by Oliver North
By the spring of ’44 we thought we had taken the worst that the Germans could throw at us—but we were wrong. On the night of 3 May ’44 we were at the front of the screen, escorting a convoy of mostly empty merchantmen back to the U.S. when our radar watch saw a blip on his scope, and guessed—correctly it turns out—that it was a U-boat.
German U-boats could do up to 18 knots on the surface—but only about 6 knots submerged. They preferred to loiter about on the surface waiting for a target—and only submerge when they had to. But this U-boat was already submerged—apparently thinking that he could let the convoy pass by and then attack from the rear—where there was only one escort. But our radar operator was so good he had picked up the sub’s periscope at 12,000 yards. That was the good part.
We had been warned that the U-boats were now using a new T-5 naval acoustic torpedo—guided to its target by the sound of a ship’s propeller blades and engine. To counter this new threat, the Menges had been equipped with what’s called “foxer” gear—a tremendous noise-maker that is towed on a cable about 200 yards aft of the stern. It’s designed to make a real racket so that acoustic torpedoes will home in that sound instead of the ship.
We should have been streaming our “foxer” gear but the skipper didn’t want me to because it interferes with the sonars on our ships—making it harder to detect a submarine. He also said he was concerned that the noise of our foxer gear would attract U-boats. Well, that didn’t matter—this U-boat already knew where we were.
We went to General Quarters and immediately informed the convoy and the rest of the escorts that we were closing the contact to attack. We were at our battle stations for about twelve minutes and making about 20 knots when it hit us. An acoustic torpedo homed in on the sound of our screws and quite literally, blew the stern of the Menges right off the ship.
Thirty-one of the crew were killed instantly—and twenty-five more were wounded. Some of the crewmen on the fantail were thrown into the water by the force of the explosion. With our engine room gone we quickly went dead in the water—but our emergency generators kicked on—powering up our radars, pumps, and emergency lighting. Our combat watch—still on duty even though the ship could sink at any second—spotted the sub on radar just off our port beam. So the radioman passed the sub’s position to two other Coast Guard DEs—the Pride and the Mosley—and they immediately took off after the U-boat.
Amazingly, our ship held together. The seams and water-tight doors held. She didn’t take much water at all forward of the engine room and our damage control parties kept her afloat. We put one of our boats in the water to rescue those in the crew who had been blown over the side and most of them survived.
Just before dawn one of the other escorts came alongside and we transferred our wounded. A short while afterward a French tug arrived, took us under tow, and brought us into Oran for temporary repairs.
Later in the day, our sister ships, USS Pride, DE-323 and USS Mosley, DE-321, hunted down the German U-boat that had hit us. Just before noon the sub fired another of his acoustic torpedoes and damaged a Free French DE, but Pride, Mosley, and two other escorts finally hounded the German U-boat so long and damaged it so badly with depth charges and “hedgehogs” that it had to surface. The sub was taken under fire immediately, causing the crew to scuttle her. The Coast Guard escorts captured about half of the crew, including the skipper and learned that our assailant was U-371.
It turned out that the captain of U-371 was just twenty-five years old—and that he had intended to fire another torpedo and finish us off. But when he heard the small motor of our lifeboat—which we had put in the water to rescue our guys in the water—he thought we were abandoning ship and he decided not to “waste” another torpedo.
The USS Menges was eventually towed back to the Brooklyn Navy Yard where the stern of another damaged DE was welded to her hull. She finished the war as she had started it—doing convoy duty in the Atlantic. Ed Nash was reassigned to an 83-foot Coast Guard cutter and participated in the invasion of Normandy on D-Day.
The German U-boat fleet that had been such a prominent threat to the survival of Britain earlier in the war was slowly ground down by Allied convoys, long-range patrol aircraft, and eventually, by the introduction of escort carriers and “hunter-killer” units—dispatched not to defend convoys, but to hunt down and destroy enemy submarines.
Though the U-boats sent to sea by Admiral Dönitz would attack combatants like the USS Menges when necessity or opportunity arose, their preferred targets were merchant ships. By the end of the war 4,786 merchant vessels flagged to the nations of the British Empire would lie on the bottom of the world’s oceans, along with 578 U.S.-flagged merchant ships. More than 80,000 Allied Merchant Mariners were missing, dead, or prisoners of war. The carnage was horrific—but it was the only way to win the Battle of the Atlantic.
There is one other sad footnote to the blood-sacrifice made by the American Merchant Mariners. When the war was over, the survivors who had “delivered the tools of war” weren’t accorded the status of veterans. Though they had been subject to all the hardships, dangers, and privations of any man in uniform, they were denied the benefits afforded veterans—including the GI Bill. In 1988 President Ronald Reagan finally awarded the recognition that the World War II Merchant Mariners deserved—forty-three years after the war.
CHAPTER 10
WAR ON THE HOME FRONT 1941–1945
When Hitler started World War II by invading Poland in the summer of 1939, America was lagging behind the rest of the western world in emerging from the chronic, decade-long economic upheaval that had begun with the stock market crash of 1929. The worldwide “Great Depression” had created massive unemployment, bank failures, and the collapse of market value for nearly every commodity. Millions of Americans lost jobs, homes, farms, and businesses as banks foreclosed on loans and mortgages in an effort to survive.
In the United States, the effects of the global economic collapse were aggravated by a severe drought that ruined agricultural productivity in the southwestern plains. Hundreds of thousands of farmers and their families lost everything in the “Dust Bowl.” By the mid to late 1930s, many of these farm families had migrated west, searching vainly for jobs and a homestead.
The Roosevelt administration’s response to the economic crisis may well have exacerbated and prolonged the crisis in the United States. FDR’s National Recovery Administration, colossal federal spending—and debt—along with make-work programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Works Projects Administration and “New Deal” social programs were far less effective in stimulating the U.S. economy than more conventional, market-based initiatives undertaken in Britain and France. And unlike Britain and France—which both initiated economically invigorating military build-ups as Hitler became more threatening in 1936—the U.S. made no such significant investments.
In Germany, Hitler applied his National Socialist theories to mobilize the nation to his grand design. Like Roosevelt, he too created massive public-works projects—the Autobahn, upgraded railways, new bridges, and enormous stadiums and parade fields to showcase his Third Reich. As with military conscription, most of these projects—like the industrial expansion necessary for the production of weapons, munitions, aircraft, and ships—had an almost immediate, positive effect on the German economy.
In the U.S., Roosevelt’s public works projects—the Tennessee Valley Authority being the largest—had the effect of creating upwards of 40,000 jobs. But the full economic and military benefits of these colossal endeavors on the broader population would not be realized until the 1940s.
While European nations mobilized—stimulating their economies in the process—the U.S., pacifist in its politics and isolationist in diplomacy, languished—spurning re-armament and conscription as security or economic remedies. When Hitler invaded Poland, both Britain and France mobilized completely, and by the following spring, Britain became the only western government in history to conscript women
into the armed forces.
The first tentative steps toward mobilization in the United States didn’t even begin until 1939. That summer the U.S. Army was authorized to increase its active-duty strength from 130,000 to 227,000—but only by taking in new volunteers or activating units of the National Guard. Congress didn’t authorize conscription until the summer of 1940, after the evacuation at Dunkirk.
Industrial mobilization in the United States actually began sooner than that of the military—largely as a consequence of free enterprise. Merchant ships—desperately needed by France and Britain—were not considered war materiel under the American neutrality laws—and both countries began placing orders for vessels in various sizes and designs in early 1939. U.S. arms manufacturers—though initially banned from selling munitions directly to the combatants—were allowed to sell weapons to Canada, which began placing orders for planes, tanks, trucks, artillery pieces, and other combat arms even before Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to march across the Polish frontier. The Canadians promptly shipped the American-made weapons and equipment to England—a subterfuge that persisted until Lend-Lease came into effect in March 1941.
It was Lend-Lease—and FDR’s stated desire that the United States become the “Arsenal of Democracy”—that really accelerated America’s astounding industrial mobilization and ended the massive unemployment that was so pervasive during the Great Depression. Within a matter of weeks after Roosevelt proposed the legislation, private sector architects and engineers were drawing up plans for new aircraft, tank, truck, and arms manufacturing plants; new steel mills; expanded electrical generation and distribution; new and bigger mines; as well as enhanced oil production and refining capacity.
Agricultural experts also began planning for dramatic increases in wheat, soybean, corn, beef, hog, poultry, and dairy production. By the time the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, America’s industrial and agricultural sectors were well ahead of the U.S. Armed Forces in preparing for war.
Rosie the Riveter
In May 1940—as Hitler invaded the Low Countries and France—Roosevelt issued an Executive Order, activating a National Defense Council of business and labor leaders, headed by Frances Perkins, his Secretary of Labor. Charged with coordinating and prioritizing the massive requirements of feeding and equipping our allies and supplying the U.S. military with all that would be needed in the fight ahead, the NDC quickly realized that America’s principal shortage wouldn’t be raw materials—it was labor. Though nearly ten million American men were still unemployed when the war began, Perkins and her NDC colleagues knew that almost all of them who were fit for duty would be summoned for military service, leaving gaping employment holes in agriculture and industry.
London had solved this problem with a universal call-up of the entire adult population of Great Britain. Men and women between eighteen and forty-five who were fit for military service were put in uniforms. All others were sent to work in fields and factories as directed by the British government. Those too young or old to fight or work often found themselves drafted as air raid wardens, plane spotters, teachers, child-care givers, hospital aides, drivers, message handlers, or for neighborhood civil defense.
Women assembling machine parts in an airplane plant.
Such coercive measures were out of the question in the United States. But Perkins and the NDC also knew there was a vast, untapped workforce available: America’s women. Convincing them to join the war on the home front became one of the primary goals of the Roosevelt administration in 1941–42.
Spurred by the NDC, President Roosevelt and the First Lady launched a nationwide propaganda campaign encouraging women to “Free a Man to Fight.” The theme of all the posters, billboards, newspaper, magazine, and radio ads was essentially the same: while American men served on the front lines, American women would have to serve on the assembly lines. The Office of War Information distributed posters and handbills promoting “Rosie the Riveter” and her “We can do it!” slogan. When necessary, reluctant union and industry leaders were none too gently prodded by the NDC into opening their factory floors and union halls to women by promoting women’s war work as a “temporary” response to a national emergency.
The results were dramatic. Within a year of the U.S. entry into the war, more than a million American women had become hourly wage laborers in the defense industry. A year later it was 2.5 million. Many of these young women took jobs that had heretofore been male-only. In airplane plants they not only did meticulous work assembling fine machine parts and electric components—they were also welders and crane operators.
By 1942, American women were assembling bombs, building tanks, welding hulls, and greasing locomotives. Phyllis McKey moved from Oregon to California and joined them.
PHYLLIS MCKEY
Kaiser Shipyards
Oakland, California
22 September 1943
I was just twenty-one and a new mother, living in Oregon, when my husband and I and our new baby moved to California for his job. I had never expected to work outside the home, but there was a notice in the paper that the Kaiser Shipyard had openings for women. My sister Marian came down from Oregon to help take care of the baby and I applied for a job as a welder.
As an apprentice welder I made ninety cents an hour—which was good money. I caught on quickly and after a few weeks, I was put out in the yard where we were building Liberty ships. I think our shipyard was the first to mass-produce ships—by pre-fabricating various pieces, then bringing the parts together from all over the yard with great big cranes and welding them together right there in the dry dock.
To build the ship’s deck-houses, they laid a slab of steel down and we welded the pre-cut walls to the roof while standing on what would be the ceiling. As we finished each one, a crane would come and pick it up and carry it to the hull—which was also assembled in sections. There, it would be welded to the ship’s deck. After we had been at it awhile we could turn out a ship a day—in three shifts. All it took was some spirit, energy, and a can-do attitude.
While we would be welding beads in the pilot house, pipe fitters and electricians would move in and install all the water pipes and valves, electric wiring, and switches—so that about the time we were finished with the welding, they would be done with their work. It was an amazing process—and we all took great pride in what we accomplished.
Was a woman as good a welder as a man? Better, I think. Women did embroidery work, crochet work, knitting. For those things you not only needed to know the technique, you wanted it to be beautiful. And it was the same with welding. I could run a bead weld as good or better than any man on my shift—and that’s not me talking—that’s what my job supervisor said.
Was it hard work? Sure. It’s hot and dirty, too. Those welding masks are heavy—so were the leather gloves, chaps, and gauntlets we wore to keep from getting burned. Sometimes a spark would roll down into a glove and there’d be little round BBs of hot metal burning your flesh. It was so dirty that sometimes at the end of a shift, my skin would be completely black. But we weren’t doing this to look good—we were doing it to help win the war and feed our families.
After I had been there awhile, another sister came down from Oregon—she took a job in the Kaiser drafting department. Finally, my mom came and I took a job on a graveyard shift so that we could take turns in the bed.
I was promoted to journeyman welder, making a dollar an hour—the same pay as my husband, who was also a welder. That didn’t sit well with him because he hadn’t wanted me to go to work. He had expected to be the head of the household—and that I would come and ask him for money to buy things. Well, my job at Kaiser gave me independence—and that was something most women didn’t have until the war.
Our marriage didn’t survive—but I’m proud of what we accomplished. The women who worked in that yard built good ships that helped save a lot of lives. I never heard about any man who sailed on ’em complain about that.
Opening
so many new jobs to women had not only a profound effect on the war effort, but it also had inevitable consequences on American society and culture. Before the war, less than 20 percent of women between eighteen to forty were in the salaried labor force. By 1940 it was 25 percent and by 1945 it had swelled to 35 percent. At the end of the war, with factories and shipyards running twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, more than half of all adult American women were working outside the home. Three-quarters of the new women workers were married, most were over age thirty-five, and more than a third had children under fourteen.
The war also caused shifts in population. Americans flocked to places with military bases and defense plants; six million migrants left farms and rural areas for urban areas where defense jobs were plentiful. Often it meant taking a new job, in a new place, in a new plant, making new products—all of which required that their new employer train these new workers. Lourelei Prior was one of those who benefited from such training when she went to work for General Electric.
Free a Man to Fight.
LOURELEI PRIOR
General Electric Aircraft Engine Plant
Fort Wayne, Indiana
5 November 1945
My dad died in 1936, the year I graduated from high school in the little town of Garrett, Indiana. My mother couldn’t work and I had a twelve-year-old little brother so to support them, I went to work in an undergarment factory. When the war started, one of my good friends went into the Women Marines. I wanted to go with her to join up but my mom was really upset—that I would be leaving her and my little brother to fend for themselves.
