A young U.S. Marine lieutenant survived a perilous 1943 sea journey to get a taste of wartime England and bone up on a newfangled technology called radar.
In 1943 I was a newly minted first lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps and a graduate of the California Institute of Technology with a degree in electrical engineering. The Marine Corps reassigned me from amphibious landing operations in San Diego to a six-month course at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to study radar at a time when the very word was secret. Upon completion of the course, I joined a group of a dozen officers and an equal number of enlisted men to study ground-controlled interception of aircraft at night. Some of the marines were pilots, some were fighter directors, and some were technical personnel. First Lt. Graham T. Douglas and I were assigned to study the technical aspects.
In February our group traveled to England to learn about British accomplishments in aerial night fighting. Marine Corps headquarters thought that the British techniques might apply to America’s island-hopping campaign in the Pacific.
Most of the group went to England by air, but Lieutenant Douglas (“Doug”), a few very capable noncommissioned officers, and I were sent by ship. In New York, we boarded the Chantilly, a cargo and troop carrier operated by the British merchant marine with an Indian crew. The passengers were mostly U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, civil service employees, and a few marines.
The Chantilly became part of a large convoy that zigzagged for 16 days across the Atlantic, bearing north and passing near Greenland, Iceland, and the Arctic Circle. The menace of submarine attacks was in all our minds. We had been and were being stalked by German submarines. We knew that we wouldn’t last more than a few minutes in the icy winter waters.
Corvettes from the U.S. and Canada, and American aircraft escorted us a little less than halfway across the ocean. Just beyond the halfway point, some Short Sunderland flying boats and a British aircraft carrier joined us. But in the middle of our journey, for several days and nights in the vicinity of Greenland and Iceland, we had only the Coast Guard escort cutters for protection.
The seas were rough, the winds were howling, and ice coated the riggings and decks. Icy waves broke over the bow. The decks were slippery and dangerous, so troops generally remained inside where it was a little warmer.
On February 3, 1943, at midpoint, all hell broke loose. We were in our bunks at about 1 A.M. when a horrendous noise and shock wave rocked the ship, making it pitch, roll, and yaw up and down. Everyone thought that this was it. The lights went out and we were sure we had been torpedoed. Surprisingly, no one panicked. Flashlights were brought forth and we formed a human chain, each man touching the one ahead, going to our stations near the lifeboats, slipping and sliding once we were on the deck. We soon discovered that the ship had not been torpedoed, but the nearby Dorchester had been hit. At times on this voyage, the Chantilly and the Dorchester had been only 15 to 20 feet apart. The concussion from the Dorchester’s explosions shook Chantilly, causing the electrical system to fail. After circuit breakers were reset, the lights came back on.
Meanwhile, the Indian crewmen had left the engine room and were sitting in the lifeboats, waiting for someone to lower them into the sea. They refused to go back to the engine room. The British merchant marine officers called for volunteers from the Americans to run the ship. Finally reassured after about an hour, the regular crew went back on the job, only to find the Chantilly on a near collision course with the Dorchester, now on fire and listing. The men on the Dorchester held out their hands, begging us to reach out and pull them aboard. As the ship sank, they jumped into the water. Even after 30 years in the service, this scene is still etched in my mind.
We learned afterward that when the torpedo ripped into the old ship and it began to sink, the four chaplains aboard—a Catholic priest, a rabbi, and two Protestant ministers—took charge of handing out life jackets. When the supply was gone, the chaplains took off their own jackets and gave them to four men. The chaplains, Lieutenants John P. Washington, Alexander D. Goode, George L. Fox, and Clark V. Poling, then joined arms and sang as they sank with the ship. (The scene of their tragic final moments was later re-created at the National Historical Wax Museum in Washington, D.C., and at the Veterans Hospital in Long Beach, California. I visited both portrayals, and it seemed as if I were back there in 1943, seeing it all for the first time.)
The basic premise of convoy protocol is to keep moving. Ships at idle are easy targets. It is better for the whole mission if the convoy leaves behind any ships that are hit. Rescue is not always possible or wise. In this case, however, there were three Coast Guard cutters—the Tampa, the Comanche, and the Escanaba—assigned as escort and rescue craft. While the Tampa held the German U-boats at bay with sonar pings, the Escanaba and the Comanche rescued 230 survivors. In the icy waters of the North Atlantic, most of the 904 men on board perished in just minutes.
The Dorchester had been on our starboard. During the following night, the ship on our port, the ship ahead, and one to the stern were all torpedoed. So for two nights and two days, we sat on the decks near our lifeboats, prepared to abandon ship. The convoy was almost completely broken up. Each ship was on its own, and our ship lagged behind all the others. During this period, out of 55 ships, nine were sunk and seven damaged.
One of my most vivid memories is of an ammunition ship exploding about a mile away. The initial explosion was tremendous, and then slowly people, objects, parts of the ship, and embers went up, up, and up, and gradually floated down.
There were quiet moments during our wait on deck, but on the morning of the second day someone suddenly shouted that a torpedo was coming at us. It went right across our bow, right to left. Just after that near miss, a submarine surfaced in broad daylight in the middle of the convoy. Guns from all ships opened fire and completely blew it apart. I wondered why it had surfaced. I felt a detached, objective, and grim compassion for the sub’s crew. Before it surfaced, hedgehogs and depth charges had been rolling out at a steady rate and probably had damaged the sub.
When the Sunderland flying boats came to meet us and escort us the rest of the way, everyone stood up and cheered. Then the British carrier arrived. More cheers. Then the troops all went back to their bunks and slept. A few days later, our harrowing journey finally over, the ship docked at Greenock, Scotland.
The marines who flew across the Atlantic and our group from the Chantilly all met at the American Embassy in London’s Grosvenor Square for an administrative meeting. We then went our separate ways, each to study his specialty in the business of night fighting with aircraft. But first I sent a telegram home: ARRIVED SAFELY LOVE FRANK.
During our stay in England, Lieutenant Douglas and I visited many Royal Air Force bases and a few Royal Navy bases. We returned every two weeks to report our progress to a Colonel Montgomery at the American Embassy, and then we left for another base. Near our hotel in London lay Piccadilly Circus. At 8 in the morning and 5 at night, Doug and I braved the onslaught of the voracious, gaudily dressed prostitutes who grabbed us on all sides. Never had we experienced anything like this. I worried about losing my wallet and identification card. We soon learned to make wide detours to arrive at our destination.
The RAF station at Box, near Bath and Bristol, became our first assignment. Doug and I stayed in what to me seemed like a castle, Ashwick Manor, a beautiful estate in the country with a hedge maze in the back, all overgrown. We joined RAF officers and their batmen (orderlies). To my surprise, the first morning I was awakened by a push on the shoulder from an RAF enlisted man who announced: “Sir, I’ll be your batman. Here is your hot tea, and I shined your shoes. I hope they suit you.”
That hot tea was appreciated. The cold weather had forced me to don long underwear every day at the start of the trip, and only in May did it warm up enough for me to abandon this habit. Seeing the RAF officers huddled around and enjoying a big fire in the fireplace but leaving all doors and windows open astonished me. At night we wore our overcoats to bed for warmth.
Bicycles were issued to us at each place we visited. It was a wonderful way to see and enjoy the beautiful English countryside, and a means to get to the pubs filled with local country folk, as well as servicemen. Quite reserved at first, the locals would warm up to us after a few beers, especially the elderly bartenders. Friendly barmaids called us “Luv.”
After the mass air raids of 1940, 1943 seemed a less threatening time, but it was not entirely quiet. Every night there were German aircraft over England. When I was visiting London, the sirens wailed and I headed for the nearest bomb shelter. In one, no lights shone at all and a mass of humanity crowded so that one could scarcely sit or stand. A few flickers of matches would give a brief, eerie light.
People living in the tube stations because their homes had been bombed out left a dramatic impression. We were thankful that our families had food and a safe place to live. And oddly, everywhere we went, even after three years, the British still talked of Dunkirk, its individual heroes and the many sorrows from lost loved ones and the near obliteration of an entire army—a low ebb for the British nation.
One day Doug and I walked along a road in a small village near Brighton on the South Coast. The road, lined by a stone wall, had ditches on both sides. Suddenly a low-flying German airplane strafed the road. Doug jumped over one side of the road into the ditch and I leaped into the other. The German strafed straight down the middle of the road, passed by, and returned and strafed the road again. The villagers, not surprised or concerned, said with typical British nonchalance, “It happens all the time.”
The British used trailer-housed radar. These Mobile Ground Control Intercept Units could be moved from one position to another, camouflaged in an open field or on a promontory but rarely near a military base. While attached to one of these units near St. Annes in the vicinity of Blackpool, Doug and I were billeted in a farmhouse. The farmer and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Brown, had several children. It must have been an imposition and an embarrassment to have us move in to their humble home.
Cool and aloof from the start, the father never changed, but Mrs. Brown became like a mother hen, constantly checking on us and treating us like family. Whenever we bicycled to the pubs, she expected us to be home soon after closing. She served tea and biscuits after we were in bed. We realized that as farmers, the Browns had to give up the majority of their crops to the government for use by the troops, but like most they kept back a little extra for themselves. They shared their extra food with us but warned us not to tell anybody. One of my big regrets is that I never visited those wonderful people in later years. Our time with the Browns was rewarding and they gave us insight into country living in wartime England.
All the U.S. Marines visited the Fighter Director School at Stanmore. While there we had the great honor of meeting and having lunch with Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder, an extremely fine gentleman who was a great help to the marines. [Tedder would also serve as deputy supreme commander of the Normandy invasion, second only to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.]
Marine pilot Maj. Pete Lambrecht took me along several times as his radar operator in a Bristol Beaufighter, using airborne intercept radar. We flew across the English Channel and over the French countryside, not to seek out German planes but to get a feel for what the pilot and radar operator had to do to work together with the ground controllers. During a flight one evening a blip appeared on the radar screen. Major Lambrecht spotted a Focke Wulf Fw-190 and said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.” We did not wish to engage in combat or lose British aircraft. The German fighter chased us halfway across the Channel and then broke off and turned back.
On another occasion when I was not aboard, Major Lambrecht did tangle with a German aircraft, and his plane suffered heavy damage. He managed to make it back to base, however, and I remember all the RAF people met him with a chorus of “Bloody good show!” Later, Gen. Douglas MacArthur personally designated the then colonel Lambrecht to take charge of his night fighter coverage upon MacArthur’s return to the Philippines. (Pete’s career ended sadly, though; he was shot down during the Korean War and presumed dead.)
One evening we joined a party at an RAF base on the south coast of England, something like the USO parties at home. Here the girls came with their parents as chaperones. The girls lined up on one side of the hall and the men on the other. Doug and I sat off to one side. An older couple asked if we would like to dance with their daughter, which we did. Afterward, they invited us to their home for dinner the next evening.
Late the next day, we started out on our bicycles. Up a long country road, we arrived at a gate, opened it, and then pedaled farther until we reached a rather nice, good-sized house. We thought we had reached our destination until a little old man came out and informed us, “This is the gatehouse. The manor is farther up the hill.” After another mile, the three of them were waiting for us in front of a large estate. “How nice of you to come,” they said. “We have been looking forward to meeting you Americans.” They served a very austere meal, and we felt embarrassed to deprive them of their food. The daughter then took us on a bicycle tour of the large estate, forlornly overgrown and lacking care, but still a beautiful place.
The father showed us his pitchfork and shovels and said, “I will stand and use these tools against the Germans before I would give up this land.” This very gracious couple, who had invited us into their home and shared their meager supper, epitomized to us the brave and courageous people of England. Later we purchased some simple necessities from the American military exchange in Lon – don and presented them to the family as thank-you gifts.
In June all the marines reassembled in London and then returned to the United States by way of Reykjavik, Iceland. With the information garnered on ground-controlled night fighting, the U.S. Marine Corps formed specialized mobile, completely self-sufficient units of 200 to 300 men in the Pacific.
As a new captain, I assumed command of Air Warning Squadron 8. We boarded ships in San Diego, had a two-week stopover on Oahu for testing, and then continued to Okinawa, where we landed and spread out across a 100-mile diameter on 11 beaches with our SCR 527 radar equipment. We helped make the airspace over Okinawa extremely hazardous for incoming Japanese raids. My particular unit did an outstanding job on Okinawa, thanks in no small part to my training in England.
Originally published in the Summer 2009 issue of Military History Quarterly. To subscribe, click here.