The Wasp gets hit hard, 15 September 1942. Gift of Lionel Taylor, 2010.396.005
The USS Wasp (CV-7) was laid down on 1 April 1936, and commissioned on 25 April 1940. The [exceptionally small] aircraft carrier was built according to proportions agreed upon at the Washington Naval Conference in 1922. For the Wasp, this meant displacing no more than 15,000 tons. To build such a light aircraft carrier meant doing without much armor at all, which certainly contributed to the ship’s demise on this day 70 years ago, 15 September 1942.
Before America declared war, the Wasp was one of several ships that participated in the transport of US aircraft to Iceland in late summer 1941. After months spent training and patrolling the Atlantic—and an American declaration of war—Wasp was sent once again to ferry aircraft on behalf of the British RAF for actions at Malta in April 1942, and a return trip a month later to replace heavy aircraft losses in the first go-round.
After losing two carriers in naval combat (Lexington at Coral Sea and Yorktown at Midway), the Wasp was suddenly in high demand in the Pacific. With the American invasion of Guadalcanal in the works by July 1942, the Wasp was assigned to Admiral Fletcher’s force. Beginning in the early hours of 7 August 1942, Wasp’s Avengers, SBDs, and Wildcats hit several Japanese positions throughout the Guadalcanal islands, taking out 24 enemy aircraft at the cost of 4 of their own.
On 15 September 1942, Wasp along with the only other carrier available in the Pacific, the Hornet, was on escort duty ensuring the landing of 7th Marines on Guadalcanal proper. She was struck by several torpedoes fired from the Japanese submarine I-19. Being as Wasp was lightly armored due to its construction limitations, she was particularly vulnerable. On top of that, she was hit much like the battleship Arizona was at Pearl Harbor, struck near the magazine causing huge explosions from ammo and gasoline. The fires could not be fought and the order to abandon ship was given. After a successful evacuation, the Wasp soon rested on the floor of the waters off Guadalcanal. Though her aircraft in the sky at the time of the attack were able to make emergency landings elsewhere, the rest of the planes the Wasp carried were lost with the ship. Nearly 200 brave sailors lost their lives with the sinking of the Wasp, with many more wounded. Today, we remember those men.
Seventy years ago, on 13 September 1942, Higgins Industries in New Orleans received the Army-Navy “E” Award for excellence in production.The presentation ceremony was held on a Sunday afternoon, at the Industrial Canal Plant and was to serve the dual purpose of dedication of this new plant.
The “E” Award was bestowed from July 1942-December 1945 to businesses who had achieved a high standard in war production, training, plant safety and labor management. The company received a ceremonial pennant for display and each employee received a silver lapel pin. Like certain military awards, additional distinctions in the form of stars could be added to the initial award. Only around 4% of all companies engaged in war production received the Army-Navy Production Award, as the “E” Award was also known.
Invitation to the "E" Award ceremony. Gift in Memory of Lt. Col. Gustave Bouligny Baldwin IV, 2011.388.001
Program for the "E" Award Cermony. Gift of Walter Brunken, 2000.026.020
The program shows the schedule of events from the award ceremony.
National and local businesses, including Antoine's Restaurant, contributed congratulatory advertisements to the commemorative program.
"E" Award from Lester G. Briwa, Sr., engine tester at Higgins Industries. Gift of Lester G. Briwa Jr., 2001.148.003
Japanese Admiral Tanaka’s so-called “Tokyo Express” had at this point become quite successful in landing reinforcement troops and supplies on Guadalcanal undetected and undeterred by American naval forces. In a campaign of attrition where the battle became increasingly more about succeeding in landing your reinforcements, or stopping the enemy from doing so, the Tokyo Express’ success in landing General Kawaguchi’s 35th Infantry spelled trouble for American forces on Guadalcanal. General A. A. Vandegrift, commander of the 1st Marine Division, recognized the problem and quickly began transferring troops from secure Tulagi to Guadalcanal proper, including the 1st Marine Raider Battalion and 1st Parachute Battalion under Col. Merritt “Red Mike” Edson.
Henderson Field was the center of the months-long campaign. With the airfield in Japanese hands, Allied shipping routes to and from Australia were under the threat of being halted. With it in American hands, that threat was taken out, and the Allies would also be one step closer to taking the massive Japanese base at Rabaul. So when Edson’s Raiders arrived at Guadalcanal, they were sent to set up a southern perimeter around the airfield, and keep the Japanese from retaking it.
After a few small skirmishes in the days leading up to the main battle, Japanese forces had withdrawn southward further into the jungle. “Betty” bombers began dropping bombs on the Raiders’ position on 11 September as they dug in atop the ridge. Colonel Edson knew an attack was imminent, and on this day 70 years ago, 12 September 1942, what is now known as the Battle of Bloody Ridge (or Edson’s Ridge if you ask a marine) began.
Kawaguchi’s troops and elements of the 124th Infantry Regiment waited for the naval shelling of the Henderson Field area to die down before making their ground attack on the night of 12 September, in which they succeeded in pushing back the defending marines. Battle continued on the 13th, with the main thrust of Kawaguchi’s forces of about 2,000 men headed for the ridge. In a macabre scene reminiscent of the Battle of Alligator Creek, nearly half of the attacking force was killed in action, while the raiders lost approximately 60 of their 800 plus defending troops.
American victory was not a foregone conclusion, however, and could easily have been lost. Due to communication issues, there were many marines who believed they were withdrawing, heading north towards Henderson Field. For his actions in of “rendering invaluable service…in stemming the retreat, reorganizing the troops and extending the reserve position to the left, Major [Kenneth] Bailey, despite a severe head wound, repeatedly led his troops in fierce hand to hand combat for a period of ten hours.” Major Bailey stopped retreating marines, and ensured that they turned around and faced the battle they were trained for. Without his actions, the Japanese may have taken the ridge and thereby Henderson Field and Guadalcanal itself. In the end, Edson’s Raiders succeeded in holding the ridge, and dealing the Japanese on Guadalcanal yet another devastating blow. This would be the second of three major Japanese ground offensives in the Guadalcanal Campaign.
Gen. Merritt Edson’s Medal of Honor Citation:
For extraordinary heroism and conspicuous intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty as Commanding Officer of the 1st Marine Raider Battalion, with Parachute Battalion attached, during action against enemy Japanese forces in the Solomon Islands on the night of 13–14 September 1942. After the airfield on Guadalcanal had been seized from the enemy on August 8, Col. Edson, with a force of 800 men, was assigned to the occupation and defense of a ridge dominating the jungle on either side of the airport. Facing a formidable Japanese attack which, augmented by infiltration, had crashed through our front lines, he, by skillful handling of his troops, successfully withdrew his forward units to a reserve line with minimum casualties. When the enemy, in a subsequent series of violent assaults, engaged our force in desperate hand-to-hand combat with bayonets, rifles, pistols, grenades, and knives, Col. Edson, although continuously exposed to hostile fire throughout the night, personally directed defense of the reserve position against a fanatical foe of greatly superior numbers. By his astute leadership and gallant devotion to duty, he enabled his men, despite severe losses, to cling tenaciously to their position on the vital ridge, thereby retaining command not only of the Guadalcanal airfield, but also of the 1st Division’s entire offensive installations in the surrounding area.
To see artifacts from the Museum’s collection and read stories of the men that fought in the Guadalcanal Campaign, click here.
Less than two months after its bombardment of the fortifications of Fort Stevens, Japanese submarine I-25 struck the American West Coast again, this time from the air. On the morning of 9 September 1942, two Japanese airmen boarded their Yokosuka E14Y “Glen” aircraft – a tiny seaplane with folding wings that was stored in a small hangar beneath the submarine’s deck – and flew towards the tiny coastal logging town of Brookings, just north of the California-Oregon border. Armed with two 168-pound incendiary bombs, the Japanese objective was to deposit their payload in the Siskiyou National Forest surrounding Brookings in the hopes of igniting massive wildfires in Oregon and mass panic across the West Coast. While one of the two incendiaries dropped did succeed in starting a small blaze, the Japanese raiders were observed by two U.S. Forest Service fire lookouts who quickly radioed for help and had the fires under control and extinguished by the following morning.
Although a tactical failure and seemingly insignificant in the amount of damage done, the September 9th raids, now known as the Lookout Air Raids, marked the first and to date only time the continental United States has been bombed by enemy aircraft.
The Japanese pilot who led the Lookout Air Raids, Warrant Officer Nobuo Fujita, survived the war and, in 1962, accepted an invitation from the citizens of Brookings to revisit the very community he had been assigned to destroy twenty years earlier. Ashamed of his actions during the war, Fujita presented a 400-year-old samurai sword which he had carried throughout WWII to the town as a sign of his regret. Fujita would make many further visits to his one-time target and, shortly before his death, would be named an honorary citizen of Brookings.
Post by Red Ball Express Coordinator Collin Makamson
Consolidated B-32 Dominator, the "Hobo Queen," during maintenance on Tinian, 1945. Gift of Elwyn Fink, 2010.216.364
Today marks the 70th anniversary of the maiden flight of the Consolidated B-32 Dominator. Never heard of the B-32 Dominator? Well, you’re not alone. Although the project to design this four-engine bomber began in 1940, the B-32 didn’t see combat until the last several weeks of the war. The Consolidated aircraft was the backup plan in case Boeing B-29 production ran into trouble, which it never did (it was standard protocol for the military to order parallel development programs in case one went wrong). The B-32, however, ran into myriad problems throughout its development, and the entire program was nearly scrapped on several occasions. Its first nearly real possible assignment was as a replacement for Mediterranean Theater B-24s beginning some time in 1944, but the Dominator wasn’t ready yet. That transition was never made.
But when 5th Air Force General Kenney couldn’t get his hands on the B-29s he requested, he settled instead for B-32s to serve as replacements for his B-24s. The 386th Bomb Squadron was reoutfitted with B-32s. The Dominator flew its very first combat mission over the Philippines on 29 May 1945, just a few months before the war ended. So the B-32’s claim to fame that none were ever lost in combat isn’t quite as impressive is it might sound. In mid-August a pair of Dominators doing photo reconnaissance were faced with Japanese Zeros. The “Hobo Queen II” was able to shoot down two of the Zeros, but Sgt. Anthony Marchione was killed, making him the last air casualty of American forces in World War II.
The B-32 program was shut down just days after the Japanese officially surrendered, and all Dominators were scrapped before 1950. Only about 100 were ever manufactured.
Consolidated B-32 Dominator Specs:
Armament:
Ten .50-caliber machine guns plus a 20,000-pound bomb load
Engines:
Four Wright R-3350-23 Cyclone radial engines (2200 hp)
Apart from Glenn Miller’s ‘Kalamazoo,’ the undeniable hit of the late summer in 1942 was ‘My Devotion.’ A hit three times for three different artists, the song was first taken into the Top Ten for Decca by Jimmy Dorsey and Bob Eberly on August 22nd before being quickly followed by Vaughn Monroe’s version for Victor on August 29th. However, it would be the third outing of the song on Columbia that would prove the biggest hit and place ‘cheery, chubby’ Charlie Spivak and His Orchestra at #2 on the Billboard charts.
Debuting 70 years ago today, Spivak’s version backed on the flip-side with his take on ‘I Left My Heart At The Stage Door Canteen’ would remain on the charts for 11 weeks. Indeed, ‘My Devotion’ proved so popular that at one point there were two separate competing versions on the charts when Vaughn Monroe’s version re-entered the Top Ten. Written by songwriters Roc Hillman and Johnny Napton, ‘My Devotion’ typified a trend in the national consciousness, with lyrics expressing the loneliness and longing of loved ones separated by war. ‘My Devotion’ would remain a popular standard throughout the 1940s and 50s with Anne Shelton, The Four Aces and Glenn Miller all recording versions or incorporating it into their live repertoire.
Click below to hear Vaughn Monroe’s version of ‘My Devotion.’
Post by Red Ball Express Coordinator Collin Makamson
Bremen in ruins after heavy bombardment. Gift in Memory of Robert John McNary Smith, 2011.168.411
The city of Bremen, Germany had been beneath the shadows of British bombs since May 1940. British bombing raids—later joined with those of the US 8th Air Force—grew more and more common in the following years. When on this day in 1942 more than 200 British aircraft flew over Bremen, more than 100 people were killed, hundreds more injured, and vast damage was done to the infrastructure of the city. It would be repeatedly hit in the years following.
The Kunsthalle Bremen, the city’s art museum, was among the damaged buildings. While most of the artwork had been removed to safety for the very reason of the possibility of bomb damage, one piece was left where it hung: German American artist Emanuel Leutze’s famous Washington Crossing the Delaware, which at 12 x 21 feet was too massive to move. The September 5th strike burned many of the museum’s galleries, and also burned and destroyed Leutze’s painting. The piece by the same name which you may have seen hanging in New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art was the second version of the painting, replicated by Leutze himself just after painting the original in 1850-51.
Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze, 1851
Having learned the lesson the hard way, the directors of the Kunsthalle Bremen split up the collection and moved it several times, with a portion of it finally settling in a castle outside of Berlin. That particular portion of the museum’s collection, including masterpieces by van Gogh and Titian among other notable artists, was captured by Soviet Capt. Viktor Baldin, and sent back to Russia where they remain—albeit controversially—to this day. The pieces are now referred to as the Baldin Collection, and are held at the Hermitage despite Baldin’s attempts in the years after the war to have the works returned to the Kunsthalle Bremen. Russian leadership has categorically refused. Hundreds of pieces of the Kunsthalle Bremen’s collection not accounted for in the Baldin Collection remain missing to this day.
On September 4, 1942,Warner Brothers released the spy film Across the Pacific (no resemblance whatsoever to the 1926 film of the same name) starring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor and Sydney Greenstreet. The war had disrupted the film in a number of ways. The first was that the original script had Bogie thwarting a fictitious Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. After December 7, 1941, the script was quickly rewritten and the attack moved to Panama. The other was the departure of John Huston for military service. Both Huston and the film’s second director, Vincent Sherman, blamed the other for what was called an “improbable ending.”
On this day 70 years ago, bandleader Sammy Kaye and His Orchestra landed a Top Ten hit with their arrangement of Irving Berlin’s ‘I Left My Heart At The Stage Door Canteen.’ This was Sammy Kaye’s second war-themed hit as, nine months earlier, Kaye had composed the music for the patriotic march ‘Remember Pearl Harbor.’ The tune that placed Kaye into the Top Ten for the second time was from Irving Berlin’s musical ‘This Is The Army,’ then in the middle of its massively successful Broadway run. Kaye’s rendition would climb all the way to #3 on the Billboard charts with only Charlie Spivak’s ‘My Devotion’ and Glenn Miller’s titanic ‘Kalamazoo’ standing in the way of #1.
“I Left My Heart at the Stage Door Canteen” remained a popular selection throughout the war with later versions by Jo Stafford and the Merry Macs all becoming hits.
Visit the Stage Door Canteen at The National WWII Museum for live entertainment and also to see artifacts related to the Stage Door Canteens.
Post by Red Ball Express Coordinator Collin Makamson
Sunday marked the 70th anniversary of the 1942 total lunar eclipse visible in North and South America, Western Europe, and Africa. The only total eclipse of the moon fully visible across the US during WWII, both troops overseas and their families on the home front could share this celestial event.
A lunar eclipse occurs only during a full moon when it passes through the Earth’s shadow. Specifically a total lunar eclipse occurs when the entire moon passes through the umbra, or inner portion of the Earth’s shadow blocking all direct sunlight from reaching the moon. As a result the moon appears deep orange or red in color because a small amount of filtered sunlight reaches the moon by the refractive qualities of the Earth’s atmosphere. Learn more about the lunar eclipse of August 26, 1942.
The total lunar eclipse of October 28, 2004, shown above, was similar to the August 26, 1942 eclipse in terms of visibility, duration, and location. Photo by Fred Espenak, 2004.
For extraordinary heroism and conspicuous intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty as Commanding Officer of the 1st Marine Raider Battalion, with Parachute Battalion attached, during action against enemy Japanese forces in the Solomon Islands on the night of 13–14 September 1942. After the airfield on Guadalcanal had been seized from the enemy on August 8, Col. Edson, with a force of 800 men, was assigned to the occupation and defense of a ridge dominating the jungle on either side of the airport. Facing a formidable Japanese attack which, augmented by infiltration, had crashed through our front lines, he, by skillful handling of his troops, successfully withdrew his forward units to a reserve line with minimum casualties. When the enemy, in a subsequent series of violent assaults, engaged our force in desperate hand-to-hand combat with bayonets, rifles, pistols, grenades, and knives, Col. Edson, although continuously exposed to hostile fire throughout the night, personally directed defense of the reserve position against a fanatical foe of greatly superior numbers. By his astute leadership and gallant devotion to duty, he enabled his men, despite severe losses, to cling tenaciously to their position on the vital ridge, thereby retaining command not only of the Guadalcanal airfield, but also of the 1st Division’s entire offensive installations in the surrounding area.
Apart from Glenn Miller’s ‘Kalamazoo,’ the undeniable hit of the late summer in 1942 was ‘My Devotion.’ A hit three times for three different artists, the song was first taken into the Top Ten for Decca by Jimmy Dorsey and Bob Eberly on August 22nd before being quickly followed by Vaughn Monroe’s version for Victor on August 29th. However, it would be the third outing of the song on Columbia that would prove the biggest hit and place ‘cheery, chubby’ Charlie Spivak and His Orchestra at #2 on the Billboard charts. 
