Today marks the 70th anniversary of the creation of the Coast Guard Women’s Reserve, better known as the SPARs—a contraction of the Coast Guard motto, “Semper Paratus – Always Ready.” These women could not serve at sea or outside the continental US (though in 1944 they were allowed to be sent to Alaska and Hawaii), and they had no authority over any man regardless of rank. However, they were given the same pay as their counterparts.
Over the course of World War II, between 10,000 and 11,000 women volunteered. The average enlisted applicant was 22 years of age (29 for the average officer) with a high school diploma and a few years of work experience. The Women’s Reserve preferred applicants who had experience on the water, as swimmers of boaters. Once enlisted, the SPARs were trained at Oklahoma A & M, Hunter College, Iowa State Teachers College, and later the Biltmore Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida. The Coast Guard was the only one of the US military branches to train its female officers at the branch’s own academy, located in New London, Connecticut.
After a month of training, most SPARs were assigned duties that were clerical in nature, although they also worked on other projects such as rigging parachutes, driving vehicles, cooking, and as radio operators. Perhaps the most unique job for SPARs was as operators of the then brand new—and highly classified—LORAN technology used by the Coast Guard for calculating the precise location of ships and aircraft.
As with the other newly minted women’s units of other branches, SPARs were needed in order to relieve men of office work and send them into the Atlantic to stave off the rising threat of German U-boats. A government recruitment video specified that some of the most highly desired positions were for women with backgrounds as lab techs, dental hygienists, dietitians, engineers or draftsmen.
A sign of the times, many families of the women who enlisted were shocked, or unsupportive of their daughters serving in the military. Though by the time the war ended and women in the military proved that their capabilities were equal to the men they released for duty, it would be a new era for women in the American workforce.
SPARs Recruitment Film
SPARS Artifact Highlight: Mary Mills Weinmann
Gift of John Weinmann, 2007.102
This SPARs uniform was issued to Mary Mills Weinmann, who served in the United States Coast Guard Women’s Reserve between 16 September 1943 and 30 September 1945. She was assigned to the Coast Guard Port Authority in New Orleans, Louisiana. Mrs. Weinmann served as a SPAR on a part time basis, for 307 days. The rank on this uniform is that of an Ensign, but she was promoted prior to discharge to the rank of Lt. (jg).
In the years 1939-1941, at the behest of President Franklin Roosevelt upon urging from retailers, Thanksgiving was celebrated a week earlier, on the third Thursday in November rather than the fourth. As a result, some referred to the earlier celebration not as Thanksgiving, but as Franksgiving. The week change was intended as an economic stimulus measure that would create a longer Christmas shopping season and increase retail in the time of the Great Depression. Some states refused the change and celebrated at the usual time, while a few states celebrated both dates.
For the first Thanksgiving during WWII, in 1942, Roosevelt returned the holiday to its traditional week. The hit 1942 film, Holiday Inn, remarked on the confusion surrounding the date of that year’s Thanksgiving—even the turkey is confused. Happy Thanksgiving!
On this day 70 years ago, RCA-Victor recording artists Vaughn Monroe & His Orchestra hit the charts with the song ‘When The Lights Go On Again (All Over The World).’ A poignant ballad expressing hope and longing for a return to peacetime normalcy, the song debuted on the Billboard charts at #5 and would climb all the way to #2, before stalling just short of the top slot courtesy of Bing Crosby’s unstoppable ‘White Christmas.’ An enduring classic of the period, ‘When The Lights Go On Again’ is also memorable for the explicit reference made in its opening verse to the conflict raging worldwide.
When the lights go on again all over the world
And the boys are home again all over the world
And rain or snow is all that may fall from the skies above
A kiss won’t mean “Goodbye” but “Hello to love”
Click below to hear the original 1942 recording of ‘When The Lights Go On Again (All Over The World.’
This post by Collin Makamson, Red Ball Express Coordinator at The National WW2 Museum
One of the most brutal naval battles in recorded history occurred seventy years ago this morning. Usually referred to as the Battle of Friday the 13th, it was part of a larger series of battles collectively known as the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. The battle was fought between a powerful Japanese force of battleships, cruisers and destroyers, which was en route to bombard Henderson Field, and a hastily assembled American force of cruisers and destroyers that was ordered to intervene.
The American commander, Rear Admiral Daniel Callaghan, hoped to repeat a victory won by Rear Admiral Norman Scott the month before at Cape Esperance. However, Callaghan had little experience as a unit commander, so he ignored many of the advantages he had over the Japanese force, primarily the advanced radar that his ships carried. Thus, as the two forces steamed directly at each other, Callaghan chose not to open fire early, when his radar directed guns might have dealt considerable damage. Instead, the Americans got so close to the Japanese force that the lead ship, USS Cushing, had to make an emergency turn to avoid colliding with a Japanese destroyer. Then, just after midnight on Friday the 13th, 1942, a Japanese destroyer turned on a searchlight and, in the words of many of the participants, “All hell broke loose.”
At a time when the largest naval guns could hit targets over twenty miles away, the American and Japanese ships involved in this night battle fired at each other at ranges of less than one mile. The USS Cushing avoided being rammed by the Japanese battleship Hiei by less than thirty feet. In the wild melee that followed, all hope of coherent command and control was lost. Adding to the confusion, Admirals Callaghan and Scott were both killed during the battle.
The Battle of Friday the 13th lasted only about 25 minutes. In that short time, of the 27 ships engaged, 9 were sunk or crippled and 13 were damaged. The battleship Hiei was hit over 100 times, and the USS SanFrancisco was hit over 40 times. Only one American ship, the USS Fletcher, emerged from the battle without a scratch. Perhaps the most famous casualty of the night battle was the USS Juneau, which was torpedoed early in the battle. She was sunk the next day by a Japanese submarine, with the loss of all but 10 men. Among her casualties were the five Sullivan brothers.
USS Juneau, sunk by Japanese submarine I-26 on 13 November 1942
The Sullivan Brothers: (left to right) Joseph, Francis, Albert, Madison and George, killed 13 November 1942
Tactically, the Battle of Friday the 13th was a decisive Japanese victory. Although they lost the Hiei, which was scuttled the next day, they sank or damaged all but one of the American ships engaged. However, they failed to complete their objective of destroying Henderson Field, so the battle was a strategic victory for the US Navy. Regardless, the Battle of Friday the 13th stands today as one of the most vicious naval battles ever fought. It is truly deserving of its nickname, “A bar room brawl with the lights out.”
Today marks the 70th anniversary of the opening shots of the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, a series of vicious battles between the US and Japan that helped to bring about the end of the Guadalcanal campaign. The battles were triggered by a major Japanese attempt to eliminate the US beachhead surrounding Henderson Field. A powerful Japanese surface force composed of two battleships, one cruiser and eleven destroyers sailed for Guadalcanal on 12 November with the intention of shelling Henderson Field into oblivion. The Japanese force was soon spotted by aerial reconnaissance and Allied coast watchers.
Meanwhile, a large American resupply convoy arrived at Guadalcanal on the 11th. Their unloading efforts were quickened once word of the approaching Japanese force reached Guadalcanal on the 12th. As the transports and their escorting cruisers and destroyers attempted to clear the area, they came under attack by a large formation of Japanese G4M “Betty” bombers. Most of the attackers were shot down by concentrated anti-aircraft fire and Wildcats from Henderson Field, but one “Betty,” probably with a dead pilot, crashed into USS SanFrancisco’s aft machine gun platform and then fell overboard into the sea.
USS San Francisco (center) burns after being struck by a “Betty” bomber.
Fifteen men were killed in the crash, including all twelve men on the machine gun platform. Each of those men, who kept firing at the plane even as it crashed into them, were honored by having a destroyer escort named after them. One of those ships, the USS Slater DE-766, is preserved today as a floating museum in Albany, New York.
USS Slater DE-766, named in honor of Seaman Frank Slater, killed aboard USS San Francisco 12 November 1942.
After the transports cleared the area, the escorting cruisers and destroyers were ordered to turn back and attempt to drive off the approaching Japanese surface force. Although the American ships were vastly outgunned, they were the only US warships available at the time. As daylight faded on the evening of 12 November 1942, the US and Japanese forces steamed towards each other. They would soon meet in one of the shortest and bloodiest naval battles of the Pacific War.
Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa, represented a series of firsts for the Allied crusade against Nazi Germany and her Allies. It was the first amphibious landing undertaken by the US Army in the European theater. It was the first combat operation commanded by Dwight Eisenhower. And it was the first, and quite possibly the only, operation of the war in which the Allied commanders expected their opponents holding the beach to offer no resistance at all.
The landing beaches in Morocco and Algeria were held by Vichy French forces. These troops were loyal to Germany mostly due to a tenuous agreement whereby the Nazis agreed to keep part of France free from German occupation provided the Vichy resisted an Allied invasion. The Allied leadership believed that when the Vichy French saw the Allied armadas approaching the landing beaches, they would immediately join forces with the invaders to liberate North Africa.
Allied commanders also had to contend with the native North African population. Their willingness to aid the Allied cause was questionable at best. The primary hope of the Allied command was that both the French and the native population would willingly and energetically aid the liberators. Barring that, they would have settled for simply allowing the American and British troops to move through Morocco and Algeria quickly so that they could smash Rommel’s Afrika Korps on the anvil of General Bernard Montgomery’s forces advancing westward from Egypt.
In an attempt to sway both the Vichy French and the North African natives to the Allied cause, thousands of leaflets were dropped over North Africa prior to the landings in November 1942. This leaflet was picked up in Oran, Algeria, by Oscar Rich, who landed there as a member of the 1st Quartermaster Battalion, 1st Infantry Division. The leaflet, printed in French on one side and Arabic on the other, reads in part:
Message from the President of the United States:
We come to you to liberate you from your conquerors, whose only desire is to deprive you of your sovereign right to worship freely and your right to live your way of life in peace.
We come to you solely to defeat your enemies – we wish you no harm. We come to you with the assurance that we will leave as soon as the menace of Germany and Italy is dissipated. Help us and the day of universal peace will arrive.
Unfortunately for the Allies, the Vichy French offered stiff resistance to the landings in some sectors, and the day of universal peace was delayed indefinitely.
French side of US propaganda leaflet dropped over Oran.
Arabic side of leaflet collected by Oscar Rich.
Oscar Rich served with the 1st Infantry Division throughout the war.
On November 7, 1942, Warner Brothers Studios released its third wartime film short, Beyond the Line of Duty, directed by Lewis Seiler and narrated by future President Ronald Reagan. Beyond the Line of Duty detailed the heroic exploits of B-17 pilot Lt. Hewitt “Shorty” Wheless during the Battle of the Phillipines (1941) whose badly-mauled plane and crew shot down seven Japanese “Zeros” before making a crash-landing at night with three flat tires. For his efforts, Wheless was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, earned mention in President Roosevelt’s Fireside Chat on April 28, 1942 and was given Beyond the Line of Duty‘s starring role. The short proved popular and, at the 15th Academy Awards in 1943, Beyond the Line ofDuty took home the Oscar for Best Short Subject.
Like its predecessor shorts,Winning Your Wings starring Jimmy Stewart and Men Of The Sky, Beyond the Line of Duty sought to raise morale and spur enlistment for the air service. Warner Brothers would release only one further wartime short, The Rear Gunner, also starring Ronald Reagan, before the growing demand for training films became overwhelming and the First Motion Picture Unit took over as the USAAF’s primary film production unit; adopting the line ‘We Kill ‘Em With Fil’m’ as its motto.
This post by Collin Makamson, Red Ball Express Coordinator at The National WWII Museum
October 30, 2012 marks the 70th anniversary of the sinking of U-559 and the heroic capture of an M4 Enigma and code books critical to the code breaking efforts at Bletchley Park. Four British naval destroyers, dispatched from Port Said, detected the U-boat using ASDIC, British SONAR technology, and hunted the submarine over a ten hour period. U-559 was eventually depth charged and forced to surface under cover of night. As the U-boat crew abandoned ship, they failed to destroy the Enigma or scuttle the submarine. Three British sailors, Lieutenant Anthony Fasson, Able Seaman Colin Grazier, and NAAFI canteen assistant Tommy Brown, climbed aboard the slowly sinking U-boat, retrieving the Enigma and the codebooks with the current settings. The submarine suddenly foundered while Grazier and Fasson were attempting to escape; both sailors drowned and were posthumously awarded the George Cross.
Able Seaman Colin Grazier, G.C.
Lieutenant Anthony Fasson, G.C.
Tommy Brown, G.M.
Breaking the Enigma M4
With the introduction of the more advanced M4 version of the Enigma, the German Navy crippled Bletchley Park’s code breaking abilities for most of 1942. Unable to decipher U-boat transmissions, the Allies were sustaining incredible shipping losses in the Atlantic and Mediterranean by roving U-boat “wolfpacks.” The codebooks captured from U-559 gave Bletchley Park the key to deciphering signals from the new M4 version of the Enigma. Using the new cipher, the first intercept revealed the positions of more than a dozen U-boats and subsequent intercepts allowed the Allies to reroute shipping convoys around waiting German submarines. Consequently, Allied shipping losses during January and February of 1943 were cut in half, marking a turning point in the Battle of the Atlantic.
Enigma: How it Works
The Enigma is an electro-mechanical machine used by Germany during WWII to encrypt and decipher secret messages. The machine itself consists of a keyboard used to enter the message, three or four rotating alphabet disks known as rotors that function to substitute letters, a lampboard used by the operator to read an incoming message, and a plugboard which provided an additional layer of encryption by scrambling letters. Enigma encoded messages by repeatedly changing the electric pathway through the machine, producing a polyalphabetic substitution code. Operators used codebooks to set their rotors and plugs, as identical settings were required when sending and receiving encrypted messages. With its additional fourth rotor, the Naval Enigma M4 proved impossible for mathematicians at Bletchley Park to break were it not for the codebooks captured from U-559. On that fateful moonless evening seventy years ago today, the heroic actions of Fasson, Grazier, and Brown paired with the tireless work of code breakers at Bletchley Park ultimately saved vast amounts of shipping losses and countless Allied lives.
Enigma M3 on exhibit at The National WWII Museum. The Naval Enigma M4 held four rotors in the same space as the three-rotor version pictured above. On loan from the National Cryptologic Museum.
Posted by Annie Tête, STEM Education Coordinator at The National WWII Museum.
Beginning with the attack on Pearl Harbor, and worsened by the attempted bombing of Santa Barbara and the successful bombing of Fort Stevens, wartime hysteria and fear of an enemy invasion knew no bounds. These attacks led the War Department to consider all of the nation’s vulnerable points, and at the top of that list was the then-territory of Alaska. Overnight, the territory gained value to both Americans and the Japanese alike. Just 750 miles away from Attu was a Japanese naval base, making the threat of the region being invaded and taken, and subsequently—perhaps—the rest of North American—a not-so-unrealistic fear.
The idea of a route connecting mainland United States to Alaska was not a new idea. In fact, it had been proposed in the ‘20s. But it wasn’t until February 1942 that the construction was approved by Roosevelt, only after working out an agreement with the Canadian government as well. Before the Alcan Highway (also called the Alaska Highway or the Alaska-Canadian Highway), the only way to supply US troops stationed in Alaska was by sea or air. If shipping lanes on the northwest coast were successfully interrupted by the enemy, or even by some unlucky circumstance for that matter, Alaska could easily fall. It was seen as a national defense problem. Construction work began in March, and was hastened with Japanese actions in the Alaskan islands of Kiska and Attu in June 1942.
Once completed, the Alcan Highway was a 1500-mile route between Dawson Creek, British Columbia to Fairbanks, Alaska. It was built by the skillful hands of 7 Army Corps of Engineer regiments totaling more than 10,000 men, nearly 35% of whom were African Americans excluded from combat roles. Once arriving in the more-often-than-not icy terrain, these troops often had to relearn simple tasks that were made nearly impossible by the ice, snow, and miserable conditions of the region.
Though the Alcan Highway completed on this day 70 years ago, it wasn’t officially opened until 20 November 1942. Though its construction was a necessary and impressive feat, driving the snow-covered highway was nearly as difficult as building the route had been. Construction troops often had to shovel out the road, even in temperatures dozens of degrees below zero. Accidents and flipped vehicles were a common sight. Tow cars worked 24 hours a day rescuing stranded vehicles and pulling them out of ditches. Quartermaster troops were stationed at every 100-mile mark to aid in servicing vehicles, though they were not always well-enough equipped to address the problem.
After the route’s completion, civilian contractors continued work on the route to make it more permanent and better able to sustain the intense weather of the Alaska-Canadian wilderness. The route was opened to the public in 1948, after being made safe enough. Today, the entire route is paved.
Image Gallery
Images from a unit history of an engineer regiment that worked on the Alcan Highway. Gift of Ben Cohen, 2011.051.
"A heavy log for a corduroy road bed at the J-35 mile mark is carried by seven husky Company C men. After a job like this, chow and sleep were always welcome."
Comfort was in short supply for men working the Alcan. Here a Private bathes in an improvised tub.
Building a box culvert in knee-deep mud and water. The platoons flipped coins for jobs like this, and these boys lost.
Men wait for the inevitable time when ice flows will sweep the bridge from its moorings.
On this day 70 years ago, RCA-Victor recording artists Vaughn Monroe & His Orchestra hit the charts with the song ‘When The Lights Go On Again (All Over The World).’ A poignant ballad expressing hope and longing for a return to peacetime normalcy, the song debuted on the Billboard charts at #5 and would climb all the way to #2, before stalling just short of the top slot courtesy of Bing Crosby’s unstoppable ‘White Christmas.’ An enduring classic of the period, ‘When The Lights Go On Again’ is also memorable for the explicit reference made in its opening verse to the conflict raging worldwide.
On November 7, 1942, Warner Brothers Studios released its third wartime film short, Beyond the Line of Duty, directed by Lewis Seiler and narrated by future President Ronald Reagan. Beyond the Line of Duty detailed the heroic exploits of B-17 pilot Lt. Hewitt “Shorty” Wheless during the Battle of the Phillipines (1941) whose badly-mauled plane and crew shot down seven Japanese “Zeros” before making a crash-landing at night with three flat tires. For his efforts, Wheless was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, earned mention in President Roosevelt’s Fireside Chat on April 28, 1942 and was given Beyond the Line of Duty‘s starring role. The short proved popular and, at the 15th Academy Awards in 1943, Beyond the Line of Duty took home the Oscar for Best Short Subject.
