Some years ago I wrote on ARM Netzahualcoyotl, the last WWII Gearing class in service worldwide. Mexico also was the very last user of the WWII Fletcher class, however unlike Mexico’s FRAM-modernized Gearing, in 2001 ARM Cuitláhuac remained “frozen in time” to a WWII technology level.
(USS John Rodgers (DD-574) during WWII.)
(ARM Cuitláhuac, the former USS John Rodgers, in 2000. It was the last Fletcher still in service anywhere in the world.)
For Stalingrad, covered in part 1, Josef Stalin had an idea (however wrong) but no ship. Meanwhile in the United States after WWII, the US Navy had an incomplete ship, USS Hawaii, but was looking for ideas on how to finish it.
(USS Guam during WWII.) (photo via All Hands, the US Navy’s magazine)
(End of the road for USS Hawaii on 20 June 1959 as it is towed to the scrapyard.)
I have not done a 2-part series for a while and these are two ships I have been wanting to write about for some time.
USS Hawaii and Stalingrad were two warships of roughly the same type and of similar firepower, both born (directly or indirectly) out of WWII. Both were made at different times for totally different reasons, each had a unique life and in the end, neither was finished.
(How it started: artist’s rendition of the Soviet battlecruiser Stalingrad.)
(How it ended: the never-finished Stalingrad for use in weapons tests.)
I debated on this topic as perhaps it is too bland for general reading, but perhaps readers will be interested not only in WWII military technology but how decisions about it was made in later decades.
(The launching of USS Dyess (DD-880) during WWII. A third of a century later, USS Dyess would be one of the Gearing class candidate ships for the study below.)
There were many proposals to upgrade WWII warships. For every success like the GUPPY submarines, many more proposals never saw daylight. They were too expensive, or mechanically impossible, or just dumb ideas to begin with. Today they survive only as poorly-documented sketches.
(The July 1980 report which spelled the end for WWII destroyers in the US Navy.)
However this proposal: to upgrade WWII Gearing class destroyers for service deep into the 1980s, was a reasonable idea to explore, mechanically feasible, and thoroughly documented in the unclassified realm. As it was never done, it is forgotten today. So hopefully it will be of some interest.
(The decommissioned USS William C. Lawe (DD-763) on the right, which in 1983 had been the very last WWII destroyer in the US Navy.)
Normally a barracks ship would probably be thought of as one of the most boring things in any fleet, but four Benewah class barracks ships of WWII were successfully retasked as riverine combatants during the Vietnam War.
(Launching of the barracks ship USS Benewah (APB-35) during WWII.)
(USS Benewah with a UH-1 Iroquois and riverine warfare craft off the Vietnamese coast in 1969.)
During the 1982 Falklands War, Argentina’s ARA Alférez Sobral, formerly the WWII US Navy’s USS Salish (ATA-187), made a remarkable voyage of determined sailors surviving at sea.
(USS Salish (ATA-187) in US Navy service.)
(The heavily-damaged ARA Alférez Sobral, the former USS Salish, returning to Argentina in May 1982 after taking multiple British missile hits.)
For readers in the USA, I wish all a happy Independence Day, our nation’s 247th year.
In the US Navy, a warship launched or commissioned on the 4th of July is a special honor. Below is the WWII Gato class submarine USS Angler (SS-240) being launched by Electric Boat Company at Groton, CT on 4 July 1943.
USS Angler survived WWII and during 1952, was selected for conversion into SSK configuration to become USS Angler (SSK-240).
Combat sinkings of warships destroyer-sized or larger after WWII were not many, even fewer in the later Cold War period, and as such are usually well-known and documented.
Egypt’s WWII-vintage destroyer ENS el-Qaher is by contrast, barely studied and almost completely forgotten today.
(ENS el-Qaher, formerly the British HMS Myngs of WWII.)
(Israeli air force F-4 Phantom IIs.)
(The wreck of ENS el-Qaher.)
The USSR’s M-XV class of small submarines was designed before WWII, were built and served during the war before being put out of production, and then quite remarkably were put back into production after WWII; only to leave service very soon after.
(M-294 of the Soviet navy at sea.)
Despite being almost totally forgotten today these WWII submarines served long into the Cold War era, in some cases into the 1970s, and were helpful to several navies looking to establish a modern submarine force.
(S10 was Egypt’s first submarine ever. It was formerly the Soviet M-271.)
The United States fielded many excellent warship designs during WWII: the Essex class aircraft carriers, the Iowa class battleships, the Sumner and Gearing classes of destroyer, and so on.
The Tacoma class patrol frigates were not in this category. Even before WWII ended the whole patrol frigate concept was viewed as a mistake within the US Navy.
Whatever their problems, these were still young warships when WWII ended in 1945. They were simple and inexpensive to operate. They were ideal for transfer to smaller navies friendly to the USA. One of these was Cuba, which received three.
(Máximo Gómez, formerly USS Grand Island (PF-14) of WWII.)
The final outcome of these transfers could not have been imagined in the early years after WWII, when the USA and Cuba had a strong defense partnership.
(Fidel Castro addresses the crew of one of his three Tacoma class frigates in August 1963, four years after seizing power in Cuba.) (photo via CubaHoy)
(Declassified in 2002, this CIA sitrep from the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis mentions two of Cuba’s Tacoma class ships.)
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