naval history - peek inside

12 U N I T E D S TAT E S N AVA L I N S T I T U T E

S-3A VIKING

Type: Carrier-basedantisubmarine

Length: 53feet,4inches

Wingspan: 68feet,8inches

Height: 22feet,9inches

Engines: 2GET34-GE-2turbofan

7,513poundsstaticthrusteachcontinuous

Max. speed: 493mphatsealevel

Crew: 4

Armament: Internalbay2,400poundsdepthbombs,mines,torpedoesincluding

2Mark57nucleardepthcharges;wingstations2,500poundsdepth

bombs,mines,torpedoes

Vikings at Sea

Historic Aircraft By Norman PolmarAuthor, ShipS and aircraft of the U.S. fleet

After World War II, the U.S. Navy began the development of special-

ized carrier-based aircraft for antisubma-rine warfare. Previously, standard fighters and bombers were employed for that role.

The Navy’s first aircraft designed spe-cifically for the ASW role were the so-called “Guardian Twins,” the Grumman AF, which came in two “flavors”—the W-suffix aircraft with the large AN/APS-20 radar for detecting submarine masts and periscopes, and the S-suffix with a limited detection capability but a large weapons bay and wing pylons for weap-ons.1 These search-and-attack capabilities were first combined in the Grumman S2F (later S-2) Tracker, whose initial flight was in December 1952.

By the mid-1960s the Navy was seeking a more advanced carrier ASW aircraft—given the development des-ignation VSX. Updated sensors were available, and a faster and longer-range aircraft would be more effective in reach-ing potential targets. Also significant, with the demise of the specialized ASW

carriers—designated CVS—the airborne subhunters would operate from attack carriers that carried only turbine-powered aircraft. Handling piston-engine fuels for just the Tracker would be a burden.

When the VSX requirement appeared, Grumman Aircraft, later Grumman Aerospace Corporation, was the favored competitor, having produced far more carrier aircraft—among them the Guardian and Tracker ASW planes—than any other firm. But Lockheed had been in the ASW business longer, albeit with land-based aircraft, beginning with the PBO Hudson in the late 1930s through the P-3 Orion that entered ser-vice in 1962. To compensate for its lim-ited experience in carrier-based aircraft, Lockheed teamed with Ling-Temco-Vought, which had several outstanding carrier planes to its credit, and firms with ASW-systems experience.

Lockheed was named VSX winner in August 1969, with an initial batch of eight flight-test aircraft (YS-3A) being ordered by the Navy. The first Viking took to the

air on 21 January 1972. The flight tests were successful, with initial carrier trials on board the USS Forrestal (CVA-59) in November 1973. Even before flight trials had been completed, the Navy ordered the Viking into production as the S-3A.2

The plane had a snub nose and a high wing carrying two General Electric high-bypass turbofan engines, mounted in underwing nacelles, just inboard of the wing-fold points. The early operational aircraft were fitted with a Univac AN/AYK-10 digital computer to support a host of sensors including AN/APS-116 radar, OR-89 forward-looking infrared (FLIR), AQS-81 magnetic anomaly detector (MAD), ALR-47 electronic countermeasures (ECM) system, and 60 sonobuoy chutes.

For the “killer” side of the mission the Viking had an internal weapons bay for up to 2,000 pounds of depth bombs, mines, and torpedoes, plus stores on two wing pylons. Each pylon could carry a Harpoon or Bullpup antiship missile or a 300-gallon drop tank. A retractable in-flight refueling probe was provided.

The flight crew consisted of two pilots, a tactical coordinator, and a sensor opera-tor. Each had an ejection seat that could work at any speed/altitude combination.

The first fleet squadron to fly the Viking was Antisubmarine Squadron

J. M. CAIELLA

This Viking of VS-31 served on board the USS Independence (CV-62) during her 1977 Mediterranean Sea cruise. The Topcats S-3A, later converted to S-3B standards, has its MAD (magnetic anomaly detector) boom extended and carries an AGM-84 Harpoon on its left wing pylon.• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Copyright © 2012, Naval History, U.S. Naval Institute, Annapolis, Maryland (410) 268-6110 www.usni.org

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(VS) 21, which went aboard the John F. Kennedy (CVA-67) in 1975. With 187 ASW aircraft produced—including the eight YS-3A prototypes—the Navy formed 12 Viking squadrons plus a readi-ness/replacement squadron. Thus, almost every carrier air wing was provided with an eight-plane S-3 squadron, which shared the ship-based ASW role with an SH-3 Sea King helicopter squadron (HS).

The Viking proved to be a reliable, safe, and relatively effective ASW aircraft. The only significant problem encountered was the plane’s stall char-acteristics, which were rectified by the addition of minor stall strips.

Similar to the evolution of its pre-decessor—the S-2 Tracker—into the C-1 Trader for carrier-on-board (COD) cargo and passenger delivery, the sev-enth YS-3A was modified to a COD prototype. In that role—with ASW gear removed—it could carry six passengers or 5,750 pounds of cargo internally and another 1,000 pounds in two wing pods. Range and speed were superior to the Trader. The first of the modified planes flew in 1976 as the US-3A. Three addi-tional YS-3A/US-3A conversions fol-lowed. Lockheed also proposed a larger variant with a side door and a 70-inch fuselage extension, or “plug,” that would provide an 8,000-pound cargo capacity. The Navy, however, declined production. Instead it bought the C-2 Greyhound, derived from Grumman’s E-2 Hawkeye electronic-warfare aircraft.

Similarly, Lockheed converted the fifth YS-3A to an aerial tanker, fitting it with a drogue-and-reel system. The tanker could carry 16,000 pounds of fuel, of which 11,000 pounds could be transferred to another aircraft. Refueling trials were suc-cessful, but again the Navy opted for a Grumman aircraft—the KA-6D, modified from A-6A airframes. Yet another Viking variant was a an electronic intelligence (ELINT) collection aircraft, the ES-3A Shadow. Sixteen were produced and served on board several carriers in small detach-ments. However, the aircraft was consid-ered too expensive to maintain and was discarded in 1999.

Lockheed also proposed variants of an airborne early warning (AEW) configura-tion to succeed the turboprop Hawkeye. The principal version had a fixed, trian-gular radome atop the wing and fuselage,

which was to house a high-power, angle-beam, L-band phased-array (electroni-cally scanned) radar. It would retain a limited weapons capability as well as the in-flight refueling probe. That proposal, too, was rejected.

Including the eight preproduction Vikings and the 16 Shadows, the Navy procured a total of 203 of these aircraft.

The last S-3A was delivered in August 1978 and the last ES-3A in September 1993. The ASW variants were periodi-cally upgraded, with improved sensors and acoustic data-processing capacity; these aircraft were designated S-3B, with the first of about 160 upgrades joining the Fleet in December 1987.

With the demise of the Soviet Union in late 1991 and the subsequent reduction of the Soviet submarine threat, as of 1993 the S-3B was considered a “sea control” rather than ASW aircraft, and in the mid-1990s the ASW equipment and operators were removed. Thus configured, they were employed in ocean surveillance, antishipping (with Harpoon and Maverick missiles), and aerial tanking (with external drogue and fuel tanks). The last role was critical because of the demise of the KA-6D Intruder tankers and the relatively short range of the F/A-18 Hornet strike fighters.

Discarding the Viking from the ASW role initially left the carrier force with only the specialized SH-60F Seahawk helicop-ters for the assignment. However, even that limited capability is being diluted with their replacement by a smaller number of multimission MH-60R Seahawks.

In the post–Cold War era, the cost of operating and maintaining an S-3B

force for the “sea control” mission was considered extravagant, and the surviv-ing Vikings were rapidly retired. The last carrier VS/S-3B squadron went ashore in January 2009.

Five S-3B aircraft have been retained for research and development. The rest of the Vikings—a fine aircraft that served in an important role during the Cold War—have been retired.

Notes1. See N. Polmar, “The Navy’s Guardian,” Naval History (June 2006), pp. 14–15.2. The principal reference for the S-3 is René J. Francillon, Lockheed Aircraft Since 1913 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1987). The most compre-hensive journal article on the aircraft is Jay Miller, ed., “Lockheed S-3A Viking,” Aerophile (February 1979), pp. 308–41.

Mr. Polmar, a columnist for Proceedings and Naval History, is author of the definitive two-volume Air-craft Carriers: A History of Carrier Aviation and Its Influence on World Events (2004, 2008).

U.S. NAVY ( RICARDO J. REYES)

With landing gear down and locked and tailhook fully extended, an S-3B Viking, assigned to Sea Control Squadron 22, approaches the flight deck of the USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) during operations in the Persian Gulf on 3 March 2005. The Checkmates’ Viking is carrying a 300-gallon fuel tank under its right wing and a D-704 buddy refueling pod under its left.• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •


Historic Fleets By Robert J. Cressman

‘The Busy Lady’

Eight days before Christmas 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Captain Daniel J. Callaghan, his naval aide, to

suggest names for a number of authorized ships that included destroyer tenders. On 21 December the Bureau of Navigation provided the chief executive with candi-dates for his consideration, including one that honored the “valley and its environs in east-central California” that encompassed the western slope of the Sierra Nevada.

A week later, the fifth ship of the Dixie class, two of which were already serving in the F leet , became the Yosemi t e , designated AD-19. The Navy awarded the contract for her construction on 10 April 1941. Just under eight months later, the Japanese attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet and naval, military, and air installations on Oahu drew the United States into World War II.

Workers at the Tampa Shipbuilding Company in Florida laid the Yosemite’s keel on 19 January 1942, 43 days after Pearl Harbor. On 16 May 1943, the new tender slid down the ways. Lola W. Powers—whose husband Melville, a retired commander with 30 years’ service who served as assistant general manager of the building yard—performed the christening. Construction continued, with the Yosemite being commissioned on 25 May 1944.

Her sheer size awed young Machinist’s Mate Second Class Dick Wibom: “I couldn’t believe how big she looked.” Captain George C. “Bull” Towner, who at the start of the war had been navigator of the heavy cruiser Louisville (CA-28) on her return voyage to Pearl Harbor from Manila, assumed command of the Yosemite. He told his crewmen on commissioning day that they had been given a fine ship “but [one] with

no reputation and with no ship’s spirit.” Those intangibles lay within their power to earn and generate.

Following her shakedown cruise and fitting-out, which included enlarging the ventilating systems for the engine rooms and combat-information center, the Yosemite sailed for the Pacific, reaching Pearl Harbor on 29 August 1944. She welcomed her first customer, the Caldwell

(DD-605), alongside on 2 September. Over the next five months, the tender provided repairs to 216 ships, of which 126 had been alongside.

The Yosemite then steamed to Eniwetok, then to Ulithi, in the western Caroline Islands, arriving on 3 March 1945 to begin the busiest month yet of her career—tending 73 ships (21 of which she took alongside) that generated 1,689 work requests. Her hardworking crew maintained its sanity among the business of readying ships for the Okinawa campaign with pinochle, clandestine craps games, and music—from ragtime to classical. One year after Bull Towner had talked of reputation and

spirit, he declared on the Yosemite’s first anniversary: “The ‘Mighty Y’ [as she had become known] takes off her hat to no other tender afloat.”

Powered by geared turbines with 11,000 shaft-horsepower that turned twin screws, the Yosemite had made 19.6 knots on trials, making her and her sisters the fastest destroyer tenders of the U.S. Fleet. Her heaviest boom capacity was

20 tons, with the cranes so situated as to be able to service radar antennae. Her bunkers could contain 24,555 barrels of fuel oil and 2,705 of diesel fuel.

She sported a main b a t t e r y e q u a l t o a destroyer’s—four dual-purpose 5-inch/38s, two stepped forward and two aft on the centerline. By the time the Yosemite entered the Fleet, even tenders bristled with antiaircraft weapons, wartime experience having proved the 40-mm Bofors and 20-mm Oer l ikon machine guns far more capable of downing a fast, modern, high-performance plane than the 1.1-inch/75-caliber and .50-caliber machine guns that had been the secondary batteries of auxiliaries.

Several large hatches on both sides of the ship provided easy access to the

spaces within her thin steel shell. On the upper deck, one found an operating room, a sick bay, and a dental office, as well as shops to fix canvas and gyros. In addition, there was a pattern shop and a carpenter shop, a sonar-attack teacher and a typewriter shop. On the main deck were shops to maintain fire-control and optical equipment and one for watch repair, as well as a photographic lab and a design and blueprint room.

A traveling crane serviced the Yosemite’s cavernous machine-shop well to the second deck below. In addition, the repair department spaces on the main deck featured a foundry and a blacksmith shop, as well as pipe, welding, boiler,

COURTESY JAMES MCWATERS, USS Yosemite ASSOCIATION

sailors of the Yosemite, clad in uniforms of the 1960s ranging from undress blues to dungarees, wait in anticipation at mail call outside the ship’s on-board post office. in the days before cell phones and the internet, a vessel’s postal unit provided a vital line of communications with faraway family and friends. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •


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USS Yosemite (AD-19), Dixie-class destroyer tender

as the cruiser and her men had prepared for the presidential visit. The tender’s captain, Harlan R. Bankert Jr. (who had enlisted three months before the Cuban crisis began), noted that his ship’s carpenter shop, print shop, and sail loft had “played a helpful role in the successful completion of the presidential summit.” Certainly, the Belknap’s commanding officer contended, “we could not have accomplished what had to be done without Yosemite’s help. That you did it all with a positive, can-do approach is the hallmark of a great tender.”

Cancellation of the Yosemite’s July 1993 deployment saddened Lieutenant Michael A. Boslet, her chief engineer, who considered his tour in the venerable tender the biggest challenge of his career. “It would have been nice to deploy one last time,” Boslet lamented, “I think she has some miles left in her.”

The Yosemite was decommissioned on 27 January 1994 at Naval Station Mayport, and her “Don’t Tread on Me” jack—flown by the oldest ship in continuous commission—consequently was transferred to the repair ship Jason (AR-8). Stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on the same day, The Busy Lady met her end nearly a decade later, on 18 November 2003, as she served the Fleet for one final time—a target in a Fleet training exercise.

Admiral Arleigh A. Burke, who had flown his flag in the Yosemite as commander, Destroyers, Atlantic Fleet, shortly before he became Chief of Naval Operations, fondly remembered her as “not one of the grand dames of the fleet, but [one that could] repair wounds, care for their crews, and fix their ailments. Without her,” he maintained with a certainty that reflected his experience as a destroyerman, “[the ships of the Fleet] could not have done their duty. She was a true Battle Fleet tender!”

and sheet-metal shops. The second deck housed an even larger machine shop and an electrical shop. The third deck contained the torpedo shop.

The Mighty Y—now referred to by her crew as “The Busy Lady”—accompanied the Pacific Fleet to Japan after hostilities ceased, providing services at Sasebo and Yokosuka. Returning then to the States, she became flagship for commander, Destroyer Force, Atlantic Fleet, at Portland, Maine, on 17 June 1946. Six months later she moved to Newport, Rhode Island; that remained her home port until October 1969, when she steamed to Mayport, Florida, to take up duties there. Her voyages took her from Oslo, Norway, to Portsmouth, England; Athens, Greece; and Naples, Italy.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the Yosemite provided services for destroyers at Kingston, Jamaica. Many years after that dangerous confrontation, she also played a small part in establishing the groundwork for what President George H. W. Bush called “a better U.S.-Soviet relationship . . . an instrument of positive change for the world”—the end of the Cold War. On 3 December 1989, upon the conclusion of summit talks at Malta between Bush and Soviet Chairman Mikhail Gorbachev, the President thanked the captain and crew of the guided-missile cruiser Belknap (CG-26) for their “great support.”

The Belknap’s commanding officer in turn praised the Yosemite’s “superb support under often difficult short-fuse conditions”

J. M. CAIELLA

the Yosemite in the measure 32/3ax camouflage—5-L light gray, 5-o ocean gray, and dull black—in which she went to war. the portside design differed from that employed on the starboard.• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND

the Yosemite provides services for the guided-missile destroyer Tattnall (DDG-19) and guided-missile cruiser Dale (CG-19) as they lie alongside, ca. 1989. By coincidence the cruiser, destroyer, and tender share the same hull number. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Displacement: 14,037 tons

Length: 530 feet, 6 inches

Beam: 73 feet, 4 inches

Draft: 25 feet, 6 inches

Speed: 19.6 knots (trial)

Armament: Four 5-inch/38-caliber guns

Eight 40-mm guns

Twenty-three 20-mm guns

Complement: 1,076 officers and men

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He will forever gaze out at us from an iconic World War II photograph, sitting in the cockpit of his grumman F4F Wildcat fighter with the sun on his face and his hunter’s eyes trained into the distance.

John Lucian Smith was once the leading American fighter ace of World War II, downing 19 enemy planes during the first horrific weeks of the Battle of guadalcanal. Two months later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt presented him with the Medal of Honor at the White House.

Yet the fire that burned in him so brightly as the resolute and inspir-ing combat leader of Marine Fighter Squadron (VMF) 223 eventually flamed out. Thirty years later, at age 57, he walked into the backyard of his Encino, California, home and took his own life.

By any measure, he was an extraordinary man.Smith was born on 26 December 1914 in the small prairie town of

Lexington, Oklahoma. His father, R. O. Smith, worked as a rural-route carrier, delivering mail in a donkey cart. His mother, Pearl, took over the route on R. O.’s day off. John was the youngest of four brothers. The family was close.

Quiet and polite, John proved to be good at most everything he tackled, excelling at football, baseball, horsemanship, and games. His quick, orderly mind also allowed him to succeed academically, although he decided to skip his high school graduation to go on a hunting trip.

He then attended the University of Oklahoma, where he majored in accounting and joined the Reserve Officers Training Corps—shov-

eling coal at the university’s power plant to help pay tuition and expenses.

The Marine Corps Gains a Pilot

After graduation in May 1936, he was commissioned into the U.S. Army Field Artillery, resigning in July 1936 to join the U.S. Marine Corps as a second lieuten-ant. In July 1938, he began flight training at Pensacola,

Florida, and earned his wings as a naval aviator. He was at an officer’s-club dance in Norfolk, Virginia, when he met Louise Outland, who had just earned her master’s degree in English literature at Old Do-minion University. They were married in 1941. The young accountant proved to be a superb

pilot. First assigned to a dive-bomber squadron, he

ART COLLECTION, NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE MARINE CORPS, TRIANgLE, VIRgINIA; INSET:

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Marine Sergeant Hugh Laidman’s painting At the Edge of Henderson Field centers on a

Grumman F4F Wildcat, the storied U.S. fighter that sustained the U.S. campaign on

Guadalcanal in 1942. The commander of the lone Marine Corps fighter

squadron initially on the island, Captain John L. Smith (inset), led by example, shooting down 19 enemy aircraft.



transferred to fighters. After the Japanese at-tack on Pearl Harbor, his squadron was part of the naval task force ordered by the Pacific Fleet commander-in-chief , Admiral Husband Kimmel, to reinforce the garri-son at Wake Island. When that order was rescinded by Kimmel’s successor on 22 De-cember due to his fear of incurring further losses, Smith’s fighter squadron remained at Midway Atoll to con-tinue training.

Shortly before the Battle of Midway in June 1942, Captain Smith was ordered to Pearl Harbor to take command of newly created VMF-223. Most of his pi-lots were green second lieutenants fresh from flight school; Smith’s first task was to mold them into a fighting unit. He put his pilots into the air every day, practicing gunnery and aerial drills. When they weren’t flying, he had them studying intelligence reports from the first confrontations between grumman Wildcats and Japanese Zeros at the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway.

Smith was fortunate to have two experienced pilots as-signed to him. Captain Rivers Morrell Jr., a former standout on the U.S. Naval Academy football team, was his execu-tive officer. Captain Marion E. Carl, who had shot down a Zero at Midway, was the engineering officer.

The younger pilots included Roy Corry, who had scored two victories at Midway. Smith appointed him gunnery officer. Charles “Red” Kendrick was a recent Harvard Law School graduate, and Smith made him the navigation of-ficer. Noyes “Scotty” McLennan, fresh out of Yale, proved to be an excellent aerial tactician. Ken Frazier was the most aggressive of the lot. As with every squadron, there were unusual characters, including the slow-moving “Rapid Robert” Read, and newlywed Elwood Bailey, who com-plained that he had only been allowed one night with his bride before shipping out. All in that group were second lieutenants.

To his enlisted Marines, John Lucian Smith was “Skip-per.” To his peers he wasn’t a “Jack” or a “Johnny”—just simply “John L.” He didn’t invite familiarity and he drove his men hard, but they knew that his tough training regi-men might someday save their lives.

On 2 August 1942, VMF-223 left Pearl Harbor on board the escort carrier Long Island (CVE-1). Sec-ond Lieutenant Fred gutt got acquainted with his commanding officer quickly after Smith stopped him on deck to ask if he played bridge. gutt said yes; they began playing every night.

S o m e t i m e s o n e can take the measure of a man in a seri-ous bridge game, and gutt drew several conclusions about his CO: He was definitely decisive, and, with his

mathematician’s mind, he had an amazing ability to keep track of cards as they were played. He also had the knack of being able to “read” his opponents.

Costly Triumphs over Guadalcanal

On the morning of 7 August 1942, the 1st Marine Divi-sion under Major general Alexander A. Vandegrift landed on the beaches of guadalcanal in the first American of-fensive of the Pacific war, quickly capturing the Japanese airfield being constructed there. But the outcome was soon in doubt. Invasion-force commander Vice Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, concerned about the vulnerability of his carriers to Japanese aircraft, withdrew his force from the beachhead on the evening of 8 August—before half the Marines’ supplies and heavy equipment could be unloaded.

In the months that followed, Japanese efforts to retake the airfield led to three major land battles and seven great naval clashes. At stake was Japan’s aspiration to a Pacific empire. On the same night Fletcher pulled out, the U.S. Navy suffered the worst disaster of its history at the Battle of Savo Island (see story, p. 24). Four Allied heavy cruisers were sunk and another was badly damaged; the Japanese didn’t lose a ship.

With the U.S. Navy gone, Japanese warplanes bombed and strafed the Marine positions on guadalcanal as they pleased. Without air support, the Americans could only endure the daily pounding in their trenches and foxholes. By night, Japanese ships landed more troops to reinforce their garrison. Morale fell with each passing day.

On 20 August 1942, the Long Island launched Smith’s fighter squadron, along with a dive-bomber squadron, under

REx HAMILTON

Captain Smith (center, holding a bottle) and his young pilots of VMF-223 unwind at night in their area on Guadalcanal, certain that whatever sleep they might get will be interrupted by Japanese bombers or naval gunfire targeting their airfield. Thousands of miles from home in a remote jungle outpost, several of the Marines nonetheless are sporting civilian pajamas.


the overall command of Major Dick Mangrum. Seventy-five minutes later, the planes began to land at newly named Henderson Field on guadalcanal.

“Thank god you’ve come,” said an emotional general Vandegrift.

Smith and his pilots set up camp next to the airfield before night fell. They were barely asleep when Japanese shock troops made their first assault against the Marine defensive perimeter, losing nearly 1,000 dead in an unsuc-cessful attack.

The following day, Smith led four F4F Wildcats on their first patrol. Over Savo Island he spotted six Zeros heading south, and turned to meet them. The first Zero in line fired a machine-gun burst at him before diving out of sight. Smith rolled over and fired at the next Zero in line. It spi-raled down. Later, when he had brought the flight home, Smith didn’t boast about that first kill. Instead he spoke to his pilots about the superior qualities of the Zero and the skill of Japanese aviators.

Unending Aerial Combat

From then on, the Marine fliers were in the air almost every day. When coast-watchers would radio that a Japa-nese aircraft formation was on its way, a scramble flag was run up in front of the operations tent. Within minutes the pilots were clawing their way through the air to gain altitude.

VMF-223’s assignment was to destroy enemy bombers. When Smith saw that the Japanese usually attacked in a large V formation with the bombers in the lead and the Zeros behind, he concluded that a hit-and-run strategy would give his pilots the best chance of success. He ordered them to go after the bombers with overhead or

high-side attacks to avoid the bombers’ tail guns. If the Zeros engaged the Wildcats, his pilots were to fire a burst or two and disengage. The Wildcats flew in pairs. In a dogfight, the wingman would try to shoot the Zero off the element-leader’s tail.

An important victory for the Americans came on 24 August, when ten enemy bombers and six Zeros were de-stroyed. Marion Carl was credited with four kills, making him the first Marine Corps ace of the war. There was a cost. Elwood Bailey disappeared over the sea after shoot-ing down two Zeros. Fred gutt was seriously wounded in a dogfight. Roy Corry vanished after attacking a flight of Zeros. “Rapid Robert” Read was wounded when a Zero shot up his plane as it was lifting off the field. He was forced to ditch into the sea.

Outnumbered in every action, Smith knew VMF-223 couldn’t win a battle of attrition. He told his pilots it would only get rougher and that they had to pull together. The only way to stop the relentless Japanese was to knock them down and survive to fight again.

In the next three days, Smith shot down four more bomb-ers. On 30 August, he and his wingman Red Kendrick were at 28,000 feet over guadalcanal when he spotted 22 Zeros below them. Diving, Smith closed on one of the planes and opened fire. It exploded. Another Zero emerged from a cloud and he locked in behind it. Another quick burst and it blew up. A third Zero came at him head-on and they both opened fire as the planes closed at a combined speed of 500 knots. Flames began shooting up out of the Japanese

THE PETER B. MERSKY COLLECTION

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, with an assist from Louise Smith—John L.’s wife—presents the Medal of Honor to Major Smith at the White House in February 1943. When he had received the Navy Cross the previous October, Smith had written to his wife that he was “proud to get it, except that [his superiors] think that it is good payment for seeing young pilots who are sharing my tent go down in flames day after day.”


fighter’s cockpit, and Smith saw the enemy pilot’s head on fire as he flashed past. Smith observed another Zero as he was descending to land, and closed to within 50 feet before opening fire. The Zero flew straight into the ground.

Triumphs Come with Mounting Toll

From 21 August to 11 September, the Imperial Japanese Navy launched more than 300 air sorties against guadal-canal. The fighter pilots of VMF-223 (reinforced by VMF-224 on 30 August) claimed the destruction of 29 Zeros, 37 bombers, and 11 single-engine carrier bombers.

And Smith continued to lose pilots. On 5 September, Rivers Morrell was wounded and put out of action. On the 13th, Scotty McLennan, the Yale man who had shot down three enemy planes, disappeared after a fight with six Zeros.

Every night the airfield was bombed or shelled by Japa-nese planes, ships, and submarines. The pilots sat around their campsite in pajamas, sometimes sharing a bottle of whiskey. They were now contending with skin rashes, malaria, crotch rot, hives, and dysentery, while subsisting largely on Japanese rice, dehydrated potatoes, and black coffee. The whiskey helped them sleep.

By early September John L. Smith had shot down 12 Japanese planes, Marion Carl had destroyed 11, Second Lieutenant Ken Frazier 9, Second Lieuten-ants gene Trowbridge and Zenneth Pond 6 each, and Fred gutt 4. The friendly rivalry between Smith and the gentlemanly, mild-mannered Carl became legendary.

On 9 September, Carl had just shot down a Zero when his plane was hit from behind. His cockpit afire, he bailed out, land-ing in the ocean about 30 miles from Henderson Field. Picked up by a na-tive in a canoe, he spent five days in an epic ad-venture of survival before returning from the dead. After rounding up his per-sonal effects, which had already been “redistrib-uted,” he reported to Ma-rine Brigadier general Roy geiger, the commanding officer of guadalcanal’s

newly nicknamed Cactus Air Force (for the island’s code name). geiger informed him that in Carl’s absence, John L. had raised his victory total to 16. Carl remained at 12.

“goddammit, general, ground him for five days,” Carl responded.

Smith kept his men focused on destroying Japanese bombers, but there were always more the next day. In the face of almost insurmountable odds, he was unwavering. They would fly until there were no planes left or they were relieved.

His pilots had started out respecting him. The ones now remaining were in awe.

On 30 September, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, com-mander of the Pacific Fleet, flew to guadalcanal to find out if it could be held. While there, he took the opportunity to personally decorate VMF-223’s Smith and Carl with the Navy Cross. Red Kendrick and Second Lieutenant Willis Lees III received the Distinguished Flying Cross.

‘I Am Sick of the Whole Mess’

Two days later, coast-watchers failed to detect a major Japanese air attack. The formation was closing when Smith led his Wildcats up to meet the threat. Bursting through

the top cloud layer, he saw more than 20 Zeros above him. Before he could dive back into the clouds, they attacked.

Willis Lees was the first to go. His Wildcat aflame, he bailed out and was never seen again. Smith’s plane was riddled with bullets, but after dropping through another cloud layer, he encountered three Zeros. He destroyed one, but the other two scored hits, knocking out his carburetor.

After crash-landing, he began a five-mile trek through Japanese lines. At one point, he came upon a wrecked Wildcat. It was Scotty McLennan’s plane, his shattered body still in-side. Arriving back at the airfield, he was told that Red Kendrick was missing, believed to have gone down in nearby jungle. Smith led a search party and found

NAVY ART COLLECTION, NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAgE COMMAND

Then–Lieutenant Colonel John L. Smith posed beside the tail section of his F4F for this portrait by Albert K. Murray. The onetime leading fighter ace of World War II was discharged in 1960 at age 45—having spent 23 years in the Marine Corps and serving in two wars.


the plane, with Red still strapped into the cockpit. They buried him next to the wreckage.

Smith poured out his thoughts in a letter to his wife:

5 October 1942. Louise Darling . . . I haven’t the least idea of what’s going to happen to me and this squadron. . . . Have lost the best I started out with. Lost one the same day I was shot down. . . I would have rather it had been me instead of him. Hope I can see his family when I get back and tell them what a swell Marine he was. I know they will be proud of him. He just received the Distinguished Flying Cross. . . . Really no justice in war, or he certainly would have gotten through. I have gotten 18 of them so far and am getting sick of seeing them burn and blow up in my face. Several times I have had to duck to get out of the debris. . . . An Admiral pinned the Navy Cross on me the other morning. I am proud to get it, except that they think that it is good payment for seeing young pilots who are sharing my tent go down in flames day after day. I don’t mind saying that I am sick of the whole mess. . . . All my love to you, John

Only nine of the original pilots of VMF-223 were left.

Newly promoted Major Smith would destroy one more enemy aircraft before the squadron officially was relieved on 11 October 1942. By then he was the top American fighter ace of the war, and Marion Carl was number two. VMF-223 was credited with more than 100 aerial victories.

More important, the verdict on guadalcanal was in. Al-though there would be bitter fighting in the months ahead, the Marines were going to hold. VMF-223 had made a difference.

The Nation’s Highest Honor

Reaching San Francisco ten days later, Smith was in-formed that his next assignment would be a war-bond tour. The news didn’t make him happy. When he got to his home in Norfolk, Louise was shocked at his condition. He was yellow from jaundice and in a state of emotional ex-haustion.

He began the tour in November. At every rally he spoke about the real heroes of the Pacific war, the ones he had served with who hadn’t come back. A Marine Corps publicist sent Smith a message that such “negativity” was hurting bond sales.

He ignored it. As he traveled cross-country, Smith reached out to the families of his squadron-mates who had been killed.

In February 1943, he was ordered to report to the White House. While he and Louise waited to meet President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Admiral John “Slew” McCain, who had commanded land-based air operations in the theater that included guadalcanal, joined them. Louise thought McCain seemed as nervous as they were; when he tried to roll a cigarette, loose tobacco rained down his blues. A few minutes later, Louise watched proudly as President Roosevelt awarded John L. the Medal of Honor.

Smith requested another combat assignment in the Pa-cific and was made executive officer of Marine Air group (MAg) 32, which was taking part in the liberation of the Philippines. Months later he became the only fighter ace in the war to command an air group. He received the Legion of Merit with combat “V” for his role in providing close-ground support for the “mud Marines” in the campaign.

When the war ended, Smith stayed in the Corps—it was his life. Not all his surviving squadron-mates from VMF-223

THE PETER B. MERSKY COLLECTION

Smith was back in combat eight years after the end of World War II, this time as a colonel commanding Marine Aircraft Group (MAG) 33 in Korea in 1953. Some believe that his vocal advocacy of Marine aviation kept him from promotion to brigadier general in 1959, a devastating blow to Smith.


felt that way. Fred gutt, who had become an ace with eight victories, had had enough. For every John L. Smith and Mar-ion Carl he had served under, there were too many “horses’ asses” who won commands on seniority rather than merit.

Deployed to the Korean conflict in July 1953 as an air-group commander, now-Colonel Smith flew combat mis-sions in the weeks leading up to the armistice. While keep-ing the unit combat-ready after the shooting stopped, he spent considerable time assisting refugee children dislocated by the war.

Renewing Family Ties

Over the next four years he served in a number of staff and operational billets, always advocating aggressively for a strengthened Marine air arm. His message was not always well received.

While stationed at Quantico, Virginia, he began to focus on his three children, John L. Jr., Caroline, and Owen. When 12-year-old Caroline showed an interest in horseback riding, he renewed his own interest, buying a big palomino and teaching Caroline how to jump. He seemed to instinctively know how to overcome her fears. Soon she was jumping four-foot fences.

At one of the Quantico parades, a horse ahead of them bolted, carrying away its female rider. Smith took off in pursuit, caught up to the galloping horse, and whisked the woman safely out of the saddle.

One year he traveled by car across the country with his son Owen. After visiting the grand Canyon, they stopped at John’s Oklahoma birthplace, taking a photograph there in front of the sign erected to celebrate the town’s most famous son. Later, Smith went calling on some of his moth-er’s old friends, now in their 80s. Owen had never seen his father be deferential to any man, but around the crocheting ladies he was like a schoolboy.

In 1958 Smith took his family to a dedication ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery for the Tomb of the Un-knowns of World War II and Korea. President Dwight D. Eisenhower invited Smith to join him for a brief prayer service out of the public eye.

Marion Carl, who considered Smith the finest combat leader he had ever known, was certain that his friend would make brigadier general, but in 1959 Smith was passed over for promotion. Carl concluded that he had alienated senior ground officers by lobbying too strongly for Marine air. It was a bitter blow for Smith.

Depression and Discharge

On 30 December 1959, Smith checked himself into Bethesda Naval Hospital and asked for help in dealing with depression. After being admitted, he was placed in a locked psychiatric ward. Told that the medical staff was on holiday, he then spent the next 12 days in confinement. Marion Carl visited him in the hospital, but there was nothing he could do to help his friend.

On 10 January 1960, he had his first consultation—with a flight surgeon doing temporary work in psychiatry while pursuing a career in space medicine. From 10 January to 15 February, Smith had seven 30-minute sessions with the doc-tor, after which he was officially diagnosed with “Depres-sion Condition #3140.” A clinical board summary—based solely on the flight surgeon’s diagnosis—said: “He has now received maximum benefit of hospitalization and further treatment is not indicated at this time.” Aside from the seven conferences, he had received no treatment.

John L. Smith was discharged from the Marine Corps on 30 September 1960, deemed unfit for duty. During his 23-year career, he had earned the Medal of Honor, Navy Cross, Distinguished Flying Cross, Legion of Merit, Silver Star, five Bronze Stars, Britain’s Distinguished Service Order, and more than a dozen other medals and decorations.

A source of pride soon after, however, was being invited to the White House in 1962 to meet a fellow decorated veteran of the Solomon Islands campaign, President John F. Kennedy. They shared a few words in the Rose garden.

Soon after being discharged, Smith began working as a mar-keting executive in the aerospace industry, spending more than ten years at the Rocketdyne Corporation in California. According to his daughter, Caroline, he didn’t enjoy some


aspects of the work—it was called “mar-keting” but more often it was mere glad-handing. He bristled at being trotted out to play golf with potential customers and being introduced as “John L. Smith, our Medal of Honor winner.” But it was part of the job.

Rocketdyne laid him off in 1972, when he was 57. He was unable to find another job, but later that year he joined the other survivors from VMF-223 in San Diego to mark the 30-year anniversary of their guadalcanal service. Fred gutt, at the time a building contractor, was thrilled to see him again. “John L.” appeared to be enjoying life and looked great.

A month after the reunion, Fred re-ceived a phone call from 223 squadron-mate Conrad Winter, who told him that their beloved CO had shot himself. Both were shocked and devastated.

There was never any pretense in John Lucian Smith. From the quiet boy who grew up on the Oklahoma prairie to the celebrated war hero honored by three presidents and interred at Arlington Na-tional Cemetery, he lived his life simply and directly. His philosophy of leadership can be summed up in a statement he made to a fellow Marine officer in 1942 during the Battle of guadalcanal: “I’m a rifleman commanding a fighter squadron.”

Sources: The material related to the personal life of John L. Smith came from interviews with his son Owen Ballard Smith and his daughter, Caroline Smith Wilson. Owen Smith provided his father’s personal wartime letters along with the official records related to his hospitalization in 1960. Peter Mersky provided the accounts of Louise Outland Smith’s wartime recollections from personal interviews. For material related to Smith’s combat service, the author relied on interviews with Fred gutt, who served under Smith in VMF-223; Barrett Tillman; John B. Lund-strom; Col. Joseph Alexander; and Bruce Carl, the son of Major general Marion Carl; along with written contribu-tions from Frank Olynyk. Books and periodical sources included The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign, by John B. Lundstrom (Naval Institute Press, 1993); Guadalcanal, by Richard B. Frank (Random House, 1990); Pushing the Envelope: The Career of Fighter Ace and Test Pilot Marion Carl, by Marion Carl with Barrett Tillman (Naval Institute Press, 1994); The Cactus Air Force, by Thomas g. Miller Jr. (Harper & Row, 1969); Guadalcanal Diary, by Richard Tregaskis (Penguin, 1943); A History of Marine Attack Squadron 223, by First Lieutenant Brett A. Jones, USMC (Marine Corps History and Museums Division, 1978); Life magazine, 7 December 1942; Van Nuys (CA) News, 16 June 1972; The Oklahoman, 6 January 1948. Websites included Arlington National Cemetery (arlingtoncem-etery.net/johnluci.htm.) and acepilots.com.

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What makes a warship excellent rather than merely serviceable? What consti-tutes a nautical turkey, or causes an ugly duckling of a ship to develop into a sea-going swan? If you visit Stockholm, you

can see a classic turkey: the 17th-century capital ship Vasa, which rolled over and sank on her first voyage before even clearing harbor. She was later recovered and restored and is now on display in a museum. Since her loss, naval archi-tects have largely learned to avoid disaster, but turkeydom is a lot more subtle. good or bad really depends on point of view. Ships last a long time, sometimes 30 or even 50 years. But how well do they last?

Maybe the best criterion for judging ships is how well they survive in the face of changing circumstances—not just changes in technology but also the inevitable changes in the world. During the Cold War, it seemed that while technology changed, the global status quo was fixed; the world of, say, 1985 was recognizably that of 1955 or even 1950. Once the Cold War ended, all the pent-up pressure for change appeared to burst out. And the world of 2012 is not really the same as that of 2000; global threats have changed, as have naval missions.

Judging the

When it comes to warships, bigger is usually better, and the most successful vessels are often those that are adaptable to changing times and technologies.

By NormaN FriedmaN Badfrom the

Atlanta vs. Dido

World War II is a good place to begin a study of ship-design success, mediocrity, and failure. During the war both technology and the art of naval warfare changed at a break-neck pace. What seemed perfectly reasonable in 1939 was obsolete and often unusable in 1945. Comparing different navies that had similar outlooks—the U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy—highlights this fact.

Cruisers saw a lot of action in both navies. In the late 1930s, the U.S. and Royal navies built small cruis-ers armed with dual-purpose guns: the American Atlan-tas and the British Didos. Both classes were often called antiaircraft cruisers, but neither really was. They were both conceived mainly to work with groups of destroyers, backing them against the heavy ships the destroyers were expected to attack. The British were far more obsessed than Americans with limiting the cruisers’ size, which they equated to the ships’ cost, and they also selected a heavier, 5.25-inch dual-purpose gun, rather than the U.S. 5-inch gun.

Both classes were well liked in wartime, but the British clearly found the Didos too small and too tight. Late in the war they nearly opted for a new class of ships with similar main batteries—but enlarged from the former ships’ 5,500 tons to more than to 8,000 tons, which says a lot about how successful the small Didos really were.

The relatively heavy 5.25-inch gun was chosen for sec-ondary batteries on battleships mainly because it had the punch to stop an enemy destroyer approaching to attack with torpedoes, not because it could be fired quickly against attacking aircraft. It fired much more slowly than the U.S. Navy’s 5-inch/38-caliber gun.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

ABOVE LEfT: NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAgE COMMAND; BOTTOM: U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE PHOTO ARCHIVE

The USS Spruance (above left) and her classmates confirmed that bigger is often better; the cruiser-size destroyers were large enough to accommodate weapon upgrades. But the U.S. Navy got relatively little from its large World War II fleet of PT boats. After the conflict, most were either destroyed, including PT-362 (bottom), or sold.


In fact the British found the 5.25-inch guns so heavy and poorly adapted to antiaircraft fire that their carriers instead were armed with 4.5-inch guns, which were considered antiaircraft weapons. Their cruisers had 4-inch antiaircraft guns. The combination of small ship size and heavy gun was so unfortunate that repeat Dido-class cruisers built during the war sacrificed one of their five twin 5.25s. Indeed, most British cruisers of this period gave up one turret for a more powerful antiaircraft armament, which left them with half the secondary battery of a battleship.

In both cases the sacrifice bought light antiaircraft guns, which were intended mainly to defend the cruisers against aircraft heading for them, rather than to contribute to the area defense of a formation. Presumably one measure of the value of an antiaircraft ship was the ratio of heavy antiair-craft weapons, which would help defend other ships, to the light weapons needed for the ship to survive.

The U.S. Atlanta-class light cruisers displaced about 6,000 tons. As conceived, they had substantially less light-antiaircraft firepower than the Didos, and they too had to sacrifice heavy guns to provide enough light guns to protect themselves. They were designed with eight twin 5-inch/38-caliber mounts, two of which (the worst-placed ones on the ships) were removed. That left as many 5-inch antiaircraft guns as on board any of the U.S. cruisers that helped protect carriers. Instead of backing destroyer attacks, the Atlantas found themselves, along with other new U.S. surface warships, covering the carriers that now provided the Pacific fleet’s main offensive punch.

The Atlanta-class cruisers had enough reserve of stabil-ity to accept a very heavy self-defense battery plus a full radar outfit, which was badly needed in their new role. The Atlantas were both lucky (they featured the best dual-purpose gun of the war, and an excellent fire-control system

U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE PHOTO ARCHIVE

Atlanta-class light cruisers featured either 12 or 16 5-inch dual-purpose guns, leaving them lightly armed by traditional cruiser standards but well equipped for protecting Pacific war carriers from air attack. Top: The Atlanta helped defend the carrier Enterprise at the Battle of the Eastern Solomons before being sunk at the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. Bottom: HMS Dido and her sister ships were armed with heavier but slower-firing 5.25-inch guns, which were not as effective against aircraft.


to boot) and large enough to make use of that luck. The U.S. Navy showed its satisfaction with the ships by building modified Atlanta-class cruisers during the war and by choos-ing enlarged Atlantas (with new 5-inch/54-caliber guns) as the last cruisers it ordered during the conflict.

Why did the Atlanta cruisers succeed where the Didos probably did not? Larger size made them more adaptable to the new kind of war the U.S. Navy fought in the Pacific (quite aside from the fact that a far better power plant gave them the range they needed). The ships were not so large that they could easily be adapted to the new postwar tech-nology, although they were seriously considered for some conversions. In contrast, the one attempt to modernize the Didos with new guns was abandoned when it turned out that the ships would not have the space for more than a minute or so of fire from the weapons.

Essex vs. Illustrious

There’s a consistent pattern to the run of U.S. and British warships. British designers were proud of holding down the size of their ships, whether or not they were forced to do so by pre-war treaty obligations. They clearly equated size with cost, and the de-signers understood that more ships is better, which is certainly true.

But British design records con-tain no suggestion that technology might be changing in a direction that would demand larger ships. That is particularly difficult to understand in the case of aircraft carriers; by the 1930s it must have been obvious that airplanes were changing rapidly. U.S. carrier de-signers were lucky because they began work on the main wartime U.S. carriers, the Essex class, after the outbreak of war in Europe had ended the naval-treaty system that limited size.

The masterpiece of British car-rier design was the armored-deck Illustrious. Carrier designers were always aware that a flattop was a disaster waiting to happen, and the most obvious way for a major mishap to occur would be for the enemy to put bombs through the flight deck. The Illustrious actually had an armored hangar rather than a completely armored flight deck, but even her limited amount of deck armor made a great difference—particularly in the face of kamikazes at the end of the war.

As with the case of the Didos, there was a key “but.” When the Illustrious was designed in 1936, the Royal Navy dismissed the possibility that carrier fighters could beat off bombers (visual warning time was too short). It was willing to settle for the limited number of strike aircraft that could be stowed in a relatively small, closed, protected hangar. Part of the price paid was reduced freeboard (seakeeping) and a shorter, slower hull.

Ironically, just as the ship was being designed, the first radars were being tested; they held the promise that carrier fighters might be able to defend carriers—and therefore that the ships should have much larger air groups. When that became obvious, the latter ships of the Illustrious class were redesigned with double hangars, but the price included such low overhead clearance that later aircraft were dif-ficult or impossible to stow. That did not make for a great postwar future.

The U.S. Navy built the larger Essex-class carriers that had unarmored, open hangars but armored hangar decks, which made them very difficult to sink, whatever happened

to their flight decks. The most important difference was that the American carriers accommodated air wings that were nearly three times the size of those on board British carriers, and large air wings perfectly fit the new kind of warfare being waged in the Pacific. Plus, the open hangar made the ships relatively easy to modernize postwar. De-

NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAgE COMMAND

Ordnancemen work on bombs amid F6F Hellcat fighters while other sailors watch a movie in the Essex-class Yorktown’s large, open hangar. Essex carriers could accommodate air wings nearly three times the size of those on board British carriers.


spite plans to update all of their six wartime fleet carriers, the British modernized just one because they soon realized that the work would be (as it was) a drawn-out nightmare, due in part to the armored hangars.

The U.S. Navy never would have been able to prosecute the Pacific war had it relied on small British-type carriers. In 1941, when they first saw HMS Illustrious, U.S. officers were very impressed and wanted armored flight decks. They finally got them in the Midways—but that was because the Navy was willing to build 45,000-ton carriers rather than the 27,000 tons of an Essex or the 23,000 tons of an Illustrious.

Size bought the flexibility for some Essex-class carriers to remain in the front line of naval aviation through the early 1970s as the airplanes on board drastically changed. In 1939, for example, a typical attack bomber might weigh

12,000 pounds, but by 1960 the A3D weighed about 70,000 pounds.

The fact that size mattered a great deal was not really a new lesson. After the Wash-ington Naval Conference of 1921, the U.S. Navy decided to convert two incomplete bat-tle cruisers into the carriers Lexington (CV-2) and Saratoga (CV-3). These huge ships were so large that by the mid-1920s, well before they could be completed, they were being derided as white elephants. Analysis at the Naval War College seemed to show that it would be far better to build numerous smaller carriers, because together they would have greater flight-deck area and hence greater total aircraft capacity. The USS Ranger (CV-4) was designed and built on this basis.

While the Ranger was being constructed, the two white elephants entered service and demonstrated that size mattered. In this case, it was soon obvious that the total number of aircraft in a fleet was not as important as the number on board each carrier, because the lat-ter comprised U.S. carrier aviation’s tactical unit, the air wing. (Later, well into World War II, the U.S. Navy began conducting multicar-rier air-group operations.) Size also bought speed and survivability. The Lexington and Saratoga, but not the Ranger, fought in the Pacific. The bigger carriers were not turkeys; they were ugly ducklings that became swans.

Many of the ships the U.S. Navy built during World War II reinforce the bigger-is-better lesson. Designers always want to cre-ate the tightest possible package that fulfills specific requirements. for various reasons, by 1941 the U.S. Navy was demanding enough to get larger packages than those of some

other navies (german heavy cruisers and destroyers were larger, apparently without getting as much for the tonnage). During the war, British captains periodically wrote that they wished they could have similarly large ships, and by the time Japan surrendered the British were designing and building U.S.-size destroyers. However, the usual response by the British design authority was that the American ships were large simply because their designers were incompetent; they produced loose, expensive ships.

The naval world changed during the war, as conflict in the Pacific increasingly became carrier warfare. It changed even more postwar, largely through the introduction of new technologies such as missiles, jet aircraft, and heavy electron-ics. for the U.S. Navy, the changes were affordable largely because its wartime carriers, cruisers, destroyers, and sub-

How Can You Tell?By Norman friedman

According to an old proverb, “to understand all is to forgive all.”

The more you know about how and why ships were designed, the more dif-ficult it is to dismiss them as disasters. It is also difficult to be sure how successful some ships actually were. Knowing how many of a particular design were built doesn’t help. When a country mobi-lizes, it tries to mass-produce whatever is then being built.

The U.S. Navy ended up with 175 Fletchers because that was the U.S. destroyer class in production in 1941—and the Fletchers happened to be an excellent design. The Navy ended up with a lot of “flush-deckers” because that destroyer design was in production in 1917—and, because its designers mistakenly denigrated the value of a forecastle, the ships were not so excellent, particularly in the North Atlantic. A lot of battleships survived through the interwar period not necessarily because they were excellent, but because arms-control treaties precluded new construction that would have outmoded them.

That having been said, clearly the Royal Navy was a lot happier with Queen Elizabeth–class battleships than with the slower R class. Remember, too, how few World War II capital ships were tested in the mission for which they had been conceived—and how often disaster was due not to some

basic design flaw but to a detail. Off guadalcanal, the South Dakota (BB-57) was temporarily knocked out not by enemy fire but by a circuit breaker that was probably tripped by the vibration of her own propeller. While the tripped breaker was a detail, the vibration was a design flaw, but surely the ship’s basic design was not to blame.

To make matters more complicated, it is difficult to compare ships within a navy, let alone on a navy-to-navy basis, because different navies usually operate under rather different conditions. The British, who had long operated in the rough North Atlantic, were better at designing seakeeping hulls than the U.S. Navy during the Cold War. And the need for improved seakeeping resulted in the Arleigh Burkes’ unusual hull form.

Comparison within the U.S. Navy is difficult because so few officers indi-vidually experienced ships of different designs (but with much the same mis-sion) at much the same stage of their careers. The comparable stage of career is important; an ensign and a captain on board the same ship at the same time will generally have radically dif-ferent experiences. further complicat-ing matters, much obviously depends on the systems and weapons on board those ships. A ship armed with her original surface-to-air missiles performs far worse than the same vessel equipped with upgraded weapon systems.


marines were so large that they were adaptable. They were probably never seen as turkeys, but they were certainly swans in retrospect.

The only real criticism was that having been designed mainly for the calm Pacific, the ships were ill-adapted to patrolling rough northern waters, which Cold War service usually entailed. The British had much better hull forms for seakeeping. However, many of their well-designed warships could not accommodate new technologies, resulting in the size of the Royal Navy contracting faster than necessary.

for example, both navies embarked on development of surface-to-air missiles in 1944. The American missiles were the Terrier and Talos; the British was the Seaslug. The U.S. Navy managed to field the Terrier relatively quickly because it could be installed aboard two heavy cruisers, the Boston (CA-69) and Canberra (CA-70). The British could not even imagine quickly fielding the Seaslug because their cruisers were too small. They nearly lost the opportunity to field it altogether because they thought it was necessary to build a massive new cruiser for the purpose. It took first Sea Lord Louis Mountbatten to insist that the missile could be squeezed aboard a big de-stroyer, and that squeezing took enormous ingenuity.

Postwar Destroyers and Frigates

Perhaps the greatest recent transformation from ugly duckling to swan were the U.S. Spruance-class destroy-ers, only recently decommis-sioned. When completed, the Spruances seemed to be cruiser-size ships with frig-ate armaments—a ludicrous combination. They were so large because plans originally called for a single ship that could be completed as either a missile (antiaircraft) destroyer or an antisubmarine de-stroyer (essentially the missile destroyer with missiles re-moved). Doing that was less expensive than building two separate classes.

But the program was halted before the missile destroyers could be built. The only Spruance-class missile destroyers were four ships laid down for the shah of Iran and then taken over by the U.S. Navy as the Kidd-class destroyers.

The sheer size of the Spruance hull, however, permitted the addition of considerable weaponry that could not possibly have fit into a smaller ship.

The first sign that the big Spruance hull was well worth-while was that it could be adapted to take the Aegis missile system—as Ticonderoga-class cruisers. That mattered enor-mously. At the time it was the only economical way to put Aegis to sea, the alternative being a larger and unaffordable nuclear cruiser. Score one for the ugly duckling. Similarly, the antisubmarine launcher forward in the Spruance-class destroyers could be replaced by 64 vertical cells, each car-rying a Tomahawk land-attack missile. By the time they were retired, the Spruances were valued as general-purpose destroyers with substantial land-attack firepower, a role that carried over into the later Zumwalt class, conceived to replace them.

The surface combatants the U.S. Navy built to succeed the Spruances almost might be considered an experiment in tight vs. loose design. The Oliver Hazard Perry–class frigates were deliberately cost-controlled, largely by limit-ing their size. They were mainly intended to fill an air-defense gap, and to pay for that capability they sacrificed the sort of long-range sonar with which Spruances were equipped.


The USS Knox and her sister frigates were designed as antisubmarine warfare convoy escorts, but soon after the Cold War ended and the threat of enemy submarines diminished, the ships were scrapped or sold to foreign navies.


The frigates were useful in a Cold War context, but life is unpredictable. When the Perrys were conceived in 1971, the Cold War seemed to be a fixed fact of life. Twenty years later it was over. Most NATO navies had concentrated on Cold War tasks: antisubmarine warfare and defensive mine countermeasures. With the end of that conflict, neither was nearly as important.

The U.S. Navy discarded its specialized convoy escorts, mainly Knox-class frigates, and it soon abandoned most of the Perrys. Surviving ones had their missile system, for which so much had been sacrificed at their outset, removed because it was considered ineffective against current “pop-up” threats. If this article had been written in 1980, the Perrys and the Knoxes would have been swans. Now they look more like turkeys. The big U.S. destroyers and cruisers look like the real swans, because they were conceived for the type of strike warfare the U.S. Navy espoused in the 1980s. Size pays.

The Allure of Speed

At the other end of the spectrum, both during World War II and in the 1970s the U.S. Navy invested in small, fast combatants: respectively, PT boats and missile hydrofoils (PHMs). In each case speed was an overriding virtue, the theory being that a really fast ship could dart out, strike, and escape before an enemy could return fire. Many other navies thought the same way before and after World War II. The Soviets and their Chinese pupils, for example, built flocks of fast torpedo and missile boats. Swans or turkeys?

The U.S. Navy got remarkably little out of its big PT fleet in World War II, and it discarded nearly all the boats immediately afterward. The official verdict was that they had been nearly useless. They had effectively interdicted Japanese barge traffic in the Solomons, but that task did not require the speed built into them, which resulted in the boats being flimsy and relatively dangerous. On other occasions, as in the Philippines, they failed to hit their major combatant targets, perhaps because firing effectively from a small, bouncing boat is rather difficult.

As for the PHMs, only 6 of a planned 30 were built, and they were discarded at about midlife. More tellingly, foreign buyers could not be found. The PHMs incorporated a revolutionary form of foil control that made it possible for them to operate and maintain speed in far rougher weather than simpler hydrofoils. The craft should therefore have been rather attractive. Moreover, Boeing, which had built the PHMs and owned rights to their technology, could not find any buyers for somewhat comparable hydrofoils; no one in the West really needed very high speed.

That should not have been a great surprise. High speed always has been very attractive, but those interested rarely if ever appreciate how much it costs—and not just in money. Before World War II, the french and the Italians competed in building ultrafast destroyers, to the extent that

builders advertised trial speeds in suc-cessive editions of Jane’s Fighting Ships.

In 1945 the french liaison officer with the U.S. Pacific fleet wrote that the ef-fort had been pointless. High-powered machinery was too delicate, consumed too much space, and required too much fuel. Tactically, it bought nothing. The french naval staff listened and then abandoned the search for high speed in the postwar Surcouf-class destroyers. Once aircraft became the core of fleets, warships only needed enough speed to keep up with carriers. No ship could be fast enough to evade an attacking plane or helicopter.

Value of Size in Subs

Submarines are a special case. They are particularly diffi-cult to design because their underwater volume must exactly balance their weight. Perhaps the most successful U.S. subs were the “fleet boats” of World War II. They were extremely effective in their design role: destroying the enemy’s mer-chant fleet while scouting for the U.S. fleet. Probably no smaller submarine would have done as well.

The fleet boats also met the standard implied in this arti-cle: flexibility in the face of dramatically changing context and technology. They proved well suited to modernization (fleet snorkel and guppy programs) and also to completely new roles, such as serving as radar pickets and strategic mis-sile carriers. In the process, they validated the U.S. Navy’s view that size was well worthwhile. At the time, other navies derided the fleet boats for their size. The British, for example, opted for more economical submarines. They may have performed better in constricted European waters, although even that is not certain.

Evaluating more modern submarines is difficult; however, the lesson generally has been that size pays. The least suc-cessful nuclear submarines were the ones drastically cut down to reduce their costs: the Tullibee (SSN-597) and the Skates. The best of the lot were probably the Los Angeles class, because they had the most “stretch” in them. This included the ability to add Tomahawk missiles. It seems unlikely that any earlier, more tightly designed subma-rines could have accommodated a substantial number of unmanned underwater vehicles—again, an important role unimagined when the submarines were designed.


“Bigger is better” also applies to submarines. When commissioned, the Los Angeles and her classmates were derided by many observers as too large, but they had room to fit later improvements and weapon systems.


Many observers had derided the Los Angeles (SSN-688) as too large, her design governed by Admiral Hyman Rick-over’s atavistic insistence that to increase speed she should have a massive new power plant rather than a much more efficient hydrodynamic hull and a less powerful power plant. greater hull size probably encouraged other improve-ments, which might have been difficult to shoehorn into the more compact hull that many had preferred.

The Lessons of Ship Design

What conclusions can be drawn about ship design? One lesson, at least in surface ships, is that reaching for spectac-ular performance, speed for example, is often counterpro-ductive: The enemy’s weapons generally outrun ships. The sacrifices made for a few knots may be difficult to identify, but they are real and later on become unacceptable. Also size pays, even if at the outset it may seem wasteful. The larger the ship, the better the opportunity to modernize her to keep up with a changing world.

A navy needs numbers. Usually that is translated to mean that ships should be made as inexpensively as pos-sible. However, there is another way to look at numbers.

The number of ships the U.S. Navy can maintain is, roughly, the number the Navy can build each year multi-plied by the number of years a ship remains viable—and viability is a matter both of how well the ship survives the rigors of the sea and of how well she survives the rigors of a rapidly changing world. The bigger the ship, the better she will survive the sea. If bigger also means better at adapt-

ing to the changing world, the answer to numbers is probably to build fewer ships each year but to make them big.

This may seem somewhat simplistic. for example, large ships require large crews, and building fewer ships each year makes it more difficult to replace those lost in action. But the overall lesson remains. The only real caveat is that the fundamentals of hull design and machinery not change radically. If they do, if a particular hull or power plant becomes obsolete, then it does not matter how long the ship can last.

That has happened. Around 1860 the Royal Navy had an enormous lead over other navies in capital ships. Its large number of wooden “liners” lasted a long time in reserve, and they could be updated with steam propulsion. Then the french introduced armor. All those unarmored wooden hulls were suddenly obsolete. The British armored some of their wooden capital

ships but concentrated on new iron hulls, which were far more satisfactory. The race to rebuild British naval superior-ity was horribly expensive, and the British felt compelled to cancel large numbers of projected wooden cruisers to buy enough iron battleships.

More recently the demise, or near demise, of diesel-elec-tric submarines in favor of nuclear submarines had much the same impact on the U.S. Navy. It dramatically reduced the value of submarine capital, represented by the service’s large post–World War II supply of fleet boats, before the diesel subs would have been discarded due to age.

A note on sources:This article reflects my long experience writing ship-design histories based on of-ficial papers from archives, mainly in the United States and the United Kingdom. I also have used french archives at Vincennes, but I have not compiled design histories comparable to those of U.S. and British ships (the comments by the french liaison officer in this article are from the records of the Conseil Superieur de la Marine, comparable to the U.S. general Board).

for details, see my Illustrated Design History series on American warships, all published by the Naval Institute Press: U.S. Aircraft Carriers (1983); U.S. Battleships (1985); U.S. Cruisers (1984); U.S. Destroyers (1982, 2003 revised edition covers the Arleigh Burkes, Zumwalt, and LCS); U.S. Submarines through 1945 (1995); U.S. Submarines since 1945 (1994); U.S. Small Combatants (1987); and U.S. Amphibious Ships and Craft (2002). No volumes on minecraft or the fleet train have been pub-lished, although I have done extensive research in both categories.

for the Royal Navy, I have published a history of aircraft carriers and their aircraft (British Carrier Aviation: The Evolution of the Ships and Their Aircraft, Naval Institute Press, 1987); a history of later British cruisers (British Cruisers: Two World Wars and After, Naval Institute Press, 2010); and two volumes on British destroyers (British Destroyers and Frigates: The Second World War and After, Chatham, 2006; and British Destroyers: From Earliest Days to the Second World War, Naval Institute Press, 2009). A book on earlier British cruisers, scheduled for release this fall, is the source of my comment on the 1860 situa-tion. I also have researched British battleships and British submarines, perhaps for later publication.


The Story behind the Famous Kiss

By Lawrence Verria and captain GeorGe GaLdorisi, U.s. naVy (retired)

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The two participants in the world’s most famous kiss didn’t even know each other, nor was their photograph staged. A new book, The Kissing Sailor, tells how it came about and was captured for posterity. The following condensed version weaves together key sections of chapters 9 through 12.

She Looked Like a Nurse

Tuesday, August 14, 1945, started off for greta Zim-mer in the same manner as did most weekdays during that year. Hurrying to get ready for work, she showered, dressed, and pinned her hair up tightly to keep her long locks from covering her ears and neck. Before leaving her Manhattan apartment she grabbed a quick bite to eat, reached for her multicolored, small purse, and rushed out the door. When running late, greta walked briskly toward the subway station to catch a train that could get her to work on time.

Her destination was the 33rd and Lexington subway stop, approximately three blocks from Dr. J. L. Berke’s dentist office. greta had worked as a dental assistant at the Manhattan office for several months. While she hoped to someday design theater sets and pursue other vocations in the arts, work as a dental assistant bought her some independence and took her mind off a pro-longed war.

When greta arrived at the office on the morning of August 14, she changed into her working uniform. If it were not for her place of employment, she could have been easily mistaken for a nurse. Her white dress, white stockings, white shoes, and white cap did not distinguish her from thousands of other caregivers in New York.

While greta performed her dental assistant duties that Tuesday morning, many patients burst into the office short of breath and beaming. Excitedly, they in-formed the staff and patients that the war with Japan had ended. Most patients and workers believed them. greta wasn’t so sure. She wanted to trust their reports, but the war had rained more than a fair share of misery upon greta. Her defenses remained high. She opted to delay a celebratory mindset that could prove painfully premature.

During the later morning hours, patients continued to enter the dentists’ office with more optimistic news. While greta tried to ignore the positive developments, the temptation to flow with the prevailing winds chal-lenged her reserve. As the reports became more definitive and promising, greta found herself listening, contemplat-ing, and growing eager.

When the two dentists returned from their lunches after 1:00 pm, greta quickly finished the business before her. Soon after, she grabbed her small hand purse with the colorful pattern, took off her white dental assistant cap (as was customary before going out in public), and set out during her lunch break for Times Square. There

the Times news zipper utilized lit and moving type to report the latest news. She wanted to know for herself if the claims that had been tossed about over the past several hours were misleading hearsay, or if, on this day, the reports would finally be true.

When greta arrived at Times Square, a holiday at-mosphere was taking hold. While the celebration was subdued compared to what would follow later that day, greta sensed a vibrant energy in the air. Suited busi-nessmen, well-dressed women, and uniformed soldiers and sailors entered the pandemonium from all directions. Some ran with no determined direction. Others walked with purpose. Some remained stationary, as if waiting for something big to happen. greta paid no one particular person much attention.

As she proceeded into the square she moved by several recognizable landmarks: the 42nd Street subway stairwell, a replica of the Statue of Liberty, and a large statue of Joe Rosenthal’s famous picture from a few months ear-lier. After walking a few paces beyond the 25-foot model of the Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima, greta spun around and looked in the direction of the Times Building. She focused her sight just above the third-floor windows where the scrolling lighted letters spelled out the latest headlines. greta read the racing and succinctly worded message quickly. Now she knew the truth.

The Last Day of Leave

On the last day of his leave, Petty Officer First Class george Mendonsa paid no attention to the day’s newspa-per headlines and worried little about his Japanese enemy. After almost two years in World War II’s Pacific theater, his mindset was that the war would unfold independent of his blessing or curse. On the morning of August 14, 1945, his thoughts focused primarily on Rita Petry, an attractive Long Island girl he’d met a few weeks earlier in Rhode Island.

george woke up that Tuesday morning alone in a bedroom at the Petry family’s Long Island home. After breakfast with Rita’s family, he leafed through The New York Times looking for show times in New York’s the-aters. He and his new girlfriend decided to take in a matinee at Radio City Music Hall. They thought the 1:05 pm showing of A Bell for Adano would give them plenty of time to make it back to Long Island by early evening. george was scheduled to depart for San Fran-cisco that night. In a few days he expected to board The Sullivans and prepare for what he hoped would be


the last battles of World War II. He knew an invasion of the Japanese mainland was imminent. While he did not welcome the looming chain of events, he thought finish-ing off the Japanese in their homeland would be a fitting bookend to a war that had commenced almost four years earlier with the empire’s surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor. But all that was in the future. He still had one day left to enjoy in New York.

Preparing for that day, george wore a formal blue Navy uniform that he’d had tailor-made while on leave in Newport. Rita liked how well fitted the new uniform ap-peared, but she’d also noticed that “he didn’t look like a usual sailor. He didn’t have those things [rates] on his shoulder.” She’d offered to sew on the chevron, but george had insisted he would take care of the matter with a crossbow hand-stitch he had perfected affixing rates on uniforms on board The Sullivans. He never got around to it, so, in the event the shore patrol inquired as to the whereabouts of his rating badge, george made sure to carry the chevron on his person when he and Rita set out for the city.

When they arrived in Man-hattan at approximately noon, the city already buzzed with rumors of Japan’s anticipated surrender. However, neither Rita nor george listened much to people’s conversations. In-tent on getting to the theater for the 1:05 movie, they made their way from the subway di-rectly to Radio City Music Hall.

For all their rushing, george and Rita never saw the climax of A Bell for Adano, the movie they had come to see. After a few scenes of the film had played on the large screen, a theater employee interrupted the show by pounding on the entrance door and announcing loudly that World War II had ended. Radio City Music Hall patrons simultaneously leaped to their feet with a thunderous applause. Though President Truman had not yet received Japan’s official surrender, and the White House’s official announcement of Japan’s capitulation was still hours away, few raised the slightest objection to the premature declaration.

Seconds after the theater attendant’s announcement, george, Rita, and most other moviegoers poured out of

Radio City Music Hall into a bustling 50th Street and 6th Avenue. As they merged into the frenzied scene, they fed off the contagious excitement that surrounded them. Peo-ple yelled out news of victory and peace. They smiled and laughed. They jumped up and down with no thought of proper decorum. As if caught in a magnetic field, the historic celebration moved toward Times Square. People from other

sections of the city were funneled to the same crossroads where they had gathered for celebrations in the past.

At the corner of 7th Avenue and 49th Street, george and Rita dropped into Childs restaurant for celebratory libations. As in other watering holes in New York, people walked, skipped and ran up to the

jam-packed counter to tip a glass or two (or significantly more) to the war that they thought had finally ended. The scene at Childs looked much like that on 7th Avenue.

Order and etiquette had been cast away. Rather than placing orders for a spe-

cific mug of beer or a favorite glass of wine, patrons forced their way

toward the bar and reached out an arm to grab one of the shot glasses of liquor that lined the counter. A generous bartender

continuously poured the contents of hard liquor bottles into waiting

glasses. george grabbed whatever the server dispensed and did not ask what it

was he drank. He knew the desired result would be the same whether the contributor was Jack Daniel’s, Jameson, or Old grand-Dad. Even Rita gave over to the reckless abandon. After several minutes and the consumption of too many drinks, george and his date made their way out of the packed bar.

Emotions and alcohol-based fuel propelled them out into Times Square where victorious World War II celebrants continued to mass. george thought, My God, Times Square is going wild. And at that point, so was george. He felt uncharacteristically blissful and jubilant. As george moved

• • • • • • • • • • • • • •

COURTESY OF gEORgE MENDONSA

On 14 August 1945, Petty Officer First Class George Mendonsa and his new girlfriend (soon to be wife) Rita Petry were in New York when news of the war’s end broke and everyone hit the streets, celebrating.• • • • • • • • • • • • • •

news of the war’s end had primed america’s meeting place for a one-in-a-million

kind of picture.


briskly toward the 42nd Street subway station, the sailor from The Sullivans outpaced his girlfriend. For the moment, no one could corral george. And no one tried—not even Rita. The realization of a triumphant war created more vigor than his large frame could hold. He needed to release the energy. Rita did her best to keep up. At most points she trailed him by only a few feet. Although she enjoyed the folic through Times Square, she wondered if george would ever stop for a breather.

In Search of the Picture

As the spirited celebration of Japan’s surrender grew, reporters from the Associated Press, The New York Times, the New York Daily News, and other well-known publi-cations descended on Times Square to record the spon-taneous merriment that was enveloping the world’s most important crossroads. Photographers added more bodies to a burgeoning impromptu gala. One of them represented Life magazine.

On August 14, 1945, the magazine sought pictures that differed from most others printed earlier in the war. On this day, Life wanted its view-ers to know what the end of the war felt like. The editors didn’t know with any degree of certainty what incarnation that feeling might take, but they left it to their photographers to show them—just like they had with other events over the publication’s nine-year history. Those unsu-pervised approaches had rarely led to disappointment in the past, and Life’s editors trusted their photographers to deliver again today.

The magazine’s trust in its pho-tographers was especially complete when Alfred Eisenstaedt was on as-signment. He had photographed the people and personalities of World War II, some prior to the declaration of war and others even be-fore Life existed. As a german Jew in the 1930s, he had chronicled the developing storm, including a picture of Benito Mussolini’s first meeting with Adolf Hitler in Ven-ice, on June 13, 1934. In another shoot he’d photographed an Ethiopian soldier’s bare cracked feet on the eve of Fas-cist Italy’s attack in 1935.

After the outbreak of war between Japan and the United States, Eisenstaedt focused on the American home front. In 1942 he photographed a six-member Missouri draft board classifying a young farmer as 2-C, indicating draft deferment because of his occupation’s

importance to the nation. For another series in 1945, he visited Washington and photographed freshman senators performing comical monologues and musical numbers to entertain Capitol reporters. During World War II, Eisenstaedt showed the world what war looked like on the U.S. mainland.

On the day World War II ended, Eisenstaedt entered Times Square dressed in a tan suit, a white shirt with a lined tie, tan saddle shoes, and a Leica camera hanging from his neck. Despite his distinctive ensemble, he trav-eled stealthily amongst the kaleidoscope of moving parts looking for the picture. He made sure not to call attention to himself. He was on the hunt. He knew there was a picture in the making. Kinetic energy filled the square. Eisenstaedt wished for others to feel it, too. To create that sense, Eisenstaedt’s photo needed a tactile element. It was a tall order for the five-foot, four-inch photographer. He relished the challenge.

At some point after 1:00 pm, Eisenstaedt took a picture of several women celebrating in front of a theater across

the street from the 42nd Street subway sta-tion stairwell. The picture showed ladies

throwing pieces of paper into the air, creating a mini-ticker-tape parade.

While the photo had its charm, it was not the defining picture Eisenstaedt was searching for that day.

Shortly after closing the shutter on that scene, he turned to his left and looked up Broadway and 7th Avenue to where 43rd Street connected to Times Square’s main ar-tery. As Eisenstaedt continued to search for a photograph that would forever define the moment at hand, he peered around and beneath, but probably not over, the sea of hu-manity. News of the war’s end had primed America’s meet-ing place for a one-in-a-million kind of picture. A prospect would present itself soon. Eisenstaedt knew that. So he looked and waited.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • •

COURTESY OF gRETA FRIEDMAN

Greta Zimmer, who worked as a dental assistant, had been forced to leave her parents in Austria, where they assured the survival of their three daughters by sending them away. Not sure the war was really over, Greta walked to Times Square to see for herself the Times news zipper. Meanwhile, Life magazine photographer Alfred

Eisenstaedt was on the prowl to capture the image that would define

this national moment.• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •


The Kiss

greta Zimmer stood motionless in Times Square near a replica of the Statue of Liberty and a model of the Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima. To greta’s left was Childs restaurant, one of several in New York, includ-ing this establishment at 7th Avenue and 49th Street. But greta did not come to Times Square to stare at statues or belly up to bars. She wanted to read the Times zipper and learn if Japan really had surrendered to the United States.

With the 44th Street sign and the Astor Hotel to her back, she looked up at the tall triangular building that divided one street into two. The lit message running around the Times Building read, “VJ, VJ, VJ, VJ . . .” greta gazed at the moving type without blinking. A faint smile widened her lips and narrowed her eyes. She took in the moment fully and thought, The war is over. It’s really over.

Though greta had arrived in Times Square by herself, she was not alone. While she continued to watch the mo-tioning “VJ” message, hundreds of people moved around her. greta paid little attention to the swelling mass of hu-manity. But they were about to take notice of her, and never forget what they saw. Within a few seconds she be-came Times Square’s nucleus. Everybody orbited around her, with one exception. He was drawn to her.

Fresh from the revelry at a Childs on 49th, george Mendonsa and his new girlfriend, Rita Petry, made their way down Times Square toward the 42nd Street subway station. Rita fell behind george by a few steps. Mean-while, Eisenstaedt persisted in his hunt for the photo. After traveling a block or so up Times Square, he took notice of a fast moving sailor who he thought he saw grabbing a woman and kissing her. That sailor was heading quickly south down Broadway and 7th Avenue. Wonder-ing what he might do next, Eisen-staedt changed direction and raced ahead of the darting sailor. To avoid bumping into people in the crowded street, he had to look away from the sailor he was trying to track. He struggled to regain his focus on the Navy man wearing the formal Navy

blue uniform. As he did so, greta looked away from the Times zipper and started to turn to her right. george crossed the intersection of 44th and 7th Avenue, lengthening the space between him and Rita. The photographer, the sailor, and the dental assistant were on a collision course.

With a quickening pace that matched the surrounding scene’s rising pulse, the sailor who served his country aboard The Sul-livans zeroed in on a woman whom he assumed to be a nurse. The li-quor running through his veins transfixed his glassy stare. He re-membered a war scene when he had rescued maimed sailors from a burning ship in a vast ocean of water. Afterward, gentle nurses, an-gels in white, tended to the injured

men. From the bridge of The Sullivans he watched them perform miracles. Their selfless service reassured him that one day the war would end. Peace would reign, again. That day had arrived.

george steamed forward several more feet. His girlfriend was now farther behind. He focused on greta, the “nurse.” She remained unaware of his advance. That served his purpose well. He sought no permission for what he was about to do. He just knew that she looked like those nurses who saved lives during the war. Their care and nurturing had provided a short and precious reprieve from kamikaze-filled skies. But that nightmare had ended. And

there she stood. Before him. With background noises barely register-ing, he rushed toward her as if in a vacuum.

Though george halted his steps just before running into greta, his upper torso’s momentum swept over her. The motion’s force bent greta backward and to her right. As he overtook greta’s slender frame, his right hand cupped her slim waist. He pulled her inward toward his lean and muscular body. Her initial attempt to physically separate her person from the intruder proved a futile exertion against the dark-uni-formed man’s strong hold. With her right arm pinned between their two bodies, she instinctively brought her left arm and clenched fist upward in defense. The effort was unnecessary. He never intended to hurt her.

As their lips locked, his left arm supported her neck. His left hand,

He sought no permission for what he was about to do. He

just knew that she looked like those nurses who saved

lives during the war.

To order your copy of The Kissing Sailor, go to www.usni.org/store/books.


as far she could tell, she had not been photographed at any point in time during that day. She did not learn otherwise until years later, when she saw Eisenstaedt’s photograph of a Times Square couple kissing in a book entitled The Eyes of Eisenstaedt.

george did not realize that he had been photographed, either. When george turned from the act he’d instigated, he smiled at Rita and offered little explanation for what had transpired. As hard as it is to believe, she made no serious objection. george’s actions fell within the accept-able norms of August 14, 1945, but not any other day. Actually, neither george nor Rita thought much of the episode and proceeded to Rita’s parents’ home via the 42nd Street subway train. Later that evening, the Petrys transported george to Laguardia Airport for a flight to San Francisco that left at approximately midnight. Nei-ther he nor Rita discovered Eisenstaedt’s V-J Day, 1945, Times Square until 1980.

Excerpt reprinted, by permission, from Lawrence Verria and George Gal-dorisi, The Kissing Sailor: The Mystery Behind the Photo That Ended World War II (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2012).

turned backward and away from her face, of-fered the singular gesture of restraint, caution or doubt. The struck pose created an oddly appealing mixture of brutish force, caring embrace, and awkward hesitation. He didn’t let go. As he continued to lean forward, she lowered her right arm and gave over to her pursuer—but only for three or four seconds. He tried to hold her closer, wanting the mo-ment to last longer. And longer still. But they parted, the space between them and the mo-ment shared ever widening, releasing the heat born from their embrace into the New York summer afternoon.

The encounter, brief and impromptu, trans-pired beyond the participants’ governance. Even george, the initiator, commanded little more resolve than a floating twig in a rush-ing river of fate. He just had to kiss her. He didn’t know why.

For that moment, george had thought Times Square’s streets belonged to him. They did not. Alfred Eisenstaedt owned them. When he was on assignment, nothing worth capturing on film escaped his purview. Before george and greta parted, Eisenstaedt spun around, aimed his Leica and clicked the camera’s shutter release closed four times. One of those clicks produced V-J Day, 1945, Times Square. That photograph became his career’s most famous, Life magazine’s most re-produced, and one of history’s most popular. The image of a sailor kissing a nurse on the day World War II ended kept company with Joe Rosenthal’s photo of the flag rais-ing at Iwo Jima. That photo proudly exemplified what a hard-fought victory looks like. This photo savored what a long-sought peace feels like.

Alfred Eisenstaedt was not the only photographer to take notice of george and greta. Navy Lieutenant Vic-tor Jorgensen, standing to Eisenstaedt’s right, fired off one shot of the entwined couple at the precise moment the Life photographer took his second picture of four. Though Jorgensen’s photo did not captivate audiences to the same degree that Eisenstaedt’s second photograph did, Kissing the War Goodbye drew many admirers as well.

And then it was over. Shortly after the taking of V-J Day, 1945, Times Square, greta returned to the dental of-fice and told everyone what was happening on the streets. Dr. Berke had her cancel the rest of the day’s appointments and closed the office. Afterward, as greta made her way home, another sailor kissed her, this time politely on the cheek. For this kiss greta no longer wore her dental assis-tant uniform and no photographers took her picture. And

U.S. NAVY (VICTOR JORgENSEN)

Other photos were also snapped of the kissing sailor. Lieutenant Victor Jorgensen, U.S. Navy, happened to be on the scene and captured the moment.• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

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