Other maritime reading: Maritime Monday 95 for today (or when you find this).
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It’s about connections. Several months back, in October to be exact, one of the people highlighted in this series was RM3/c Otis Dennis, an early hero of the Pacific, who had a DE named for him, that was a player in the Battle off Samar. Then I got a comment from Otis’ nephew, Don Dennis, who pointed me to the family website, which also contains a wealth of information of Otis’ wartime service, but also that of his pilot, who perished with him, LTjg Carleton Fogg, USN, and some detailed historical records from the USS ENTERPRISE (CV-6) and the squadrons who flew from her by CAPT “Dusty” Kleiss, USN (Ret).

And that site is a massive compilation of family history, reaching back into the times of WWII with the story of one of the families who were captured (all of them) by the Japanese in the Philippines.

That being said, today I will cover the story of LTjg Fogg and his floating legacy.

From the Dennis Family site, the only place I found significant detail about the life of Carleton Fogg:

Lieutenant (j.g.) Carleton Thayer Fogg, U.S. Navy
Received from the U.S. Navy Archives

Lieutenant (j.g.) Carleton Thayer Fogg was born in Lynn, Massachusetts on August 19, 1917 and died February 1, 1942 in the Pacific area (Roi Island, Kwajalein Atoll) from enemy action (Japanese attack).

On October 6, 1937, he enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve and from 15th to November 13, 1937 he was on active duty and was discharged on December 21, 1937.

On December 10, 1937, he was appointed Aviation Cadet, U.S. Naval Reserve, from December 3, 1937 and accepted appointment and executed oath on December 21st. He was assigned to active duty for training involving flying at the Naval Air Station, Pensacola, Florida, on the 10th of December and detached on January 7, 1939, and assigned to the Scouting Squadron Two USS SARATOGA for temporary active duty involving flying, reporting on February 23, 1939. He was detached from this duty on June 14, 1939 and assigned to the Scouting Squadron Seventy-one (USS WASP) for active duty involving flying.

He was appointed Ensign for Aviation duties, US Volunteer Reserve, from January 1, 1939 and accepted the appointment and executed oath of office on August 19th. On September 11, 1939, assigned to Scouting Squadron Six USS ENTERPRISE to active duty involving flying. Commissioned Ensign, U.S. Navy, from June 1, 1939 and on March 28th, accepted the appointment and executed oath of office. On December 13th, appointed Lieutenant (j.g.) for temporary service to rank from November 1, 1941 and accepted on January 7, 1942.

The President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the AIR MEDAL posthumously to Lieutenant (j.g.) Carleton T. Fogg, U.S.N. for service as set forth in the following:

CITATION:

“For meritorious conduct in aerial flight while in action with the enemy. As a member of a Scouting Squadron he participated in the initial attack on Kwajelein Atoll, Marshall Islands on February 1, 1942, which was executed in the face of enemy fighter opposition and heavy anti-aircraft fire. He pressed home his attack in a determined manner and contributed to the damage to enemy installation on Roi Island. He gallantly gave up his life in the service of his country. His conduct throughout was in accordance with the best traditions of the Naval Service.”

LTjg Fogg and RM3/c Dennis flew a Dauntless dive bomber. This is a drawing of theirs:

LTjg Fogg was overhead Pearl Harbor on Dec 7th, 1941, and this is his after action report:

Pearl Harbor Report of ENS C. T. Fogg – 7 December 1941

from USS Enterprise CV-6
SCOUTING SQUADRON SIX
U. S. S. ENTERPRISE
At Sea
14 December, 1941
From: Ensign C. T. FOGG, USN, (Pilot of 6-S-11).
To: The Commander, Scouting Squadron SIX.

Subject: Report of Action with Japanese on Oahu on 7 December, 1941.

Reference: (a) Art. 874 U.S. Navy Regs.

1.

I completed my scouting sector with no contacts and proceeded to Oahu, arriving over Barbers Point at about 0840. I flew towards Pearl Harbor and got as far as Ewa Field before I realized fully that Oahu had been bombed. I immediately turned back towards Barbers Point and rendezvoused with five other Scouting Squadron SIX planes who had completed search. This group was lead by Lieutenant W. E. Gallaher, USN. After circling at sea for an indefinite time we sighted two large groups of enemy aircraft rendezvousing about 20 miles south of Barbers Point. After reporting them, we attempted to land at Ford Island but were mistaken for enemy and fired upon by own anti-aircraft. The formation broke and I turned back and landed at Ewa Field. Damage to my plane was slight, only a hole in the main spar of my right wing and another in my tail surfaces. At Ewa Field I found that they had suffered two strafing attacks and that all aircraft but two (2) F4F’s had been destroyed by incendiary bullets. Personnel casualties were light, approximately three dead and eight to twelve seriously wounded.
2.

I remained at Ewa Field by direction of Wheeler Control until about 1000 the next day (Monday) when I took off and proceeded to Ford Island by orders from Patrol Wing TWO Operations Officer.

(Signed) C. T. FOGG

In honor of his sacrifice, the USS FOGG (DE-57), a ship of the BUCKLEY Class destroyer escorts, was named fro Carleton Fogg and was commissioned on July 7th, 1943, with his mother as the ship’s sponsor.Here is what history I could find on FOGG’s operational record at the Dictinary of American Fighting Ships:

Fogg’s first cruise on convoy duty began with her departure from New York 13 October 1943. She escorted unladen tankers to Aruba and Curacao in the Netherlands West Indies, crossed to Algiers guarding loaded tankers, then returned by way of Curacao and Trinidad to New York 4 December 1943. Between 26 December 1943 and 20 August 1944, she made six escort voyages from New York to Londonderry and Lisahally, North Ireland, guarding the flow of men and material which made possible the invasion of Europe and the push across the continent which followed.

The escort put to sea once more from New York 12 September 1944, to escort a convoy through the English Channel to Cherbourg, France, then called at Portsmouth, England, before returning to New York 9 October for a brief overhaul. After special training at Charleston, she sailed 6 November to escort a slow towing convoy to England and back. Homeward bound, on 20 December, one of the LSTs in the convoy was torpedoed, and as Fogg began to search for the submarine, she, too, was torpedoed. Four of her men were killed and two wounded, and the ship badly damaged [losing the rear third of the ship, breaking off just aft of the Engine Room #2 bulkhead]. For two days the crew fought to save their ship, but when on 22 December the stern sheared off, all but a skeleton crew were taken off. These men restored buoyancy, and Fogg reached the Azores in tow the next day. A first attempt to tow her back to the United States failed when bad weather tore away the temporary bulkheads replacing the stern but she at last arrived at Boston for repairs 9 March 1945.

After refresher training, Fogg sailed out of Norfolk between 2 and 30 June 1945, acting as target ship in battle problems with a cruiser, serving as plane guard for a carrier, and training men in combat information center duty. On l July, she entered Philadelphia Naval Shipyard for conversion to a radar picket, which was completed 2 October. Duty along the east coast and in the Caribbean, primarily in antisubmarine warfare development and as combat information center school ship, continued until 26 July 1947, when she arrived at Charleston, S.C. There, Fogg was decommissioned and placed in reserve 27 October 1947.

There is a note on the Dennis site indicating a 2 volume book titled “History of USS FOGG DE-57” by Salvatore J. DiMilla was written. It appears the book can be found at the East Carolina University Special Collections. I suspect it has plenty of information on DE ops in WWII.

I close with an excerpt from the memorial service for LTjg Carleton Fogg, held at his alma mater the North Yarmouth Acaemy:

[…]
What man, whatever his need, can grouse and grumble at the rationing of rubber when his friend has made the supreme contribution; what civilian club-room admiral or barbershop general can revise and rearrange with his pitiful HALF-information battle lines, worldwide in their extent, entered by his neighbor who, like a brigade famous in history, knew and acted upon the military axiom “Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to DO, – and die!”?
[…]

Good advise for all time? I think so.

The credit for this posts detail goes to the families of Otis Dennis and Carleton Fogg for taking the time and effort to collect and organize a tremendous amount of history.

embedded by Embedded Video

Funny, and not all at once:

Update: commenter Theodore pints us at the truth and it’s false…but it almost sounds plausible these days.

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on.

-Winston Churchilldownload Ready to Rumble

Check this out…Burt Rutan’s new design for Virgin Atlantic’s commercial space travel….

[…]
WhiteKnight, a three-fuselage, four-engine plane in its new incarnation, will ferry the smaller spacecraft high into the sky and release it. The spacecraft pilot then fires the craft’s rocket engine, which burns a combination of nitrous oxide and a rubber-based solid fuel, and shoots the vehicle upward to an altitude of more than 62 miles, the realm of black sky.

Once there, the pilot is to activate the craft’s innovative feathered wing, which rotates into a position that greatly increases aerodynamic drag and slows the craft for a glider landing back on earth.
[…]

It’s a short flight, but it’s expensive…

I’m sure there will be plenty of takers anyhow.

“Blogging Block” (at least with “Sea Stories”) still in place.

Found this, tho

from January (13th to be exact), 1917….the reason not to use a heavy cruiser to pull a grounded sub off the beaches of California…USS MILAWAUKEE goes hard aground trying to get H-3 out of trouble. End result: lost the ship. Salvaged from the place beached by bad judgment.

More info on the event is here. It seems the private bids (from experts in salvage, mind you, seemed too expensive, so…tell the “Can Do” guys to turn to, it’s just pulling a sub back to deep water, after all. Sound too familiar?

A detailed report, “The Valor of Inexperience” by CAPT Harvey Haislip, USN (Retired) was published in Proceedings in Feb 1967.The Driver

Nasser Rabbat, a Syrian professor of Islamic architecture at MIT, told the Park Service not to worry about the giant Mecca oriented crescent at the center of the Flight 93 Memorial. He said that since it does not point quite exactly to Mecca (it is off by 1.8°) it can’t be considered a proper mihrab (the central feature around which every mosque is built).

Liar. Many of the most famous mihrabs face as much as 20 or 30 degrees off of Mecca.

Here is another Rabbat deception:

Mosques are never in the shape of a crescent or a circle. This defeats the purpose of lining up the worshipers parallel to the Qibla wall (Mecca orientation), which usually translates into a rectangular shape, or sometimes a square. [From the White Paper released by the Memorial Project in August 2007.]

It is true that most mosques are rectangular, the more clearly to mark the direction to Mecca, but this is certainly not a requirement, given that the two most religiously significant sites in Islam are round mosques. Significant site #1 is the Sacred Mosque in Mecca:

Second most significant is the Mosque of Omar, also called the Dome of the Rock, on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, from which point Muhammad supposedly ascended into heaven:

Perhaps because of the prominence of these precedents, a small but significant number of mosques around the world follow the round model.

There is the Tun Abdul Aziz mosque built in Malaysia in 1975, referred to colloquially as the “Masjid Bulat,” or “round mosque.”

There is the new 5,000 person Arafat Mosque in Nigeria, which the architect claims is “the only round mosque in Africa,” but he is wrong. Another round mosque, Al Nileen, sits at the confluence of Blue and White Nile rivers in Khartoum:

[From Google Earth. Look up “alnileen mosque”.]Africa is also home to some older round mosques. Here is a round mosque from the Ivory coast. Similar mosques have also been found in Sierra Leone.

Here is a modern Russian mosque, laid out in shape of an eight point star.

There is even a famous round mosque right in the heart of the EU, at the northwest corner of the Parc du Cinquantenaire in Brussels.

There is a round mosque in Kuwait, a round mosque in Kadavu India, and probably many more.

At the Islamic architecture website Archnet, a Muslim architect (not a native English writer) explains the problem with round mosques:

… a circular mosque can not function well because a mousqe should have an oriantation to kibla and as we all know that a circle does not have an orientation, How can we know the kibla wall if it is a circle ?

This problem does not afflict Paul Murdoch’s mosque design for the Flight 93 memorial because Murdoch’s giant crescent does create an orientation. Face into the crescent to face Mecca, just as with a smaller size mihrab.

Geometrically, Murdoch’s Crescent of Embrace is just a gigantic Islamic prayer rug:

A Muslim prayer rug is a two dimensional mihrab, laid out to face Mecca, just as the Crescent of Embrace is.

Notice that to a person looking into the Flight 93 crescent, the irregularity of the outer arc of the crescent is not visible. The radial arbors are all behind the double row of red maples that line the walkway. The ends of the crescent are also well defined by the end of the walkway of red maples at the bottom and the end of the thousand foot long, fifty foot tall Entry Portal Wall on top. This is a perfectly comprehensible and recognizable Mecca direction indicator.

Rabbat’s comments to the Park Service do not even pretend to be objective. He lists “talking points” in defense of the crescent design without ever even pretending to weigh the merits of the case against the design.

Most obviously, Rabbat never considers the almost exact Mecca orientation of the giant crescent as a grounds for concern, but limits his remarks to possible excuses for not worrying about this obviously worrisome fact. The same for all of his other talking points. He only even considers ways to absolve the crescent design.

In short, Rabbat is as overtly biased as he could possibly be, yet the Park Service has no qualms about this overt bias. Rabbat gives them the excuses for unconcern that they want and they eagerly embrace him. The Park Service investigation into warnings of an enemy plot was a total fraud.

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Listen to this podcast

A 40 hour laptop battery? The People vs. Larry Flynt hd

Maybe, if Asst Prof Yi Cui and his associates get their way.

[…]
Publishing in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, the Stanford researchers have shown that by using silicon nanowires as the battery anode instead of today’s graphite, the amount of lithium the anode can hold is extended tenfold.
[…]

Another life improvement due to nanotech…

Related maritime links: Fred Fry’s Maritime Monday 94 and more stories of “skyhooks” from Eagle1.
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CDR Samuel D. Dealey, USNWhile digging about last week on the topic of Fresh Water Submarines, I found the story of this valient man from the annals of submarine warfare. While Skipper of the USS HARDER (SS-257), he made his place in history and quite lofty place it is, complete with these two medals: The picture is misleading: Dealey wore three stars on his Navy Cross (indicating 4 awards of that medal) and also had been awarded the Silver Star, as well.Born September 13th, 1906, Samuel Dealey graduated from the US Naval Academy, class of 1930, and went to the fleet, first as a Surface Warfare Officer aboard the USS NEVADA (BB-36). He then went to submarine training, and was in command of S-20 when WWII broke out. He assumed command of the newly built USS HARDER on December 2nd, 1942 and took her on 6 war patrols.CDR Dealey did not get off to a great start. He initially “bilged out” of the Academy for low grades, but was re-instated, finally graduating. Of the submariners awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously, Samuel Dealey was the one who sunk the greatest amount of tonnage during his time in the combat zones of the Pacific:

After a shakedown off the East Coast, Dealey survived a “blue-on-blue” attack by a Navy patrol bomber in the Caribbean to bring Harder to the Pacific in the spring of 1943.

Harder left Pearl Harbor on her first war patrol on 7 June, bound for the coast of southern Honshu. Dealey In his first attack on a two-ship convoy late on the night of 21 June, Dealey was driven deep by an aggressive escort and crashed into the muddy bottom – an inauspicious beginning, even though it now appears that one target may have been damaged. Dealey backed himself out of the mud, and two nights later had his first real success in torpedoing the ex-seaplane tender Sagara Maru (7,000 tons) and crippling her so badly that she was beached on the Japanese mainland and abandoned as a total loss. Over the next four days, Dealey made seven attacks on three different convoys, but post-war analysis credits him only with possible damage to one ship.

Harder returned to Midway on 7 July with one of her four diesel engines completely broken down. She was one of 12 Gato-class boats fitted originally with the troublesome Hooven-Owens-Rentschler (HOR) engines, whose original design was licensed from the German firm MAN (Maschinenfabrik-Augsburg-Nürnberg) in the 1930s. After some hasty repairs and bearing a generous inventory of spare engine parts, Harder returned to sea for her second war patrol off Honshu in late August and in 14 days made nine attacks, which netted Harder a total of five ships for 15,000 tons in the post-war accounting. Once again, the ship suffered engine problems throughout the patrol but returned safely to Pearl Harbor, via Midway, on 7 October 1943.
[…]

The best detail of the USS HARDER’s war record I found on the web is contained on the page linked above.

Patrol reports, for HARDER’s first two, are here and here. Those reports were found at a page where a number of links take you to submarine war patrol reports. A lengthy synopsis of HARDER’s patrols, listing subs in company and with information on her targets is found here.

The USS HARDER (SS-257) was lost at sea during combat on August 24th, 1944 under depth charge attack of Luzon in the Philippines. Some info from the sub in company, USS HAKE (SS-256), indicates the HARDER’s loss. CDR Dealey’s citation reads:

Rank and organization: Commander, U.S. Navy. Born: 13 September 1906, Dallas, Tex. Appointed from: Texas. Other Navy awards: Navy Cross with 3 Gold Stars, Silver Star Medal.

Citation:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as Commanding Officer of the U.S.S. Harder during her 5th War Patrol in Japanese-controlled waters. Floodlighted by a bright moon and disclosed to an enemy destroyer escort which bore down with intent to attack, Comdr. Dealey quickly dived to periscope depth and waited for the pursuer to close range, then opened fire, sending the target and all aboard down in flames with his third torpedo. Plunging deep to avoid fierce depth charges, he again surfaced and, within 9 minutes after sighting another destroyer, had sent the enemy down tail first with a hit directly amidship. Evading detection, he penetrated the confined waters off Tawi Tawi with the Japanese Fleet base 6 miles away and scored death blows on 2 patrolling destroyers in quick succession. With his ship heeled over by concussion from the first exploding target and the second vessel nose-diving in a blinding detonation, he cleared the area at high speed. Sighted by a large hostile fleet force on the following day, he swung his bow toward the lead destroyer for another “down-the-throat” shot, fired 3 bow tubes and promptly crash-dived to be terrifically rocked seconds later by the exploding ship as the Harder passed beneath. This remarkable record of 5 vital Japanese destroyers sunk in 5 short-range torpedo attacks attests the valiant fighting spirit of Comdr. Dealey and his indomitable command.

That’s quite an accomplishment. Our submarines, strategically, were mostly in place to cut off supplies and troops. They took on the combatants when they had to.

Two books about the USS HARDER, “Through Hell and Deep Water” by VADM Charles Lockwood, USN and COL Hans Adamson, USAF, (published in 1956) and “The Destroyer Killer” by Edwin Hoyt tell of the war record this storied submarine.

In honor of Samuel Dealey, the USS DEALEY (DE-1006) MAX Payne release was commissioned on June 3rd, 1954, as the lead ship of the DEALEY Class of destroyer escorts.USS DEALEY (DE-1006) was assigned to the Atlantic Fleet and made cruises to the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, and around South America, exercising with navies from that part of the world. One of her duties assigned was to “escort” Russian merchants into Cuba, observing their cargo loads, and wait for their departure, to observe the differences.She was decommissioned July 28th, 1972 and transferred to the Uruguayan Navy the same day, being re-commissioned as ROU 18 De Julio (DE-3). I suspect I operated with DE-3 during UNITAS XXIV in 1983, as I recall doing surface gunnery exercises with a Uruguayan ship. If that was the case, then this sea story happened while in company with the ex-USS DEALEY.The USS DEALEY’s website is here.

Bonus link: the Sub Art site.

We should have been “on fumes” by 1944…

Extrapolate forward to today. How many times have we heard such doom and gloom?

download Akeelah and the Bee

Here’s the paper done by MAJ Stephen Coughlin, USAR Bra Boys download that got him shoved out the door as a consultant for the Pentagon, because a retired Naval Officer didn’t like his tone in meetings….

Update: You know, just because his accuser, a high ranking civil servant now (GS-15) didn’t like him, can we ever expect him to be called a “Muslim zealot with a pen?” I didn’t think so, not in the age of American guilt.

Update: Navy CAPT Gordan E. Van Hook, in a letter to the Editor of the Washington Times on 1/15/2008, suggests the dismissal of Stephan Coughlin was an issue fiscal responsibility, Major Coughlin being pad for on a “bloated” contract:

[…]
Mr. Gertz and Miss West may want to further investigate what the American taxpayers were paying for Mr. Coughlin’s product and who the good steward was that decided to terminate the bloated contract.

If the issue was mis-sepnt taxpayers dollars, I’d suggest the Gordon England has far bigger targets to be investigating than a single contract for a consultant (who happened to upset a Muslim on his staff), such as the cost overruns in the LPD-17 and LCS procurement contracts. Far better return on the taxpayers dollar getting some of those multi million dollar issues solved. I’m sure Stephen Coughlin’s man year didn’t cost us anywhere near $1M/year.

And, CAPT Van Hook acts like no one understands how the system works when people disagree because of personal issues:

[…]
Yes, Mr. Islam is a Muslim, and yes he has a view of the religion that does not necessarily coincide with Mr. Coughlin’s, but those who suggest our Defense Department cannot hold different points of view do not understand how the system works.
[…]

How it is supposed to work is the people who object because it offends their faith should be told that’s not a consideration. On top of that, you could always toss in the “separation of church and state” argument, and a civil servant is a part of the state…

How it really works is how it did: Golden boys or girls get ahead at the whim of their patrons, and then the other gloden boys/girls chime in to justify the inappropriate behavior.

Nice going, CAPT Gordan E. Van Hook, USN: Score one for supporting a personal view, that is in fact detrimental to our National Security, win the day. Looking for some stars for your collar, are you? Better be kissing up to other than those put in place by President Bush, or haven’t you gotten the Early Bird lately?