The Patriot Files Forums  

Go Back   The Patriot Files Forums > Conflict posts > World War II

Post New Thread  Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Old 03-02-2021, 12:21 PM
Boats's Avatar
Boats Boats is offline
Senior Member
 

Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Sauk Village, IL
Posts: 21,783
Arrow This Is What a Dying Aircraft Carrier Looks Like (No Enemy Missile Required)

This Is What a Dying Aircraft Carrier Looks Like (No Enemy Missile Required)
By: James Holmes - National Interest News - 03-02-21
Re: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/re...equired-179135

Photo link: https://nationalinterest.org/sites/d...?itok=7gI39Vib
Tags: Navy - Military - War - History - Ship - Vessel

Bad captains can have a large impact on operations.

Here's What You Need to Remember: No bad deed went unrewarded in the case of Leslie Gehres. The navy whitewashed his misdeeds. He was decorated with the Navy Cross, its loftiest award for martial valor, and ultimately promoted to a rear admiral. Seldom does your humble scribe come away incensed from reading history. The saga of the World War II aircraft carrier USS Franklin (CV-13) constitutes an exception. We normally think of Franklin’s history as a parable about the importance of shipboard firefighting and damage control. It’s about materiel and methods, in other words. And these things are important without a doubt. Fighting ships are metal boxes packed with explosives and flammables. Suppressing fire represents a crucial function, which is why the first thing a new sailor does after reporting aboard is qualify in rudimentary damage control.

But a ship is more than a hunk of steel. The hunk of steel plus the crew that lives on board it comprises the ship. Bad leadership marred Franklin’s human component. In the end, then, this is a story with mixed lessons. It is not merely about the material dimension of naval warfare.

USS Franklin lived a short but eventful life, joining the Pacific Fleet in mid-1944. Franklin was the first fleet carrier to absorb a direct strike from a Japanese kamikaze, in the aftermath of the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944. But the flattop was to endure its worst trial in March 1945, while operating with Task Force 58 off the Japanese seacoast. On the morning of March 19 a “Judy” dive bomber eluded the fleet’s air defenses, dumping two bombs on a Franklin whose decks were crowded with fully armed, fully fueled aircraft preparing to raid sites on Kyushu.

Armor plating shielded the carrier’s innards—in particular the engineering plant—from destruction. The crew eventually managed to restart propulsion, and Franklin made the fleet anchorage at Ulithi Atoll under her own power. In the interim, however, dozens of secondary explosions spanning five hours transformed the flight and hangar decks into something out of Dante. It was a charnel house. The blasts killed the damage-control team while disabling fire fighting equipment on the hangar deck. Ammunition “cooked off,” amplifying the destruction. Aircraft fuselages melted. Rivers of burning fuel sluiced into the hangar deck and beneath from fractured pipes. Over 800 perished out of a crew of around 3,400 sailors and aviators.

Recovery operations were fitful under these circumstances. The crew managed to start a diesel-powered fire pump and organize makeshift fire parties. Cruiser USS Santa Fe came alongside and executed a controlled crash with the flat top so seamen could pass across supplies, render such firefighting aid as they could, and take aboard Franklin crewmen. The carrier survived, returning to New York via the Panama Canal.

This is a Pacific War story rich in insights for practitioners of sea power. For instance, it reveals much about the strategic and operational environment in Eurasian waters today. To wit: a foe with no navy of consequence can still exert influence at sea. It can deploy shore-based implements of sea power to punish a hostile navy cruising off its shores. The Imperial Japanese Navy met its doom at Leyte Gulf in October 1944. It could do little despite a flashy last-ditch effort or two to stem the American advance. But airfields in the home islands could act as unsinkable if stationary aircraft carriers once U.S. Navy task forces came within reach. Japan fielded an array of tactical aircraft along with munitions to arm them and pilots to fly them or, in the case of the kamikaze, crash them into American vessels. Tokyo waged an “anti-access” strategy long before the term was invented.

Franklin’s ordeal also yielded hard-won lessons about naval architecture and shipboard practices, and about firefighting and damage control in particular. These are the standard lessons of the affair. To oversimplify, the chief lesson was: equip ships with more of everything. Assigning more people to a damage-control organization would give it a better chance of withstanding damage. Installing more and longer fire hoses would bolster fire parties’ capacity to get at blazes in remote recesses of the ship. Furnishing more portable pumps would let firefighters do their work should fireplugs fail. More high-capacity foam systems would help control and extinguish flaming fuel. Mounting quick-access “scuttles” on armored hatches would allow crewmen to escape compartments should hatches become jammed or too hot to handle. And on and on.

These are all valuable insights. To me, though, the tale of USS Franklin represents a cautionary tale about the scourge of “toxic leadership.” When I reported at the Surface Warfare Officers’ School a few brief years ago, my check-in interview with the skipper amounted to this: leave the place better than you found it. Toxic leaders leave the place worse than they found it. They put themselves ahead of the institution, and they deploy leadership and management tactics that advance their personal interests—even at the expense of colleagues or subordinates.

I’ve known toxic leaders. So have you if you’ve worn a military uniform. They appear from time to time, often as ship captains. Why them in particular? It’s been said a ship captain is the world’s last absolute monarch once underway. And like any absolute monarch, the skipper can be a tyrant if he rules in his selfish interest rather than the common good. He can abuse his authority in an effort to get ahead.

Enter Captain Leslie E. Gehres. Captain Gehres assumed command of Franklin at Ulithi on the heels of the October 1944 kamikaze strike. Historian Joseph Springer, the author of a gripping oral history of the carrier’s travails, recounts how the new skipper introduced himself to the crew. Gehres relieved Captain J. M. Shoemaker at Ulithi. At the change-of-command ceremony, according to one Franklin sailor, Gehres proclaimed: “‘It was your fault because you didn’t shoot [the kamikaze] down. You didn’t do your duty; you’re incompetent, lazy, and careless. Evidently you don’t know your jobs and I’m going to do my best to shape up this crew!’ We just stood there and couldn’t believe our ears. He sure got a lot of cheers for that.”

Imagine that. You’ve just been through hell. Dozens of your shipmates are dead, dozens more wounded. And the first thing your new commanding officer does is upbraid you and your shipmates while insulting his predecessor in his presence. That’s extreme toxicity. According to crew accounts relayed by Springer, as many as three hundred sailors jumped ship in Bremerton, Washington, when the carrier made port there for shipyard repairs. They did so in large part because they believed Franklin was jinxed following the suicide strike. In part, though, they fled to escape Captain Gehres and his noxious brand of leadership.

It gets worse. Japanese warplanes harried Task Force 58 relentlessly in the hours leading up to the March 19 attack. Franklin had gone to general quarters a dozen times in six hours, so Captain Gehres relaxed the ship’s posture to allow the crew to get a hot meal.

The captain’s after-action report and the official war damage report indicate that the skies were clear the morning of March 19. The deck log—the official record of a ship’s doings—says otherwise. At 0654 the ship’s Combat Information Center reported a “bogey,” or unidentified aircraft, thirty miles off. Two other sightings followed. The range was decreasing. At last, at 0708, lookouts on board USS Hancock positively identified the Judy. Hancock radioed Franklin: “Bogey closing you!” The dive bomber was twelve miles off at that point, and inbound fast. (The aircraft would cover that distance in under three minutes, scant reaction time for the best-trained crew.)

Yet Gehres never ordered Franklin to general quarters—meaning the bombs struck the flat top when it was less than fully ready for battle.

When Santa Fe came alongside he ordered the wounded evacuated and then, writes Springer, issued an order that “could not possibly have been more vague.” Gehres directed the air officer to evacuate anyone who “would not be needed to save the ship.” A mass exodus to the cruiser ensued as those who defined themselves as nonessential fled. Ship-wide communications were out, and in the confusion many crewmen believed “abandon ship” had been ordered. The skipper then stopped the evacuation. He later directed about one hundred sailors—including some blown overboard by bomb blasts—to return to Franklin, whereupon he demanded that they state in writing why they had “left this vessel while she was in action and seriously damaged when no order had been issued to abandon ship.” Springer opines that his action “nearly tainted” the carrier’s gallant struggle to survive.

Nearly tainted? Gehres announced that 215 Franklin crewmen would be charged with desertion, and insisted that ships carrying them treat them as prisoners. He founded the “Big Ben 704 Club” to honor the crewmen who had remained on board (and ostentatiously exclude everyone else), barred evacuees from attending the memorial service for fallen shipmates, made sure no evacuee received a medal, and laid the legal groundwork for courts-martial against officers and chief petty officers who took refuge in Santa Fe. (Thankfully the navy leadership ignored his legal maneuvering.) “The treatment of these Franklin crewmen,” concludes Springer, constituted “one of the greatest but least-known injustices involving the U.S. Navy in World War II.”

And how. No bad deed went unrewarded in the case of Leslie Gehres. The navy whitewashed his misdeeds. He was decorated with the Navy Cross, its loftiest award for martial valor, and ultimately promoted to a rear admiral. Here was a navy captain who assumed command of a wounded vessel, shattered its culture, scapegoated his way out of high-seas disaster, and in fact garnered promotions and high honors for his trouble. Many individual Franklin mariners—the ship’s chaplain and one of her engineering officers in particular—displayed conspicuous gallantry following the March 19 cataclysm. Indeed, the flattop is the most decorated U.S. Navy warship ever. Yet this was far from the navy’s finest hour.

This is a story worth telling and retelling. It supplies insight into material matters, along with examples of grit and fortitude. It also supplies a case study in how not to lead. Let’s detoxify the sea service.

James Holmes is Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific, an Atlantic Monthly Best Book of 2010. The views voiced here are his alone. This article first appeared in 2017.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Personal note: I've worked on thee flat tops in my day and one supply ship. There are things onboard flat tops that are highly dangerous to all. The JP4 or AV Gas fuels - Black Oil or Gas Fires or a busted catapult steam line or blow aircraft engine not counting any on deck aircraft fires (not often). Weapons are maintained below deck - loaded on the aircraft either in the hangar bays or flight deck and loaded on aircraft. The aircraft are launched off by steam catapults. Weapons: Are brought up from below decks into the hangar bay & also the flight deck - if needed - this makes the Skipper a little tense. Old school 500lb bomb(s) rolling off its carriage can do significant damage in that area and very sensitive to any fire or hard impacts. Pilots on their aircraft carry sidewinder missiles, 500 lb. bombs on the AIE's (they burn AVgas). Fueling most aircraft in hangar bay's or topside is carefully monitored (JP4 fuel samples are taken prior to fueling jet aircraft) and fire bottles are always on the standby. The below deck guys pump the fuel up to the hangar bay pumps or topside fuel stations as needed. The below deck pumping stations - pump the fuels up to the topside pump stations and fuel samples are taking again prior to fueling any aircraft. Flight deck loading of weapons and fuel are the most dangerous times. The deck is crowed with many aircraft of different types. (A4-A3D-F8 Jets- Hilo's- Prop's A1E's & our Willie FUD)
-
Note: Aviation fuels AVGas (props) & JP4 Fuels (jets). The ship burns black oil (or at least ours did).
-
On deck the Hilo's - Prop's - Jet's - are all turning over on the flight deck. You can't tell which aircraft is running at many times. Walk behind a jet and you could get blown over the side. Walk into a prop or jet intake - well let's just say - your history. I've seen one guy walk into a prop - it was God awful. He walked into a FUD prop (aircraft goes down) Pilot agonizing from the man who walked in his prop. Body parts blown aft of the aircraft - contaminates from the person are blow back aft and sometime sucked into intakes of the jets - that is a bad day. Med-Tec's have to pick up the remains. Carrier's are dangerous. You can end up in sickbay just by walking into a wingtip or tie downs. During Nam the crews worked 24/7 with take offs and landings (day and night). Pilots would make two or more trips to Nam and back a day. We also had a FUD Radar Prop. Yes it's dangerous - but when it goes right - it's as pretty as a picture. The Launch and Capture each day and night 24/7 for days (its really a site to behold watching these aircraft and pilots take off and land. You get a little tired - and often times take a quick nap on the catwalks rather than your rack.
-
Closing Note: All Carrier's are "big and dangerous" to be sure - but boy do they pack a punch.
-
Boats (ABF2)
__________________
Boats

O Almighty Lord God, who neither slumberest nor sleepest; Protect and assist, we beseech thee, all those who at home or abroad, by land, by sea, or in the air, are serving this country, that they, being armed with thy defence, may be preserved evermore in all perils; and being filled with wisdom and girded with strength, may do their duty to thy honour and glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

"IN GOD WE TRUST"
sendpm.gif Reply With Quote
Sponsored Links
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is On

All times are GMT -7. The time now is 02:17 AM.


Powered by vBulletin, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.