Operation Hula
The North Pacific Offensive

Potential Joint US/Russian Operation
in the North Pacific, 1945

Part 1: Hula Base

by Brooks A Rowlett, brooksar@indy.net

Among the negotiations at the Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin Yalta Conference in February 1945, an important aspect was the timing of the Soviet Union's entry into the war against Japan. As part of the prepara-tions for the USSR's entry, the US agreed to provide warships to the Soviet Union in the Far East so that various coastal operations could be carried out sooner, rather than having to rely on Russian Far eastern shipyards to build up forces.

To expedite the handover of such ships, and yet conceal the preparations, a new advanced base was set up beginning immediately in February 1945, with material carried in by the miscellaneous auxiliary USS Besboro (AG-66). Besboro departed from Adak amid rumors that she was bound to reactivate Kiska as a base, or even to set up a base in the Soviet Kommandorski Islands - but to the surprise of all she headed east, to Dutch Harbor, where she picked up a SeaBee (Navy Construction Battalion) unit and proceeded to Cold Bay, on the mainland, at the end of the Alaska Peninsula. The base was not set up from nothing - Cold Bay had been secretly established as an Army Air Force Base before the Pearl Harbor attack, and had operated USAAF P-40s, P-39s, and P-38s. But with Attu and Kiska recovered in 1943, and aircraft operating from the bases on Attu, Amchitka, Shemya, and Adak, Cold Bay was decommissioned as an AAF base in the fall of 1944. Now it was to be reactivated.

There was an Army emergency air strip still operational at nearby Ft. Randall, so the area was not totally empty. Very shortly after the SeaBees arrived, the base received the code name "Hula" - surely one of the most "opposite" forms of cover and deception code name ever devised. The SeaBees knew something interesting was up when Lend-Lease Liberty ships flying the Hammer & Sickle flag began arriving with Russian personnel, and when the SeaBees received instructons to install bilingual (English and Russian) road signs.

The Russian vessels going to US Pacific ports in '45 were dropping off lots of sailors at Cold Bay to train with the new vessels the Soviet Navy (VMF) would receive. The Russians - and the Americans who came to teach them -joked that Hula was a wonderful place, with "a woman behind every tree". But being on the west coast of Alaska in one of the most storm-tossed areas of the world, with rain and fog common even in high summer, it was far from the most wonderful place.

Unusually, it seems that the whole process of transferring the vessels via lend-Lease was also codenamed "Operation Hula" or sometimes "Project Hula". But the secrecy of this operations was especially unusual, and contributes to the minimal awareness of Hula even today - the Navy Captain who directed Hula reported directly to CNO Admiral King.

More Operation Hula

BT

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