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After Pearl, our fleet was decimated so we had to get "creative". We needed ships, so in some cases we seized them.
One of those seized ships was a 1928 ship from the Swedish_American line christened the
"Kungsholm". Five days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Kungsholm was seized in NY harbor for use as a troop transport. On Jan 2nd, she was sold to the US War Shipping Administration and renamed the "John Ericcson" (after the inventor of the Civil War Monitor),
She was retro-fitted with bunks & provisions & for the duration of the war, served as an
American troopship in the Pacific & Mediterranean (she also participated in the DDay Normandy
Invasion).
The John Ericcson was part of Convoy USG6 leaving NY 3/3/1943 for Casablanca. My dad was in that Convoy and here is an account of it from one of the tankers "Chiwawa" who was assigned the duty of convoy tanker, refueling the convoy's seven escorts. Chiwawa left Norfolk on her first wartime cruise 2/13/1943 to Aruba for oil. She arrived back in NY 2/25/1943 and departed approx 1 week later as part of a 45 ship convoy, USG6, bound for Casablanca.
From "A Tale Of Two Tankers" by Paul Gryniewicz
"The escorting destroyers, Wainwright, Trippe, Champlin, Roann, Mayrant, Hobby, and Rhind, were equipped with the latest radar and sonar. It was common for convoy escorts to burn 2 or 3 times more fuel than normal dashing around the merchant ships, investigating & attacking enemy contacts. As the convoy zig-zagged it's way across the Atlantic at 9 knots, the USG-6 escorts needed all the fuel they could get. Shore-based radio direction finders detected German U-boats blocking UGS-6's way to North Africa.
Just three days out of NY, an unescorted Norwegian freighter, Tamesis, blundered into the convoy and collided with S.S. alcoa Guard. The Norwegian ship quickly sank, Alcoa Guard, while heavily damaged, managed to stay afloat and made it safely to Bermuda. On;y one ship in the convoy, S.S, Richard A. Alvet, heard the calls for help and dropped out of the convoy to pick up survivors.
On march 12th, the convoy received orders from the Commader-In- Chief Atlantic Fleet changing it's course to the north of the Azores in hope of avoiding German submarines. However, the order was received too late to do any good. U-130 was already shadowing the convoy and relaying it's position to 16 other German submarines. The wolfpack's first victim was a straggler, the S.S. keystone, which was slowed by boiler trouble and had fallen about 50 miles astern of the convoy. U-172 fired a single torpedo into Keystone after sunset on march 13th and the merchantman quickly went down. The cruel, heartless logic of wartime demanded that no attempt be made by the convoy to go back and rescue survivors. They were sragglers and left to fend for themselves.
The very next day, Rhind rescued 22 survivors from a Norwegian cargo ship that had been adrift since 3/6 after a u-boat blew their ship out from underneath them.
Just before sunset on March 15, sailing in the tail position of the starboard column known as the "coffin corner", S.S. Wyoming was hit by two torpedoes from U-524 and sank in just 8 minutes. In addition to the cargo, Wyoming had 127 Army Air Corps passengers and crew aboard. While Hobby drove off hte attacking U-boat, destroyer Champlin dashed in and plucked all 140 souls out of the water. Not one person was lost! At about the same time the next night, the U-boats struck again. This time U-172 severely damaged but did not sink S.S. Benjamin Harrison. Her survivors were rescued, but due to the numerous U-boats in the area, attempts to tow her out of harm's wat were abandoned. The escorts sank her.
March 17th was the convoy's last night under U-boat attack/ Late that afternoon the convoy came within range of aircraft based in North Africa and Gibralter, however that did not prevent the U-boats from making one more attack. Now it was Chiwawa's turn. Before dark, U-167 fired four torpedoes into the convoy. Commander Fultz and his crew braced themselves for the unevitable explosion. To their great relief, the torpedoes passed harmlessly beneath only to continue on into the body of the convoy. Only one of the 4 found a mark, the liberty ship S.S. Molly Pitcher. Like Benjamin Harrison the day before, Molly Pitcher was hit but still afloat. Champlin, Rowan, and S.S. William Johnson picked up her crew. Later that night, U-521 surfaced and finished off the abandoned ship. The remaining 38 merchant ships of UGS-6 proceeded to Casablanca without further incident.
The convoy's escorts scored one kill on march 12th, when Champlin sank U-130 with depth charges. Considering the convoy was up against 17 U-boats, the seven escorts did a remarkable job of limited convoy losses to just 5 ships. The destroyer's aggressive sweeps ahead, astern and on both sides of the convoy forced the Germans to fire at long range and only at ships at the rear of the convoy. Most certainly, convoy losses would've been much greater without the escorts' defensive tactics made possible by Chiwawa's ever-ready source of fuel"
Not exactly a Carnival Cruise, eh?
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