SABOTAGE BY OUR NAVY

Early in World War II there was an inexplicable policy at high levels of the Navy which should have brought some high ranking admirals to court marshall for sheer stupidity, if not for treason. My first hint of this problem was mentioned in my posting about Pearl Harbor. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, I was assigned to the SS Columbia, which was the largest of the Alaska passenger liners. We sailed with sealed transmitting equipment on the ship loaded with troops to take to Alaska and returned loaded with women and children being evacuated because the Japanese had already invaded Alaska. We sailed, for the most part, without any escort, through waters active with Japanese submarines. When arriving in Seattle, officials came aboard to break the seal and test our transmitting equipment. To our shock, the transmitter tubes of the radio had been removed without the captain or the operator being notified. We had been sailing through those dangerous waters, loaded with civilians with inoperable transmitting equipment. Had we been torpedoed, we would not have been able to call for help.

Next I was the operator assigned to the S.S. Mexican. The operators we customarily referred to as “sparks” in deference to the early history of ship’s radios which used spark transmitters.  The Mexican was held up in Portland loading metal runway strips and other desperately needed war supplies for the South Pacific. After it was all loaded the federal radio commission further held up the anxiously awaited shipment to install a new antenna and other upgrades to our radio equipment. Finally, we were allowed to sail. During the cruise I was able to listen to the radio for news and would type up the news in a little newsletter for the crew members.

In Brisbane, the hospital ships were transferring patients to the local hospital. Australian Naval officers came aboard our ship and broke the seal that had been placed on the radio equipment so that if the operator used the equipment without the captain’s permission, it would be known.  They tested the equipment and found that it had been sabotaged after the radio upgrades had delayed our sailing. We had sailed the whole distance, including through the Coral Sea battle without usable radio transmission equipment.  The Australian officer asked which side the American Navy was fighting on since they had found this on almost every American ship that came in.  Had we been torpedoed I would have been stuck trying to make the radio transmitter work until the water came up to my desk!

When we returned to San Francisco I received word that the draft board had ordered me to leave the ship’s radio job and do research at Cal Tech. At that time, one smart move by naval personnel had been exhibited in that the allies divided up the world into areas and specified one allied radio station to serve all ships in that area with any emergency information. One day in San Francisco, I was shocked to have a couple of young navy enlisted men come aboard with a tool chest and inform me that they had orders to cut the receiving coils out of the receivers so that our receivers as well as our transmitters would be inoperative. All of the efforts of the allies to get word to our ships would have been in vain.  I took the fire ax out and told the navy boys that the radio law required radio operators to protect their equipment so it would have to be over my dead body or the captain’s orders before they could sabotage our receivers. Their comments were complementary, and they said “Good for you, Sparks!” and they left. They were later ordered to come back and finish the job.

The officer who replaced me had been a radio officer on a ship on the east coast whose ship had been sunk. His experience on the east coast was that he tried unsuccessfully to get out an SOS, but his transmitting equipment had also been sabotaged, so this subversive, bungling policy must have been made at a very high level to cover both coasts.