50th Anniversary of....

All through 1994, there will be 50th Anniversaries of one important day or another from World War II - and we remember that it was 50 years ago on the night of 23/24 December 1944 when 25 German U-Bootfahrer P.O.W.s in Papago Park (Arizona) tunnelled out and made their way to freedom.

Some of the men in this group were Captains JURGEN WATTENBERG (154-1985), the former Navigations Officer on the pocket battleship GRAF SPEE and later, Skipper of U-162; and also FRIEDRICH GUGGENBERGER (269-+-1987) who, as Skipper of U-81, sank the aircraft carrier HMS ARK ROYAL in the Mediterranean just short of Gibraltar.

A reward was quickly offered for the capture and return of these prisoners - you got a whole TWENTY FIVE BUCKS if you could capture one of the escapees AND return him to the camp. If you only captured the prisoner and had the ARMY come out to pick him up, you only got FIFTEEN BUCKS. Doesn't seem like a lot of money for the risk involved. But it must have induced someone, as all the P.O.W.s were rounded up in short order and returned to Papago Park.

Smokey Bear Turns 50
from Larry Gately (2959-1993)

We who live in the USA are all familiar with the cartoon character SMOKEY BEAR who, on behalf of the US Forest Service, is constantly telling us: "Only YOU can prevent forest fires." But did you know that SMOKEY BEAR was born of World War II necessity?

It was reported in PARADE Magazine - in World War II, shells from a Japanese submarine landed near a wooded area in Southern California, raising fears of a forest fire. The Agriculture Department's Forest Service and the wartime Advertising Council teamed up to design a fire prevention campaign. In 1994, SMOKEY BEAR was created.

Today, 95% of adults and 86% of children aged 8 to 12 recognize SMOKEY's message. The number of accidental wildfires caused by humans has been reduced by half since SMOKEY began, even though 10 times as many people visit our forests today as in the 1940's.

The official date to honor the 50th birthday of SMOKEY BEAR will be 9 August, 1994 on the Mall in Washington DC.

US Subs Use Tactics of U-Boats

In a recent article from the KNIGHT-RIDDER News Service, it states that on 21 May, 1944 "BLAIR'S BLASTERS" departed Midway as a mini-Wolf Pack. Unlike the German packs in the earlier days of the War when one or two dozen (sometimes more) U-Boats formed the pack, the 'BLASTERS' had only three boats - USS SHARK II, USS PILOTFISH and USS PINTADO. When the group arrived in the area of the Marianas on the Honshu-Saipan Convoy Route, USS SILVERSIDES, who was on independent patrol, joined with the group.

The night of 31 May - 1 June almost bore fruit, as a convoy was spotted. Radical zig-zags of this convoy took it well away from the pack. Soon, SILVERSIDES spotted another convoy and PILOTFISH went after it, but without success. SHARK II located the first convoy a day later but again, failed to get into an attack position.

One of the advantages of WOLF PACK tactics is that, if a convoy turned to avoid one submarine, there is a chance they will run across another sub and this now worked in favor of the American boats as the convoy ran across PINTADO, which roared in with a night surface attack. Six torpedoes scored hits, sinking one freighter and damaging another.

Then a 3rd convoy was spotted and all four subs went into pursuit. But the convoy had air cover, so it became a complicated game of planes hunting the submarines that were hunting the surface ships.

Faulty Joint Sank THRESHER?

THOMAS J. SPRINGER (3351-1993) sent us a newspaper clipping filed by the AP which says:

"The secret of why the USS THRESHER sank in 1963 lies at the bottom of the Atlantic with her 129 crewmen.

But declassified NAVY documents suggest a frantic scene where a faulty pipe joint gave way, allowing an explosive rush of ocean water to flood the engine room and doom the sub.

A NAVY report released this week agreed with long-held suspicions that a hole in a pipe was the culprit in the catastrophe. The report said the hole probably was two to five inches wide.

A quarter-inch hole at 400 feet below the ocean's surface would allow a stream of water like that from a fire hose to shoot into the sub. A one-inch hole at the depths in which the THRESHER operated would be 'something beyond the imagination of most of us,' Vice Admiral E. W. Grenfell said in a 1964 article.

The flooding on the THRESHER shorted electrical circuits, triggering an automatic shutdown of the reactor, the report said. When the Captain tried to empty seawater from ballast tanks, that system failed, causing the sub to sink.

The sub was crushed when it reached a depth too great for its hull to withstand the water pressure.

The NAVY released the documents along with previously classified information on the SCORPION, the only other US nuclear submarine ever lost at sea. The SCORPION sank in 1968 after a torpedo exploded."

Divers Rob Sea Grave of Souvenirs

We had long said something like this would happen - that, while nations turn a blind eye to divers who dive on ships like WILHELM GUSTLOFF to take valuables that went down with the ship and more than 5,000 victims but we wondered what would happen when their ships were "visited".

In an article from the TIMES out of the Republic of Ireland sent by PHILIP von BARGEN (2749-1993), we read that the British Defence Ministry is up in arms so to speak, because divers have visited probably the most holy of all ROYAL NAVY shipwrecks, HMS ROYAL OAK, in search of souvenirs. The Director of Harbours (Orkneys) said: "It is sacrilege for people to damage war graves in such a way....."

Amazing that there is one set of standards when it comes to diving German U-Boats, and yet another for diving British or American wrecks. No, I am not against SCUBA divers - I am one myself. But it is wrong to apply one set of standards to diving wrecks of one side from World War II and yet another to the other side. To think that it is sacrilege to dive ROYAL NAVY (or US NAVY) wrecks, but OKAY to dive German wrecks is really a two-faced standard, and that is wrong. It should be either one way or the other for all sunken warships - but no one is foolish to think that it will ever happen that way.

Can you imagine being alongside USS ARIZONA and watch a dive boat cruise up, drop anchor, and unload a bunch of divers over the side? Or if Japanese divers were suddenly diving USS WAHOO for souvenirs? All I am saying, is put yourself in the other guy's shoes one time.