Army Ships -- Signal Corps

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Updated 25 August 2003.

Army Ships -- The Ghost Fleet

Signal Corps

First some clarification. I am defining "Signal Corps ships" as those with operations dedicated to or heavily tilted toward the Signal Corps function. Records found in Record Group 336 at National Archives during December 2001 indicate operational relationships were much as for today's oceanographic ships. Operational control (crew, maintenance and such) lies with the Military Sealift Command while the technical control (where they go and what they do) lies with Oceanographer of the Navy. The status is mentioned in a monograph titled Water Transportation for the United States Army, 1939-1942 with reference to the Harbor Boat Service:

Aside from the Navy Gun Crew, the military contingent on the Silverado was furnished by the Signal Corps, but for operational purposes the vessel was manned by civilians in the employ of the Transportation Corps.

An interesting 1930 article is posted on the Army Quartermaster Foundation/Museum site indicates Signal Corps had full operation of the ships at some time. The Work of the Army's Fleet [By Colonel T. M. Knox, Q. M. C., The Quartermaster Review, March-April 1930] states:

Another interesting development of Alaskan military needs has been the supply and maintenance by the Quartermaster Corps of an Army Transport as a deep-sea cable-laying ship. The first such cable-ship, the U. S. Army Transport "Burnside" was a former prize ship of the Spanish War, and recently has been replaced by a larger ship from the U. S. Shipping Board named the "Dellwood". This transport is in reality a high-grade laboratory and deep-sea cable layer, under the control and operation [emphasis added] of the U. S. Army Signal Corps.

I believe the description in the monograph is more closely descriptive of the relationships despite the mention of "control and operation of the U. S. Army Signal Corps" in Knox's piece. I've seen similar descriptions of the oceanographic vessels as their movements are controlled and operations are directed by Oceanographer of the Navy. The crewing, maintenance and operation of the vessels is a Military Sealift Command function and they are considered to be operated by that organization.

In the Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA) the ships with signal function may also have been operated by a special group, the Small Ships, with a different command structure from the large vessels. These were vessels acquired or built locally and crewed by Australians, New Zealanders or other locally available civilian mariners under contract to the U.S. Army. A very interesting Australian book, Forgotten Fleet by Bill Lunney and Frank Finch, covers this subject in considerable detail.

Ken Liddane, one of ten Signal Corps personnel aboard FP-47, has furnished first hand information. His vessel was used to transmit news stories from reporters following the Pacific landings. They boarded the ship in Hollandia, New Guinea and followed the action through the Philippines and Borneo. He has provided a photo showing the FP-47 with the Signal Corps emblem and two Rising Sun flags for two aircraft downed.

In a covering letter Mr. Liddane noted presence of the Signal Corps detachment, the U.S. Army Ship and Gun crew and "Additional (civilian) personnel on board included, Captain, 1st and 2nd Mates, Chief and asst. Ch. Engineers" that indicates the crew mix was quite similar to that described in Forgotten Fleet where the civilians were Australian. I have also seen indications the civilians were also people with maritime experience, or at least vessel experience, recruited in the U.S. The crewing of these vessels, particularly in SWPA, seems to have been a pragmatic "whatever works" under the desperate manpower shortages of the war.

In a subsequent e-mail message Mr. Liddane described the method of operation: "There was one other small Navy boat called, Apache, which traveled near us (on the FP47) which carried the correspondents. When they had their material censored and ready, they would signal us and send a small boat with the stories to us for transmission to our last port of call."

Note that we have here an Army vessel with civilian ship's officers and an Army contingent working with a naval vessel. I have constantly run across these reports of relatively small operational groups with very mixed personnel. The Second World War was the true start of large scale combined operations. The Southwest Pacific Area, probably in part due to being remote from the command centers in the U.K. and U.S. and constantly short of support, seems to have the most varied combinations.

* * *

The big Army cable layers, such as prewar layers Dellwood and Silverado, were assigned to the Signal Corps to install and maintain communications cables. Myer and Neptune (ex Bullard) were apparently built for this purpose and caught in the reorganized establishment we know now as DoD before major service in the intended roles. They did apparently do cable work for the Army, but the record of that service is obscure.

Why was the Army engaged in laying long distance submarine cables? As background I'm reminded of a post in a discussion group on the movie Saving Private Ryan that was alleged to be from someone in today's Army with extensive experience. It only succeeded in demonstrating the person's lack of historical depth. This individual claimed the movie was foolish because if the Chief of Staff wanted to find Ryan he would have just sent a message to the unit and found him. Wrong answer. First, those units were scattered more than the movie begins to show. Second, radio communications of the period were simply not that effective. During the Bulge the 106th Infantry Division was cut off and later destroyed in the Schnee Eifel. Uncertain communications played a role in their destruction:

"Both regimental commanders had been assured by radio that reinforcements from the west would attempt to break through sometime after daylight on 18 December and, further, that supplies would be dropped by air. A division order to withdraw to the Our River, sent out at 1445, was followed six hours later by the question: "When do you plan to move?" These orders, relayed through the artillery radio net, took a long time and much repetition before they could reach the entrapped regiments. The initial order to withdraw to the Our River line was not received until about midnight of the 17th. The two regimental commanders agreed that this order now was out of date because messages, signed later in the day, had promised resupply by air." (U.S. Army in World War II: The European Theater of Operations; The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge;

Breakthrough at the Schnee Eifel

)

To those in today's military used to powerful radio and satellite links, this may come as a shock, but even during my days at sea we were out of touch with land except for dots and dashes on long wave. A few of the more powerful short-wave stations punched through with rising and fading volume, static, and sudden vanishings. Thirty years ago a long distance telephone call to South America might be more a frustration in shouting and attempting to make sense of unrelated words. Long distance communications were largely by cable and even relatively short distances between permanent installations were linked by cable. In the case of islands this required submarine cables and thus cable layers.

Some of these ships acted as radio relays, particularly in the Pacific. As previously noted, cables connected permanent installations and commercial cables were also used (remember the Pearl Harbor attack warning delivered after the ships were in flames). Forces operating in the deep Southwest Pacific were not going to enjoy clear, reliable links back to Hawaii or even Australia. Signal Corps ships, probably feeling quite exposed and alone on station at sea or anchored in remote island groups, operated as relays for message traffic.

Grover, in U.S. Army ships and Watercraft of World War II, lists the Dellwood, Silverado, Restorer, Col. William A. Glassford (ex-BSP 2098; later Navy's AG-142), Basil O. Lenoir (ex-BSP 2099), Gen. Samuel M. Mills (II), Joseph Henry, Lt. Col. Ellery W. Niles (later R/V F. V. Hunt), Albert J. Myer, William H. G. Bullard (later Neptune), and the barge Brico (ex-halibut steamer Chicago and now an ex-restaurant in Fanny Bay on the east coast of Vancouver Island) as the cable ships. For the communication relay ships he lists the sailing ships Harold, Argosy Lemal, Geoanna, and Volador and diesel powered FP 47, Apache, PCER 848, PCER 849, PCER 850 and Spindle Eye (later Sgt. Curtis Shoup). The Gen. Samuel M. Mills (II), Joseph Henry and Lt. Col. Ellery W. Niles were ex-Coast Artillery Corps mine planters. The old Mills had been transferred to the Coast Guard as the Coast Guard cable ship Pequot that also operated through the war.

Later News of These Ships

Grover notes that the Joseph Henry "had sometimes heen designated as a cable ship" and other evidence indicates she may have been a Signal Corps cable ship intimately associated for periods with the Coast Artillery Corps' mine efforts. For more on this interesting ship, including the surprising news that you could actually visit her, see Joseph Henry on the Coast Artillery Corps Army Mine Planter Service page.

Miscellaneous bits and pieces on the ships above: Both Geoanna (IX-61) and Volador (IX-59) served under Navy, apparently with Coast Guard crews, before transfer to Army where they were eventually operated under the Small Ships command. Many of the SWPA Small Ships were operated with Australian crews or a mix of Navy, Army, Australian civilians and whatever combination worked. Neither Geoanna nor Volador are noted, though both are mentioned, as having Australian crews in Forgotten Fleet.

An excellent site sheds light into SWPA communications of the time. The material at AboutWW2.com is based on the papers of Lt. Colonel O. Howard ("Dave") Davidsmeyer and includes a page with a photo of Geoanna, now with the Army designation of TP-249, with some recent information from one of the Signals people aboard. This site gives considerable insight into the Signal Corps' operations in SWPA. The page Army Communications Ships has a number of photos.

A reader, John Richards, reports (19 Jan 2000) "Geoanna is in Manila and slowly being renovated." I've also found an article, "Schooner G. I.," (Naval History magazine; September/October 1997 Volume 11 Number 5) dealing with service aboard Geoanna.

With regard to the SWPA and signals vessels, part of Mac Arthur's Navy seen in more detail at Forgotten Fleet, the following is from "The SIGSALY Story" (SIGSALLY provided secure voice communications) on NSA's history site:

Eventually a dozen SIGSALY terminals were distributed to the far corners of the globe, to include Washington; London; Algiers; Australia; Hawaii; Oakland, California; Paris (after liberation); Guam; and, after VE Day, in Frankfurt and Berlin. Most interesting perhaps was the installation of the device on a 250-ton ship, an ocean lighter dubbed OL-31. This floating communications network tracked General Douglas MacArthur in his island hopping campaign in the Pacific, and would have been a vital communications link if had it been necessary to conduct a full fledged invasion of Japan. [Emphasis added]

Basil O. Lenoir stayed in Alaska doing cable work as an Air Force vessel when the Air Force Communications Service took over the cables (Now we have all three services operating cable ships!). Ken Laesser, who has the very interesting Coast Guard History page containing the last reference, has brought to my attention another of his pages where he lists Army vessels having Coast Guard crews.

For a detailed look at the life of one of these ships see Dirk van Oudenol's history of the C. S. Restorer. Restorer was built in 1902 for commercial service in the Pacific, based in Canada then registered in the U.S. during the First World War and as a result taken by the Army for the Second World War. She returned to commercial service that continued until 1951. Dirk's work is hosted on an excellent site devoted to commercial cable history: History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications.

See "Army Cable Ships" under my coverage of cable ships at ARC-1, ARC-5 & Nashawena (AG-142) for more discussion of these vessels and specifically of the Basil O. Lenoir.

Spindle Eye

The confusion about Spindle Eye is was "clarified" and is now open again. A notice of press release [Department of the Army, Public Information Division, Press Section; for Release in Am Papers, Wednesday, November 19, 1947; Army Renames 20 Vessels for Medal of Honor Heroes (Record Group 336)] at National Archives and Records Administration gives the background:

All but one of the ships to be renamed were former Victory ships, Liberty ships and small Diesel ships which had been employed to move troops and cargo during the war. The exception is the S.S. "Spindle Eye," which is to be renamed the "Sergeant Curtis F. Shoup." This vessel was outfitted and used as a news transmission ship during the atom bomb tests at Bikini Atoll. It has since been converted to a passenger-cargo vessel.

In light of this I believed the inclusion of Spindle Eye in Grover's list was due to the conversion of this vessel into the newsroom function and not as a war signals vessel. Two recent e-mails lead to a possible different conclusion. The first referred to the writer's father-in-law being aboard (verified by photo) and at Nagasaki days after the bomb was dropped. That did not match the story that the ship was "being" fitted out as a newsroom in roughly the same period. The "newsroom" was possibly a cover for the intelligence capability or the ship was actually changing from one mission to the other. It is also possible the "newsroom" ship was simply drafted into a logical mission for a ship carrying such communications equipment and the technical expertise that might enable a beginning evaluating of radiological effects created by the new weapon.

The most recent mailing states clearly that "my dad's team of Signal Corps technicians and engineers had the job of monitoring and decoding Japanese communications preceding what they thought was to be the invasion of Japan. . . . Their mission was changed to post-surrender intelligence gathering after the bombs were dropped. My dad's letters home during that period were powerful recounts of the devastating destruction of nuclear weapons." This puts the ship clearly into the class of an electronic intelligence pioneer and perhaps one with equipment making her particularly useful for events at Nagasaki and Bikini.

So far these intelligence missions are only supported by the e-mail messages. Those were not followed by additional information. I've found no firm documentation and consider these other missions possible, but unconfirmed. Confirmation and more detail would add an interesting chapter to what is now known about early shipboard communications intelligence.

As Sergeant Curtis F. Shoup (T-AG 175), this vessel was briefly a survey ship for the Navy as mentioned on my Miscellaneous Ships page under Sgt. George D. Keathley. Spindle Eye/Sergeant Curtis F. Shoup is among those ships included in a site titled The Broadcasting Fleet covering radio broadcasting ships of all sorts.

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