The navies of the Axis are now nonexistent as factors in world power. The ships are either junk or subjects for scientific study. The men and their activities are matter for historical analysis. The menace that once threatened the world is just a memory.
There is much evidence that the memory of Axis strength is already becoming too faint. The final destruction of the enemy forces was so complete that we are in danger of forgetting that we were, in 1942, ourselves too close to disaster. Naturally, people prefer to think of victories rather than defeats. It is much more pleasant to think of the great carrier task forces sweeping Japan’s home waters than it is to remember the end of the Houston, or the ravages of the U-boats off the Atlantic sea frontiers, or the slaughter of cruisers at Savo Island. Those were desperate days, and, though it may be painful to recall them, they should never be forgotten. The people and the Congress should remember them as warnings of the perils that arise when a nation has to go to war not fully armed.
Unhappily, there exists a tendency to think that we won in a walk, to forget that we were ever in danger. For example, a prominent newspaper ran, some time ago, an editorial which stated the belief that the naval war was won in the shipyards, that once the United States began mass-producing ships, victory became assured. The writer has heard numerous comments—from well-informed civilians—to the effect that the Japs of course couldn’t stand up to our industrial strength, that their planes and pilots can’t have been so good, that all we had to do was get rolling and the little monkeys were done for. All these people forget how very thinly the line was held during the years that it took for our production to make its weight felt. It is all too easy to look at the mass of ships and planes we can now muster and to forget the day when the Enterprise and some cruisers and destroyers constituted our naval strength in the Pacific, and when a collection of yachts, antique gunboats, and 20 year old destroyers were hardly holding their own against the German subs.
The writer is one who will never forget the thin times of 1942, because in that year I saw plenty of the stresses produced by lack of ships and equipment in a war with a very strong and active enemy. In January of that year, I was assigned to the U.S.S. Long Island, the first of the CVE’s. A few notes from the career of the Long Island will emphasize the leanness of those times.
Though she was a ship of considerable importance to the Navy—there being only seven CV’s in existence then—the Long Island was never dignified by much of a battery. She had, in 1942, one 5"/51, two 3"/50 and eight .50 caliber machine guns (later replaced by 20 mm.). There were also four Lewis guns, on a wonderfully contrived home-made multiple mount. Fire control equipment consisted of a rangefinder so antique that it was an object of considerable interest to visitors. (Incidentally, there is no truth in the story that this instrument was on loan from the Smithsonian.) Planes operated from CVE-1 were SOC’s and F4F’s.
In later years, the crew of the Long Island sometimes heard sarcastic comments from the magnificent new carriers of the Essex class. To these remarks, the Long Island men made loyal and effective reply. They never felt anything but loyalty to their ship. They knew she was as good as they could make her, and they knew it wasn’t their fault, or the Navy’s, that they were trundling around the Pacific on a converted freighter.
To go back to 1942, it was in May of that year that the Long Island left Norfolk for the west coast. With a motley task group of one APD, one AF, and two PC’s, she proceeded to the Canal by way of San Juan. Certainly those were American waters, but equally certainly they could hardly be said to be in American control. With the U-boats at a peak of success, ships were lucky to reach their destinations. It was an unwelcome sensation to feel hunted off the coast of Florida, to sneak through the Mona Passage hoping to escape undetected by the far-ranging enemy.
Even those of the crew who had not previously been to sea had seen the destroyers come into Norfolk, unload wounded merchant seamen into the waiting ambulances, refuel, and go back to sea. North of Puerto Rico, the survivors of a British ship were sighted and picked up. No one had to urge the lookouts and gun crews to be alert.
Perhaps through luck, perhaps because of the busy SOC patrols, the little force reached the Canal undamaged. At the end of May, the Long Island arrived in San Diego, to find the Army and Navy in a state of tension, with ships in port standing watch and watch on their A.A. batteries. After a few days of this, the ship went north to San Francisco, where the alert was even more obvious. There were sub alarms oil the coast, and warnings were received that a Jap raid on the San Francisco area could be expected. We stood by all one black night with everything ready that could shoot.
The next day—one of the few times the sun did shine on San Francisco—the Long Island and five of the old battleships stood out under the bridge. Off the Golden Gate, two more BB’s joined the force. There were eight destroyers. The Long Island's twelve F4F’s and twelve SOC’s constituted air cover. No one thought of laughing then at using SOC’s as air cover for the Battle Force.
The force proceeded westward at the best pace of the Long Island’s rather temperamental diesels. All hands were informed that the Jap fleet was at sea for a major offensive. Whatever the plans of the high command may have been, the general belief was that the battleship force would be thrown at the enemy if these were not stopped by the carrier task forces. There was no chaplain aboard, but someone had the bright idea of serving out Bibles. The boys got more bombs up to the hangar deck, very carefully cleaned the 20 mm’s (and the Lewis guns), and waited for whatever might happen.
Fortunately for all those present, nothing much did happen. The force prowled in a very clammy fog bank, losing and looking for a battleship OS2U. News of the Jap landings in the Aleutians sounded ominous and started a rumor that the force might be sent there. Actually, after the carriers had stopped the Japs at Midway, the battleship force was sent back to the West Coast bases.
The Long Island crew has always felt a very personal gratitude to the flyers who won that great and decisive battle at Midway (thus incidentally saving the Long Island from pretty certain destruction). It was more than irritating to find the citizenry of the West Coast very little conscious of the importance of the events of that first week of June. Even now, with the whole history of the war available, it is doubtful that many people realize that they were safe in their houses only because of a few far distant ships and a body of men whose skill and determination made up for a lack of weight of equipment.
To return to the career of the Long Island, her next major job was connected with the Guadalcanal campaign. On August 2nd, the ship left Pearl Harbor, having on board Marine Air Group 23 (eighteen F4F4’s and twelve SBD3’s) and with the Aylwin as escort. The Line was crossed on the 7th, both ships taking time out from the war to initiate a great accumulation of pollywogs. Even in the midst of the merrymaking there was a background of solemness in most minds. We had the feeling that we were intruding into what were virtually Japanese waters. The news, coming through a few days later, of the loss of the Astoria, Quincy, and Vincennes was hardly encouraging. Rumors of Jap cruiser forces kept the lookouts straining their eyes.
By way of Suva, the ship proceeded to Efate, there to wait until an air field on Guadalcanal should be ready for the planes. On 18 August, with the Helena, Dale, and Aylwin, the Long Island steamed up toward Guadalcanal, making visual contact with Admiral Ghormley’s task force on the 19th. On 20 August, the Marine planes took off for their just won base, Henderson Field.
The Long Island was at last to see the day when planes were supplied by hundreds to the advanced bases, when F4F4’s could be replaced by newer and faster Hellcats and Corsairs, when whole new planes became more plentiful than spare parts were in ’42. In those grim August days, eighteen Wildcats were of crucial importance to the men on Guadalcanal. If they weren’t quite as fast as the Zero, still the Marines were glad to have them; and, if they fell apart, the ground crews patched them up with baling wire and sent them off again.
Having delivered the planes, the Long Island got the hell out of there, very glad that she had not had to try her eight 20 mm’s on the kind of air attack the Japs could mount in that area. We didn’t know who was winning the war; we were glad to be alive and able to get back to Efate, and thence toward Samoa, pursued by reports of Jap cruiser forces. No one who has stood by a lone 5"/51, waiting to see if the dawn will show a Jap cruiser silhouette on the horizon, is ever likely to underrate the thinness of our fighting strength in those days.
These reminiscences of one old CVE are set down, not for their own importance, but because they are reminders—very strong in some minds—of the troubles of a nation which has to fight a war of survival with inadequate forces. . . .The Long Island’s activities are one little fragment of the story of what Messrs. Karig and Kelly have termed “the bow and arrow Navy” of 1942, in their first volume of Battle Report.
It would be highly valuable education for every voter to read that book, with its dispassionate, detailed accounts of Wake, the Java Sea, and Corregidor. With these should be remembered the German subs in our Atlantic sea lanes. These victories of superior enemy strength over gallant and ingenious but outweighed resistance should never be forgotten.
For the American public, the biggest historical lesson of the war lies in the first year of fighting. It is, of course, a point of pride that great fighting forces, supplied by the world’s largest industrial plant, overwhelmed the Axis. It is much more significant, however, that a nation capable of such efforts let itself fall into the situation of 1941-1942. The need of preparing for war was most certainly pointed out. (For example, in the report of the Hepburn Board, in 1938.) The nation was certainly capable of preparing—some of the money and effort spent in ’43 or ’44 could have been spent in ’39 and ’40. Unhappily, the public was slow to rouse; and war found the Army and Navy without the equipment and bases they had long since requested.
It seems to be traditional for the American public to go to war half ready. The danger of this practice has never been better demonstrated than at the start of this war. It will be tragic—and a betrayal of a lot of good men who got killed—if the lesson of 1942 is forgotten. We must never again find ourselves in the position of having to use a Lewis gun Navy of yachts and merchantmen—or whatever their equivalent might be in an atomic age—against a first class enemy.
Let us not forget that this was a tough war, all the way through the years from Pearl Harbor to Okinawa and Japan. Anybody who thinks it wasn’t, can tell it to the Marines—and he’d better start running shortly after he starts talking.