From the Shores of Normandy to Orient Point, Long Island: The Tank Landing Ship (LST 510) in War and Peace

By CAPT Alexander Monroe, USN (Ret.)
HRNM Volunteer

World War Two brought innovations in the ways in which offensive maritime operations were carried out. Amphibious operations was a way of projecting great combat power to a hostile foreign shore to ensure ultimate victory. Tank Landing ships, designated LSTs, were built in non-traditional locations known as “corn belt shipyards,” such as Jefferson Boat and Machine Company, and steamed down inland rivers to the open ocean.[i] They were designed to embark vehicles and troops and put them ashore through large bow doors. Once offloaded in an opposed landing, they could be retracted from the beach by anchors that had been deployed astern. LST 510, nicknamed “the Woolworth ship,” was later renamed USS Buncombe County (LST 510). Today, over 80 years after being launched into the Ohio River at Jeffersonville, Indiana, the venerable and venerated ship, which once served as a ferry in Virginia, performs a similar task in the fleet of Cross Sound Ferries between Orient Point, New York, and New London, Connecticut. The management has gone to great lengths to recognize and honor the ship’s Navy heritage and those who served aboard, including displaying its hull number and service ribbons. 

LST 510's plaque (Wikimedia Commons)

LST 510 began its life on November 30, 1943, and was placed in full commission with Lieutenant George P. Andrews, a rough-hewn former enlisted man in command on January 31, 1944, after cruising down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans in reduced commission.[ii] Following shakedown in the Gulf of Mexico, the ship was loaded with another landing craft, LCT 709 (Landing Craft Tank), and left the United States from New York in convoy on March 29, 1944.[iii] The transit was complicated by bad weather, encountering icebergs, and the fact that it was loaded with 600 tons of ammunition. Only the captain had gone to sea before. The danger of German submarines was ever present, and one nearby ship in the convoy was torpedoed. Despite these factors, the ship reached Londonderry, Northern Ireland, on April 13, 1944, transited the Irish Sea, stopped briefly in Wales, and ultimately went to Plymouth, England.[iv] The month of May was spent making last preparations for the invasion, and on June 1, the ship embarked 250 men and associated vehicles, went to anchorage, and sealed the ship. After one attempt at cross-channel transit delayed by an unexpected storm, LST 510 got underway at 3:55 AM on June 5, arriving on the 6th.[v] As it approached shore near Vierville, the crew observed bodies in the bloody water, and offloaded troops and equipment onto self- propelled Mulberry barges known as “Rhinos.”

Ensuing operations involved evacuation of the wounded from Normandy to England and resupply of the forces ashore. Doctors worked to give life-saving care in what became known as a “Hall of Mercy,” and resupply of troops ashore was accomplished at the port of Le Havre. Other supplies and ammunition were delivered on Omaha and Utah Beaches. In certain instances, the ship transited the Seine River as far upstream as Rouen. On one occasion at Christmas, near Cherbourg, the ship hit an underwater obstruction, was towed back to Portland, and dry docked for repairs.[vi] 

LST 510 after hitting an underwater obstruction, December 1944 (Navsource.org)

For three months, the ship fell into the routine of cross-channel transits. On February 5, 1945, in a dense fog south of the Isle of Wight, it collided bow-on with SS Chapel Hill Victory. Considerable damage was done to the port bow door, the ramp, and the bow area. In addition, Seaman Mark H. Warren was killed.[vii] The ship was dry docked at Falmouth for extensive repairs, spending the next four months in the yard.[viii] On June 7, 1945, it departed Falmouth to return to the United States. The ship was decommissioned in July 1946 and placed in an inactive ship facility near Jacksonville and later withdrawn, recommissioned, and renamed USS Buncombe County (LST 510) on July 1, 1955. Declared unfit for further service, it was finally stricken from active naval service on November 1, 1958. 

LST 510 after colliding with SS Chapel Hill Victory, February 1945 (Navsource.org)

In 1959, the former USS Buncombe County (LST 510) began what has been an uneventful protracted civilian career amassing some 64 years of service. First sold to the Chesapeake Bay Ferry Corporation in Norfolk, Virginia, it and two other LSTs were converted at the Norfolk Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Corporation. This entailed modification of the stern so that up to 90 cars could be loaded through the bow doors and discharged through the after end. It was renamed M/V Virginia Beach, and the two others M/V Northampton and Old Point Comfort. The former LSTs provided car and passenger service between a pier at Little Creek and Cape Charles, on the Eastern Shore. The service operated until April 15, 1964, when the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel opened.

M/V Virginia Beach (Navsource.org)

The new facility was opened on a cloudy day, marred by an impending stormy weather. Lucius Kellam, Executive Director of the Bay Bridge Authority, and Mrs. Mills Godwin, wife of the Governor of Virginia, conducted the ceremony. Concurrently, Theodore C. Bright of the Delaware River and Bay Authority handed over a check for $3,265,000 to purchase the former USS LST 510 and its two sister ships. It was renamed SS Cape Henlopen and was to provide ferry service from the Delaware coast to North Cape May, New Jersey.[ix]

The ship served from July 1964 until the summer of 1975, when it began an unproductive period. In 1983, Cross Sound Ferry Service bought the ship and began an ambitious refurbishment effort. The entire main cabin was gutted and redecorated with photos of the 1945 crew; the June 6, 1944, invasion of Normandy; and contemporaneous quotes. One such wall panel contained a statement by Vincent Lijoi, who noted, “We actually saved the world, thank God for America.” The goal of Cross Sound Ferries was thus to honor the young men who had worn the cloth of the nation and in so doing changed the course of history. 

LST 510 as the Cape Henlopen Ferry (Wikimedia Commons)

While serving in a daily pedestrian way, the ship’s crew responded to the needs of other mariners. On August 14, 2021, Captain Eva Van Camp, United States Coast Guard, presented a Coast Guard Certificate of Merit to the crew of Cape Henlopen. On July 20, 2021, crew members steaming the ship to New London had seen and rescued five boaters from a foundering small boat. As the captain observed, “This is not only what the Coast Guard does, but also what ferries do.”[x] The Steamship Historical Society has conferred its highest honor, the prestigious Ship of the Year Award, on Cape Henlopen. In so doing, it noted that it is one of the few ferries in the world with such lengthy service.[xi] In fact, the ship reached the 80th anniversary of the start of construction on September 23, 1943, having served with distinction in war and peace. 

Service bar on SS Cape Henlopen (Wikimedia Commons)

Notes:
[i] Over 120 LSTs were built in Jeffersonville, Indiana on the banks of the Ohio River.
[ii] “LST 510, One Battle Star,” LST Scuttlebutt, December, 1990, p. 16.
[iii] This vessel landed elements of the 50th Signal Company, U.S. Army, at Utah Beach, Normandy on June 6, 1944
[iv] Ltr, Ship’s History, USS LST 510, File P1-7 Serial 17, 13 January 1946, pp.1-8
[v] See again Ltr note ii, p.4.
[vi] See again Ltr note ii, p.7
[vii] Ltr, War Diary, Commander LST Group 49 to Commander U.S. Fleet, 17 March 1945.
[viii] Report of Changes in the Muster Rolls of USS LST 510, Month of February 1945, in the case of Seaman Second Class Mack H. Warren, 575-42-06, who died on February 5, 1945.
[ix] “Traffic Rolls Across the Bay, Span in Business,” Norfolk Virginian Pilot, April 16, 1964.
[x] “Coast Guard Honors Cross Sound Ferry Crew for July Rescue,” East End Beacon, Beth Young, August 17th, 2020, p. 1.
[xi] Cross Sound Ferry Vessel Earns “Ship of the Year” Honor, North Fork Patch, September 24, 2021.

Recent Reads: Despite Festivities, Dark Clouds Remain over Normandy

Beyond the Beach: The Allied War Against France

By Stephen Alan Bourque (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2018)
   
Reviewed by M.C. Farrington
Hampton Roads Naval Museum

June 6, 2019, marks the 75th anniversary of the launch of Operation Overlord.  Upon its success hung the future of a continent dominated by a power facing certain defeat, Hitler's Germany, at the hands of another power equally hostile to Western democratic values, Stalin's Soviet Union.  The only hope of postwar freedom and self-determination in Europe hinged upon victory for the 150,000 Soldiers and Sailors pouring over the beachheads of Normandy that day in 1944, hoping to link up with paratroopers dropped inland the evening before.

Led for the most part by President Emmanuel Macron of France, the commemorations that took place today demonstrated the "infinite gratitude" of the French people to their Allied liberators, some of the last of whom were presented the Legion d'honneur, France's highest award.  From Royal Air Force jets drawing the Tricolore over visiting world leaders to deliberately disheveled reenactors intermingling with tourists, to the nonagenarians walking the same beaches as they did approximately 27,375 days ago, it was an event of remembrance not to be forgotten.

Most of the books about D-Day that have come out within the past year consequently echo the awe still felt for the Allied servicemen who fought their way onto those beaches.  They also reinvigorate the "good war" paradigm that distinguishes World War II from almost every other sustained military campaign the Unites States has embarked upon ever since.

But how good of a war was it?  So good that the majority of its veterans did not speak of or write about their part in it for decades, if ever?  While most rank-and-file Soldiers and Sailors did not record their activities and thoughts about D-Day while memories were still fresh, many of those who held senior positions in the Allied Expeditionary Force certainly did. Foremost among them was Gen. Dwight David Eisenhower, whose Crusade in Europe (1948) has been one of the first stops for journalists and public historians writing new books about Overlord ever since.  The early works of other victorious leaders have also dominated the narrative for three-quarters of a century.

During the first decades after D-Day gifted storytellers such as Cornelius Ryan excelled at burnishing notions already held as sacrosanct, using the recollections of those who led Operation Overlord to underscore the fact that they were heroes who carried the fate of the Western World upon their shoulders.  While this fact is not in dispute, the aftermath of certain decisions they made slipped the surly bonds of scrutiny.

In his latest book about D-Day, prolific author Alex Kershaw wrote of Eisenhower:

Dismissed by some British officers as merely a “coordinator, a good mixer,” the blue‐eyed Eisenhower, celebrated for his broad grin and easy charm, had nevertheless imposed his will, working eighteen‐hour days, reviewing and tweaking plans to launch some seven thousand vessels, twelve thousand planes, and 160,000 troops to hostile shores.

A legion of public historians and nonfiction authors have hitched their narrative wagons to Eisenhower in much the same way as authors for generations have done with George Washington.

Just as with Washington, however, new generations of scholars have looked upon the man and his decisions with new eyes, synthesizing new material to assemble a new picture, warts and all.

More than ever before, scholars are looking at D-Day in new ways and making new discoveries that deconstruct the standard narrative of Overlord, leaving something new and  less familiar in its place.  Beyond the Beach is one of these works, but this is not just contrarian scholarship from just any historian.  Its author, professor emeritus at the US Army Command and General Staff College, has drawn together highly disparate sources, from USAAF and RAF records generated during and shortly after the war to local histories compiled in the decades since from French researchers and historians to assemble a meticulously drawn picture of preventable carnage on a grand scale; one that has eluded most Anglophone readers until now. 

The roughly 20,000 French civilians (in some cases, entire families) who were not just killed but pulverized and even atomized by the ferocious bombing raids orchestrated by Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) during Operation Flashlamp, the ferocious initial aerial assault of Overlord, as well as the rest of the campaign that summer is a major focus of this book.  "By the time the war was over," wrote Bourque, "the liberating air forces had killed as many French civilians as the Germans had killed British civilians during the 'blitz' and vengeance weapon assaults." 

Bourque puts the blame directly upon the supreme commander, Gen. Eisenhower, for a majority of the unnecessary deaths after he demanded complete operational authority over high-altitude strategic bombers that had theretofore been striking the German industrial heartland.  Redirecting them to lend tactical support to the Allied troops invading France produced lackluster results against the Germans and devastating results for French civilians. 

During the prelude to D-Day, France wasn't technically an enemy nation.  As a result of an armistice reached with Germany in June 1940, the French State declared itself neutral, yet the nation was by 1944 completely under the jackboot of the Wehrmacht. Naturally, something had to be done about it, and airpower was one of the most powerful tools at the Allies' disposal.  But power does not mean effectiveness.  Bourque makes the case that, before the bombs began falling upon France, both the senior British and American bomber commanders knew that their heavy bombers would do more harm than good and did their best to prevent them from being used for a purpose they were not designed for.

The heavy bombers were not designed with operational flexibility in mind, and neither were their governing directives produced by the Army Air Force's War Plans Division in 1941.  "Although the Nazis had occupied France more than a year earlier," Bourque pointed out, "it says nothing about the problem of attacking targets in friendly, occupied nations."  Therefore, no distinction was made between the approach made to attack targets in Germany, France, or any other occupied country.  In effect, there really was an Allied war against France. 

A key part of this book revolves around the resistance to Gen. Eisenhower from Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris of RAF Bomber Command and Lieutenant General Carl A. Spaatz of the U.S. Eighth Air Force, knowing that their plodding high-altitude bombers could no more protect the troops hitting the beaches than they could deal decisive blows against those resisting them. After quashing the "bomber barons'" dissent, Eisenhower's deputy, Chief Air Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder and his air component commander, Air Chief Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory (who had led RAF Fighter Command and had limited experience with bombers), assigned missions that the bombers were simply incapable of successfully carrying out.

Not only were Harris and Spaatz resistant to this new use of their planes, but members of the British government up to and including Winston Churchill himself were also reluctant to unleash the kind of destruction against the French that theretofore had been reserved for the Germans.

In his book Ike: An American Hero (2007), author Michael Korda detailed how both Spaatz and Harris warned Churchill that there might be as many as 80,000 French civilian casualties if their bombers were to directly support Overlord.  Churchill in turn sent a message to President Franklin Roosevelt concerning the use of strategic bombers and the possibility of a "slaughter" against "a friendly people who have committed no crimes against us."

Roosevelt replied, "However regrettable the loss of civilian life is, I am not prepared to impose from this distance any restriction on military action by the responsible commanders that in their opinion might militate against the success of ‘Overlord’ or cause additional loss of life to the Allied forces of invasion."

Captain Harry Butcher, Eisenhower's naval aide during the war, also reported the opposition of Britain's War Cabinet towards the bombing.

On April 20, 1944, he wrote in his diary:

The War Cabinet felt such bombings would involve a heavy loss of French life, although it has been arranged to notify, by pamphlet and other means, the French people in areas to be bombed, so they can scurry to safety. Yet Ike has insisted and demanded that the ground forces have the benefit of the curtailment of movement of the enemy, which is inevitable by the destruction of the French transportation centers. The coming battleground must be isolated as much as possible. [Chief Air Marshal] Tedder is a perfect master of the art. Ike wants him to supervise and direct. Fortunately, the question has been settled and as General Ike wants it and everyone seems happy with the logic of the arrangement.

At the time, radar-guided bombing had recently been adopted by American strategic bombers but even with this technological leap forward, the Eighth Air Force Operations Analysis Section estimated that in the last quarter of 1944, only one in 70 bombs dropped over cloud-covered targets landed within a half-mile of them. And as is well known, June 1944 found Normandy continually beset with bad weather.  

Compounding things were the orders ultimately given to strategic bomber crews carrying out D-Day's preparatory air assault flying between 6,000 and 12,000 feet above the thick cloud cover. "The official US Army Air Force account notes that everyone was concerned with inaccurate bombing and hitting friendly troops," wrote Bourque," so, 'with Eisenhower's approval the pathfinder bombardiers were ordered to delay up to thirty seconds after the release point showed on their scopes before dropping.'" "Unfortunately, except in the Ninth Air Force sector," Bourque concluded, "the inaccurate air attack had done little other than alert German troops to the invasion force's arrival." 

In the final tally, Harris and Spaatz's prognostications turned out to be only slightly overstated. "The total French toll caused by Allied bombs," Bourque wrote, "was between 60,000 and 70,000 out of 150,000 French civilian deaths during the war." 

The shortcomings of the bombing campaign also contributed to the staggering casualty rate of the Allied troops storming ashore, particularly at Omaha.  In many first-person accounts of D-Day I have read there is a common refrain of a false hope held by those landing that morning, best summed up in an official after-action report by Lieutenant Alfred A. Schiller, a medical officer assigned to the 7th Beach Battalion (established at Camp Bradford, Virginia, in September 1943), who landed at Omaha Beach on the morning of June 6:

In the briefing sessions, we were told again and again that the beachheads would be thoroughly softened up by aerial and naval bombardment, yet when the fortifications of the beachhead and cliffs were examined later, there was no evidence of a single bomb having been dropped on the beach installations in this area (Omaha) by aircraft. Only a few of the most- superficially placed and unprotected enemy gun emplacements had been destroyed by our naval gun fire - and as far as I could discover, this destruction might have come from [sic]car tanks instead. Had the softening-up taken place as planned, I'm certain we would easily have overcome the opposition without nearly such stupendous losses, and the evacuation schedule could have been carried out as planned.

"It is probable that the adjustment to the bombing times had the opposite effect of what planners intended and caused more Allied and French casualties than it prevented," wrote Bourque. "no wonder few air enthusiasts have wanted to realistically discuss the details of this assault, since the largest single air attack in history failed to accomplish its mission."

During the Normandy invasion, a U.S. Army medical corpsman gives candy to a French girl injured during the invasion. Photograph released June 17, 1944. (80-G-59435, Naval History and Heritage Command image)

The throngs of French citizens attending the festivities in Normandy today and in decades past were no doubt genuinely grateful to their liberators, yet that gratitude must surely be tempered with the knowledge of the great cost that came with that liberation.  After three-quarters of a century, it is high time that those outside France become just as acquainted with those unpalatable details. Bourque has done a masterful job of laying out that cost in great detail, and I doubt that after reading Beyond the Beach anyone could ever look upon Eisenhower's "crusade" with the same eyes again.

Seventy-Five Years Ago: The Depot that Supported D-Day

A group of Landing Craft, Vehicle (LCVs) maneuver in the Chesapeake Bay off Camp Bradford, Little Creek, Virginia, in 1943.  (Naval History and Heritage Command image)

By M.C. Farrington
HRNM Historian
As the world prepares to focus once again on the beaches of Normandy and recognize the men who gave their lives to cross them on June 6, 1944 to free France from German occupation on D-Day, it's worth mentioning the simple but brilliantly conceived landing craft, commonly known as Higgins boats, that got them from their hulking transport vessels to those beaches.

Not to be forgotten as well are those who trained their operators and maintained the myriad types of landing craft that ultimately paved the way back to Europe.  Much of the training and maintenance that paid dividends during Operation Neptune (the littoral phase of Operation Overlord), as well as earlier operations in North Africa and Europe occurred all over Hampton Roads. 

Dozens of Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel (LCVPs) under construction at Norfolk Naval Shipyard in 1943. More than 23,000 LCVPs were made at numerous shipyards across the nation during the war, but just two major depots were established by the Navy to refurbish them, one just a couple of miles away from the shipyard. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

The first and most numerous of what became over a dozen varieties of Higgins boat, known as the Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel (LCVP) entered U.S. naval service in June 1941 after the first nine of them rolling into Norfolk aboard rail cars from Andrew Jackson Higgins' factory in New Orleans.  The LCVP was originally made from Higgins' Eureka boat, a favorite of Prohibition-era smugglers as well as their Coast Guard adversaries, modified with innovations rooted in Japanese designs noted by Marine Corps Lieutenant Victor "Brute" Krulak while he was stationed in China a couple of years before.

This illustration by combat artist Mitchell Jamieson depicts the old wooden barque Marsala, anchored off Little Creek in Chesapeake bay, which was the first ship used by the new Amphibious Training Command to instruct Soldiers and Sailors in boarding and debarking transport vessels. Many of the trainees pictured would go on to participate in the invasion of North Africa in November 1942, Sicily and Southern Italy the following year, and, ultimately, France in 1944.  (Courtesy of the Navy Art Collection)   

From North Carolina's Outer Banks to the Ocean View section of Norfolk to Naval Amphibious Training Base Solomons, Maryland, halfway up the Chesapeake Bay, hundreds more LCVPs and their larger cousins, the Landing Craft, Mechanized (LCMs), Landing Craft, Vehicle (LCVs) and a dozen other variants would perform rough duty loading and landing trainees over and over on beaches throughout the Mid-Atlantic for the duration of the war.  After endlessly bobbing and banging against the transport vessels to load personnel and pounded by the surf disgorging them on local beaches, it became readily apparent that specialized facilities were needed to keep the boats, constructed from five-eighths inch plywood, from falling apart. 

The Naval Landing Force Equipment Depot in Norfolk, one of only two established during the war (the other being in Berkeley, California), began before the war as a small activity known as the Base Material Office on the Naval Operating Base (now known as Naval Station Norfolk) with a staff consisting of eight officers and 271 enlisted personnel.

This 1923 map of Norfolk showing sections of the city south of the Eastern Branch of the Elizabeth River shows the neighborhood of Newton Park, home to Ford's Norfolk Assembly Plant for over eight decades, except when the facility served as a Naval Landing Craft Equipment Depot during World War II. Norfolk Naval Shipyard in nearby Portsmouth and its St. Helena Annex across the Elizabeth River's Southern Branch can clearly be seen east of the facility. (Courtesy of the Sargeant Memorial Collection, Norfolk Public Library)

By June 1942, 738 personnel maintained a pool of 397 new landing craft in their modest five-acre stowage yard and had 32 under repair. They were also training operators who would accompany the landing craft to their new commands.  The hundreds of landing craft converging upon Hampton Roads and the thousands of personnel needed to operate them were overwhelming the small facility, but help arrived in the person of  Henry Ford's son, Edsel, who sold his sprawling vehicle assembly plant along the south bank of the Elizabeth River's Eastern Branch to the Navy for $2 million on September 8, 1942.   

The first Model T to be produced at the brand new assembly plant in Norfolk is pictured with an assortment of local Norfolk city officials, bankers, and businessmen on April 20, 1925. The car was bought by the city and driven off the assembly line by Mayor Seth Tyler. The plant quickly became the largest non-maritime employer in the city. (The Virginian-Pilot Photograph Collection, courtesy of the Sargeant Memorial Collection, Norfolk Public Library)

The Ford Motor Company invested in a major expansion of infrastructure at their Norfolk plant during the 1930s. The nearly-completed pier seen here in 1938 was designed to offload components and load completed vehicles directly onto ships on the Elizabeth River, but it also proved ideal for loading and unloading landing craft from military vessels in the river during the war.(The Virginian-Pilot Photograph Collection, courtesy of the Sargeant Memorial Collection, Norfolk Public Library)

Sailors quickly emptied out the three small buildings and stowage yard they maintained at NOB in October and moved 20 miles south into a main building measuring roughly 300 feet by 1,400 feet containing office spaces, a large galley, mess halls, and recreation areas in the southern end, and storerooms, repair shops, classrooms, paint booths on the north end, where as many as 25 railroad cars could be loaded or unloaded under its roof at one time.  The facility was equipped with a practically new 400-foot pier and was surrounded by 65 acres of stowage.  By March 1943, Naval Amphibious Force Atlantic Fleet was finally ready to maintain and refurbish the many thousands of landing craft required to prosecute the war in North Africa and Europe. 

In regular operation for only two months, the Naval Landing Force Equipment Depot, made from the former Ford assembly plant in the Newton Park section of South Norfolk, was packed with hundreds of landing craft in various states of repair on May 4, 1943. (National Archives and Records Administration image, Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)   

By October 1943, the depot, which boasted a staff of 1,117 enlisted men led by 70 officers, had repaired or overhauled over 10,000 landing craft, with thousands left to go.  After D-Day, however, the work load eased as more and more landing craft were transferred to the Pacific.  

The Naval Landing Force Equipment Depot at the height of its activity in October 1943.  At the time, 103 landing craft were under repair in the quarter-mile-long assembly building and 1,463 boats (many of which can be seen in the photograph) were available for issue at the sprawling 65-acre stowage yard.  (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)   

The need for such a large depot on the East Coast evaporated after the war, so the Ford Motor Corporation scooped the facility back up from the Navy on February 25, 1946, for $1.6 million–$400,000 less that it had sold it to the Navy for for less than four years earlier.  Nearly that much had to be invested into the empty facility to begin cranking out vehicles again, which it did in August.  The assembly plant continued to produce vehicles of all types, from sedans to trucks to school bus chassis, for decades until the last F-150 rolled off the assembly line there in April 2007. 

The empty interior of the mammoth Navy Landing Force Equipment Depot is shown on January 22, 1946, just before the Ford Motor Company reacquired it on February 25 for $1.6 million, $400,000 less than the company had sold it for in 1942. The company then invested $1.5 million to resume full production of cars, trucks, and school bus chassis later that year. (The Virginian-Pilot Photograph Collection, courtesy of the Sargeant Memorial Collection, Norfolk Public Library)

On August 7, 1946, the first Ford truck to roll off the assembly line since reacquiring the facility from the Navy is driven by Acting City Manager Henry H. George (left) and Norfolk Mayor James W. Reed. The last of the Ford trucks made in Norfolk, an F-150, would roll off the assembly line in 2007. (The Virginian-Pilot Photograph Collection, courtesy of the Sargeant Memorial Collection, Norfolk Public Library)

Seventy-Five Years Ago: The "Lucky Herndon" Joins the Fleet

By Steve Milner
Contributing Writer

While I'm still recalling the noteworthy observances of Norfolk Naval Shipyard's recent 250th anniversary events that I attended, I'm now writing about another story that again puts our unique facility solidly on our nation's historical map.

It deals with USS Herndon (DD 638), a destroyer that NNSY built, and later launched on February 5, 1942.  It was commissioned on December 20, 1942, and was the lead ship at Omaha Beach during the Allied invasion of Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944, at the start of the D-Day effort to retake Europe from the Germans.

USS Herndon (DD 638) enters the Elizabeth River at Norfolk Naval Shipyard on February 5, 1942. (Historic Norfolk Navy Yard Film Collection, Serial #11-19, courtesy of Marcus W. Robbins)

This ship was nicknamed the "Lucky Herndon," because it was never hit by enemy gunfire, despite being targeted by well-fortified German shore batteries.  By contrast, Herndon effectively pounded enemy gun emplacements on Omaha Beach, ahead of our first troop landings there, and was credited with firing the first naval shots of this campaign.

Although Navy artist Dwight Shepler depicted the actions of the destroyers Emmons (DD 457) and Doyle (DD 494) on June 6, 1944, his watercolor depicting the duel between the destroyers' 5-inch guns and German 88mm guns on the Normandy cliffs gives an idea of what the battle must have been like for USS Herndon (DD 638), which was the first destroyer to bombard the coast that morning. (Navy Art Collection)

Following its exemplary service in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, Herndon eventually went to the Pacific Theater in preparation for the invasion of Mainland Japan which, fortunately, didn't take place due to our dropping two Atomic bombs there.  Herndon later escorted convoys in the Pacific until World War II ended.

Here are some other statistics about the NNSY-built ship, which was a Gleaves-class destroyer: It was named for Commander William Lewis Herndon, who went down with his passenger ship, the mail steamer SS Central America, in a storm off North Carolina in 1857.  At that time, he and his crew saved more than 150 of its 474 passengers.  To commemorate his bravery, there's a monument to him at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.  The towns of Herndon in Fairfax County, Virginia and Herndon, Pennsylvania, were named for him as well.

Cmdr. Herndon, who was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in 1813, was noted for his exploration of the Amazon, in searching for natural resources.  The reason that Herndon was commanding Central America, a commercial vessel, was because Navy captains were assigned to ships that were operated by private companies contracted to the U.S. government.

Central America was also noteworthy because it was carrying an estimated 15 tons of gold, then worth about $2 million, from California to the United States Mint in Philadelphia.  This precious cargo was retrieved in 1987.

Commander Herndon's great-grandniece, Lucy Herndon Crockett, sponsored USS Herndon, the second ship to bear this hero's name.  The first, DD 198, was transferred to Great Britain and renamed HMS Churchill, before America entered WWII.  It was then sold to the Soviet Union and was lost in battle in 1945.

Herndon was 348 feet long and had a crew of 16 officers and 260 enlisted personnel.  It had surface-to-surface guns, anti-aircraft guns, torpedo tubes and depth charge launchers.  It could reach speeds of more than 37 knots and travel 6,500 miles at that speed.  Cruising at 12 knots, Herndon's range was 7,500 miles.   

Another one of the ship's noteworthy achievements was serving as an escort vessel for USS Quincy (CA 71), a heavy cruier that transportted President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the first leg of his historic trip to the Yalta conference in Crimea in 1945, to discuss the end of the Second World War.  The other "Big Three" leaders were Great Britain's Winston Churchill and the Soviet Union's Joseph Stalin.

To honor the NNSY-built destroyer and its crew, the Herndon High School marching band will travel from Virginia to France in 2019 to participate in D-Day 75th anniversary commemorations.  That is, it will with the public's financial and other support.  As they march in Normandy, each member will carry a photograph of a member of a Herndon crew member who served during WWII.  The band will also carry the American flag that flew aboard the ship on D-Day.

"What these students are doing is wonderful," said Tom Wilmore, a 92-year-old USS Herndon veteran.  "It means the world to me that they are honoring me and my shipmates in Normandy."

What a great legacy our shipyard has.  Whether it's our past, our current operations or our future accomplishments, we are proudly "America's Shipyard" that observed its 250th anniversary on November 1, with the exciting theme, "an important past, a vital future."


Editor's Note: In addition to serving as public affairs officer at Norfolk Naval Shipyard during his long and varied public relations career, Steve Milner was also a public affairs officer at Cape Canaveral, Florida, during the Gemini and Apollo programs. This article originally ran with the title, "NNSY's 250th observances were great; and here's another winner" in the November Federal Managers' Association Chapter 3 (Norfolk Naval Shipyard) newsletter.     

USS Texas's Role in the D-Day Landings

Three American battleships supported the Allied landings at Omaha and Utah Beaches on June 6, 1944. One of them was the Newport News-built USS Texas (BB-35). An old “battle wagon” commissioned in 1914, Texas was the flagship for Rear Admiral Carleton F. Bryant’s group of battleships and cruisers supporting the American beaches.

USS Texas (BB-35)

All along Hitler’s Atlantic Wall, the Germans constructed gun emplacements. At Pointe du Hoc, six large 155mm guns capable of covering both Omaha and Utah Beaches made it a prime target. As part of the preparations for D-Day, the Allies bombed Pointe du Hoc in April 1944. Unsure of the results of this bombing and regarding the guns as a great threat, the Allies assigned the US 2^nd Ranger Battalion to secure them on D-Day. Before the Rangers went in, however, Texas would get her chance to knock out these cannon. 

Guns on Hitler's Atlantic Wall

Beginning at 5:50 A.M. on June 6, Texas fired over two hundred 14” shells at Pointe du Hoc. This fire gouged craters into the landscape, turning it into something resembling the surface of the moon.  The shells hit several gun emplacements, but there was no return fire from these positions. When the Rangers captured Pointe du Hoc, they found the emplacements empty. They later discovered the guns in a field and destroyed several of them.

Pointe du Hoc. Note the crater-like surface of the land.

Two minutes after the first barrage, Texas' main guns shifted to targets at the western edge of Omaha Beach. The ship's secondary guns targeted key areas defending the beach exits, including trying to destroy the anti-tank wall. Just past noon, Texas came closer to shore (about 3,000 yards out) and added her firepower to the fight around exit D-1.

USS Texas stayed on station for most of the next two weeks, providing fire support until the main fighting moved beyond the range of her guns. Although she did not destroy all the gun emplacements, this naval vessel and others helped clear obstacles, kept the enemy seeking cover, and helped get the Allied soldiers off the beach.

(Note: This blog post was written by HRNM Educator Elijah Palmer.)