Posts Tagged ‘USS Flier’

Enroute Home

Where was Flier 66 years ago today? | Posted by Rebekah
Sep 02 2010

Grrrr….I’m done wrestling with my computer for a while.  I tried desperately today to make a graphic showing where Redfin with the Flier survivors and other Brooke’s Point people is as they make their dash for Darwin, but Google Earth and my  Photoshop programs are having issues and I’m the one giving up.  Hopefully, tomorrow, they’ll have made up and if they decide to continue their tiff, it’ll be when I don’t need them at the same time.

So tomorrow, I’ll show you where they are.

A submarine is no place for people who have not been trained to be there.  Officer’s Country is the least complicated (in terms of machinery) and most luxurious (in terms of…well as opposed to the rest of the submarine.  It’s still really, really, spartan) part of a submarine.  My guess, and mind, it’s only a guess, is the Sutherland family was in the Chief’s quarters because that is the only cabin with four bunks, and the Three Amigos (Charlie, George and “Red”) were in the XO’s cabin because that had three bunks, and Garretson and Keirson were in one of the junior officer’s cabins, because those had two bunks a piece.  That’s my guess at any rate.  But the non-submariners were kept to Officer’s Country outside of escorted trips anywhere, including the head, or bathroom, which was likely flushed for them.  (This is not an insult to anyone by the way.   For those who have ever READ the instructions for flushing a toilet on a WWII Gato-class submarine, you’ll see WHY people who are untrained shouldn’t attempt it.  It consists of like fourteen steps to flush the thing, some taking place before, some during and some after.  And if you get it wrong…eeeeewwww)

The Fliers of course, as fully qualified submariners (and, for the next few days, official members of the Redfin crew, they’re still listed on the crew’s Master Crew List) were given freedom  to walk about, and do as they liked if they stayed out of the way, and sleep where they could find an open space (which may or may not be out of the way).  With the nine civilians in Officer’s Country, not only did the Fliers but nine of Redfin’s officer ranks also had to nap where there was an open rack whenever they could.  A fully-staffed submarine feels crowded anyway, but this must have felt so much worse.

The civilians were allowed to take meals in the Officer’s Wardroom, however, and talk together, so it wasn’t like they were in solitary confinement.  One night, as a matter of fact, Mrs. Sutherland discovered a pair of silk stockings tucked under her plate as a gift for her.  She’d never owned a pair before, and thanks to military rationing in the States and Australia, they were quite rare and valuable now.  A sailor who had bought them for someone else decided he could simply get another pair in  a few days when they docked at Darwin.  Mrs. Sutherland may have been forced to be shoeless, but once she could fix that in Darwin, she would at least have stockings to go with!

Other than that, nothing much happened during these days.  The most exciting thing on Redfin’s report other than the gunfight with the mysterious maru, was the sighting on Radar of what appeared to be a destroyer, but on closer examination proved to be an Aircraft Carrier carrying what appeared to be Allied aircraft.  They also saw a few fishing boats and a small patrol craft.  Nothing exciting, compared with the normal fare.

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REDFIN!

Where was Flier 66 years ago today? | Posted by Rebekah
Aug 31 2010

Hey everyone, if I can get 64 more people to visit this site before midnight tonight, that’ll be 4,000 visits this month, a record, and quite a nice one, wouldn’t you agree?

Back to the story.

Midnight passed, and the moon rose higher, causing the people in the kumpit to fear the maru might see them if they were really looking.  Howell kept working the CW Keying on the small radio, and Russo kept flickering the flashlight out into the night, though less enthusiastically than two hours before.

Suddenly Howell, checking his cry of success, told Russo to stop signaling, Redfin saw them!

They heard her before they saw her, she was steaming on the surface from out at sea.  Austin, on deck, ordered Redfin to reverse just before they came up on them to stop the giant steel sub from knocking over these small wooden boats.  They lowered the deck to just above the surface of the water, and Al was so eager to get onboard that he forgot his formal Navy manners and didn’t ask permission to board, just grabbed the first Redfin’s hand that reached for him and scrambled on board.  Of was 0043 (or 12: 43 am) August 31, 1944.  The Flier’s ordeal was over, after 18 days.

Everyone was quickly brought on board, including Mrs. Edwards, embarrassed to be seen without her carefully kept shoes.  Every pair except her best had long since rotted away in the humid environment.  She kept her best pair in their box so she would not have to be rescued, if rescue ever came, barefoot…only to discover, as Redfin approached, that a couple of years barefoot in the Philippine jungle caused her feet to swell so much her shoes would not fit!

Alastair was amazed to be on board a real submarine, though Heather, by most accounts, watched silently from her mother’s arms.

Redfin’s CO had news for everyone too:  faced with Americans needing evacuation, Redfin received orders two hours before to grab the evacuees and head straight for Darwin, Australia, the nearest Allied port, and not to attack anyone or reveal themselves in any way between now and then.

So when the Coastwatchers asked for a few donations (the Redfin agreed during Crowley and Austin’s radio interview the night before to giving a gallon of lubricating oil for the kumpit) the Redfins turned over everything that wasn’t needed for survival for seven days.  The list of things given is really amazing:

(2) .30-caliber Browning Automatic Rifles

(2) .30-caliber machine guns

(2) .45 caliber Thompson Machine Guns

(4) Springfield .30 caliber rifles

(10) .45 caliber Colt Pistols

(3) .30 Caliber M-1 Carbine Rifles

20,000 rounds of  .30 caliber ammo

3,000 rounds of .45 caliber ammo

2,800 rounds of .30 caliber ammo for the carbines

Writing Paper

Pencils

Typewriter Ribbons

(3) Bags medical supplies including sulpha drugs, quinine and atrabrine to fight malaria

Flour

Yeast

Coffee

Canned Fruits and Vegetables

200 cartons cigarettes (it was 1944, lots of people smoked)

Playing Cards

Diesel Oil

Sulpheric Acid

Radio Tubes

Toilet Paper

Soap

And that’s just the list from the official inventory.  According to the Redfins, the men gave some of their change of clothes and one even handed over his pair of 9-1/2 shoes for Mr. Edwards when he heard Mr. Edwards had none.

If the Japanese feared Brooke’s Point before, they would doubly now, since Coastwatchers and guerrillas were well armed, had real ammo, and were well fed, entertained, clothed and shod.  This list, I think, shows something else: how little these people had been operating with for years.  It really makes their story just as amazing as the survivors.

That Japanese ship just sat there though.  Captain Austin,  who was shocked to see Palacido, who he had dropped off two months earlier a hundred miles south, suggested that his men might need some deck gun practice.  If he did, would Palacido  be sure to be responsible and clean the beach of any and all supplies and capture any men who washed up?

Palacido eagerly agreed, and the men left on the kumpits, now heavily laden with the equivalent of four years of Christmas.

The refugees were hustled downstairs and the civilians were quickly assigned cabins where they were required to stay unless they were escorted by a member of the crew to the head or the Mess.  It may sound cruel, but it was a necessary step to ensure everyone’s safety in case of trouble.  Civilians would not be rushing around, getting in the way of crew members who would be trying to help.

George, Charlie and Red, despite being military, were also confined to cabins, since they were not qualified by the Sub School to be on a submarine.

Only the Fliers were permitted some freedom, though it was limited since they had no duty stations, the three Flier officers were not going to be part of the decision making of this crew, and at most, they were free to throw themselves in any unoccupied bunk to try and rest.

Redfin soon shuddered under the  thunder of her three deck guns.  The first flash blinded the gunners themselves, who had to rely on the directions given by the lookouts overhead.

The Maru, now in danger, quickly picked up her anchor and headed south,hugging the the coast all the way.  She must have had a very shallow draft, since she glided over coral reefs Austin didn’t dare send Redfin into, or even shoot a torpedo at (they had a tendency to blow up coral reefs ather than ships over coral reefs)

It was over, the Redfin turned her nose south west, heading away from Flier’s last route through Makassar, and away from Flier’s last position.  Of the eight men who would forever remember their shipmates, only one would ever see those islands again.

And Captain Crowley, once again through no fault of his own, faced investigation into the loss of his boat.  The same boat.

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Enemy Surprise

Where was Flier 66 years ago today? | Posted by Rebekah
Aug 30 2010

It was the morning of departure.  After Captain Austin and Captain Crowley finalized the last steps to evacuation the message went out to the local people:  if you’re coming, you have 12 hours to get rid of your possessions and report to the base.

The Coastwatchers, of course, were staying.  All of them being on Filipino descent, they at least LOOKED the part, even if they could not speak the language in a tight corner.

Despite being American and having two daughters attending college in the US, Mr. Edwards and his wife and youngest daughter decided to stay too.  Mrs. Edwards, being local to the area, could rely on her family and people to hide her husband if necessary, and the Edwards felt that they could still do a lot of good for the people of the Brooke’s Point area.

The Sutherlands reported to the clearing early in the morning.  Alastair Sutherland was agog that his prayers had come true so precisely, and they were about to go on a submarine.  George, Red and Charlie were ready, as was Henry Garretson, as well as a new member of the party.

He was tall and thin, and likely spoke with an Scandinavian accent.  his name was Vens Taivo Kierson, born in Finland, emigrated with his family to the northwest US when he was about 15, and now experienced world traveler.  He actually left school to become a topper for a lumber company that felled trees for Boeing to build their plane frames.  When aircraft manufacturers started to build frames from steel rather than lumber, he learned to salvage dive and moved to Alaska.  He received a huge bonus from one of his clients when he recovered something from a recent shipwreck which enabled him to tour the Pacific.  Soon, he began working salvage in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and the Philippines.  He fought the Japanese during the (what is now known as) First Battle of Shanghai in 1932, helped the Philippine Army until the invasion of Manila and was Garretson’s partner in the salvage of the SS Panay. Why had the Fliers not seen him before now?

He had been conducting a scouting and trading mission around the island.  A couple of months earlier, a Japanese ship grounded.  The crew got off, but couldn’t take any of the cargo with them.  Kierson salvaged pretty much everything that could be carried off  the ship before the official salvage team could get there.  This haul of rifles, medicine, money, liquor, food stuffs, paper, charts and more was a godsend, and Keirson set off on a tour of the island, gathering intelligence, trading the goods for other needed items and checking in with the local guerrilla factions.

He had one other talent: transforming Japanese mines into ammunition.

Japanese mines of the time period were designed to deactivate if they came loose from their chains and floated to the surface.  This was obviously because a floating mine was dangerous to everyone, friend or foe.  Occasionally, one of these loose mines would come to rest on the beaches of Palawan.  Using a technique he’d invented and developed on Negros, Kierson would dismatle the thing to get at the black powder charge which he would put in the empty ammo shells and top with small, carefully selected and shaped pebbles for bullets, thus keeping the guerrillas on Palawan in ammunition after the official stuff had long since be used up.  It was more than tricky work, and those mines, as it turned out, rarely deactivated when they popped up on the surface, so deactivating the mines was a tricky and dangerous business.

He taught the guerrillas everything he knew, and now, with an opportunity to escape, the guerrillas were insisting that Kierson leave for his own protection.

Eight Fliers, the four Sutherlands, Charlie, Red, George, Garretson and Kierson…seventeen extra people  on an already crowded boat, and more than half unqualified and/or civilians, on patrol for who knows how long.  If Redfin had been assigned a similar length of patrol as Flier, they still had about three or four weeks left.

After breakfast, the group set off for the beach, the Flier’s feet now healed enough that most of them walked a good distance down the mountain.

But an ugly surprise waited for them:  that morning, a Japanese shipping vessel dropped anchor offshore, less than a mile from the planned rendezvous point.  Even more eerie, no one could see any sailors on the decks or pilothouse, it was as if she was abandoned.

Had they been found out?  Was the Maru waiting for Redfin to show herself before blowing them all away?  Was she bait for the rest of the convoy, lying in wait somewhere out of sight?

No one knew, but the three officers of Flier had to make a decision.  If the maru didn’t move by nightfall, would they try to make for the rendezvous point anyway, hoping the maru would miss them in the darkness?  Should they skip the attempt tonight and hope the maru would move during the night or next day and they can try again the following night on the backup date?

In the end, the officers decided to ask the civilians if they would be willing to risk the trip tonight, keeping the small boats further away from the maru and the rendezvous point than previously planned, and using the radio Howell fixed to call Redfin, since there was no way they could safely hang the lanterns in the lighthouse for the “all safe” signal to get Redfin to show herself.    The civilians quickly agreed to try that night.

After sunset, and farewells for a bunch of people who likely would never see each other again, the small crafts took off.   They headed south before looping west in a great arc, keeping a safe distance from the maru.  Howell kept calling with the radio, trying to raise the Redfin, then trying CW Keying (a variation on telegraph) in case there was something wrong.

After an hour of trying to raise the Redfin, Howell suddenly heard a staticy message.  Redfin couldn’t see them, and the CW Keying was coming through more clearly.  Howell abandoned the voice radio to concentrate on the CW Keying, while Russo grabbed a flashlight (some accounts say a shuttered lantern) and began to signal to the Redfin with it.

An hour passed, then another.  It was now midnight.  There was no sign of the Redfin, and no sign of life from the strange maru anchored too closely for comfort.

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The Coastwatchers

Where was Flier 66 years ago today? | Posted by Rebekah
Aug 26 2010

Al and the Fliers were now on the slopes of Addison Peak, waiting for pickup.  The moment Captain Crowley knew he had the ability to send  a message to Brisbane Australia (the Coastwatchers, being an Army unit, not a Navy unit, had the clearances, frequencies, ect. to contact McArthur’s headquarters, not Admiral Christie’s, but of course, were willing to forward it to Fremantle) he sent a message saying Flier was lost with some survivors, and that they likely hit a mine in Balabac Strait, and needed pick up.  Up until this point, it was suspected/assumed that Balabac was mined because it was such a used strait with such limited paths through making it nearly ideal for mining.  But now, Crowley was convinced it was, and despite the convenience,  should be avoided at all costs.

The message was embedded in the usual weather report (the Japanese could always be listening in, but since what the Coastwatchers sent was, more often that not, weather reports, it wasn’t too likely they’d listen closely), sent to Brisbane and quickly forwarded to Fremantle.

Fremantle, to put it lightly, wasn’t happy.  Not. At. All.

The next night, they sent a blistering scolding to the Coastwatchers, who weren’t even their men, telling them that they were highly disappointed in the quality of the men’s observations and that they were supposed to be watching the straits for things like mines, and they expected much better in the future.

For the commander of the group, Armando Corpus, who had suffered from depression before during this mission, it might have been the last straw.  If he followed the pattern established earlier in this mission, he likely withdrew from the other men and talked openly about how he was useless to do anything.  The other men, lead by Palacido who was the de facto leader of the group, tried to tell him it wasn’t their fault, certainly not Corpus’s alone, and that he was a valuable leader of their band.

From what I have seen, the Fliers certainly never held the Coastwatchers responsible for what happened to their boat, it was the fortunes of war.  Moreover, the Straits had been mined before the Coastwatchers got there.  Personally, I think the accusation a bit unfair, but a lot of these facts came out after the war, and 1944 wasn’t exactly a relaxing time for anyone in the Submarine Force.  Fresh off the realization that Robalo isn’t answering her repeated calls, nor calling in to report when she’d be in port, and is therefore, likely lost, to hear Flier was certainly lost in the same general area, had to be a devastating blow.  To add to that, submarine Hake reported that her hunting partner, submarine Harder, had taken a severe depth charging from the escorts of their last targets, and wasn’t answering Hake’s calls.  Hake suspected Harder was  lost with all hands, including legendary skipper Sam Dealey.  So news of all three submarines lost with their crews was hitting Christie’s office at once.  It might have been too much to take for whoever composed the scathing message.

The Fliers meanwhile were sitting back and relaxing for the first time.  As their feet healed, they started to participate in the activities of the mountain encampment and meet the people around here, including trapped missionaries, survivors of the Bataan Death March, and salvage divers.

But more on that tomorrow.

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To Brooke’s Point, now hurry up and wait

Where was Flier 66 years ago today? | Posted by Rebekah
Aug 23 2010

Sorry about last night.  Our wireless router decided to bite the dust, so we were offline for quite a while.  Thank goodness for my genius husband, he rigged the desktop to hardwire into the the Internet so I’m back, but it did screw up the timeline a little bit.

So we left the Flier survivors asleep at Rio Tuba, and by sunrise the next morning, they were treated to another meal by their gracious hosts, who turned out to be a married couple with their daughter who had recently married a young man from Brooke’s Point area.

The daughter and her husband planned to leave that morning on foot to walk the fifty plus miles to Brooke’s Point,but when the family discovered that was where the kumpit was heading, they asked if there would be room for the newleyweds…and all the bride’s dowry.

On a sixteen foot boat that was already hauling twelve people, there wasn’t really, but custom dictated that they agree, and so the Fliers found themselves sharing the little deck space with two more bodies and all the bride’s worldy goods including sacks of rice, bundles of clothes, kitchen goods, and live chickens.

The kumpit was so weighed down that she only cleared the water by a few inches and could only sluggishly lumber through the waves.  In fact, she was so slow, Sailor opted to leave her in the care of de la Cruz and the two deckhands and run north for a couple hours to visit his wife and kids, then swim out to the kumpit later.

They spent a cramped night aboard, and the following they got to Brooke’s Point, where they met the Captain of the guerillas based at Brooke’s Point, Captain Nazario Major.  As it turned out, the abandoned house they sheltered at on Bugsuk Island belonged to Major before the war, and he was the one who poisoned the cistern in case the Japanese landed.

Brooke’s Point had been a small coastal village before the war, but now appeared bombed and burnt, with little sign of its inhabitants.  Posters looking for American and Scottish families Edwards and Sutherland were scattered around, dropped by planes, offering significant monetary rewards for turning them in to the Japanese.  Only Major’s home remained near the beach.

Mrs. Major invited everyone in for a meal, and while they were eating, Mr. Edwards and Captain Armando Corpus, the leader of the American Army Coastwatchers came in and introduced themselves.  Due to the fact that Mr. Edwards was being hunted by the Japanese and there were too many Coastwatchers to stay on the beach, they lived a few miles inland on the slopes of Addison Peak, where the Fliers would be taken after the meal.

Captain Crowley asked during this meal if the Japanese knew there was such a large contingent of guerillas here, and everyone laughed.  They knew all right, and had actually landed a group of 20 soldiers on the beach on July 20, looking to quash the rebellion.  The official report of that day read like this:

“Enemy casualties-20.  Our casualties-sore trigger  fingers.”

They hadn’t been back.  Nonetheless, if the white skin of the Fliers happened to be seen by a passing patrolboat, the chances of another landing would be high, along with larger numbers of soldiers.

After lunch, Edwards and Corpus took off for the mountain camp  on foot, but the Fliers were in no condition to take that hike, so a carabao cart had been sent for them.

Before leaving however, Howell, the Radio Technician, discovered that the Coastwatchers beach radio was broken and unable to work, limiting the Coastwatchers ability to contact the outside world.  Howell asked and received permission to stay on the beach to fix the radio there.  Thankfully, there was another one on the mountain, but having the second one was important.

The carabao ride was fairly funny to Al.  The carabao decided to wallow in every mudpuddle it found, and there were a lot of puddles.  The young boy entrusted with bringing the Fliers to Addison tried to encourage the carabao to move in every way he could including beating it with a stick, but the carabao moved when it wanted to, and no sooner.

They finally reached the encampment near sunset.   There were two houses there, once built by Mr. Edwards  for his family, and one built by Captain Major for his if the Japanese invaded the beach.  The Coastwatchers stayed in the Major home in the meantime.

The enlisted guys were invited to stay at the Coastwatchers house and the officers to stay with the Edwards house, which already included Harry Garretson, an American salvage diver who was trapped in the Philippines and now bedridden with malaria.

It was a good camp, and now came the hard part: waiting to see what HQ would do.   Would they be rescued, or would they be asked to wait behind enemy lines for a while–or until the end of the war?

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Guerilla Headquarters

Where was Flier 66 years ago today? | Posted by Rebekah
Aug 21 2010

The waters north of Bugsuk Island are riddled with reefs and shallow places.  The charts clearly mark more places that are “exposed at low tide” and “passable at high tide” and “passible by shallow-bottomed boats” than they do the actual path through.

Sula LaHud, who the Fliers quickly re-named “Sailor” in respect for his amazing talents, knew the way, and darkness or treacherous waters were nothing to him, this was his home after all.  He was a Moro Trader, and according to what I can find, a Moro is a general term for a Muslim resident from (mostly) southern Palawan Island.  They apparently do not call themselves Moro, though they will recognize that you are referring to them if you use it (they don’t consider it an insult), and from what little I can find, they have never been united under any one leadership, or political entity.  I guess it’s like being from Michigan, and being called a Troll.  We don’t call ourselves that, but if someone does, we know two things: 1,) They are also Michganders and 2.) They are from the Upper Penninsula.  (People from Lower Peninsula in Michigan are Trolls cause we live under the (Mackinaw) Bridge, get it?)  But we don’t call ourselves that and we certainly aren’t united politically that way (The Troll Party of Michigan.  We believe in eating anyone who crosses our bridge.   Hey, where did everyone go?)

Oh dear, I really am sleep deprived.

Anyway, this man was apparently well known to everyone as one of the best traders and navigators in the area, and Al and the other Fliers marveled at how easily he slipped his boat through the waves, even though, just before sunset, they could see corals just inches below the waters on either side of the boat, but the boat would slide past them quickly with only a few words passing between Sailor and his two young helpers.

Taken from my book, "Surviving the Flier", and based on a map originally drawn by survivor Al Jacobson, this shows the path from the morning they were taken into the care of guerillas to landing at Brooke's Point. Note the really twisted path the boat had to take from the northern tip of Bugsuk Island to the southern tip of Palawan. If you saw this on Google Earth overhead (which I can't access on this computer right now) you would see this path corresponds to the only dark blue (deep water) path from Bugsuk to Baliluyan.

They landed without incident at Cape Baliluyan at 3 am that morning, and the guerillas were waiting for them.  They ran down to the beach, unloaded everyone and everything from Sailor’s kumpit, dragged it under cover and got everyone to the shelter as quickly as they could.

These men, the Fliers quickly learned, were mostly college students or graduates, or even teachers before the war, but now they fought against the Japanese stranglehold on the island.  They did this so well on the southern half of Palawan that they nicknamed it “Free Palawan”.  The Japanese knew they were there, and though they strongly held the northern half of Palawan (where the POW camp was) and Balabac Island, they tended to steer clear of this area so long as the guerillas weren’t too obvious about what they were up to.

There had been almost no news in this area since the fall of Manila in 1942, and these men were desperate for news of the outside world and hung on to every word the men could tell them about the defeat of the Japanese in Guadalcanal, the Bismark Sea, the Coral Sea, the Marianas, even as near as the Philippine Sea.  All news was censored and highly classified here, and these men knew none of what had happened and were jubulient to learn that, despite appearances here, the Japanese hold was weakening.

The next morning, after breakfast, the head of these Guerillas, Seargent Pasqual De la Cruz, gave them a gift.  All the guerillas donated every spare bit of clothing they had so the Fliers could walk around in something other than their boxers and t-shirts.  Again, these men had no new clothing in four years, and they didn’t know how soon they might get more, so this was an incredibly generous gift.  Each Flier man found a pair of pants that would fit him, and Al was one of the few who found a shirt that fit (though he said it was so tight it would not button across his chest).

Then de la Cruz started to question the Fliers, asking their names, ranks, serials, boat’s name, how long at sea.  There wasn’t much Captain Crowley was permitted to tell him, even though he was an Ally.  One never knew if he would be captured and tortured in the next few days or weeks after all.  But during this time, everyone discovered something no one suspected up until now:  De la Cruz had sent his men to find submariners from a boat he heard rumors of sinking OVER A MONTH BEFORE.  Sarmiento and the Bugsuk Battalion was looking for sailors that had escaped another submarine, not Flier.

De La Cruz, away from the other Fliers, gave Captain Crowley news saying he had spent the better part of the last two weeks on Balabac Island chasing down rumors of captured navy men.  He didn’t know the name of the boat, though he was certain it was a submarine, but he did hear two names: Tucker and Martin, and that they had been captured while the others with them had been killed (depending on who he interviewed, either they were killed trying to escape or killed in cold blood after their capture.  There were also rumors of two more men, but he didn’t get their names).  He also told Crowley that the submarine these two had been on had been in Darwin Australia on or around June 28.  If Crowley got back to the Allied territory, he was supposed to pass that information on.

After a dinner of, yup, more rice, and a special treat of thinly slicked and cured carabao meat (Jacobson said despite being so thin either the meat was so tough or their jaws were so weak they could barely chew it) it was time to go.  Sarmiento decided to go back to Bugsuk to keep an eye out for more survivors and resume his duties.

The Fliers were on schedule to get to Brooke’s Point, the Coastwatcher’s place, the following morning.

But there ended up being a snag.  Shortly after leaving Cape Baliluyan, Sailor’s boat came across a Japanese patrol boat.  With twelve people on such a little craft (eight Fliers, Sailor and his two boys plus de la Cruz who came to give a report to Brooke’s Point) the Filipinos knew that there was no way the Japanese patrol would think this was a fishing boat if they spotted it.  Sailor pulled his craft closer to shore, where he had to maneuver more delicately through the corals, and had the boys drop the sail to make their craft harder to see.

The patrol boat took its sweet time, plodding slowly down the coast of Palawan, and by the time Sailor thought it was safe enough to raise the sail, the wind had died.  De la Cruz, the boys, and Sailor took turns rowing through the sea, but they just couldn’t make enough progress.

In the end, Sailor decided that since they weren’t going to make Brooke’s Point before the first aerial patrols the next morning, it was better to stop for the night.  Sailor knew of a family that lived nearby, and so they landed at Rio Tuba, a tiny two-hut village three miles up the Tuba River.  The men were quickly ushered into one of the houses, where they fell asleep.

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On to the next island

Where was Flier 66 years ago today? | Posted by Rebekah
Aug 16 2010

The Fliers woke early the next morning after another miserable, shivering night, and trudged to the east end of the island.  No storms had come to their island in the night, though several had passed all around them, so Jacobson’s shells were still empty, and there was no water.

Liddell and Russo, football players in their school days, pulled vines down from the jungle on the island and the rest tried to assemble a small raft from the tangle of driftwood.  It couldn’t be too large, or the aerial patrols would see it, but too small, not everyone could hang on to it.

In the end, from the descriptions, it sounds like they created a long narrow “deck” of bamboo staves lashed together, with an outrigger frame.  Two men could straddle the deck and paddle (and they created makeshift paddles and found two long poles too), while the other six could hang on to the frame and swim and push the raft along.

The plane flew over in the morning,  and the men simply retreated to the shade of the trees both times, hoping that if the pilot saw anything, he just saw a bunch of driftwood on the beach.  But it never so  much as twitched from its normal path.

Liddell, once the raft was close to finished, likely borrowed Crowley’s watch and used it to look for slack tide.  Slack tide, for those that missed the Lombok Strait entry, is the point at the height of high tide and the lowest point of low tide where the currents caused by a tide slow, stop (as tide reaches the greatest point) then reverse and eventually gain speed.   If they started to swim just before slack, they would be swept away, but not far, and would be swept back when the tides reversed.  Liddell threw small twigs and sticks into the fast flowing channel between them and the next island, timing how fast each twig was swept away.

When he figured the tides were slowing, they hauled the raft into the surf, and Crowley and Howell took the first shift rowing.  The drop off was quick and the currents were still fast, and they were quickly swept south as they crossed the channel.

One third the way across, they heard the afternoon patrol plane overhead, and watched her approach, waiting until she was nearly on top of them to dive under the raft.  This plane flew placidly away too, and they quickly started back for their new beach.

A storm swept over them, and the men opened their mouths to the sky, trying to catch the rain.  Jacobson remembered that the big, heavy drops seemed to fall everywhere except his mouth.  It passed as quickly as it came, hitting their new island.  Jacobson thought longingly about the shells he spread out the night before and wished that someone else had been so considerate on the new island.

The tide changed, the current switched directions and soon they were being swept north of their island and had to pull hard to land on the rocky beach on the north west tip.  They had been swimming for hours and landed after sunset, burrowing into the sand, trying to get some sleep.

It was day three.

For those that were at the Memorial Weekend and whom I had the pleasure and honor of meeting, I just want to say, I enjoyed meeting all of you and getting to hear all your stories, even though many were so sad.  It really did feel like a family, and I hope that we do get together in a year or two, perhaps when the new exhibit opens!

I’ll be making changes to the site in the next few weeks.  Don’t worry, I’ll keep the blog up, but I’m hoping to add some things that will help us keep in touch with each other.

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The Long Swim

Where was Flier 66 years ago today? | Posted by Rebekah
Aug 14 2010

Flier is gone, and fifteen souls were left in the oily water marking her grave.

Some were uninjured, blown almost free of the boat before they knew what happened to them.  Lt. John Edward Casey was blinded by hot oil in his face.  Lt. Reynolds had been hit in the side by something, he never knew what.  Some said they saw men get tangled in the guardrails, others said they thought other people had been right behind them.

Only one man made it up from the Control Room, and he was so badly wounded that he died a few minutes later.  His name was Edgar Hudson, and he had been COB of the Flier.

Edgar Walker Hudson

Edgar Hudson was originally from Nashville Tennessee, and was married with a child. The night Flier sank he was standing at the foot of the ladder to the Conning Tower.

It was an overcast night, and there was no way to get a fix on any direction.  The moon wouldn’t rise for five more hours, the sun long since set and the north star hidden behind a bank of storm clouds.  The land that Al Jacobson had seen moments before when he was on Flier’s deck moments before was now gone.  It was only water and clouds from horizon to horizon.

What to do?  They didn’t know what happened.  It could have been a submarine, or shore batteries or an internal explosion that had taken Flier down. If they stayed and it was an enemy vessel, they’d be coming any minute to check the area for wreckage or survivors.  If there was land on three sides of them, but only one large island.  If they passed the smaller islands or accidentally swam east into the open ocean, they’d doom themselves.

What happened next depends on which survivors account you believe.  Some say they decided to tread water for the five hours until the moon rose so they could get a fix on a direction.  Others claim that, since the storm that was building to the west was probably still in the west, they knew where north was, and then facing north, the waves slapped them on the left side, so they had a direction.

Where to go?  East was open sea, south was a tiny island only  a couple of miles away, but too easy to miss in the dark and the next land was over thirty miles away.  West was Balabac Island, a known Japanese stronghold that the survivors were not likley to elude capture.  To the north was a string of tiny islands which no one knew much about.  They were about twelve to fifteen miles away depending on the island, the furthest of the three choices.

They chose to go north, to face whatever might face them there.  They also made a rule: Every man for himself.  No one was to ask for help.

That didn’t stop some of the men from helping others.  Jacobson tried to help the blinded Lt. Casey several times, as did Art Howell.  Howell also tried to help Ensign Meyer.  But in the end, six more men, Casey, Reynolds, Meyer, Knapp, Madeo, and Pope drifted away and were not seen again.

The moon rose, then the sun, and they could see a small island ahead.  Hours later, a plane flew overhead, forcing them to dive underwater to avoid being seen by the enemy patrol.

Finally, at three thirty in the afternoon, they staggered onto the beach.  Their skin was severely burned, and their feet and ankles were slashed open on the coral reefs that surrounded the island.  Exhausted, they had enough energy to build a rough lean-to and sleep.  There were seven now, Miller disappeared just before dawn.

They were on their own.

John Edward Casey

Lt. John Edward Casey from Baltimore, Maryland

Paul Knapp

Lt. Paul Knapp, of San Francisco, California

Gerald Francesco Madeo

Fireman Gerald Madeo of Waterbury Connecticut

Charles DeWitt Pope

Chief Gunner's Mate Charles Pope, of Greensboro, North Carolina

William Laughlin Reynolds

Lt. William Reynolds, of Industry, Pennsylvania

Philip Stanley Mayer

Ensign Philip Mayer of Beverly Hills, California

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USS Flier passes through Lombok

Uncategorized, Where was Flier 66 years ago today? | Posted by Rebekah
Aug 08 2010

Is it a bad thing that I’m now DREAMING about the Flier? Strange dreams too, like putting her in a giant fish globe complete with giant fish so people can see her to say good bye.  Or that I find a photo that shows she was painted some odd color or strange design, like plaid.

Today, Flier passed through Lombok Straits and headed into enemy territory.  Al mentioned in his memoirs that is was a passage of the usual kind where they eluded two sub chasers who gave chase but with their radar they escaped them easily.

I was lucky enough to ask Al what he meant by that phrase in one of our last interviews.  It was tape recorded, but I’m not posting it here because when my husband and I got together with Al and his wife, there was a lot of laughing and a lot of tangents.  That man loved to laugh and tell stories.  Maybe if I can edit it down to something coherent after the ceremony, I’ll post it.

Al explained what he meant by that though, and I’ll post the summary here.

Lombok was a difficult strait to navigate.  It is still one of the largest passageways for water exchange between the Pacific and Indian Oceans, so Lombok has very strong currents that switch direction with every tide.  With Lombok Island to the east and Bali to the west, the volcanic mountains were covered with Japanese anti-ship artillery.  Two sub chasers, usually small wooden boats pressed into service with minimal weaponry and no armor, patrolled the Strait, one generally staitioned on the narrow souther mouth, and another stationed somewhere in the middle.  The northern mouth was over 40 miles wide, and was more difficult to effectively patrol.  If these chasers hadn’t been armed with a radio to call in for the mountain backup, it would have been easier to sink them.

To add insult to injury, during these months of the year, there tended to be pockets of phosphorescent algae in the water.  So if you were going on at a high speed and hit one of these pockets, the sea around you would flare a brilliant greenish light saying “Hit HERE!” to anyone looking to shoot at you.

It was difficult, but three to four subs made that crossing every week, and only one, USS Bullhead, ever came to grief.  (Sadly, Bullhead was sunk there just a few DAYS short of the end of the war.)

Crowley waited until just before slack high tide which was due to occur around 2 am on the 8th.  Slack tide is the time period near the height of high tide or the lowest point of low tide.  At this point, the currents would slow, stop, then gradually reverse and gain speed.  By crossing at slack high tide, Flier bought herself a few more feet of clearance between her and the bottom and lessened the impact any currents would have on her navigation.

She had to go through surfaced.  Lombok was not deep enough to go through submerged, between the topography of the bottom and all the other factors listed above.

Captain Crowley, like many captains before her, took her through the strait as quickly as he could while sweeping for the sub chasers using radar.  When they found one, they stopped, waited until it passed in front of them (sometimes more than a mile ahead), watched it turn, then cross back before starting back up again and passing through the chaser’s stern wake.  When they found the second one, they repeated the process until they were completely crossed.

In order to pull this off, there were no lights on outside.   In an era where a significant proportion of American adults smoked, smoking was likely banned on the Flier this night, so no eagle eyed lookout might see the glowing butt high in Flier’s bridge or lookout deck.  Due to the fact that the moon was supposed to rise around 11, Crowley probably crossed Lombok closer to Lombok than Bali in order to keep her hiding in the shadows the mountains cast into the strait, but also to confuse the radar of the submarine chasers.  A submarine next to land blends into the land on a radar screen.  (A ship too, for that matter, a fact that was exploited by both sides)

After a couple of hours, Flier was finally “free” in enemy territory.  From now on, she’d run on surface at night and dive during the day to avoid the aircraft patrols.  She’d be on alert at all times, both for targets and for threats.  She was on her own.

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Last chance…

Where was Flier 66 years ago today? | Posted by Rebekah
Aug 07 2010

The following event was only ever recorded in the memoirs of Al Jacobson.

“We headed for Lombock [sic] Striat, which was out passage through the Indonesian chain of islands.  When we were about twelve hours from Lombock Strait, we ahd an engine explosion, which we at first thought would force us to turn around and go back.  However Herb [Beahr], the assistant engineering officer, said he could and did fix everything.”

Flier’s jinx, if it existed, might have been trying to stop them, who knows?  Submarines having trouble with a boat’s engines was certainly nothing new.  Occasionally, a submarine would call HQ and tell them of recurrent or permanently damaged engines and, more times than not, HQ would instruct that submarine to head home and those engines would be thoroughly looked at.  This was the Standard Operating Procedure or SOP for any piece of critical equipment on a submarine like periscopes, Sonar, Radar, Radio, Generators, Batteries…. HQ wouldn’t let you home if the ice cream machine quit working, but the big pieces would earn you a trip back to the barn.  (I wonder if the coffee maker would be considered critical enough to go home?)

So when one of Flier’s four engines “exploded” just twelve hours outside of Lombok Strait in the early afternoon of August 7, Captain Crowley had a choice: try to fix it and continue, or turn back for home?  While a submarine could operate just fine on three engines (and according to the deck log, Flier frequently did just that), he certainly would not be foolish enough to start a patrol with a 25% handicap.   If the engineering hands couldn’t fix that engine, he’d have no choice but to call HQ and likely be ordered back to Fremantle for a fix.  If that happened, Flier’s reputation would likley have suffered as a thoroughly “jinxed boat.”  Flier’s reputation, however, was not Crowley concern: his boat’s preparedness was.

But the Submarine Force is known to be among the best men that the Navy has available to them, and the Flier’s crew shone at this moment.  While Flier pushed north on two or three engines to keep on schedule for crossing the Strait, Ensign Herbert “Teddy” Baehr and his team of twenty Motor Machinist’s Mates (Or Motor Macs) worked on the engine.

Flier had been assigned a specific time window to get through Lombok.  Submarines were shuttled through Lombok on a fairly specific and rigid schedule, each being given about a 24 hour window to go through with a 12-24 hour window on either side between boats.  While the crossing was fairly short if you could do it quickly, that 24 hour window was yours to find the best time to cross for your boat.  It’s quite likely that Captain Crowley gave the Motor Mac crews that 12-hour window to fix her up, and if sucessful, he was planning on crossing at high slack tide, approximately 2 am on 8 August.

If not, back to port for an overhaul.

Baehr and his crew were, however, successful.  Though Jacobson never mentions what, precisely the “explosion” was, and perhaps he never really found out, the repairs were sucessful enough that Captain Crowley gave his blessing to continuing on to patrol.

If they hadn’t, how things might have been different…

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