Visit to the Outer Banks & Kitty Hawk

My wife and I have just returned from a short road trip. I drove down to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, a place neither my wife nor I had ever visited before. We went down before the "season" started, so it was uncrowded and peaceful.

I had read about the HMT Bedfordshire, an armed trawler which came from Britain for anti submarine patrols off the Outer Banks. Having read about the "Bedfordshire" previously, I wanted to pay my respects at the British Cemetery. For those who are not familiar with the "Bedfordshire", there is quite a story. England was in WWII a few years ahead of the USA. The USA was neutral, but was supplying England with foodstuffs, supplies and war materiel via a lifeline of merchant ships. The British code breakers at Bletchley Park had succeeded in cracking the German naval codes and were fully aware of any orders given by Admiral Doenitz to the U boat fleet, full details of operating areas, dates and number of U boats assigned to those areas. The British had also developed strategies for protecting merchant shipping and for anti submarine warfare. Unfortunately, US Admiral Ernest King was an Anglophobe, and would not give any consideration to any information the British sent to the US Navy. As a result, unprotected merchant ships were being sunk at an alarming rate within sight of the US East Coast. The area off the Outer Banks had over 100 merchant ships sunk by U Boats. This was the lifeline supplying Britain and it was coming perilously close to being cut by the U Boats. The British sent a number of armed trawlers to the East Coast of the US, equipped for anti-submarine warfare with Asdic (a version of "sonar"), deck guns and depth charges. The trawlers were not big ships, maybe 135-150 ft long. They were steam powered with triple expansion engines and had hand fired boilers burning coal.

The Bedfordshire went out on an anti-submarine patrol off Ocracoke Island. A U boat torpedoed her and she went down with all hands. The next day, bodies began washing ashore. Four bodies were found and buried there, including the skipper. Two of the bodies were unidentified. Originally, the bodies were buried under cast concrete crosses, but granite headstones with the "fouled anchor" insignia of the Royal Navy were set as permanent markers after WWII. The people of Ocracoke, mainly fishermen, buried the bodies and put up grave markers. They deeded the plot of land where the British seamen were buried to England. To this day, the "white Ensign" (the flag of the Royal Navy) flies over that little cemetery.

The skipper of the Bedfordshire was only 27 when he took his ship and crew across the Atlantic. His ship was known as an Arctic Trawler, so could stand the heavy seas, but how it hauled enough coal, fresh water for boiler makeup, and provisions for the crew to make the crossing is another matter. Something like 24 British sailors lost their lives when the "Bedfordshire" was torpedoed, defending our coastline and merchant shipping.

I told my wife the story of the Bedfordshire before we got to the Outer Banks, and said I wanted to pay my respects to the crew and the ship. Wife understood fully. We got to the little cemetery and spent a few minutes there. No one else was around, but it was a place to reflect and give thanks to a brave crew of young men who died far from home. The "White Ensign" flew over the cemetery, but it is really tattered. Maybe that is appropriate for a place memorializing a crew and ship lost as they were. I wonder how many people stop to pay their respects at the little British Cemetery these days, and realize the sacrifice those young men made for us. I suspect that in season, most people are too busy buying tee shirts and kitschy stuff and finding various amusements.

We had wanted to visit the "Graveyard of the Atlantic" Museum, but it was closed on Sundays and we headed home on a Monday morning, early. We just did not fit that into our days, unfortunately. We did take the Ferry to Ocracoke Island from Hatteras. A free ferry ride, and nearly an hour in length. The actual "as the crow flies" distance between the ferry slips at Hatteras and Ocracoke is a very short distance. However, due to storms and resulting changes to the sea bottom, the ferry has to take a much longer route. The ferries are shallow draft vessels, equipped with Voith Cycloidal type propellors, and powered with 'Cat diesels. As a result, there is a fair amount of vibration and noise on the car deck. We did get out of the pickup and talked to a crew member and he told us a lot about the area. As we stood on the for'd end of the ferry going to Ocracoke, a couple of porpoises broke water and swam off the port side of the ferry for a bit. That made our day. The return crossing back to Hatteras showed us a beautiful sunset, and then after dark, the skipper turned on the searchlight on top of the wheelhouse. The searchlight picked up some large fish breaking water, which was also quite a thing to see.

We spent a few days just being lazy, eating plenty of great seafood, walking on the dunes or laying on the sand. I had driven down with our Tacoma 4 x 4 pickup and included a shovel, tow strap and chains, axe, bow saw and similar gear. I had seen 4 x 4 trails and areas designated on maps. When we got to Hatteras, we discovered a permit to go on the beaches with a 4 x 4 is fifty bucks. For a few days, it did not pay. Similarly, another permit has to be obtained for a fire on the beach, so we did not build any fires or cook out on the beach. The beaches were deserted, and we spread out a tarp and just let the sun and sea air do their work.

On the way home, we stopped at Kitty Hawk. This is the site worth visiting. I had read a few books about the Wright Brothers, so this was quite a thing to see.
Seeing the full-sized replica of the Wright Brothers' glider and their first plane was really amazing. There is a section of the crankcase of one of their engines of the type used in their first plane. Charlie Taylor, their machinist, had apparently used aluminum castings to build those engines, which, to me seemed fairly advanced for the day. There was a display of some of the tools the Wright Brothers used, or at least tools typical of what they might have used. Wife and I chuckled at the set of drawing instruments- I still use the same type of instruments. There were some lathe tool holders, but I had to bite my tongue. These were too modern for the era. They were Armstrong or Williams lathe tool holders with 1/4" square HSS toolbits, and a lathe cutoff tool holder that also looked a bit too modern for the 1900-1903 era. There was a wooden tee square of the type we used at Brooklyn Technical HS, which also caused us to chuckle. I still have a tee square like it in the house. The exhibits and overall historic site are very well done, and we spent about 1 1/2 hours there.

It was a good vacation trip for sure.

Thanks for posting your interesting story Joe.
For those who may be interested you can find out about British or other Commonwealth Countries war graves here

CWGC - Homepage
http://www.cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery.aspx?cpage=1
Cemetery Link
CWGC - Cemetery Details
This is the information about the crew members of the Bedfordshire
http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead.aspx?cpage=1&sort=name&order=asc

Regards,
Jim

Great post, Joe... OBX is a great trip, hope to get back there someday... Thanks for the interesting report ... Your literary skills are amazing...

Joe-

great writing, as always.
I spent a week there many decades ago with a girlfriend, and of course the Kitty Hawk site was an essential place for me to spend some time. I did not know about the mariners cemetary or memorial.

The toll on merchant shipping was horrendous.
Germany understood fairly early that they had started something they couldn't win since even with slave labor they could not hope to out-produce the allies. If they were to have any chance at all to survive the war they started, it would have to be by making the oceans completely unsafe for shipping.

This is an account of one of my grandfather's crossings, & U-610.

http://www.isthmianlines.com/ships/sa_steel_navigator.htm

He was a 3rd mate on some voyages during the war but we are not clear when, or if he was the one referred to in the account. 59 yrs old at the time of the sinking, he was one of the few lucky survivors but lost some toes to frostbite during the week in the lifeboat. Grandpa seems to have spent about 6 or 8 months on dry land and then went back down to Baltimore and made at least 4 more voyages before the war ended. According to him, the (Germans) "questioning the survivors" amounted to the lifeboat crew flipping them the bird & shaking fists while exercising their seafarer's entitlement to salty language; the sub deck gunner threatening them with the mounted machine gun, the sub captain staying the gunner, and then commanding their exit.

smt

Thanks Joe most interesting and educational,as ever. A long Boooo Hisssss for Admiral Ernest King !

[QUOTEWhen we got to Hatteras, we discovered a permit to go on the beaches with a 4 x 4 is fifty bucks. For a few days, it did not pay. Similarly, another permit has to be obtained for a fire on the beach, so we did not build any fires or cook out on the beach.
][/QUOTE]



Sad......very sad

Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum

The Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum has a number of relics from a sunken U-boat.

One of the relics is a very corroded Enigma encrypting/decrypting machine. It was apparently cleaned up by electrolysis the best they could, but it would clearly be unable to operate in its present condition. Still, one could get an impression of the keyboard, the indicator lights, and the encoding rotors.

On the way home, GF & I stopped at the Mariner's Museum in Newport News VA. In addition to oogling the USS Monitor's turret in what must be the world's largest electrolytic restoration tank, we saw a 100% intact, like-new Enigma machine.

I'd heard of this encryption machine many times, and have even seen an explanation of how they work, but I never thought I'd actually see one. Here, on a single journey, I saw two of them !

It's an amazing machine.

John Ruth

Jim Christie said:

Thanks for posting your interesting story Joe.
For those who may be interested you can find out about British or other Commonwealth Countries war graves here

CWGC - Homepage
http://www.cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery.aspx?cpage=1
Cemetery Link
CWGC - Cemetery Details
This is the information about the crew members of the Bedfordshire
http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead.aspx?cpage=1&sort=name&order=asc

Regards,
Jim

Click to expand...

Thanks for that commonwealth graves link. I suspect that most of us would be amazed at the number of allied dead interred here in the states. For instance, in Montgomery Alabama, There are 78 commonwealth and 20 French, killed in training accidents during basic flight training.

John:

I am sorry we missed both the "Graveyard of the Atlantic" museum & the Mariner's Museum in Newport News. The Enigma machine was originally invented by a fellow in San Francisco, CA somewhere in the 'teens or 'twenties. He had devised an encoding machine using the same sort of wheels with letters & numbers, and the same sort of circuitry that the Enigma machines were based upon. The fellow tried to market his coding machines in the USA, having a small manufacturing operation going in San Francisco. He hoped that businesses, law enforcement and other agencies or firms needing to send confidential information might all use his encoders. He got nowhere with it. The Germans were sharp enough to recognize the potential in this design, and likely improved upon it to make it even more impossible to "crack the code".

The British Code Breakers at Bletchley Park had been given a captured Enigma machine. Even with the Enigma machine in their possession, the code breakers at Bletchley Park had a huge job to crack the German codes. Settings on the wheels of the Enigma machine were changed daily, so the basic code was scrambled differently each day. The British codebreakers accomplished what was thought by the Germans to be impossible- cracking their codes.

Initially, the German Navy noticed that the British seemed to be always be one step ahead of them and began to suspect that the British had cracked their codes. This idea was dismissed by the Germans as being an impossibility, which worked out handily for the British. The British were careful to avoid being too obvious. I did read that when the Germans figured out that the British had cracked their ciphers, they added another wheel to the Enigma machines. The British were temporarily in the blind as far as intercepting and decoding German messages, but eventually did succeed.

I saw one Enigma machine in a museum, but at the time, I did not realize the magnitude of what it was. I know that when a German naval vessel was forced to surrender, the skipper and crew had weighted bags ready and would throw the Enigma machine and the code books overboard. Even if they set scuttling charges or opened the sea cocks, the risk of having the Enigma machine and code books fall into Allied hands was considered too great to chance leaving them in a sinking vessel. How the British got hold of the Enigma machine is something I never read about.

The wreck of the "Bedfordshire" has been found and online underwater photos are on a website. The "Bedfordshire" was about 150 ft long, and was steam powered. She had a single Scotch Marine Boiler, which is clearly visible in the underwater photos. From what I read, the Admiralty purchased a large number of trawlers for conversion to anti-submarine warfare, minelaying, and other duties which a small, slower ship could perform. The fish holds on the trawlers were converted into berthing spaces for the additional crew members, as well as into a wardroom. Space for the Asdic ( similar to a sonar) apparatus, along with additional radio and navigational equipment made things more cramped for the crews. The trawlers were built to stay at sea for about 6 weeks, so having sufficient coal, makeup water, engineer stores was not something that had to be added for the Atlantic crossings. Having sufficient provisions and space to store them for the added crew was another matter. The "Arctic" trawlers were designed for service in rough seas, so crossing the Atlantic was not a problem, either. The crew had something like 24 members which was probably about 2 to 3 times the number in a peacetime fishing crew. Between the additional gear for anti-submarine warfare and navigation, and additional stores of parts, supplies, and provisions, the crew was likely jammed in as almost an afterthought.

I am glad we took the time to visit the British Cemetery on Ocracoke. As we rode the ferry back to Hatteras and night fell, I imagined those same waters as being traversed by "Bedfordshire", along with numerous merchant vessels and U boats. The lights on the strip of land between Hatteras and the other small settlements shined like a string in the night, and the two lighthouses were operating at Hatteras and Ocracoke. I pointed this out to my wife when she remarked how nice the lights looked, and mentioned this was what the U Boats found remarkable- the fact the US coastline was not blacked out. It was an interesting trip for us, having read a good bit about the history during WWII.

Roosevelt knew that Admiral King did not like or trust the Brits, buy he kept him on because of his hyper-activity and his way of driving his subordinates ruthlessly. The President once described King as "a man who shaves with a blowtorch". King refused to re-route Atlantic convoys when they knew the Germans were going to attack them, in order to protect the fact of the broken Enigma code. My Dad was a Merchant Marine who made many combat crossing in Liberty ships. When I told him about this, he sat down and did not say anything for several minutes. I asked, "Are you OK?" He said, "I'm glad I didn't know that in 1943. Regards, Clark

Joe Michaels said:

How the British got hold of the Enigma machine is something I never read about.

Click to expand...

I remembered something about that and searched for some info on it. The British manged to capture one from a German U-boat they forced to surface. More info here: 9th May 1941: Enigma machine captured

Clark:

My hat is off to your father. My own father made the crossing as a combat engineer in the US Army. Dad said the vessel they went over on was a "converted banana boat". Dad also described "hot racking" where another G.I. and my Dad alternately slept in the same rack. Dad was capable of getting seasick in a bathtub, so being on an old merchant ship in a convoy was a hellish experience for him, if for no other reason. As Dad told the story of his crossing, he was detailed for K.P., so reported to the galley. There, seasick or not, he was pointed at crates of chickens and told to get busy cleaning and preparing them to be cooked. Dad said aside from chicken guts (which, ashore, was no big deal as he'd dressed plenty of chickens), the galley stove was fueled on light fuel oil and not burning too well. Dad had to scald the chickens in a pot, and get them ready for the cooks. Dad said in the midst of all of this, there were lifeboat and abandon ship drills. Then, the real alarms started with reports of U Boats in the vicinity. Dad said the escort vessels "maneuvered like motorcycles" cutting in and out amongst the ships of the convoy. On one such occasion, Dad was standing at the rail at his muster station, fumbling with his life jacket. An old "retread" sergeant ( a retread being someone who'd served in WWI) saw my Dad looking quite green and told Dad that if they went into the North Atlantic, they had maybe 15 minutes to live due to the cold water. Dad asked the old sergeant if he'd die any quicker without his life jacket. The old sergeant took an orange out of his coat and gave it to Dad. Dad said that orange was about the only thing he recalled eating on the crossing.

Mike Korol, the senior erector for Skinner Engine, shipped as an engineer in the Merchant Marine. He made a number or runs to Europe in the engine rooms of merchant ships in convoys. Then, Mike started making the runs to Murmansk. Mike said that was the worst thing imaginable. He said in one day, during the Arctic night, they lost 6 ships around his ship to U boats. Mike kept sailing through the war. He also told me that, as an engineer officer, he was issued a .38 caliber revolver and given an order: shoot any man who tried to leave the engine room or stokehold during an attack unless the "abandon ship" order was given. Mike said they had plenty of alarms, but he also said he never had any man lose his nerve or try to desert his post in the engine room or stoke hold.

Mike said on the Murmansk runs, the ambient temperature in the engine room got down to about 45-50 degrees F. He said they ran the whole way with the cylinder drains opened on the IP and LP cylinders of the main engine due to the low ambient temperature in the engine room.

Another man I worked with very early in my career was an older engineer named Tom Verburg. He's probably long dead by now. Tom was an immigrant from the Netherlands. During WWII, Tom had been an engineer officer on a Dutch destroyer. When Holland was over-run, the skipper took the destroyer and made a dash for England. They arrived safely in England, and were attached to the Royal Navy and assigned to convoy escort duty. As Tom told it, he was in his rack sleeping when a U Boat torpedoed his destroyer. He said they took the torpedo in the after end, so lost the screw and rudder. Tom said the concussion of the torpedo was one thing, but the sudden stop that the destroyer made when it lost its screw and rudder threw him out of his rack. He was in his pajamas. He got some shoes on his feet and headed to the engine room. There, he helped secure the plant and got plenty of feedwater into the boilers to minimize the danger of explosion when the seawater hit them. Tom helped get all the men out of the engine and fire rooms. He and the skipper were in the last group of men to get off the destroyer. They got on a life raft and a few more of the crew joined them. Tom never said how many of the crew were lost with the destroyer. What he did say was it was fairly cold, and they were on the life raft for a couple of days. He said they knew if they fell asleep, they'd probably never wake up. They sang, told stories, slapped each other to wakefulness, and on the second day, a ship came in sight. The ship spotted them and steamed over to them. It was a vessel of the Royal Navy. As Tom told it, the ship maneuvered in fairly close putting their raft on its lee side. An officer with a megaphone hailed them asking what nationality they were and what ship. Tom's skipper answered "Royal Dutch Navy" and gave the name of their destroyer. The British officer with the megaphone then hollered:
"How many officer and how many men are you ?" Tom said the skipper hollered a few choice cuss words at the British Officer and told him to quite f--king around and get them taken aboard instead of worrying about officers vs men. Tom said they were given rum and taken back to England. He served the rest of the war on a variety of ships.

Tom was on another ship that was torpedoed, and that time, he was picked up by a Spanish merchant vessel. He and the other survivors were taken to the galley and given "soup with a raw egg in it". Tom said surviving a torpedoing was one thing, but being handed a mug of soup with a raw egg floating on it was another matter.

On that particular job, we were doing some work out on an oil barge unloading dock. It was winter, and a good stiff wind was blowing. Tom and I rode out to the work area on a small tugboat that was pushing a crane barge ahead of it. I had taken my gloves off and wrapped my hand around the rail of the tug. My hand froze to the rail. Tom saw me discreetly trying to get my hand loose from the rail without losing flesh in the process. He grinned at me and asked: "How do you take your coffee ?" I told him: "Straight black". Tom, having a dry sense of humor, said: "Stand fast, I'll be right back." Fat chance of me going anywhere with my hand froze to the rail. Tom reappeared with two mugs of coffee. One was his. He said: "Straight black, right Joe ?". I said "yep", and with that, Tom dumped the mug of coffee on my hand and the rail. My hand came loose. Tom was laughing and while I was cussing, he said: "Take it easy. No U boats around, so what's a mug of coffee ?"

The men who are WWII veterans are fast vanishing. The Merchant Mariners were a forgotten branch of the service, and it was only in very recent years that they were able to receive Veteran's benefits. It was too late for many of the WWII Merchant Mariners.

I took the WWII vets for granted when I was young, since my father and nearly everyone else's father, had served in WWII. Now, the WWII vets and their stories are rapidly fading into recountings in books, some youtubes, and similar. I find it a bit incomprehensible that younger people will ask: "What's VJ Day ?" or similar questions that we knew from the time we could listen to our parents and teachers. I guess history is not taught the way it was when I was a kid. More emphasis on "social change" or the Civil Rights Movement or similar, I guess.

Joe- Thanks for noticing. Having always been interested in machines and the war, I was constantly asking the adults of my Dad's age about their experiences in the war. Some were reluctant to go into detail, but most realized that I was genuinely interested, so they told it all. I listened carefully to my Dad's friends from the Merchant Marine as they described the memorable moments of their war-time voyages. Dad worked in the engine room, nursing the boiler and the triple expansion steam engine. The knowledge he gained about steam carried him through a long career selling and consulting steam installations.
In his later years, I discovered the Liberty Ship EDMUND O'BRIEN, which was berthed at the National Maritime Museum in San Francisco. I made many visits to the ship, and I explored most every nook and cranny. I told Dad that he should go with me on my next trip and spend the day on the ship. I noted that the admittance charge was only $5, as he was pretty close with his money. He said, "I would not set one foot an a Liberty Ship if they paid me $5. I realized late in his life that he and his friends did not expect to live through the war, as so many that they knew were lost in the Battle of the Atlantic. I gave him a large book that detailed the history of every Liberty built, including how it ended. My Mom told me that it was the only time she ever saw him weep. Regards, Clark

I went looking to see what other links I could find about the Bedford.
http://www.naval-history.net/WW2BritishLossesbyArea01.htm

http://www.naval-history.net/WW2BritishLosses2Auxiliary.htm

http://www.naval-history.net/xDKCas1003-Intro.htm#WW2
There is a list of the crew of the Bedford here if you scroll down to my 11th
http://www.naval-history.net/xDKCas1942-05MAY.htm

The father of a friend survived the sinking of the British Corporal in 1942 .
Sometimes looking up links for other ships can yield more information for other interests.
SS British Corporal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I also noted in a search of the Commonwealth war graves site that there are over 1700 war graves in Canada from WW again many would have been from training accidents at the flying schools of the Commonwealth Air Training Plan .
http://www.airmuseum.ca/

Perhaps these links will be useful for others doing research.
Regards,
Jim

Clark:

Thanks for your kind comments. I can appreciate your father's refusal to step foot back aboard a Liberty Ship. There were numerous stories of Liberty Ships breaking in two at sea. The Liberty Ship was an obsolete design even at the time they were first designed. The idea was to produce a ship which could be built by any number of shipyards, whether experienced, or newcomers to the shipbuilding industry. The engines were triple expansion steam engines with the idea being that steam turbine production would be directed towards warships rather than merchant ships. The Liberty Ships were also built with the idea that if they made one trip and delivered a war cargo or troops, the ship had done its job. The feeling was to get production of the Liberty ships ramped up to get out in front of the losses due to the U Boats, and losses of ships to U Boats was a given. The other factor in cranking out the Liberty Ships was the move to all welded hull construction.
This was almost a first. Therein lies quite a tale in itself, and probably why your father was not about to get aboard a Liberty Ship, even years later in peacetime at a museum's pier.

Welded hull construction was a new technology. The method of welding was "stick" or SMAW (shielded metal arc welding). The welders in the yards were running heavy electrodes (sometimes called "baseball bats") and these electrodes were what are known as "high deposition electrodes". Burning those heavy rods, they could put down a lot of weld in a hurry. This created a lot of post weld stresses. That was problem enough, but there was another wild card in the deck. The welders sometimes resorted to what is known as "slugging a weld". Slugging a weld is done for a variety of reasons: a poor fitup with an excessively wide root gap, a thick section of steel to be welded requiring numerous passes, or the welders are paid piece rate (paid a base wage, plus another wage based per inch or foot of weld rather than an hourly wage). Add to this the production schedules to get hulls launched, add to that the "racehorsing" between competing shipyards to claim they could launch a Liberty Ship in far less time than any other competing yard, and it added up to real trouble.

Slugging a weld is a slang term, and it means throwing anything that seems to fit or is at hand into a weld. Welding electrodes with the flux beaten off them were the most common, then there were scraps of steel trimmed when joints were fitup, nails, bolts, even strands of wire rope. The hull welders would throw whatever was handy into welds where the fitup was too wide for a regular root pass, and then crank up the heat and puddle the whole works together. "Burning it in" was the common term. The problems with slugged welds are numerous, but the most obvious is a lack of fusion and often accompanied by porosities and subsequent cracking in the weld.

Liberty ships tended to break in two, as did the T-2 tankers built to the Maritime Administration standardized designs. A lot was blamed on the welding and the stresses caused by it. The truth is there were a number of hull failures due to the slugged welds. The fix for both the Liberty Ships and the T-2 tankers (several of which broke in two sitting at their outfitting docks following launching) was to stop the welded seams in the hulls and rivet a band to hold the two sections of the ship together. This was supposed to "break the running stresses" from the welding.

When I first started at the powerplant (where I retired from some 24 years later), I caught one of the mechanics throwing pieces of scrap steel ( which he'd trimmed in fitting another joint) into a weld. I stopped him and took a look and saw a wide root gap. Not the end of the world by any means, so I asked the mechanic why he did not close the root gap using stringer beads until he got things to where he could lay in a proper root pass. His answer was that the "master fitter" in the plant ( a blowhard and BS artist) had taught this mechanic to slug welds. I got the crew together and explained that the slugging of welds had to stop right then, and explained the reasons for it. Next thing I knew, the mechanical superintendent wanted to see me in his office. He was a nice guy, and he asked why I'd put a stop to slugging welds. I told him pretty much the same reasons. The super, instead of agreeing, said he did not see a problem in slugging welds. He went on to tell me that during WWII, when he was in High School, he worked a shift in the South Portland, Maine shipyards as a hull welder on Liberty Ships. He said he rode an old Indian motorcycle from HS to the yard and worked with a bunch of women welders. He also said that slugging welds on the Liberty ship hull seams was common practice. No one- not the hull welders nor the yard supervision or management stopped it from happening. I told the super (my boss as it were) that slugging welds was bad practice and could result in a catastrophic failure if done on highly stressed structural joints or on pressure piping in the plant. I held firm despite my boss's whistling through his teeth and telling me in his homey sort of way that no harm came from slugging welds on the Liberty Ship hulls, and they were paid piece rate, aside from having to keep getting hulls launched at an ever faster rate. I told the super he only saw the hulls in the yard, not on the high seas, so had no idea what happened- whether the U Boats or mines sank the Liberty Ships before the slugged welds failed.

There is a lot of metallurgical research into whether brittle fractures occurred in the Liberty Ship hulls due to the composition of the steel. I tend to think that the slugged welds and post-weld stresses produced hull failures a lot quicker than any brittle fracture mechanisms.

What also struck me about the Liberty Ships is the degree of finish on some of the components. These were the "ugly ducklings" of the merchant marine, and built as one-trip vessels. Despite this, there were brass trimmed gauges and brass cased ship's clocks, and the classic engine telegraphs made of bronze. A lot of finely finished parts like lubricators, union bonnet valves, and similar were all over those ships. I remember seeing the "Jeremiah O'Brian" in SF myself and thinking how, for a wartime class of ships built with the idea of making one trip, they sure did not skimp on the traditional things like the ship's clocks, gauges, and similar.

Your father may well have had some bad memories of his days during WWII aboard the Liberty Ships. My own father would never talk much of his time during WWII. One July the 4th, when I was a kid of about 12, I came into our house to find my father sequestered in his office. He had the blinds down, music playing softly, and a large glass of neat whisky in hand. He was sweating and did not look too good. Out in the street, every kid and plenty of adults were blasting away with anything from small firecrackers to M-80's, cherry bombs, whistling chasers, and similar. Most of these people had no more idea as to why they were blasting away than the man in the moon, and many did not have two nickels to rub together most of the time. They would send two or three guys in cars driving south from our neighborhood in Brooklyn to "South of the Border", a tourist trap down towards Florida. There, the delegation from our block would stock up on fireworks (illegal in NY) and cartons of cigarettes and cheap booze. They'd return to our block, ready for the Fourth of July. At first light, all hell would break loose. Guys were lighting off whole packs of firecrackers and dropping M-80's down manhole covers in the street, or blowing other people's garbage cans up into the air. I had never noticed how any of this affected my father until that day. Dad was sitting in his office, and when I saw how he looked, I asked him what was wrong. Dad told me he was reminded of D-Day (he had gone ashore in the second wave), and said the smell of the fireworks and the sounds of the whistling chasers brought it all back. Dad told me on D-Day, he'd made it ashore, and "the air was vibrating with a noise like you've never heard". Dad said his first impulse was to hit the sand and he wanted to "Crawl into my helmet like a turtle into his shell". Dad pushed on. Dad said the sounds of what the clowns in the street were setting off reminded him of the Blitz when he was in England, and of D-Day. Dad was a brave and strong man, and he never walked away from much and never was afraid to speak his mind or try to do the right thing. However, the racket on July the 4th on our block must have triggered a flash back.

Years later, with some understanding of what veterans go through, I came to realize this is what must have hit my father. Dad fought through Europe, was at the Bulge, and was wounded twice. He'd barely speak of any of it. All he'd say about the Bulge was it was so cold, and a few brief sentences about what he experienced. I think that is how it is with a lot of combat veterans. The men of our father's generation had done their part, did not dwell upon it or make much of it, they came home, and did not want to re-live or go back to what they experienced during WWII. Dad had a deep-seated disdain for motion pictures that made light of wars, or depicted heroics as per Hollywood. Dad wanted to live his life and not re-live WWII. As I got older, and had friends who are combat vets from the Vietnam era, I got a much better understanding of this. Combat veterans pay a price that is not measured by physical wounds or combat ribbons or decorations. Perhaps the most overlooked of these veterans are the Merchant Mariners in WWII.

Every so often we get things on TV about Bletchley park,Turing,and Enigma. The whole story I never get tired of. Credit where it's due,the Enigma was an ingenious device. Apparently we rescued the first one out of a wounded U boat just before it went down. I think there must have hundreds of them in the day,but now they are like hens teeth. I remember one was stolen and it was a big deal. Whether or not it was returned I can't say.

My Dad told of a deck crack that occurred on one voyage across the Atlantic. It was between the superstructure and the #2 hold. Even though the seas had calmed after a pretty rough period, the crack kept growing until it spanned the beam of the ship. They ported in Cardiff, Wales for repairs and off-loading. Dad was detailed to help the Brits who came aboard to carry out the repair. The crack was the result of slug welding, with row after row of welding rods laid in the weld. The only thing holding was the thin cap of weld covering the welding rods. He said that the Welsh welders were incensed at the poor workmanship, and spent nearly a week reinforcing the break and welding the repair. Regards, Clark

Clark:

It is interesting and not surprising that the history books, documentary films, museums and similar all focus on the statistics and "let's all work together" aspects of WWII Shipbuilding. Only the people like your father, or people like us who are either in related professions or have some technical knowledge know the real story. Images of "Rosie the Riveter" and similar, newsreels and publicity about how many ships or how much tonnage the yards were launching, and stories of how everyone worked together are what everyone knows about. I went out to Walnut Creek, CA to visit my Mom a few months back. Mom is now 97, still driving and still using a computer. Mom worked as a statistician in the Office of War Information during WWII, and tells things like they really were. So did my father.

Anyhow, Mom said I'd enjoy the "Rosie the Riveter" museum in Richmond, CA. Mom said that if we were lucky, this 90-something year old woman of Color who had worked in the yards would give a presentation. Sure enough, the lady was there. She spoke for about 30-40 minutes with no notes. No "and-um's", no "you knows", just a straight talk about what it was really like in the shipyards from the perspective of a woman of color. What made it more interesting was this woman was the grand-daughter of a freed slave who was very much a part of her life. The lady told about the discrimination that went on in the yards, even with a war going on. There were two union locals for the shipyard boilermakers (the craft which did the hull construction)- a White local and a Colored local. As this lady told it, there was a kind of segregation and not everyone in the yards was prepared to work alongside women or people of color. She told stories about the welders, learning to weld, and much more. I really appreciated this lady and what she had to say. She is 90-something years old, wearing a US Parks Service uniform and looking trim and good in it, standing with nice straight posture, and telling a story with details that need to be told.

Like your dad's tale of a Liberty ship cracking due to slugged welds, and like my old boss's making light of slugged welds in the WWII shipyards, this lady added to the real story. It is not so pretty or good a picture as the history books and similar would have us believe.

I had a cousin who was a shipyard boilermaker in WWII at Federal Shipbuilding in Kearny, NJ. He had an ASME welder qualification for 6-G pipe welds in a civilian shop prior to WWII. He was a smaller man and had boxed in some lightweight class prior to WWII, often to help keep bread on the family table during the Depression. As my cousin told it, he was often assigned to weld in the double bottoms of ships under construction, since he could fit through the limber holes in the frames and work in tight places. My cousin had an automotive lock and glazing shop when I knew him, and he kept two folding chairs, two pair of boxing gloves, and some supplies in a cigar box like stiptic pencils for closing cuts. He also had a speed bag in his shop. He was a little nuts and would offer to spar with anyone who asked about the boxing gloves, and once decked a hoodlum who'd made the mistake of trying to shake him down for "protection".

My cousin told me the story of going to work in Federal Ship. He said he hired in, no problem, as they needed second shift hull welders during WWII. With a wife and kids, he was not immediately draft eligible. The foreman or leader assigned him to work with a journeyman hull welder to break him into how things were done in the yard. The journeyman asked my cousin's name and immediately said to the foreman: "I won't work with a sheeney (derrogatory term for a Jewish person) bastard." The foreman told the guy to get moving. The guy called my cousin a few choice insults and ordered him to roll up and carry a huge coil of welding lead. My cousin pulled the lead and whipped the end with a heavy twist-lock connector, making sure to hit his partner squarely in the face. His partner started bleeding, and hollered that my cousin was going to be a dead man at the end of the shift. He said they'd have it out in the parking lot. My cousin said, OK, no problem, he was more than ready to teach this guy a lesson. At the end of the shift, the word had spread thru the yard about the fight, and a load of guys gathered, some betting on the journeyman as he was a bigger man and outreached my cousin. MY cousin said he danced around the big guy, and it was obvious the big guy was a slugger, but had neither moves nor speed. He waited for his chance and put the big guy down with a 3 punch combination (something my own father had taught me, and my cousin also taught me). the big guy was out like a light. The parking lot erupted in cheers. My cousin was suspended for a week, but the foreman immediately moved him up and gave him a good working partner. My cousin said discrimination and grudges and messing up other people's work was routine in the yard, even though a war was going on.

Little wonder Liberty Ships had the shoddy workmanship your father and the Welsh welders discovered. It was not all that the history books, documentaries, newsreels and posters would have us believe.

Edward Hebern

Joe Wrote:

>The Enigma machine was originally invented by a fellow in San Francisco, CA somewhere in the 'teens or 'twenties. He had devised an >encoding machine using the same sort of wheels with letters & numbers, and the same sort of circuitry that the Enigma machines were >based upon. The fellow tried to market his coding machines in the USA, having a small manufacturing operation going in San >Francisco. He hoped that businesses, law enforcement and other agencies or firms needing to send confidential information might all >use his encoders. He got nowhere with it.

Joe, you are just simply an amazing man ! The above passage led me to Edward Hebren, who was indeed the first to patent an Enigma-like rotor coding machine:

Edward Hebern - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Apparently, he was so confident that his enterprise would be a success that he borrowed money to build a large factory with impressive architecture. He lost the building to foreclosure, but it still stands in Oakland.

File:Hebern code building.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John Ruth

Joe -

Your interesting post, with the links Jim added - and Stephen - resulted in an interesting hour of poking around the web.

The Outer Banks is a very interesting area - one year just about this time we went there with our son and daughter when they were out of school - probably 8 and 12 I would guess. I had never heard of the British cemetery, but your writing of the other things brings back memories.

I never thought about British war dead here, but by the records Jim posted there are 1,051 British/Commonwealth war graves. I was surprised that there are 26 buried in Arlington - including two female service members. In a couple cases in mass graves where individual identification could not be made - in reading I learned that if a mixed nationality on the aircraft the burial would be in the country where the majority came from. As a result, for example, Major General Wingate and several others who were on an American aircraft that crashed in Burma ended up in Arlington. He was the commander of the 'Chindits' and very adept at irregular and jungle warfare.

If you ever get a chance, stop at one of the American cemeteries in Europe that the Battlefield Monuments Commission maintains. Many will remember the one scenes from Saving Private Ryan that start at the one at Pointe du Hoc - very moving places from WWI and WWII.

What your dad, Stephen's grandfather and too many other went through back then is beyond our comprehension. The man who was my scout master when I was young, and one of the best woodsmen I have ever knows, was in the Navy. I remember him telling me, laughing, that he should have gotten credit for submarine service even though he was in the engine room on a carrier - think the Ticonderoga. In any event, they were hit bad and to control fires the decks above them got flooded with the engine/boiler room crew operating for most of a day 'submerged'. Tough guys.

I recall the one Brit capture of an Enigma machine early in the war - but also that most of one, or an early version, came out through Poland as the war started. In any event breaking the code - and then as has been said, not always using the information, was a tough situation.

Dale