No Higher Honor (41 page)

  
5
.
  
Cdr. Alan W. Swinger, “FFG 7 Class Pre-Commissioning,”
U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings
(hereafter,
Proceedings
), January 1982.

  
6
.
  
Letter, Rinn to Capt. John P. Doolittle, 24 January 1985.

  
7
.
  
Interview, Rinn.

  
8
.
  
Interview, Chuck Dumas with author, 28 January 2002.

  
9
.
  
Interview, Rinn.

10
.
  
Roberts's first sea tours were aboard the battleship USS
California
(BB 44) and the troop transport USS
Heywood
(AP 12).
Heywood
is listed, incorrectly, in most official FFG 58–related publications as AD 12.
Bellatrix
was initially designated AK 20 and reclassified AKA 3 in 1943. See, for example, “U.S. Navy Ships—USS
Bellatrix
(AK-20, later AKA-3), 1942–1963,” Department of the Navy, Navy Historical Center,
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-b/ak20.htm
. FFG 58's 1984 launch booklet misstates the original designation as AKA 20. (Launch booklet, FFG 58, Database, “Changes in Ships' Status, v. 3.4, 22 May 2005,” compiled by Christopher P. Cavas.)

11
.
  
Lt. Col. Frank O. Hough, Maj. Verle E. Ludwig, and Henry I. Shaw Jr.,
Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal: History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II
, vol. 1, p. 314 (Historical Branch, G-3 Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1958).

12
.
  
This is the way official navy documents tell the story, but there is a footnote, or perhaps an asterisk, to add. The coast guard also honors one of
its own who died valiantly in the Matanikau withdrawal, and its scholars tell the tale a bit differently. According to coast guard battle reports, the navy coxswain was accompanied that day by a coast guard petty officer, Raymond J. Evans. The signalman reported that the boats carried their marines to shore, dropped them off, and withdrew, confirming the navy version. But Evans maintained that when the rest of the boats headed back to base, he and Roberts stuck around, intending to evacuate any troops wounded early on. “Due to our inexperience, we did not anticipate fire from the beach and allowed our boat to lay too close in,” Evans recalled in a 1999 interview with coast guard historians. A sudden burst of machine-gun bullets caught Roberts in the head and neck. Evans threw the throttle to the stops and raced back to Lunga Point, but the navy coxswain was beyond help. When the marines' mayday call arrived, Evans headed back to the landing zone in a boat with Douglas Munro, a close friend and fellow signalman. According to coast guard historians, Munro led the rescue mission, steered his boat between the enemy and the landing craft, and was killed by a single bullet while helping to tow a grounded landing craft off the beach. In 1942 the War Department approved the coast guard's request to award Munro the Medal of Honor. He remains the only guardsman to receive the country's highest military decoration. Whichever version is true—coast guard or navy—the fact remains that Roberts risked his life to aid U.S. Marines, and gave it in service of his country. (Robert M. Browning Jr., “Douglas Munro at Guadalcanal,” U.S. Coast Guard Web site,
http://www.uscg.mil/hq/g-cp/history/Munro.html
, September 1999.)

13
.
  
Roberts's Navy Cross was awarded on 10 February 1943. The citation read, in part: “Roberts, although he knew that his boat was to be maneuvered into an exposed position for the purpose of drawing enemy fire away from the other boats being used to rescue the trapped Marines, courageously volunteered as a member of the crew. The lightly armed boat was made a target for the enemy fire during the entire evacuation and Roberts was wounded just as the operation was completed. His gallant action, taken without regard for his own safety, contributed directly to the highly successful rescue, and was in keeping with the highest traditions of the Naval Service.” This was somewhat shortened from an earlier draft, which read, “For extraordinary heroism as member of the crew of a Higgins boat assisting in the rescue of a group of Marines surrounded by enemy Japanese forces on a beachhead on Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, on September 27, 1942. Although he knew that his boat was to be used for the purpose of drawing enemy fire away from other craft evacuating the trapped Marines, Roberts, with utter disregard for his own personal safety, volunteered as a member of the crew. With his lightly armed boat stationed
in an exposed position, he gallantly remained at his post until, at the close of the operations, he was wounded by enemy fire. By his great personal valor and fearless devotion to duty he contributed directly to the success of his mission, saving the lives of many who might otherwise have perished.”

14
.
  
J. Henry Doscher Jr.,
Little Wolf at Leyte
(Austin, TX: Eakin Press, 1996), 2.

15
.
  
Samuel E. Morison,
Sailor Historian
(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), 210.

16
.
  
Rear Adm. Robert W. Copeland, with Jack E. O'Neill,
The Spirit of the Sammy-B.
, unpublished manuscript, ca. 1952.

17
.
  
Among the U.S. sailors who helped win the battle of Surigao Strait was young Elmo Zumwalt, a target evaluator aboard the destroyer
Robinson
and future chief of naval operations. (Lt. Cdr. Thomas J. Cutler,
The Battle of Leyte Gulf: 23-26 October 1944
[New York: HarperCollins, 1994], 205.)

18
.
  
Robert Jon Cox,
The Battle Off Samar: Taffy III at Leyte Gulf
(Groton, CT: Ivy Alba Press, 2003), 60.

19
.
  
Copeland,
Spirit of the Sammy-B,
ch. 5. The eminent naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison concluded: “The Battle off Samar, thus unexpectedly joined at 0648, was the most remarkable of the Pacific war, since the tactics had to be improvised.” (Morison,
Sailor Historian,
212.)

20
.
  
The
Roberts'
s propeller shafts were rated for 420 revolutions per minute (rpm), the boilers for 440 pounds of pressure per square inch (psi). “As soon as we fire our fish,” Copeland told his engineer, “I will ring up flank speed, and I want you to hook on everything you've got. Don't worry about your reduction gears or your boilers or anything, because there's all hell being thrown at us up here, and we are just fortunate we haven't been hit yet, so don't worry about it.” The engineer shut the safety valves. The steam pressure rose to 670 psi, producing 477 shaft rpm and propelling the ship to 28.5 knots. It is likely that no
Butler
-class ship ever went faster (Copeland,
Spirit of the Sammy-B,
ch. 6). Four decades later, FFG 58 would set a speed record for its own
Perry
class.

21
.
  
Details of the Battle of Leyte Gulf are drawn from Cutler,
Battle of Leyte Gulf;
Doescher,
Little Wolf at Leyte;
Robert W. Love Jr.,
History of the U.S. Navy
(Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1992); and Jack Sweetman,
American Naval History: An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775–Present,
3rd ed. (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2002).

22
.
  
See Andrew C. Toppan, “Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships,” “DD-823,”
Haze Gray & Underway: Naval History and Photography,
http://www.hazegray.org/danfs/destroy/dd823txt.htm
, 1994–2003.

23
.
  
Norman Polmar,
The Death of the USS
Thresher (Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2001), 63.

24
.
  
L. A. Olsson, “History of Ships Named
Samuel B. Roberts,
” Naval History Division, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, ca. 1971.

25
.
  
Letter, Mark Unhjem to Rinn, 23 February 1988. This letter, which was actually sent after the 14 April 1988 mining, is dated improperly.

26
.
  
Letter, Robert J. Cressman to Rinn, 1 February 1984.

CHAPTER 3

  
1
.
  
Ralph Linwood Snow,
Bath Iron Works: The First Hundred Years
(Bath, ME: Maine Maritime Museum, 1987), 13.

  
2
.
  
The young scion of wealthy merchants, Hyde had marched off to war at the head of an infantry company and returned to Maine a twenty-four-year-old brigadier general. Hyde's valor at Antietam—three horses were killed under him as he charged toward Stonewall Jackson's headquarters—was recognized in 1896 with the Medal of Honor.

  
3
.
  
The gunboats, USS
Machias
and USS
Castine,
would one day sail around the world with Teddy Roosevelt's Great White Fleet. (“List of Ships: The Hulls of Bath Iron Works,” BIW promotional booklet, 2002.)

  
4
.
  
Snow,
Bath Iron Works,
317, 386. Eight of the eighty-two destroyers produced during World War II were lost in combat. (“A Legacy of Pride . . . A Future of Promise: The First Hundred Years of Bath Iron Works,” BIW promotional booklet, 1984.)

  
5
.
  
Toppan, “Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships,” “DD 724.”

  
6
.
  
Snow,
Bath Iron Works,
422.

  
7
.
  
For example: “A ‘Bath-built ship' holds a near-legendary status among the U.S. Navy's engineering personnel, testimony to this builder's commitment to quality that quite literally spans decades,” wrote Randall D. Bennett and Crystal D. Sloan in “Repeating Design Errors, or ‘Where's the History?'”, a paper presented at the 2003 symposium of the International Council on Systems Engineering.

  
8
.
  
Interview, William Haggett with author, 5 August 2002.

  
9
.
  
Snow,
Bath Iron Works,
485.

10
.
  
After retiring from the navy, Sonenshein served a two-year term on the National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere, which stirred up controversy in 1985 with a report suggesting that U.S. shipyards be allowed to go out of business rather than be propped up by government subsidy. (Michael Isikoff and Howard Kurtz, “Shipbuilders on the Skids,”
Washington Post,
17 July 1985.)

11
.
  
Snow,
Bath Iron Works,
496.

12
.
  
Adm. Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. (Ret.),
On Watch
(New York: Quadrangle/New York Times Book Co., 1976), 72.
See also
Jan S. Breemer,
U.S. Naval Developments
(Annapolis, MD: Nautical and Aviation Publishing, 1983), 7: “The Navy has been inclined to buy the best of everything. Generally speaking . . . the Navy has put its money into the high-capability ships, on the premise
that a few well-coordinated, highly capable ships will out-perform a larger number of less expensive ones.”

13
.
  
Between 1968 and 1977, the number of navy surface combatants fell from 304 to 182. (Naval Historical Center, Ships History Branch, “U.S. Navy Active Ship Force Levels, 1917–Present,”
http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/org9-4.htm
, 2 March 2003.)

14
.
  
Naval Sea Systems Command (hereafter, NAVSEA), “Building Patrol Frigates for the United States Navy,” pamphlet, 1974.

15
.
  
Predicted costs were calculated in projected 1973 dollars, the budget year in which the first ship would be purchased. (Norman Friedman,
U.S. Destroyers: An Illustrated Design History
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1982), 378, 381.)

16
.
  
Ibid., 384.

17
.
  
High-tensile steel has a yield strength of 45 kilograms per square inch; medium steel, 33; and HY-80, 80. (NAVSEA, draft report, NAVSEA Damage Assessment Team, 27 April 1988.)

18
.
  
NAVSEA, “Building Patrol Frigates.”

19
.
  
Price's planners also reasoned that the DX and plenty of other ships already carried the new SQS-53, so the smaller SQS-56 ought to suffice for the new frigate. Among the other equipment postponed or simply deleted from the plan: stabilizing fins; the RAST, a kind of giant winch to help helicopter pilots land on the ship's tiny flight deck in bad weather; the SLQ-32 Nixie noise-maker, which trailed behind the ship to confuse enemy subs and torpedoes; the Naval Tactical Data System networking system, which allowed a navy battle group to fuse sensor data into a single electronic picture of the area; and the Mk 36 Super RBOC, a fan of deck-mounted tubes that fired flares and strips of aluminum to distract incoming missiles. The flight decks of the early
Perrys
were built long enough for the original LAMPS helicopters, the SH-2 Seasprites, but three feet too short for their LAMPS-3 successors, the larger SH-60 Sea Hawks, which began to appear in 1985. (NAVSEA, final report, “Survivability Review Group Report on USS
Samuel B. Roberts
[FFG 58] Damage Analysis,” October 1988, p. 2–1, p. 7–39; Bernard Prézelin, and A. D. Baker III,
The Naval Institute Guide to Combat Fleets of the World 1990–1991
[Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1990], 805–6; Norman Polmar,
The Naval Institute Guide to Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet,
14th ed. [Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1987]; Friedman,
U.S. Destroyers;
etc.)