One Century Ago: Bringing 'Em Back after "The Navy Put 'Em Across"

Front side of a postcard featuring an artwork by Norman Rockwell, used by returning troops to report their arrival in the United States from Europe. This example was sent on May 28, 1919, by Private Howard P. Moyer, of the 111th Engineer Regiment, 36th Division, who was embarked on USS Great Northern (ID # 4569). It was mailed to his sister, Mrs. Edith Folger of Richmond, Indiana. (Donation of Dr. Mark Kulikowski/ Naval History and Heritage Command image)

By M.C. Farrington
HRNM Historian

Naval historians of the First World War tend to gravitate towards great battles such as Jutland and the ferociously frustrating Dardanelles campaign, but these dramatic naval and littoral actions had nothing to do with the U.S. Navy's most decisive contribution to the war, delivering the two-million-man American Expeditionary Force (AEF) to Europe. By this time one hundred years ago, what was then known as the Great War had been over for months, but many of the American Soldiers and Marines who fought its final, bloody campaigns were still coming home.

Front side of a postcard used by returning troops to report their arrival in the United States from Europe. This example was sent on August 6, 1919, reporting the arrival of a member of the 34th Engineer Regiment at Norfolk, Virginia, on USS Texan (ID # 1354). It was mailed to his mother, Mrs. Arthur Dean of Nevada, Iowa. (Donation of Dr. Mark Kulikowski/ Naval History and Heritage Command image)

Although many different kinds of American surface combatants played important roles in containing the German submarine threat and saving Great Britain from potential starvation, the U.S. Atlantic Fleet's Cruiser and Transport Force, consisting of 45,000 U.S. naval personnel manning 24 cruisers and 42 transport vessels (many of which were German passenger liners confiscated after the American entry into the war) put an entire American army across the Atlantic, a feat inconceivable to European leaders on all sides of the conflict before the Navy actually accomplished it.

Postcards for virtually every troopship in the Cruiser and Transport Force were produced by enterprising entrepreneurs in 1919 for returning members of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), plus the warships that were also pressed into service to bring soldiers back to America. USS DeKalb, which brought 8,949 AEF personnel back to America after the Armistice, served as the German auxillary cruiser Prinz Eitel Friedrich, sinking 11 vessels before its crew sought refuge at Norfolk Naval Shipyard in 1915. (Donation of Dr. Mark Kulikowski/ Naval History and Heritage Command image)

Even after American troops irrevocably tipped the balance against Germany and the Cental Powers and the war was ostensibly over, the Navy had much more to do. Even battleships and cruisers were pressed into the effort to bring home the Soldiers and Marines as quickly as possible, which stretched into the summer of 1919.

This hastily-made postcard shows USS Virginia (BB-13), which brought back 5,784 members of the AEF to American shores before resuming its regular duties in July, 1919. (Donation of Dr. Mark Kulikowski/ Naval History and Heritage Command image)

"After the signing of the Armistice," wrote Vice Admiral Albert Gleaves, Cruiser and Transport Force commander, "the United States Transport Fleet expanded still more, and developed into a fleet of 149 ships manned by 4,238 officers and 59,030 men, with the gratifying result that 86.7 per cent[sic] of our overseas army was brought home under the Stars and Stripes."

Such an unprecedented feat was accomplished largely to an unprecedented recruiting effort, one which artists contrubuted to by accentuating the great fun to be had by those who volunteered.  A recruiting poster in our collection by the famous maritime artist Henry Reuterdahl shows a smiling, cheerful Sailor bearing a Soldier across the waves.

(Hampton Roads Naval Museum collection)

Despite the vital job Sailors performed in making sure the AEF returned home safe and sound, many of the volunteers who made it possible felt that the returning Doughboys were basking in the public's adulation at their expense.

Don't take my word for it.  Check out this editorial cartoon from a magazine published at Naval Operating Base Norfolk (now Naval Station Norfolk) during the war:

This editorial cartoon was made as part of a contest for the readers of Navy Life, but so far the issue of the magazine announcing the winner has not been found. (M.C. Farrington/ Courtesy of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum) 

The similarity between the recruiting poster and the cartoon might be coincidental, but probably not.  The cartoonist, Ensign Adolph Goodwin, had probably seen Reuterdahl's poster. The magazine he worked for, Navy Life, was a short-lived contemporary of The Stars and Stripes, published by the AEF in France by uniformed service members. Although official publications, the editorial policies of Navy Life and Stars and Stripes didn't necessarily adhere to official United States Government policy.

Adolph Goodwin made charactures of Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, among other luminiaries, in a book about his hometown, Who's Who in Raleigh (1916). (Libraty of Congress via Internet Archive/ Hathi Trust)

While famous artists like Henry Reuterdahl produced well-received work presenting the Navy to the public as its leaders wished it to be seen, some lesser-known artists in uniform have bequeathed work that shows us how members of the Navy saw themselves.  

One Century Ago: We Got Ourselves a Convoy!

Now that we can look back upon the whole course of the campaign, we can usefully study why it was that the choice should have been so long in doubt, and at the time there were many, including among civilians, who were familiar with the idea of convoy, and inferred, from its success in former wars, that it was an obvious and infallible method whose value had been strangely overlooked.

Henry Newbolt, History of the Great War, Naval Operations, Vol. V., 2-3.

In this undated photograph, United States merchant vessels approach the coast of England during the First World War. The second experimental convoy, the first originating from the North American continent, to test this contested transatlantic shipping strategy left Hampton Roads for Ireland on May 24, 1917. (Naval History and Heritage Command image)    

The convoy system, originally known as "wafting," had been used sporadically by the English since the early-1500s.  The practice was still in place 350 years ago when groups of merchant vessels laden with tobacco left Hampton Roads on their way to England, hoping not to run afoul of what was then the scourge of the seas, the Dutch.  A century ago, however, the practice had long been out of favor, and for the first three years of the First World War, the British had been paying for it dearly in terms of tonnage, war material, and lives lost to their German adversaries. 

Smaller convoys had been instituted by the British practically before the war officially began, the first being, ironically enough, to the Dutch.  The so-called "Beef Trips" along the Hook of Holland route began in July, 1916.  Another convoy arrangement had also been put into place to protect colliers bound for France, yet the Admiralty insisted that the term "convoy" was inappropriate, calling the arrangement instead, "controlled sailing." First Sea Lord Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, RN, had approved the arrangement in January 1917, yet he still strongly resisted any recommendation that the same strategy be used in transatlantic shipping.  Despite relenting to Norwegian demands to provide a similar measure of protection to their merchant vessels a couple of months later, no serious consideration was given to instituting the convoy system across the Atlantic, where U-boats inflicted most of the British losses.

Similar losses being incurred by American-flagged ships in no small part precipitated the U.S. entry into the war on April 6, 1917, but Americans too were reluctant to resurrect convoying from American ports.  President Woodrow Wilson was fond of saying that his Navy would hunt down the Kaiser's submarines on the open ocean and strike their bases, which he called "hornets' nests." The Royal Navy had followed this strategy, known as the patrol system, since the beginning of the war but had precious little to show for it.  

Rear Admiral William S. Sims, USN, who arrived in London on April 10 as a liaison officer to the British Admiralty, later wrote, "One of the astonishing things about this war was that many of the naval officers of all countries did not seem to understand until a very late date that it was utterly futile to send anti-submarine surface craft out into the wide ocean to attack or chase away submarines. The thing to do, of course, was to make the submarines come to the anti-submarine craft and fight in order to get merchantmen." Many mid-grade officers of the Royal Navy agreed with him, yet simple, even traditional, ideas can run afoul of a hidebound orthodoxy at the top, and that is what Sims encountered both within the Admiralty in London, and later from his superiors in Washington. 

Admiral Jellicoe's attitude reflected that of his predecessor, Adm. Sir Henry Jackson, and the chief of the Admiralty War Staff, Adm. Sir Henry Oliver.  Fixated on the Mahanian concept that decisive duels between dreadnoughts constituted the raison d'être of modern navies, they negated its role as a guarantor of maritime commerce.  As a consequence, the battleships of the Grand Fleet assembled together in Scapa Flow received the greatest protection from submarines, while the widely dispersed merchant vessels approaching Britain from around the world received little to none, and the nation began to starve.

Making matters worse for the merchantmen, the senior strategists of the Royal Navy operated under the assumption that a proper convoy would require a 1-1 ratio of escorts to merchant vessels, in which case, even if the entire U.S. Atlantic Fleet came to their aid after entering the war, it would not be enough to make the arrangement practicable.  And with its commander, Adm. Henry T. Mayo, just as convinced that he needed most of his ships at home to protect against a German onslaught against the eastern seaboard, Sims' proposal seemed a non-starter. 

The tide began to turn, however, when Jellicoe along with the Admiralty revised its estimates on how many ocean-going escort vessels might actually be needed to begin convoying vessels across the Atlantic, helped in no small measure by Destroyer Division 8's arrival in Ireland on May 4.  The day before that, Sims received word from Washington that 36 destroyers would be on their way.  Although the destroyers of Division 8 began their service in British waters on May 8, they were assigned only to patrol duties.  Under pressure from Parliament, however, reeling from the news that April had been the most successful month of the war for German submarines, the decision was made to assemble a trial convoy and sail it from Gibraltar in the Mediterranean, which departed for Britain on May 10.  A subsequent naval staff study concluded, "The trial had been an entire success, and from that moment it may be said that the submarine menace was conquered."

Despite such superlatives from officers typically given to understatement, the newly-converted Admiralty could not usher their new allies across the pond into their new way of thinking.  The U.S. Navy turned down a request to send a convoy of 16 to 20 ships from Hampton Roads with one of the three American destroyer divisions being sent to British waters after Division 8, so the British resolved to show their American cousins that it could be done.  Their second trial convoy, made up of 12 ships and escorted by the armored cruiser HMS Roxburgh, left Hampton Roads on May 24.  All the vessels of the convoy, with the exception of two that fell behind, reached their destinations safely by June 10.

Despite one of the stragglers being torpedoed and sunk, the vessels of this first transatlantic convoy of the war had a much better survival rate than they would have had alone.  Before the convoy system was finally instituted on the Atlantic crossings, a merchant vessel had a one in four chance of being attacked.  Although it would be a few months before convoying once again became a regular part of maritime commerce originating from Hampton Roads, it was clear that this centuries-old practice would bring the reign of terror spawned by the newest naval weapon to an end at last.

USS Helm (DD 388): For the Duration

Hanging on one of the walls in the museum gallery is this fairly humble looking plaque. Many visitors might not even give it a second glance. Yet in the spirit of "if these walls could talk," this piece of metal would tell quite a few stories if it was able.

As the plaque states, the Bagley-class destroyer USS Helm (DD 388) was built at the Norfolk Navy Yard as part of FDR's "New Deal" program. While often overshadowed by the more modern Fletcher-class destroyers, older destroyers like Helm contributed significantly for the entire duration of the war.

The ship's illustrious career in World War II started in the opening minutes of the war. On the morning of December 7, 1941, Helm was the only ship underway at Pearl Harbor when the attack started. The ship's gunners shot down one Japanese plane before a Japanese midget submarine was spotted and targeted by the destroyer's 5-inch guns. The enemy craft submerged before any significant damage was inflicted. 

The action at Pearl Harbor was only the beginning for USS Helm. The destroyer was kept busy on various assignments for the rest of the war, involved in many of the main engagements of the Pacific War either as a screening vessel or for close-in shore support.  She was also assigned to more routine escort duty at times.  Helm was part of the invasion of Guadalcanal, survived the Battle of Savo Island, and supported the invasion of Cape Gloucester.  After a brief return to the U.S., the destroyer returned to more active engagements. The "tin can" mostly protected carriers during the latter battles of the war, including the "Marianas Turkey Shoot" and at Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, as well as strikes against many other targets.

Near the end of the war the Japanese suicide tactics increased, making the destroyer's role of protecting the bigger ships all the more important. This was especially true during the Iwo Jima and Okinawa campaigns. 

This photo shows a kamikaze plane attacking a Bagley-class destroyer in the Sulu Sea southwest of the Philippines. Most likely this is USS Helm as the ship suffered some minor damage from a suicide plane on this day while part of a task group of escort carriers.

During the last few weeks of the war the destroyer participated in the rescue of the crew of USS Indianapolis after the heavy cruiser was sunk by a Japanese submarine.  After the Japanese surrendered, the ship returned to the United States and was decommissioned in 1946.  It was then used in atomic bomb testing before being scrapped a year later.  USS Helm's near decade of service was more eventful than many other ships.  The four years of action in World War II earned her eleven battle stars, participating in nearly every major Pacific campaign.

Story by Hampton Roads Naval Museum Educator Elijah Palmer.