1943.
23. Braynard, By Their Works, 101; “Events of Interest in the Shipping World,” New York Times, 1 August 1943.
24. Braynard, By Their Works, 101–2; “Warship Is Launched 8-1/2 Days after Start,” New York Times, 2 September 1943.
25. “Work of Gibbs & Cox,” 2–13.
26. Albion and Connery, Forrestal and the Navy, 117–19; “Work of Gibbs & Cox”; Robert P. Post, “Setback in Battle of the Atlantic Seen in Rise in Sinkings off US,” New York Times, 7 February 1942, 3; Ashley Halsey Jr., “Those Not-So-Little Ships—the DEs,” Naval Institute Proceedings 69, no. 9 (September 1943): 1201–4; “Events of Interest in the Shipping World,” New York Times, 12 September 1943.
27. “Challenge in Escorts,” Time, 1 February1943.
28. C. P. Trussell, “Navy Called Slow in Submarine War,” New York Times, 22 April 1943.
29. “Knox Hits Reports on Ship Sinkings,” New York Times, 24 April 1943; Trussell, New York Times.
30. “New Craft Ready to Fight U-Boats,” New York Times, 6 March 1943, 1.
31. “Forrestal Asserts U-boat Toll Indicates End of Menace Is Near,” New York Times, 30 May 1943, 1; “Promises New Peak in Curbing U-boats,” New York Times, 7 November 1943.
32. Albion and Connery, Forrestal and the Navy, 117–19.
1. Daniel A. Gallery, U-505 (New York: Paperback Library, 1967), 261–65.
2. Daniel A. Gallery, “We Captured a German Sub,” Saturday Evening Post, 4 August 1945, 9; Wayne Pickels, interview with the author, 14 April 2007. Philip K. Lundeberg, in his 1953 dissertation “American Anti-Submarine Operations in the Battle of the Atlantic,” points out that a submarine capture had been accomplished by both British and German forces earlier in the war, assisted by the cooperation of surrendering crews.
3. Gallery, U-505, 10.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., 10; Gallery, U-505, 263; Lundeberg, “American Anti-Submarine Operations,” 351–52.
6. Pickels interview, 14 April 2007.
7. Gallery, “We Captured a German Sub,” 11; Lundeberg, “American Anti-Submarine Operations,” 352.
8. Pickels interview, 14 April 2007; Gallery, “We Captured a German Sub,” 72; Theodore P. Savas, ed., Hunt and Kill (New York: Savas Beatie, 2004), 148–49. Lange’s exiting before his crew is not viewed as an act of cowardlice. Standard operating procedure for a U-boat is for the skipper to leave first and assist and direct the rest of the crew to safety, according to Savas.
9. Savas, Hunt and Kill, 232–33; Gallery, U-505, 211.
10. Pickels interview, 14 April 2007.
11. Ibid. Pickels used the Monte Blanc fountain pen until the ink ran dry. He called the company office in New York City to order a replacement refill. They told him they did not have refills for such an old model. Once they found out where he obtained the pen, they offered to send him a free replacement if he would send them the one he retrieved from U-505. He declined their offer and instead donated the historic pen to the U-505 exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.
12. Lundeberg, “American Anti-Submarine Operations,” 354; Mark E. Wise and Jak Mallmann Showell, “The Role of Intelligence in the Capture of U-505,” in Savas, Hunt and Kill, 118–19. Savas included the authors’ essay, which stated that more than twelve hundred items were taken from U-505, including eight hundred technical documents and navigation charts, torpedoes, codes, ciphers, manuals, ship logs, receipts, papers, and radio equipment.
13. Lundeberg, “American Anti-Submarine Operations,” 353.
14. Gallery, “We Captured a German Sub,” 70; Frank P. Denardo, “Capture of the U-505: A First Person Account,” DEHM.
15. Gallery, “We Captured a German Sub,” 70; Pickels interview, 14 April 2007.
16. Gallery, top secret order, 14 June 1944, DEHM.
17. Joseph Villanella, interview with the author. Villanella wanted to donate the swimming trunks and other memorabilia to the Destroyer Escort Historical Museum, but he says a workman stole the box containing the trunks and other historical items from his attic.
18. Arthur Overacker, interview with the author.
19. Ibid.; Savas, Hunt and Kill, 164, 123.
20. Robert Storrick, interview with the author.
21. Ibid.
22. Gallery, U-505, 232.
23. Ibid., 234–35; Timothy P. Mulligan, Lone Wolf (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1993), 196.
24. Villanella interview.
25. Roger Cozens, interview with the author; Mulligan, Lone Wolf, 199–201. Werner Henke was imprisoned at Fort Hunter about seventeen miles south of Washington, D.C., where U-boat prisoners were interrogated. On the evening of 15 June 1944 he was shot and killed while trying to escape over the barbed-wire fence.
26. Pickels interview, 14 April 2007.
27. Charlie F. Field, interview with the author; Charles F. Field, correspondence with the author; Charlie F. Field, Captain’s Talker (N.p.: Longacre Publishing, 1999); Niestle, German U-boat Losses, 143–44.
28. Field interview; Blair, Hitler’s U-boat War: The Hunted, 567–68; Action Report, USS Thomas, 6 July 1944.
29. Field, Captain’s Talker, 19–20; Field interview.
30. Blair, Hitler’s U-boat War: The Hunted, 502; Field, Captain’s Talker, 19–20; Niestle, German U-boat Losses, 74, 83.
31. Blair, Hitler’s U-boat War: The Hunted, 535–36; Field, Captain’s Talker, 31–33.
32. Blair, Hitler’s U-boat War: The Hunted.
33. David Graybeal, oral history, 18 November 2002, Guggenheim Memorial Library, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, N.J.; Blair, Hitler’s U-boat War: The Hunted, 541–42.
34. Blair, Hitler’s U-boat War: The Hunted.
35. Graybeal oral history.
36. Field interview; M. Williams Fuller, Axis Sally (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Paradise West, 2004). Fuller notes that after the war, American military officials found Mildred Gillars (Axis Sally) living in a cellar of a bombed-out building in Berlin. She was shipped home in 1948 to stand trial for treason. On 10 March 1949 she was found innocent of treason in seven of the eight counts; she was found guilty of treason on count eight, that of portraying an American soldier’s mother in a broadcast drama, “Vision of the Invasion.” She was sentenced to ten to thirty years in federal prison. A model prisoner at West Virginia’s Alderson Federal Prison, she was paroled in 1962. (She served time with her fellow inmate, Iva Ikuko Toguri, known as Tokyo Rose.) After parole, Gillars worked for more than twenty-five years in a Catholic Convent teaching music to kindergarten children. She left at the age of seventy to finish her college education, graduating in 1973 with a degree in speech. She died at eighty-seven in Columbus, Ohio, in 1988.
37. Earl Charles White Sr. to Earl Charles White Jr., 17 March 1945 to 28 September 1945. This remarkable collection of letters was provided courtesy of Penny Ellis Shaw, granddaughter of Earl Charles White Sr. Shaw said her mother remembers that after young Charles returned home from the war in 1945, his whole body would shake whenever the town fire whistle sounded, an obvious reminder of the whistle calling him to battle stations on Halloran. Charles Jr. died in 1963. DANFS 3:217.
38. Morison, Battle of the Atlantic, 231–33; Grover Theis, “Subsea Snake Hunters” Motor Boating, April 1943, 21.
39. Edward J. Day, An Unlikely Sailor (Parsons, W.Va.: McClain Printing, 1990), 43. Day served on board the USS PC-597 and then as a junior officer on board the USS Fowler, named for a Naval Reservist, Robert Ludlow Fowler III, who was killed during action in the South Pacific in October 1942. Later in life Day would serve as postmaster general of the United States under President John F. Kennedy and was credited with introducing the zip code to America.
40. Theodore Roscoe, United States Destroyer Operations in World War II (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1953), 62; Motor Boating, 19–20.
41. “Six Day Officers Training Cruise Aboard Destroyer Escorts at SCTC-Miami for Command Group Students,” January 1944, Box 306, Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. Naval Files, FDRL.
42. Ibid.; “Change of Duty Orders,” Lt. Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., 10 April 1944, Box 306, Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. Naval Files, FDRL.
1. Naval History Division, Department of the Navy, Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, vol. 6 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976) (hereafter cited as DANFS 6), 366–68; William Wolf, German Guided Missiles: Henschel HS 293 and Ruhrstahl SD 1400X “Fritz X,” Military Monograph 53 (Bennington, Vt.: Merriam Press, 2006).
2. Roger Ford, Germany’s Secret Weapons in World War II (Osceola, Wisc.: MBI, 2000), 91–93; Samuel Eliot Morison, Sicily-Salerno-Anzio, vol. 9 of History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, by Samuel Eliot Morison (Edison, N.J.: Castle Books, 2001), 283.
3. Morison, Sicily-Salerno-Anzio; Roscoe, United States Destroyer Operations, 341.
4. George Gowling, interview with the author; Frank McClatchie, interview with the author.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.; Riemer interview; Trim But Deadly (DESA newsletter) 7, no. 2, DEHM.
8. Gowling interview; Ford, Germany’s Secret Weapons, 82; Riemer interview; “The Anzio Jam-Boree,” Trim But Deadly 7 (2): 5, DEHM.
9. Blair, Hitler’s U-boat War: The Hunted, xi.
10. Elmo Allen, interview with the author; Elmo Allen, correspondence with the author.
11. Allen interview; Robert G. Shanklin, “Enemies Meet After War, Amazing Encounter,” unpublished personal recollection, courtesy Elmo Allen.
12. Roscoe, United States Destroyer Operations, 504–5; Robert C. Stern, Battle Beneath the Waves (Edison, N.J.: Castle Books, 2003), 146–47; Blair, Hitler’s U-boat War: The Hunted, 531.
13. Roscoe, United States Destroyer Operations, 504–5; William T. Y’Blood, Hunter-Killer (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1983), 252; Andrews, Tempest, Fire and Foe, 88.
14. Ernie Pyle, untitled column, courtesy of Owen Nicholson.
15. Ernie Pyle, “Switching Ships at Sea,” 1945, courtesy of Owen Nicholson.
16. Ibid.; Thomas J. Cutler and Deborah W. Cutler, Dictionary of Naval Terms (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2005), 34.
17. Owen Nicholson, interview with the author; Owen Nicholson, personal diary, provided to author courtesy of Owen Nicholson.
18. Ernie Pyle, untitled column, courtesy of Owen Nicholson. This column was one of fifteen Pyle mailed from the western Pacific in 1945 that were never published. The live-action copy during the Okinawa campaign took precedent, and consequently, these columns remained in Scripps-Howard files.
19. Ibid.; Ernie Pyle, “Swede the D-E Comedian,” courtesy of Owen Nicholson; Nicholson interview. Six days following the death of President Roosevelt, Ernie Pyle was shot and killed by Japanese machine-gun fire near Okinawa. He was mourned by American military men, especially Army men. Hollywood later made a movie about the famous reporter, Ernie Pyle’s Story of G.I. Joe, starring Burgess Meredith.
1. Lundeberg, “American Anti-Submarine Operations,” 413, 431–33; Capt. Paul Just, Vom Seeflieger, translated, courtesy DEHM.
2. Levi Hancock, interview with the author.
3. Roy Adcock, interview with the author.
4. Ruolff F. Kip, interview with the author. Ensign Kip, along with twelve other survivors, had been recommended for a Purple Heart. Unfortunately, the recommendation never was acted upon. Kip never knew he was on the list until years later, when Lundeberg researched naval records. Lundeberg advised the Navy Department, which scheduled a private ceremony on board the USS Intrepid in New York City. The medal was pinned on Kip, who was wearing the same Princeton letter sweater credited with saving his life in 1945. Andrews, Tempest, Fire and Foe, 136–37; Roger W. Cozens, “Loss of the Davis DE-136 and Subsequent Sinking of U-546,” DESA News, July–August 2004, DEHM.
5. Philip K. Lundeberg, interview with the author; Andrews, Tempest, Fire and Foe, 136; Peter Karetka, interview with the author.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ira Wolfert, “The Silent, Invisible War Under the Sea,” Reader’s Digest, November 1945; Lundeberg, “American Anti-Submarine Operations,” 434–37; Just, Vom Seeflieger.
9. Pellegrino Soriano, oral history, 3 August 2003, Guggenheim Memorial Library, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, N.J.
10. Ibid.; Morison, Atlantic Battle Won, 355; Robert Jackson, Kriegsmarine (Osceola, Wisc.: MBI, 2001), 53–54; Just, Vom Seeflieger.
11. Soriano oral history, 7; Blair, Hitler’s U-boat War: The Hunted, 687; Just, Vom Seeflieger, 192; Pickels interview, 10 November 2007.
12. Warren Kerrigan, interview with the author.
13. Warren S. Kerrigan, USS Frost: U-Boat Killer (N.p.: Privately published, 2001), 19; Kerrigan interview; Stan Mosky, correspondence with author; Dennis Carpenter and Joseph Dorinson, Anyone Here a Sailor (Great Neck, N.Y.: Brightlights, n.d.), 31–32; Helen E. Grenga, Movies on the Fantail (Newnan, Ga.: Yeoman Press, 2001), 90–91; Ensign Herb Golden, USNR, “The Navy Way: A First-Hand Account on How Ships at Sea Exchange and Show Films,” New York Times, 12 November 1944.
14. “Lt. Eddie Duchin Here in Preparation for Sea Duty,” Quincy Patriot, 14 September 1943. Following the war, Duchin reformed his band, but he died shortly thereafter, in 1951, from leukemia.
15. Ibid., 29, 36, 37; Kerrigan interview.
16. Kerrigan, USS Frost, 58.
17. Kurt Bunzel, “A U-boat Goes to Sea—as the U-boat Dying Had Already Begun,” personal recollection, n.d., courtesy of DEHM.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. Frank Musumeci, interview with the author; William Creech, interview with the author.
21. Bunzel, “U-boat goes to sea.”
22. Kerrigan interview; Holman interview.
23. Blair, Hitler’s U-boat War: The Hunted, 621–22.
24. Ibid.; Kerrigan, USS Frost, 97–98.
25. Roscoe, United States Destroyer Operations, 502–4; Naval History Division, Department of the Navy, Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, vol. 8 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1981), 114–16; Cdr. Robert A. Dawes Jr., The Dragon’s Breath: Hurricane at Sea (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1996); Creech interview; Keally interview.
26. Cross, Sailor in the White House, 185.
27. Kerrigan interview; Musumeci interview; Kerrigan, USS Frost, 135.
28. Blair, Hitler’s U-boat War: The Hunted, 686; Y’Blood, Hunter-Killer, 260.
29. Morison, Atlantic Battle Won, 348–49; Richard Wallace, DESA News, July–August 1982; Kerrigan, USS Frost, 135–55.
30. Morison, Atlantic Battle Won; Morison; Lundeberg, “American Anti-Submarine Operations,” 425–26.
31. Halsey, “Those Not-So-Little Ships,” 1204; “To Alter Chapel Window: Artist Pictured Virgin Mary with Destroyer Escort in Arms,” New York Times, 29 March 1944.
32. Halsey, “Those Not-So-Little Ships,” 1203.
33. Andrews, Tempest, Fire and Foe, 3–4.
34. Graybeal oral history.
35. Davis oral history.
36. John Lampe oral history, 16 November 2002, Guggenheim Memorial Library, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, N.J.
37. Ibid.; Arthur C. Fleischman Sr., interview with the author; Robert N. Bavier Jr., USNR, “North Atlantic Storm,” Yachting, August 1944.
38. Charles Lovett, oral history, 21 November 2002, Guggenheim Memorial Library, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, N.J.
39. McClatchie interview; Kenneth H. Hannan, interview with the author; Blair, Hitler’s U-boat War: The Hunted, 690.
40. McClatchie interview.
1.Muth interview; Muth correspondence.
2.Blair, Hitler’s U-boat War: The Hunted, 651–53; Harold Moyers, “The Sinking of the U-869,” U.S. Coast Guard, http://www.uscg.mil/history/webcutters/ U869_Crow_Koiner.asp/.
3. Howard Denson, interview with the author.
4. Muth interview.
5. Ibid.
6. Log Book, USS Crow, 1 February 1945–28 February 1945; I. George King, interview with the author.
7. “Sole Survivor,” transcript of Nova interview with Herbert Guschewski, PBS, June 1999; Robert Kurson, Shadow Divers (New York: Random House, 2004), 232.
8. Moyers, “Sinking of the U-869.”
9. Robert Quigley, interview with the author.
10. Theodore Sieviec, interview with the author.
11. Axel Niestle to author, e-mail, “Re-assessment of German U-boat Losses in World War II: The Loss of U-869,” 9 March 2007.
12. Ibid.
13. Quigley interview.
14. Ernest Hughes, interview with the author.
15. Ibid.; John Boy, interview with the author.
16. Hughes interview.
17. Norman C. Taylor, interview with the author.
18. Ibid.; Robert Hoenshel, interview with the author; “54 Men Are Lost,” New York Times, 19 April 1944.
19. William C. Stanback, interview with the author; Blair, Hitler’s U-boat War: The Hunted, 560–61.
20. Ibid.
21. Stanback interview.
22. Milton Stein, interview with the author; Milton Stein, correspondence with the author.
23. Stein correspondence.
24. Ibid.
25. DANFS 6:93–94.
26. Tom Eddy, personal diary, USS Bates, courtesy of DEHM; “Naval Officers Here Tell of Invasion,” World-Telegram, 2 August 1944; King, U.S. Navy at War, 137–40; Samuel Eliot Morison, The Invasion of France and Germany, 1944–45, vol. 11 of History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, by Samuel Eliot Morison (Edison, N.J.: Castle Books, 2001), 170.
27. “Invasion Service of DEs Described,” New York Times, 3 August 1944.
28. Edwin B. Black, The Last Voyage of the USS Rich (Pembroke, N.C.: WFC Press, 1996), 85.
29. Ibid., 80–81.
30. Ibid., 93–96.
31. Morison, Invasion of France and Germany, 1944–45, 173; Ford, Germany’s Secret Weapons, 131; Sonke Neitzel, “The Deployment of the U-boats,” in The Battle of the Atlantic, 1939-1945, ed. Stephen Howarth and Derek Law, 276 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1994).
32. Clay Blair, Hitler’s U-boat War: The Hunters, 1939–1942 (New York: Modern Library, 2000), 121–26.
33. Ibid., 127; Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948), 506.
34. Blair, Hitler’s U-boat War: The Hunters, 128.
35. James Mitchell, interview with the author.
36. Ibid.; DANFS 6:136.
37. “14 Dead in 2 U-boat Sinkings Off East Coast as V-E Neared,” New York Times, 10 May 1945; “The Last German U-boat to Sink an American Ship in World War II Was Herself Sent to the Bottom,” World War II, February 1999, 20; Adam Lynch, “Kill and Be Killed? The U-853 Mystery,” Naval History 22, no. 3 (June 2008): 39–40.
38. William Tobin, interview with the author.
39. “200 Depth Charges Beat a Davey Jones Dirge for Last U-boat Bagged off East Coast,” New York Times, 15 May 1945; Tobin interview; Roscoe, United States Destroyer Operations, 514.
40. Carl Barth, interview with the author; Tobin interview. Franz Krones was sent to Camp Edwards, Massachusetts, and later released back to Germany. Finding his home destroyed and family displaced, he finally located his mother and moved to Otzberg, where he worked on a farm. He married in 1951, and he and his wife have a son, daughter, and four grandchildren. Krones later worked as a civil servant for the German Federal Armed Forces.
41. Lewis Iselin interview, 10 April 1969, 11, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. After the war, Iselin went on to become a prominent sculptor of portraits and other figurative works. Among his best known works were Face of Our Time, four faces cast in bronze at Midland’s Mutual Life Insurance Company in Columbus, Ohio, and Memory, a draped marble figure of a widow created as a World War II memorial for the United States Military Cemetery in Suresnes, France. Barth interview.
42. Tobin interview.
43. Ibid.
1. Rackham Holt, Mary McLeod Bethune: A Biography (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964), 190–91.
2. Ibid., 193; Pickels interview, 10 November 2007. Mary McLeon Bethune first met Eleanor and Sara Roosevelt at a luncheon for the National Council of Women of the U.S.A. Eleanor Roosevelt hosted in her New York City home. Bethune was the only black among the thirty-five guests. Sara Roosevelt noticed the apprehensive glances from southern women as Bethune was ushered to the table. Sara quickly took the arm of Bethune and seated her in a place of honor, immediately to the right of Eleanor, which delighted the black servants in the Roosevelt household. Bethune and the Roosevelt women became instant friends.
3. Holt, Mary McLeod Bethune, 194–95.
4. Walter White, A Man Called White (New York: Viking Press, 1948), 190–91; Jervis Anderson, A. Philip Randolph: A Biographical Portrait (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), 255.
5. White, Man Called White, 191; Eric Purdon, Black Company: The Story of Subchaser 1264 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1972), 13.
6. White, Man Called White, 191; Samuel I. Rosenman, Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1941 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950), 233–37; Anderson, A. Philip Randolph, 241–42; “President Orders an Even Break for Minorities in Defense Jobs,” New York Times, 26 June 1941.
7. Samuel I. Rosenman, Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1942 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1950), 39.
8. Gerald Astor, The Right to Fight: A History of African Americans in the Military (Cambridge, Mass.: DaCapo Press, 1998), 143–44; “Ready for Good Will Trip,” New York Times, 8 November 1934.
9. Astor, Right to Fight, 144. Interior Secretary Harold Ickes indicated that FDR was in favor of allowing African Americans to train as pilots. “Air Corps to Form Negro Squadron,” New York Times, 17 January 1941; “Army Calls Negro Fliers,” New York Times, 22 March 1941.
10. Astor, Right to Fight, 160; Purdon, Black Company, 18.
11. Ibid.
12. Carmichael, FDR, 103–5.
13. Ibid. FDR is credited with bringing blacks into the government for the first time in history, and gathered informally as the president’s “black cabinet.” FDR also appointed the first black federal judge and named several blacks to the various federal agencies and departments.
14. Harold Ickes, The Lowering Clouds: The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954), 323; David Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 765; Dennis Nelson, The Integration of the Negro into the U.S. Navy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1951), 11; Richard E. Miller, The Messman Chronicles (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2004), 6.
15. Ickes, Lowering Clouds; Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 768–71.
16. B. Joyce Ross, “Mary McLeod Bethune and the National Youth Administration: A Case Study of Power Relationships in the Black Cabinet of Franklin D. Roosevelt,” Journal of Negro History, January 1975, 1.
17. Benjamin Garrison, interview with the author; Mary Pat Kelley, Proudly We Served: The Men of the USS Mason (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1999), 17–18.
18. Graham interview. The Navy later opened a second training facility for blacks at the Hampton Institute in Virginia.
19. Adolph W. Newton, Better than Good: A Black Sailor’s War, 1943–1945 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1999), 14–17.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Graham interview.
23. Larson, History of the U.S. Naval Training Center, 262.
24. Ibid., 263–64; Nelson, Integration of the Negro, 28, 31.
25. Nelson, Integration of the Negro, 39, 42, 43.
26. Ibid., 45–46.
27. Graham interview; Ward, Closest Companion, 175–76.
28. Ward, Closest Companion, 176.
29. Thomas Howard, interview with the author. A smaller warship, a sub chaser, the PC-1264, also was manned by a mostly black crew and patrolled coastal waters.
30. Garrison interview.
31. Ibid.
32. “New Navy Crew Mostly Negroes,” New York Times, 21 March 1944.
33. “First Negro-Manned Naval Vessel Is Commissioned,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, 25 March 1944.
34. Mary Pat Kelly, Proudly We Served: The Men of the USS Mason (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1999), 56–57.
35. Ibid., 64.
36. Graham interview.
37. Mansel G. Blackford, ed., On Board the USS Mason: The World War II Diary of James A. Dunn (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1996), 7.
38. Thomas W. Young, “War Goods Delivered on USS Mason’s First Combat Assignment,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, 1944.
39. Allen interview.
40. Charles Dana Gibson, Ordeal of Convoy N.Y. 119 (Camden, Maine: Ensign Press, 1992); Capt. Russ V. Bradley, “USS Edgar G. Chase, Convoy NY 119,” DEHM.
41. National Weather Service, Eastern Region Headquarters, http://www.erh.noaa.gov/akq/Hur40s.htm/.
42. Bradley, “USS Edgar G. Chase,” 3.
43. Gibson, Ordeal of Convoy N.Y. 119, xxiii.
44. Bradley, “USS Edgar G. Chase,” 3.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid.; Allen interview.
47. Bradley, “USS Edgar G. Chase,” 6–7.
48. Kelly, Proudly We Served, 100; Bradley, “USS Edgar G. Chase,” 6–7.
49. Kelly, Proudly We Served, 115–16.
50. Blackford, On Board the USS Mason, 35, 46.
51. Ibid., 47.
52. Garrison interview.
53. Howard interview.
54. In 1995, the sailors on board the USS Mason finally received the commendation for which they were recommended in 1944. Thanks to the work of Naval Institute Press author Mary Pat Kelly, the African American sailors still living were honored by President Bill Clinton.
55. Garrison interview; Davis oral history.
56. Cassin Craig, interview with the author.
57. Thomas W. Young, “Writer Says USS Mason Showed White and Colored Men Mix Well in New Navy,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, 30 September 1944.
58. Thomas W. Young, “Irish First to Treat USS Mason Crew Like Real Americans,” Norfolk Journal and Guide, 14 October 1944.
59. Ibid.
60. Kelly, Proudly We Served, 92.
1. Richard Warner, interview with the author, 31 January 2004; Robert J. Cressman, “USS Ulvert M. Moore (DE-442),” Sea Classics 13, no. 2 (March 1980); DANFS 6:598–99. The USS Stafford returned to St. Pedro Bay, Leyte, on 16 January and went into dry dock for hull repairs. It continued antisubmarine patrols. It was decommissioned in 1947, after earning two battle stars.
2. Dale Anderson, interview with the author.
3. George Lawson, interview with the author.
4. Richard Warner, interview with the author, 31 January 2004.
5. Christopher Roosevelt, correspondence with the author; “Hewitt Decorates F. D. Roosevelt Jr.,” New York Times, 17 November 1943.
6. Ted Barnhart, interview with the author; Robert W. Schwier, correspondence with the author; William Bell, interview with the author.
7. Barnhart interview; Warner interview, 31 January 2004; Warner correspondence, 13 January 2004.
8. Ibid.; Daniel Sutelle, interview with the author.
9. Warner interview, 31 January 2004; Warner oral history; Anderson interview; Naval History Division, Department of the Navy, Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, vol. 5 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979), 154; Samuel Eliot Morison, The Liberation of the Philippines, 1944–45, vol. 13 of History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, by Samuel Eliot Morison (Edison, N.J.: Castle Books, 2001), 101.
10. Bell interview; William Bell, correspondence with the author. Elliott joined the Army Air Corps in 1940, compiling an outstanding war record. He served as a reconnaissance pilot in the North Atlantic, North Africa, and the Mediterranean, ending the war as a brigadier general. James entered active service in the Marines in November 1940, first serving as a military observer in the Middle East and Far East. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he chose combat duty and was awarded the Navy Cross and Silver Star.
11. Ibid.; Naval History Division, Department of the Navy, Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, vol. 7 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1981), 392. Although debate remains as to the identity of the Japanese submarine sunk by Ulvert M. Moore, many experts believe it was RO-115.
12. J. Henry Doscher Jr., Little Wolf at Leyte (Austin, Tex.: Eakin Press, 1996), vol. 7; Larner, “All in a Day”; “4 Small U.S. Ships, Lost, Averted a Possible Philippines Disaster,” New York Times, 15 November 1944.
13. Robert W. Copeland with Jack E. O’Neill, The Spirit of the Sammy B (N.p.: USS Samuel B. Roberts Survivors’ Association, September 2000), 35–36.
14. Ibid.; Doscher, Little Wolf at Leyte, 35.
15. Copeland with O’Neill, Spirit of the Sammy B; Doscher, Little Wolf at Leyte, 40; Charles W. Touzell, interview with the author; Charles W. Touzell, correspondence with the author; Fred Graziano, interview with the author; Fred Graziano, correspondence with the author; Donald Derwoyed, interview with the author; Vern Kimmell, interview with the author; Howard W. Fortney, interview with the author; Robert L. Johnson to wife, n.d.
16. Doscher, Little Wolf at Leyte, 40–41.
17. Ibid., 44; Tom Stevenson, interview with the author; Jack Yusen, interview with the author; Thomas J. Cutler, The Battle of Leyte Gulf (New York: Harper Collins, 1994), 232.
18. Stevenson interview.
19. Ibid.
20. Doscher, Little Wolf at Leyte, 16, 58; Richard Rohde, interview with the author; James D. Hornfisher, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors (New York: Bantam Books, 2004), 36.
21. Rohde interview; Stevenson interview; Yusen interview; Doscher, Little Wolf at Leyte, 48.
22. Glenn Huffman, interview with the author; Whitney correspondence, courtesy of DEHM.
23. Copeland with O’Neill, Spirit of the Sammy B, 60; David Sears, The Last Epic Naval Battle (New York: New American Library, 2005), 215.
24. Copeland with O’Neill, Spirit of the Sammy B, 62–63; Rohde interview; Huffman interview; Stevenson interview.
25. Vern Kimmell, interview with the author; Franklyn Jeff Conley, interview with the author.
26. Robert L. Johnson to wife.
27. Tomiji Koyanagi, “With Kurita in the Battle for Leyte Gulf,” Naval Institute Proceedings, February 1953, 119–34.
28. Conley interview; Howard Fortney, interview with the author.
29. Robert L. Goggins, interview with the author; Robert L. Goggins, personal war diary provided to the author; DANFS 6:327; Samuel Eliot Morison, Leyte, June 1944–January 1945, vol. 12 of History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, by Samuel Eliot Morison (Edison, N.J.: Castle Books, 2001), 301.
30. Morison, Leyte, June 1944–January 1945, 301.
31. Albert R. Pincus, interview with the author; Albert R. Pincus, From Brooklyn to Tokyo Bay: A Sailor’s Story of WW II (Paducah, Ky.: Turner, 2004), 35–41.
1. Roberge interview, 29 February 2004; Walter L. Roberge Jr., Dog Easy One Eight Six (N.p.: Privately published, spring 1995), 83; Bob Drury and Tom Clavin, Halsey’s Typhoon (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007), 3; Lt. Cdr. Henry L. Plage, oral history, courtesy DEHM; Roscoe, United States Destroyer Operations, 448.
2. R. B. Hillyer, The Greatest Anti-Submarine Action of All Wars (N.p.: Privately published, n.d.), 98.
3. Roberge interview, 29 February 2004.
4. Plage oral history.
5. Ibid.; Capt. C. Raymond Calhoun, Typhoon: The Other Enemy (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1981), 110; William F. Halsey and J. Bryan III, Admiral Halsey’s Story (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1947), 239.
6. William Fairlee correspondence, courtesy DEHM; Henry Eugene Davis, interview with the author; letter from unnamed sailor on board the USS Melvin R. Nawman, courtesy Robert H. Dreher.
7. Hanson W. Baldwin, “The Law of Storms,” Crowsnest, October 1953.
8. Drury and Clavin, Halsey’s Typhoon, 218; Calhoun, Typhoon, 114. Keelhauling is the ancient punishment of hauling a man from one side of the ship to the other under the bottom by means of ropes passed under the keel. Cutler, Battle of Leyte Gulf, 126; Halsey, “Those Not-So-Little Ships,” 240.
9. Roscoe, United States Destroyer Operations, 450–51; Calhoun, Typhoon, 116.
10. Roscoe, United States Destroyer Operations, 450–51.
11. Davis interview; war diary, 1 January 1944, kept by commanding officer, USS Bangust, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Ms.
12. Dale P. Harper, “The Destroyer Escort England Was One of the U.S. Navy’s Most Prolific Killers of Japanese Submarines during World War II,” World War II, n.d., courtesy DEHM; A. B. Feuer, “The Killer Dillers and the Hedgehogs,” Sea Classics, December 1988; John A. Williamson to Richard E. Warner, 22 January 1993, courtesy Richard E. Warner.
13. Andrews, Tempest, Fire and Foe, 164–65; Roscoe, United States Destroyer Operations, 410; Robert Currie, interview with the author.
14. Daniel R. Gallagher to Victor Buck, 8 December 2000, DEHM; Stanley G. Skebe to Victor Buck, 19 October 2000, DEHM; Roscoe, United States Destroyer Operations, 436–37; Capt. George E. Marix, Action Report, USS Eversole, 7 November 1944.
15. Roscoe, United States Destroyer Operations, 492; Owen Gault, “Sighted Subs, Sank Six,” Sea Classics, 73.
16. Richard W. Graves, interview with the author; Richard W. Graves, Men of Poseidon: Life at Sea aboard the USS Rall (Nevada City, Calif.: Willow Valley Press, 2000), 70–71; William Shumate, interview with the author.
17. Kruse interview; James W. Gannon correspondence, DEHM; Rodger J. Crum correspondence, DEHM; Edward Pinkowski, “The USS Underhill,” Our Navy, mid-December 1945, 42–43; Ens. Robert P. Cook, “The Sinking of the USS Underhill,” n.d., DEHM.
18. Nathaniel G. Benchley, “Sorry, No Ice Cream,” New Yorker, 30 May 1953, 1–3. Benchley would go on after the war to author several best-selling books, including The Off-Islanders, later made into a motion picture, The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming.
19. Charles Esch, interview with the author.
20. John Kunsak Jr., interview with the author; Graves, Men of Poseidon, 140–41; DANFS 6:22.
21. Robert D. Piper, interview with the author.
22. John P. Cosgrove, interview with the author; R. B. Paynter and John Cosgrove, The Gendreau Story (San Francisco: Destroyer Escort Sailors Assn., n.d.).
23. Cosgrove interview; John Virum, interview with the author; Robert D. Young, interview with the author; Robert D. Young, From Maine to Bounding Main, 41–45.
24. Irving Mesher, interview with the author; H. C. Finch, ed., USS Silverstein: History and Sea Stories (N.p.: Privately published, 2002), courtesy of Irv Mesher.
25. Roscoe, United States Destroyer Operations, 462.
26. Ibid.; Edward M. Docalovich, interview with the author. The USS Melvin R. Nawman was damaged the next day when it collided with a tank landing ship.
27. Charles R. Cox, interview with the author.
28. Edward Hinz, interview with the author. Hinz recorded his recollections in a book, The USS Blessman and I (N.p.: Xlibris, 2007).
29. DANFS 3:433–36; Cross, Sailor in the White House, 103–5; Doug Stanton, In Harm’s Way (New York: Henry Holt, 2001), 249 and 165; Carlos R. Monarez, interview with the author.
30. George R. Dawson, personal recollections, courtesy of Frank Frazitta; Frank Frazitta, personal diary provided to the author; Cedric Foster, “As Broadcast over Yankee Network,” transcript, July 1945, courtesy of Frank Frazita; DANFS 3:438.