World War II at Sea (WW2HRT_36-08)

[Music] thank you as you can see in the following slides Craig is an incredibly accomplished scholar he has been at both the U.S Naval Academy and the naval war college she is the author of 17 books and uh has won a raft Awards and just recently also won the incredibly prestigious pritzker award from the pritzker military history museum this is a Lifetime Achievement Award acknowledging his body of work this is kind of the equivalent of winning the military history Oscar it's incredible so that's wonderful I want to talk though about a different aspect of Drake's yes well done one of the things that has consistently impressed me about the Pacific War Naval History Community as a whole is that it has just been incredibly collaborative and collegial in nature in the 25 plus years that I have been working with this group of people they consistently are willing to share their insights and their knowledge pointing out sources to people that they might have overlooked in many cases saying oh yeah I've got that let me email that to you when I first started working in this field I never thought that people like Craig or Richard Frank or John lundstrom would you know even deign to answer my emails and yet you know they ended up becoming my friends without Craig I don't know that I would have had the opportunity for some of the joint speaking engagements that we've attended at places like Pearl Harbor and most recently down in Texas at the Nimitz Museum without Craig I certainly wouldn't have had early access to the sync pack the recipe for Admiral nimitz's preferred homegrown cocktail that he served in Pearl Harbor and that I serve in my house pretty frequently so that's just one of the benefits that I feel blessed in having as being a part of this wider community of which Craig is a prominent member so please join me in welcoming to the stage not only an absolutely tremendous scholar in the field but also a heck of a nice guy my friend Craig Simons [Applause] wow what an introduction how can I live up to that that's really nice John thank you I also want to thank this organization and particularly Don Patton who's been so good to me and and who is responsible for so much wonderful stuff that how happens around here I picked up a copy of the tablet on my way in which most of you probably did as well and it's so thorough that I don't need to give my speech now so it just just read this and and you're good to go um I also want to thank Steve and Mark for driving me around picking me up at the airport and showing me the sites of Minneapolis it's it's been a great day it's been a great day and I I hope it continues to be we'll see some of you know and as was mentioned at my most recent work is on Admiral Chester Nimitz and when I first got a call to talk here I thought that might be the subject but uh and I'm happy to answer any questions about Admiral Nimitz that any of you might have but Don asked me to talk more broadly about the naval war um about a big book that I wrote The World War II at Sea nearly 800 Pages it has to be a big book it was a big war as we all know a war that involved more than 70 Nations you know for Americans that were began on December 7th 1941 Pearl Harbor Day for the British the French the Germans and especially for the Polish it began two years before that on September 1st 1939 and for the Japanese and especially the Chinese it began two years before that on July 7 1937. so in considering the global aspect of this conflict it's important to acknowledge I believe all of those participants uh including those who fought in theaters that many Americans don't pay a lot of attention to such as the Indian Ocean the barren sea and at least until 1942 the Mediterranean for American audiences the most famous uh book about this topic is uh is this one Samuel Ellie Morrison you may have heard of him two ocean war Morrison was a Harvard professor in 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and he asked President Franklin Roosevelt for a Navy commission apparently you could do that in those days Mr President I'm I'm from Harvard and I I would like a commission he wanted to go to Sea and Chronicle the wars an Insider Roosevelt made him a lieutenant commander and Morrison went to sea he was on board Navy ships several historic events including both The Landings in North Africa and Operation Torch and the invasion of Okinawa in 1945 and he stayed with the Navy and the project and retired some years after the war as a rear Admiral so he was both Professor Morrison and Admiral Morrison in addition to his own experiences he had scores of other officers send him their reports often firsthand accounts of aspects of the war that he did not witness personally the result was a 15 volume history of the naval war much of which he wrote himself and all of which he supervised as general editor now apparently there were some readers who were slightly intimidated by sitting down at night to read a 15 volume work no one here of course falls into that category so he later wrote a one volume version which is still in print but note the title whoops I gotta back up here where are we going yeah the two ocean war one that took place in the Atlantic that featured particularly the war Convoy defense against Hitler's U-boats and another that took place in the Pacific where combat was characterized by a huge carrier battles as well as amphibious Landings on Islands from Guadalcanal to Okinawa it is an excellent quite readable account of the role of the U.S Navy in two oceans but remember I said there were more than 70 Nations 72 Nations as a matter of fact who took part in that war voluntarily or involuntarily in a few cases and nearly a dozen of those Nations had substantial navies that played important roles the U.S Navy was the largest or at least it became the largest by 1943 but it was not the only one then two the naval war was fought not in two oceans but in at least six including the Arctic as well as in several Seas including the Mediterranean and the Caribbean it was in short a global war quite literally a World War so than the first World War in addition to the U.S Navy and the British royal Navy we should not ignore the French the polls the Russians the Australians the Canadians the Dutch and the Norwegians got to get that in here in Minnesota plus of course the axis navies the Germans the Japanese the Italians who had a substantial Naval force all those navies played roles obviously some more prominent than others in defining the trajectory and I argue even the outcome of the second World War so that's my first point it truly was a global war now the second point I want to make involves resources and especially shipping when national leaders sought to construct a global strategy for this war they not only had to take the entire Globe into consideration they had to make hard decisions about where and how to allocate the scarce resources because committing resources to one theater one of these orange circles necessarily meant not committing it to another there is something called you ready for this Slide the butterfly effect where supposedly a butterfly flapping its wings in Indonesia can create a typhoon in someplace else now I'm skeptical of the literal truth of that story but it's a useful metaphor to keep in mind and that is that they were all interconnected the global character of the naval war was especially evident in 1942 the First full year of American involvement the second world war when the demands for Allied resources were ubiquitous what was the movie that won the award everywhere all the time whatever it was the other night that pretty much describes the war in the Atlantic to fight off the U-boats in the Pacific to slow down at least to the Japanese in the Arctic to take supplies to the Red Army which after all was bearing the brunt of the land war against the Vermont in the Mediterranean where the British were desperately trying to keep open the supply line between Gibraltar and Suez even in the Indian Ocean where a Japanese carrier Force the same one that had struck at Pearl Harbor attacked both salon and British bases on the mainland of India um all those flapping butterfly wings meant that the Strategic decision makers could not pursue a single line of approach they had to parcel out their scarce assets here and there hoping the world did not collapse on them entirely so the second thing to remember in thinking generally about the war at Sea is that it was not one of armies and navies fighting it was a war of production it was a war of allocation it was a war of distribution in short it was a war decided as so many wars are by Logistics early on the Allies did try to address these various conflicts one at a time the American chief of operation was Harold Stark universally known as Betty we can address the reasons why he was known as Betty in the Q a if you're interested in such a thing he came by it at the Naval Academy where traditionally the upper class imposes a nickname on the plebes when they arrive in those days it was virtually common less so now I don't know what your nickname was uh down at the Academy and shaking his head at me so I won't pursue that but note here's a letter uh from the chairman of the army Chief of Staff General George Marshall to the chief of Naval operations Harold Stark and note the salutation if you can read it dear Betty um so Stark became chief of Naval operations on August 1st 1939 August 1st 39 exactly one month before Germany invaded Poland to begin the second world war his principal contribution to Allied strategy was a memo that he wrote in 1940 after France had capitulated and the British were driven from the beaches at Dunkirk at that point it looked very much like the Germans were going to win the war in Europe you'd have gotten very good odds that Burton was not going to survive and given that Stark laid out four options in this new environment for the United States to consider first we could simply stay on the defensive and defend the Western Hemisphere tuck in defend second the United States could focus all its efforts on a possible war with Japan that after all had been the primary consideration of Naval planners since at least 1911 for the Pacific Ocean third we could try to fight in both oceans at the same time which seemed problematical uh or fourth we could reverse 20 years of strategic planning and reorient our entire strategy toward the defeat of Germany that fourth option plan D planned dog in Navy lingo was the option he recommended and the one that was accepted by Franklin Roosevelt the shorthand for this policy is as everyone here I'm sure knows is simply Germany first Roosevelt believed that Germany Nazi Germany was far more dangerous to World stability not only because of its perverse ideology and obvious aggressive intent but also because of its economy Germany's gross domestic product in 1940 was larger than those of Britain and France combined and six times that of Japan in Roosevelt's mind it was essential to defeat Germany first and in particular to keep Britain from going down to defeat after all if Britain fell there would be no staging platform for any future invasion of Nazi occupied Europe should it come to that that was the justification for the whole lend lease program we need to keep Britain in this war to have a launching platform also to save Britain by the way most historians and nearly all textbooks whether they're going to delete World War II from High School curriculum at just incomprehensible to me but those textbooks tend to treat the Germany first Principle as if it were a literal truth there might be a chapter on the war in Europe and then a second chapter on the war in the Pacific as if they happened sequentially but of course that is not the way it was fought when American and British Admirals met as they did regularly to discuss allied strategy they all paid lip service to the idea of defeating Germany first but the pressures were immediate they were everywhere they were simultaneous and ubiquitous remember the butterfly the anglo-americans in 1942 were like the boy in front of a dam leaking in 12 places a once and trying to plug the holes every theater Commander wanted more of everything and the one thing that they specifically needed more of was shipping so here's the third thing in addition to being a global war fought by a dozen navies and six oceans and a war that was driven by the production of the tools of War it was a war in which there was never quite enough shipping a few examples in August 1942 you were talking earlier at the pre-meeting a single reinforced U.S Marine Division splashed ashore on Guadalcanal Island the one where the blue arrow there the bottom of the Solomon island chain most Americans had never heard of it couldn't find it on a map at the time now this in itself is a violation of the Germany first principle this is the first Allied offensive of the war and it's in Guadalcanal but Admiral Ernest King the American chief of Naval operations argued that this was not really an offensive you see it was merely to keep the Japanese from further expanding their Pacific Empire they were trying to build an Airfield there so in his view it was a defensive move okay King by the way as most everybody here probably knows was a notoriously Gruff individual he knew exactly how he wanted the war to be fought and he was a powerful voice for assuming the offensive as soon as possible in the Pacific keep the Japanese back on their heels not to allow them to consolidate their defensive perimeter which would increase the cost of taking it back later he knew full well that putting a single Marine Division ashore on Guadalcanal would be the camel's nose Under the Tent because he knew that once U.S forces were committed in the Solomon Islands that they would have to be supported they would draw more resources and reinforcement like a black hole into the fighting front and that is exactly what happened there was another complication and that was what to do with this guy MacArthur was such a senior General and very popular with the civilians back home who read about him in the paper all the time thanks to MacArthur's staff who put out daily communiques and that's especially following his I shall return announcement in Australia that Roosevelt knew he had to give MacArthur an important command alas MacArthur also had a lot of personal and political baggage he was imperious he was disdainful of others the focus of much attention by others as a possible future presidential candidate Roosevelt did not want to give him command of the entire Pacific nor did he want to give him control of the U.S Navy something that would have made Ernie King's Head explode so like King Solomon he cut the baby in half MacArthur got command of what was called the Southwest Pacific or Southwest Pac in the inevitable acronym it was a fairly large command that as you can see included the continent of Australia the Dutch East Indies now Indonesia including the big islands of New Guinea Borneo and Sumatra the British colony of Malaya Singapore and of course the Philippines which as far as MacArthur was concerned was the object of the entire Pacific Campaign the rest of the Pacific embracing an area five times larger than MacArthur's though of course mostly water was called the Pacific Ocean area and it was put under the command of Navy Admiral Chester Nimitz and of course I have to put this slide on the screen I love this picture of him by the way he looks looking at that cameraman like who let that cameraman on board this ship so I'm not exactly objective in discussing the relationship between Nimitz and MacArthur this slide for example which I think is a staged photograph obviously but the caption I believe should say look Doug Japan is over here in effect the United States with British compliance decided to make the two the Pacific two separate command theaters and that meant divided command MacArthur did not believe in a divided command both on philosophical grounds and quite frankly because he thought he should command all of it he complained about this regularly constantly directly to his own boss in the Joint Chiefs George Marshall and to the president himself secretly MacArthur believed that Roosevelt had trimmed down the size of his command on purpose limiting it so that MacArthur couldn't win the war come back as a hero and challenge him in the 1944 presidential campaign a scenario that MacArthur seems at least to have thought about the decision stood and so when the U.S Marines splashed ashore on Guadalcanal in August of 1942 to begin a campaign in the tropical jungle that would last for most of six months the United States was now in effect fighting not only a two-ocean war as Morrison called it but by dividing his forces between Macarthur and Nimitz in the Pacific and invading North Africa as well it was actually engaged now in a Forefront War remember I said earlier that shipping was a key to trying to maintain these simultaneous offenses this was especially evident during the campaign for Guadalcanal though the official name of the campaign was Operation Watchtower resources were so scarce in 1942 that the popular name ascribed to it was Operation shoestring we went there early we went there with inadequate resources and we had a hell of a time sustaining those hard-pressed Marines on the island Marines managed to hang on to that foothold but only just and the United States had to devote almost literally all the shipping it had in the Pacific Ocean to keep them there but and here is where the global aspect of the naval war became evident at the same time the Marines were fighting to hang on to their little Enclave on Guadalcanal the anglo-american Allies also conducted an invasion of French North Africa having decided on a Germany first strategy Roosevelt and Churchill were eager to get Allied Forces into combat somewhere in Europe and since Europe itself looked like too tough a nut to crack this is what was possible it's a bit problematic in that there were no Germans in North Africa that's embarrassing um but once U.S and British troops landed there the Germans arrived soon enough as you can see with the blue arrows there coming from Sicily into North Africa and as on Guadalcanal sustaining and even expanding the Allied foothold in North Africa proved stressful this is how the Atlantic and the Pacific Theaters were really one there was a worldwide shortage of shipping and multiple competing demands for it ships were needed for the North Atlantic convoys to Britain that kept British citizens fed and supplied ships were needed for convoys to Russia who rounded the North Cape to keep the Red Army bearing the brunt of the war against Germany and more ships were required for the two campaigns in the Pacific everybody wanted more shipping now with those butterfly wings flapping in the Pacific and the Atlantic let me take a few minutes to talk about the Mediterranean almost exactly in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea is the tiny island of Malta it's actually two islands the main island of Malta and the even tinier island of Gozo tiny as they were they were also crucial to British interests in the Mediterranean Malta sat almost exactly at the Nexus of the line between Gibraltar and Suez for the allies and between Italy and North Africa for the axis it's Airfield provided cover for British convoys and was a threat to axis convoys because it's ancient Harbor at Valletta sat quite literally on the flank of axis sea Lanes so naturally the Germans and Italians wanted to eliminate this thorn in their side they considered seizing it by a paratroop invasion but a similar operation in Crete had not turned out well for the Germans and the luftwaffe said it could do the job unaided I've heard this from Air Forces my whole life so throughout the spring and summer of 1942 German aircraft pounded Malta here's a statistic more bombs were dropped on the tiny island of Malta in the single month of April 1942 then were dropped on London in the whole of the Blitz and they had an impact by July 1942 the island was an extremis the food ration was down to six ounces of food six ounces of food per person per week the Spitfires were nearly out of fuel if they could not fly the island would be defenseless the Island's governor and formed London that unless a convoy got through in the next week the island Must Fall so the British scraped together what transport shipping they had cobbled together a convoy in Glasgow Scotland it consisted of 14 transports including the oil tanker Ohio which was transferred from the U.S flag to British service for this Convoy an argument can be made in fact I guess I'm making it right now that in August of 1942 the Ohio was the single most crucial vessel on the planet if she and her cargo of aviation fuel did not make it to Malta the Spitfires would be grounded the island would fall the axis would control the Mediterranean dubbed operation pedestal the Convoy set out in the first week of August now here's why I'm telling you this story note the date it's the same week the Marines went ashore on Guadalcanal here's an unmistakable manifestation of the global war being fought quite literally on the same day on opposite sides of the world the pedestal Convoy by the way had the strongest escort of any Convoy in history these 14 ships were escorted by two battleships four aircraft carriers seven Cruisers and 32 Destroyers all to guard 14 transports but especially that oil tanker it was a bigger escort Force than either of the Japanese or American fleets that had fought at the Battle of Midway two months earlier most Americans never heard of it it was a measure not only of the importance attached to the survival of Malta but to the scarcity and value of that transport shipping in the perilous track from Gibraltar to Malta the pedestal Convoy lost two aircraft carriers four Cruisers several destroyers and nine of the 14 transports and of course thousands of sailors lives it was in short a massacre far worse than Allied losses off Guadalcanal that same week in the Battle of Savo Island the Germans focused on the tanker and rather amazingly we actually have a photo of the moment she was hit by an aerial torpedo but in spite of that she somehow remained afloat and five days later with her decks of wash her back broken no engine no steering no compass and with pieces of a German bomber actually hung up in her superstructure she was tugged pushed even carried into volata Harbor where cheering crowds lined the Waterfront and a band played Rule Britannia Malta remained in British hands for the rest of the war now my point in telling you this story is not just that it's a pretty amazing Story one that a lot of students of the second world war Overlook but also to illustrate that the naval war did not proceed as some books suggest first in the in Europe and then in the Pacific but everywhere at the same time and it illustrates how precarious was the state of Allied Shipping in the late summer of 1942 the 18 transports at Guadalcanal and the 14 transports involved in pedestal nine of which were sunk formed a pool of sea transports so limited that it restricted what the Allies could do strategically this particular problem would never entirely disappear but it would dramatically diminish over time because of American shipbuilding capability and here's my final point about the naval war what finally defeated the axis in World War II was not just Grit bravery sacrifice it needed all of that but even with that it would have been difficult without American industrial productivity this is most evident of course in the battle of the Atlantic between German U-boats and Allied convoys even as the predations of the U-boats increased throughout 1942 the number of ships built by the United States increased to by 1943 not only were there more escorts and more efficient anti-submarine weapons available to Allied convoys but in a brutal and and utterly critical assessment of the battle of the Atlantic the key was that by the end of 1942 the United States could build ships faster than the Germans could sink them here in this slide you can see that from 1939 to 42 the number of Allied ships sunk by U-boats represented by the black bars was pretty frightening then in December of 42 the production of new ships the red bars surpassed a million tons a month for the first time and went up from there the number of sinkings also dropped off due to the increased escorts new and better equipment it's a pretty gruesome calculus but from 1943 on it didn't matter how many ships the U-boats could sink they would never get ahead of American Shipbuilding by 1943 the Germans had lost the battle of the Atlantic and they knew it here's a kind of a vivid example of how this new construction changed the war here is a photograph of a group working in a shipyard to build a to lay the Keel of a liberty ship in 1943 so we'll call this day one by the way don't tell OSHA about the headgear on the on the shipyard workers here I'm not sure it was up to Reg all right here's day one here's the same ship this ship one day later one day here it is on day six day 10. day 14 day 24 and there it goes one month one month and there are hundreds of these shipyards around the periphery of the United States this rather astonishing success of the American shipbuilding program meant that the convoys got through The Troop ships got through the build up for D-Day could begin speaking of D-Day and we offer one more example of how the war was Global in character in June of 1944 famously the Allies Americans British Canadians and French invaded Nazi occupied Europe at Normandy it is the single most famous campaign of the entire War most students of the war are aware of what a massive undertaking it was how many thousands of ships were necessary to execute it some stories of D-Day focus on what happened when the first landing craft hit the beach at least as important as what happened before that the essential building of the transports the landing craft especially the ships known as Landing ships tank lsts which you can see here on Omaha Beach these specially designed ships like this one did not even exist before 1942. but they were essential to carry tanks and trucks to The Invasion Beach despite the astonishing output of American industry that I just mentioned there were never quite enough lsts to go around commanders wanted them in the Mediterranean to land on Sicily and Italy other commanders wanted them in the Pacific for Tarawa and quadrilaine and of course Eisenhower wanted them for the invasion of Normandy the need was so Universal even U.S shipyards could not keep up with the demand so D-Day was postponed for a month originally scheduled for May 1st 1944 to June in order to allow the for the construction of 56 more lsts and yet even as Allied troops fought for the Normandy beaches a lesser-known second D-Day took place that same month only a week and a half apart half a world away in the Marianas on Saipan indeed the naval Armada for the invasion of Saipan was more powerful than the one at Normandy the Normandy Armada was numerically larger but it had fewer warships and of course no aircraft carriers whereas the Allied invasion Force for Saipan included 15 aircraft carriers more than a thousand airplanes and 84 of those precious and scarce lsts even though Eisenhower was begging for just one or two more here then is another example of a truly global war the fact that the anglo-americans could Mount two enormous Invasion armadas on opposite sides of the world at the same time shows first how the American industrial Dynamo had changed the calculus of battle from 1942 when a shortage of transports threatened disaster at both Guadalcanal and Malta to 1944 when the Allies could Assemble two enormous Invasion fleets each consisting of thousands of ships it also demonstrates how the naval war was Global simultaneous and interconnected Germany first was the official allied strategy and yet by 1944 the Allies had become so dominant at Sea that they could fight in the Atlantic and the Pacific and the Mediterranean and the Arctic all at the same time all Wars including World War II are eventually one on the ground it's important even for a naval historian to acknowledge the horrific sacrifices made by Russian soldiers on the Eastern front by Chinese soldiers in Asia that ground down the Axis powers over a period of years while enduring horrendous losses and yet it is also important to remember just how much the course of the war was charted and steered did you see the way thing I did there by Maritime events thank you very much I look forward to your question Dr Simons wanted to give you all an exam I pointed out that none of us are midshipmen anymore uh but uh anyways fabulous can you believe we can get this right here in Minnesota so thank you for coming out Dr Simons you know we are having trouble getting Navy veterans uh and so in lieu of having uh one of those esteemed uh Defenders of Liberty uh Andrew's going to talk about uh a Navy veteran from Minnesota we can all be proud of uh his name is uh Captain Richard Fleming my son Andrew I want you to come up Andrew he is a 2019 graduate of St John's University and a very deep historical researcher uh and presenter here at the Dr Harold C Deutsche World War II history Roundtable uh and Andrew it's your floor I've been asked to speak tonight on the veteran connection that ties into Dr Craig Simon's presentation regarding his excellent Book World War II at sea in the absence of a World War II veteran In the Flesh tonight the round tables and myself decided to shed light on a local hero United States Marine Corps Captain Richard E Fleming who won the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously for his actions at the Battle of Midway Fleming field and South St Paul is named after him which many of you may have made that connection already Captain Fleming sacrificed his life defending a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and lived his life in the most purposeful and honorable way I have titled my presentation for tonight Overture of sacrifice and we'll see why later before I get started there are a few organizations and individuals I need to thank who made my research tonight in the slideshow possible I'd like to thank St Thomas Academy from which Captain Fleming is an alumni the Congressional Medal of Honor Society Fort Snelling National Cemetery Dr Craig Simons retired army colonel Don Patton retired Navy captain brooksburg and my colleague Mr Steve dobbinspeck each one of these programs that you see tonight is a team effort and nothing if not a collaboration between a lot of selfless people all right so here we are Kat Richard Eugene Fleming he was born in 1917 in Saint Paul he was raised in Saint Paul as well before the existence of Interstate 94 and the freeway system back then St Paul was a smaller City home to lots of German Irish and polish immigrants and was a regional hub for riverine Commerce and Rail lines Richard attended the Saint Thomas Military Academy where he graduated in 1935 as the cadet Commander the top student Cadet in his class we will notice that Richard had a habit for distinguishing himself he was a very gifted and intelligent individual with a knack for peer leadership and Technical proficiency Richard earned his bachelor in arts degree from the University of Minnesota in 1939 where he was a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon is still a functioning fraternity headquartered on University Avenue Southeast I wonder if any of their current members are aware of the pedigree they're responsible for continuing those are some big shoes to fill now for the rest of the slideshow we will see that the United States Marine Corps and Richard Fleming's life will intersect for the remainder of his time on this Earth Richard's life as a civilian was not long for this world and he was called to a higher purpose as soon as he graduated from college I'm sure that he like many young men at the time knew there was trouble brewing in the world and he must have known that he wanted to be ready in case the imminent conflict reached the United States fascinated with flight he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps Reserve in 1939 shortly after earning his bachelor's degree Lieutenant Fleming completed his flight training at Naval Air Station Pensacola where he graduated again at the top of his class by now it's 1940 and Germany has invaded Poland it's a Nazi jagboot covers Europe and France Belgium Luxembourg and the low countries are all under Hitler's control the United States is increasing its sanctions and embargoes on Japan particularly concerning the emperor's oil supply and tensions are rising Lieutenant Fleming's first Duty station was in San Diego where he arrived a month before the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor he was ultimately destined for Midway atoll however and he arrived there with his unit 10 days after the surprise attack that left the United States Pacific surface Fleet in shambles Fleming was a flight officer in Marine scout bombing Squadron 241. over the next six months Fleming acquires the lay of the land or should I say a c around Midway flying patrols analyzing the weather patterns making Landings a day and night on the airstrips on the isolated atoll he was promoted to first lieutenant in April 1942 and then the captain a short month later in May no doubt due to his leadership prowess and aircraft navigation skills Captain Fleming was known by his by this time for his expert handling of his aircraft and his ability to lead doctrinally and technically sound attacks a little known fact of these Marine Scout bomber squadrons is at this point in the war they did not fly all the ubiquitous SPD dauntless which is without a doubt one of the if not the most easily recognizable planes associated with the victory in the Pacific no you have to remember this is United States Marine Corps which throughout history always does more with less and often operates the rest of the war Department's leftover and obsolete weapons and material let's not forget that after Midway in the late summer of 1942 just two short months after the Marines on Guadalcanal initially assaulted the island with bolt action Springfield Rifles and water cools 30 cal heavy machine guns while the Army at the same time was prepping for land battle in North Africa a few months later with semi-automatic M1 Grands and lighter air-cooled 30 cal machine guns Captain Fleming's craft was the Vaught sb2u Vindicator as the Japanese Fleet known as the Kido bhutai approached in May 1942 his aircraft had already been obsolete for a couple years this was a modest depression-era airframe that was rolled off the production line as low Wing monoplane strike aircraft were newly replacing biplanes such as the Curtis bfc2 the total number of indicators produced 260 is indicative that this was a pre-war design through and through also similar produced in modest isolationist era numbers was another obsolete airframe that saw combat at Midway the TBD Devastator vindicators were not mass-produced throughout the war because they were later replaced by more capable aircraft like the SBD sb2c hell diver and the Avenger it's far underpowered engine produced well below a thousand horsepower and is combat Cruise speed only gave it 120 to 130 mile an hour advantage over the ships it was chasing while performing a dive bomb or a Glide bombing attack it could carry one bomb under the center line that was released from a carriage that gave it clearance from its two-bladed propeller that's significant Because by the end of the war everything has four blades The Vindicator is also lightly armed with 150 cal machine gun in the starboard wing and one Flex mounted 50 cal on the rear Gunner seat behind me you can see a photo of a destroyed Vindicator that was a casualty of the attack on Pearl Harbor and below that photo you'll see a rare photograph of one of Fleming's Squad roommates taking off from Midway Island Vindicator pilots and crew begrudgingly called their planes wind indicators which should say enough about their slow speed and seeming ability to be blown around by a headwind now let's talk about Midway atoll why was the most fearsome Japanese carrier Strike Force ever assembled headed for this isolated seemingly small base Midway atoll consists of two islands sand and eastern island and a lagoon the small size of the base on Midway is disproportionate to the role it would play in changing the course of history as part of Roosevelt's Pacific Ocean defense initiatives in the late 1930s the base and Naval Air Station were completed in operational in 1940. it was home to surprisingly large number aircraft by the time of the battle 31 pby cattle in a long-range Oceanic Patrol aircraft 17 B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers and four B-26 Marauder medium bombers in addition to dozens of fighter aircraft and strike aircraft like those piloted by Captain Fleming's vmsb 241 that's the name of his unit if you were to place these aircraft with Japanese aircraft you can quickly understand that a detrim what a detriment to the Pacific Ocean security the loss of Midway atoll would be not to mention Midway is the second to last Island system in the greater Hawaiian island chain so the political connection of Midway to the United States is much like that of Iwo Jima to the Empire of Japan this was and still is American soil assuming the Japanese took Midway atoll and Were Somehow able to effectively Supply their own Naval Air Station there the U.S Navy would be an extremely threatened position very close to its own home turf besides the base itself the Imperial Japanese Navy was looking to challenge the U.S carrier Fleet to a once and for all Showdown on the high seas winner take all they were confident they could use the invasion of Midway as a medium for this head-to-head carrier of clash to inflict a decisive defeat on the U.S Navy and Push Washington further towards suing for peace a little known fact about Midway is that it was actually simultaneously attacked by two Japanese destroyers on December 7th 1941. as the attack on Pearl Harbor was underway this was part of the larger coordinated strike on U.S naval installations all over the Pacific like Guam Wake Island and the Philippines the Destroyers were repulsed and this stands as the first American victory of the war today midway's active 8 000 foot Runway serves as an extended twin engine operations or e-tops runway for passing twin engine passenger aircraft behind me you will see the bases at Midway atoll as Captain Fleming would have seen them in November 1941 looking East it may not appear to be much but these two little Islands in this Lagoon changed the course of history in seven months from this the time this photo was taken this would be the scene of a battle after which the Japanese would never return to the offensive in in practice the battle commenced on June 4th 1942 U.S Navy code Breakers had long since broken the Japanese Naval code and knew that the keto bhutai were steaming for Midway many of the people in this Auditorium know that the story of the Japanese destroyer oracio and its fateful Chase of the USS Nautilus which ultimately gave the location of the keto bhutai away from the fuel starved U.S Navy strike planes led by Wade McCluskey what is lesser known however is the Marine Corps contribution to the battle on June 4th planes from vmsb241 took off from Midway amid the chaos to look for Japanese carriers as well and successfully found them Captain Fleming's squadron commander major Lofton Henderson was shot down during the marine scout bombers first strike on the Japanese carriers Henderson would later be the namesake of the legendary Airfield at Guadalcanal this put Captain Fleming in charge of the squadron at only 24 years old two years younger than myself I should add few words can describe the weight on Captain Fleming's shoulders as he was charged with leading a group of obsolete 1930s strike planes against the baddest and saltiest pilots and sailors of the Imperial Japanese Navy also not a small task was being responsible for shooting the combat Air Patrol off of Fleming's back a job that fell on rear Gunner private first class George a Toms without fear Fleming and toms led the second division of vmsb-241 on a dive bombing attack of the makuma a bat a massive Japanese Heavy Cruiser these slow underpowered aircraft stood little chance of success in the face of the complement of Weaponry The Heavy Cruiser could fill the air with along with its escorts as a result of withering anti-aircraft fire Fleming's men were unable to press home their attacks and a few aircraft were lost on their approach to attack the makula Dauntless in the face of almost certain death Captain Fleming pitched his lone Vindicator into a 70 degree dive stressing the sp2u's airframe to its limit the urgency of this task must have been sitting deep in his stomach because Captain Fleming reportedly Dove to an absurd 400 feet before releasing his bomb at that low of an altitude he must have likely missed the wave tops by mere yards as he pulled out of his dive the forces on Fleming and Tom's bodies let alone their aircraft are sobering to even imagine Captain Fleming's bomb hit its Target but it's unclear in historical materials what the effect of this bomb hit was it wasn't until Captain Fleming rejoined his formation and landed safely back on Midway that he noticed his wind indicator had been perforated by 179 anti-aircraft round hits he himself was wounded in two places as well and received medical attention that night the next day on June 5th Captain Richard Fleming awoke after only four hours of sleep likely still in pain from his wounds and was given another mission this time vmsb-241 was to go back out to the makuma and Endeavor to sink it it's not known whether Fleming and toms took off that day in a fresh Vindicator or there one that was shot to hell the day before but regardless the two men took off to the skies for the final time in the lead of the Squadron Fleming's plan was a coordinated Glide and dive bombing attack that would hopefully split up the target packages anti-aircraft defenses and ensure a higher chance of bomb hits while on approach as part of the Glide bombing element Fleming's sb2u was fatally struck by likely a 25 millimeter anti-aircraft round from The Heavy Cruiser and caught fire but always leading by example and not one to leave his mission incomplete Captain Fleming continued on he must have known he was about to die with his last actions on this Earth he released his bomb at again an absurd 500 feet above the makuma Landing a very near Miss and then crashed into the sea behind me you'll see an artist's watercolor rendering of Fleming's last actions with his Vindicator on fire and going down above the makuma Richard Fleming led by example from the time he was a young adult until he took his last breath at the controls of his doomed aircraft his willingness to attack the enemy even while facing long odds beckons for the Excellence that followed him from Saint Thomas Military Academy in St Paul Minnesota to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean the Battle of Midway decimated Fleming Squadron of 30 aircraft 23 were lost 36 Airmen were casualties these men that went down joined their brothers of the Navy Torpedo squadrants who were the only elements of the U.S strike squadrons to suffer more losses Fleming's surviving Squad roommates never forgot his final actions and recounted them in detail when they landed back on Midway through the military channels Fleming was considered for and then a war the Medal of Honor posthumously his mother received the medal in his place on November 4th 1942 just two days after what would have been his 25th birthday Fleming's backseat of private first class George a Toms was awarded the distinguished flying cross posthumously as well as one of the greatest battles in U.S military history the Battle of Midway was no exception in its volume of sacrifice and proportionate number of medals and awards many of which sadly were handed out posthumously as for the makuma The Heavy Cruiser was finished off by U.S Navy strike planes on June 6 1942 resulting in a catastrophic loss of life aboard Captain Fleming's Medal of Honor was mired by controversy in the decades to come as historical accounts of the Battle of Midway surfaced in later years notional and verbal Histories on check became the accepted truth even when they contradicted the official accounts even Fleming's metal citation itself had a slight error in it that makuma was labeled as a battleship not a Heavy Cruiser I don't blame the war department however if I was staring into the belly of that beast from a slow-moving biplane upgrade I'm sure I would have thought any huge ship I was up against was a battleship as well the famous Japanese pilot mitsuo fuchida told the story differently as well in His official statement he describes Captain Fleming's action as bombing the makuma the second time hitting it and then crashing his Vindicator into the ship itself and I want to add go off scripture Dr Simon's mentioned this might have been because he went so low he must have thought this Marine Corps pile was nuts and and went straight into the ship um the uh the citation in Fleming's Medal of Honor clearly and correctly states that he missed the ship and hit the ocean and Fujita was actually hundreds of miles away uh when it happened as he was a pilot and part of the keto bhutai it's not clear why Fuji his account of the battle was accepted as gospel after the war but next I'll show you a photograph of the makuma before it sank this photo has become wildly famous since the war and provides excellent insight into the moments before she went under as you can see the number for turret at the stern of the ship appears to have aircraft wreckage on it it's because of this photo in coincidence with mitsuo fujita's account of the battle that the Collision rumor was allowed to propagate through popular history in the decades after the war however what you can see on the turret is not actually aircraft wreckage from Captain Fleming's plane it's actually debris Left Behind from a catastrophic explosion suffered by the Cruiser's type 93 torpedo mounts these chunks of ship deposited on the turret were blown into the air and landed there after the explosion not left behind by a marine pilot with a death wish and I want to point out these can everyone see my laser pointer these these objects coming out of the ship are torpedoes that were that were blown out of their tubes Richard Fleming's Legacy it has because of Americans like him that we won the war he didn't do it alone but he is an excellent and local example ordinary talented intelligent smart men and women who answered the call to defend freedom and liberate oppressed territories far from their homes he is one of the early cases we can look to and see bravery and duty exemplified to the highest degree tragically the Allied victory in 1945 had the motif of extreme sacrifice displayed throughout the entire conflict like a severed vein Richard Fleming's contribution to the victory over evil in the Pacific reverberated throughout the war in many many many other examples we can look to for inspiration behind me I have lots of depictions of them in the paratroopers in Normandy led by Lieutenant Colonel Richard Cole of the 502nd parachute Infantry Regiment who led a bloody bayonet charge across Purple Heart Lane to Route the defending Germans the Marines landing at Tarawa who suffered insane casualties to learn tough lessons about island hopping Warfare the men of the Eighth Air Force who in total lost more men in the Skies over Europe than all of the Marine Corps during World War II in their campaign to crush the Nazi war effort and the luftwaffe before invading and finally in the same theater as Fleming the TBD Devastator pilots who themselves were devastated but drew the Japanese combat Air Patrol to low level and unintentionally let the sbd's high angle approach the keto bhutai go more or less unguarded um Captain Fleming had a destroyer named after him the USS Fleming de-32 during the war which served with distinction in the Pacific today his legacy lives on near the place he grew up at flemingfield in South St Paul Fleming's love of Aviation is preserved with his namesake where engines are heard today his grave site in Fort Snelling National Cemetery can be seen by the public today as well I want to reiterate that men like Richard E Fleming are the reason we are free today men like this only truly die when they stop being talked about and that is when history is in Jeopardy of repeating itself we cannot minimize the sacrifice undertaken by these men in the name of life liberty and the pursuit of all who threaten it many of the men lost in the Battle of Midway would be the youngest men in the room here and yet the freedom of the world was decided by the actions of men like them in the right moments much like the Overture of a symphony Captain Fleming's sacrifice set the tone for the rest of the war after the Battle of Midway the Japanese were on the defensive until the atomic bombs were dropped and the U.S accepted Japan's unconditional surrender actions of men like Fleming at Midway made this outcome happen and never again was the U.S honest back foot in the Pacific that is why I titled this presentation Overture of sacrifice thank you [Applause] in a spirit of a two ocean war I'd like to also present uh Mike Guardia in Mike guard is an internationally recognized author and Military historian a veteran in the United States Army is an armor officer he's twice the nominated for the Army historical foundation's distinguished book award as a speaker we host the lecture series hell Moore lessons in leadership which is available for presentation worldwide Mike Guardia has given presentations at the U.S Special Operations Command the International Spy Museum and his work has been reviewed in the Washington Times the military View and many other Publications Mike holds a ba and M.A in American history for the University of Houston and he will talk to us today about a hero from the Atlantic side of the two ocean war Mike Guardia this is a very special gentleman that I would like to discuss with you all tonight uh probably someone who is an unsung hero and also somebody whose Legacy is actually all over the Twin Cities today so the gentleman that I'd like to speak to you about his name is Marty Romano he was a crewman aboard PT 306 and uh I had the very special opportunity to interview Marty at length he was one of several World War II veterans that I had the opportunity to interview as part of my book the combat Diaries and I have to give a special thanks to Don Patton for arranging that interview I remember it was about two years ago as I was uh getting all my work ready for the combat Diaries I got a call from Don and he said Mike there's a guy that I really want you to meet his name is Marty Romano and the first thing that flashed through my mind as well with a name like that you got to be a tough guy Marty Romano and he said you know he's uh he said this guy Marty he's originally from New Jersey uh he's lived in he's lived in the Twin Cities for the past several years and he he was a crewman aboard PT 306 in the Mediterranean theater of operations and the second thing that went through my mind at that point was wow I had forgotten that PT Boats were a critical part of the of the Mediterranean theater of operations because I think when many of us hear the word PT Boat I think our go-to is is probably uh is probably a lot of us think about JFK we tend to think about PT 109 and we tend to think about a lot of the PT Boat operations that were critical to the Pacific Theater of War but not a lot of press and not a lot of attention gets paid to to a lot of the PT Boat operations that happen not only in the Mediterranean but were also a very critical part of the D-Day operation so if you take a look at this picture right here Center Mass you will see the crew of PT 306 in the Mediterranean theater of operations and if you look specifically Marty Romano he is one of the gentlemen who is kneeling in the front row he he he is the second man from the right and I will never forget one of the first times that I met Marty Romano one of the very first meetings that I had with him it was actually in it was actually in the dead of winter and I had the opportunity to to go to his home at the time in Bloomington and even though it was the dead of winter and here was a gentleman who who no joke was 97 years old and he was out in his front yard and he was he was he he was he he he was actually shoveling snow and he was doing it with the dexterity of a 30 year old I mean he was just doing these piles of snow like it was nobody's business and I was thinking to myself gosh if I make it to 97 I want to be that strong and I want to have that much energy and when I spoke to him when I spoke to him for the first time yeah I was uh I was incredibly impressed not only by how energetic he was but he had that he had that raspy New Jersey accent he looks at me and he says oh hey there Mike how's it going hey uh you just go on inside and you grab yourself some coffee I'll be right witches and so I go inside I go inside and the house is immaculate he comes in he shakes off you know he's he's shaking around like a 30 year old he sits down right in front of me he takes a big Swig of coffee and he's like okay Mike what can I do just for and that started a very long series of interviews uh for for the combat diaries that uh I had the opportunity to sit with him for now if you take a look there there's Marty Romano and tragically he recently passed away as a matter of fact he he he he he passed away it was it was actually just this past February he uh he was 98 only a few months shy of his uh of his 99th birthday but as you can see in that picture it looks like he's about to make me an offer I can't refuse [Applause] all right so the story of Marty Romano begins as it is in the uh in in the concrete jungle of Jersey City he was born in June of 1924 in Jersey City New Jersey and he was the first generation american-born son of Italian immigrants now he enjoys a childhood which is pretty typical of the children who were growing up in Jersey City at the time you know he plays a lot of stickball in the street he uh he indulges himself in the local variety of Athletics he learns how to work on cars but unfortunately this was a point in American history where a lot of Italian immigrants and particularly a lot of Italian Americans were either discriminated against or they were looked upon with a lot of Suspicion and unfortunately Marty Romano was no exception but despite all that he graduates from Dickinson High School in 1941 and his first job out of high school is as a machinist Apprentice he's working for a Firearms manufacturer he's learning how to Tool all of the different components that go into these firearms and he he was especially proud of the fact that he learned how to operate all this machinery and he said that he could bore the diameters of those barrels within one one thousandth of an inch well because he is a machinist and because he has extensive experience working with firearms that makes him that makes him a prime candidate for the draft and not only that that also makes him a prime candidate for the Navy when he goes into the induction Center he finds out that the Navy is very hard up for machinists and in particular he becomes a machinist mate the person who is responsible for operating the engine compartments throughout any of the variety of ships so he's inducted into the U.S Navy in September of 1943 and by this point the war at least for the American side of things has been going on for the better part of two years now and well well he is well well he is in the middle of boot camp he uh suddenly he he has no idea what exactly he's going to do after boot camp is over he knows that he is going to be a machinist mate but he has no idea what type of craft he'll be assigned to but then by happenstance when he's at the naval Training Center which is in Rhode Island at this point he looks across he looks across the bay he sees a few miles out on the horizon he sees these small boats and at first he doesn't really know what to make of him he says huh you know that's a uh it's a small looking craft out there it doesn't look like anything I've seen before and it's nothing that I've seen inside any of the training literature or any of the training films that we've had to this point but what he finds out is that it's a PT Boat PT being an acronym for patrol torpedo and the first thing that he says to himself when he sees this is they're not big enough to be a destroyer but they're a little bit too big to be a gunboat I wonder what the heck those things are I don't know what they're called they don't look familiar but by God I'm impressed and I want to find out as much of them as I can that's when he learns it's called a PT boat and not only that he's also impressed by what exactly their mission is here's a small boat that is actually made mostly of plywood and not only that it has to rely on speed and it also has to rely on stealth because its Mission it operates mostly at night and it's going to sneak up on these bigger enemy ships and fire off a few Torpedoes and then get the heck out of Dodge before anybody knows what's happening so they're too big to be gunboats but he says yeah I'm impressed so as a machinist mate what I'm going to do is I'm going to be responsible for everything that happens or doesn't happen as far as the engine compartment is concerned inside these PT boats and he finds out through a matter of course that the engine Suite inside the PT boat is uh actually a big Packard engine and it's coincidental because as a youngster he used to work on he used to work on detailing and taking apart the engines of the of the Packard cars which were considered the Premier Luxury vehicles in America at that point so he is inducted as a PT crewman he is assigned to a PT Squadron he goes to uh he goes to the Mediterranean theater of operations and by the time he gets there it's the early spring of 1944 and he says by this time here's what the war looked like he said the North Africa campaign was done and we had already conquered Sicily we already had a toe hold of operations on Sardinia and the Salerno campaign was really in its mopping up phase at this point but he says my journey from getting from the point of embarkation to my PT Squadron was it was an adventure in itself because I landed at Casablanca and I'll tell you from firsthand experience he told me he said that Casablanca was nothing like what happened in in in the Humphrey Bogart movie he said he said that there was he said there was no he said there was no Lauren Bacall he said that there was no Soiree at Rick's he said it was just hot and it was stinky it says that's the only thing I remember about it and the first thing that they did as if my reception at that place wasn't bad enough what they did was they put me on a train right they put me in they they actually put me inside of this big boxcar that was officially designed for horses and they they packed as many as upwards of 60 to 70 men inside there and it was hot it was cramped we had absolutely no air conditioning it was very poorly venerated and there were no bathrooms either so he said what we had to do was we who we actually had to choose whether or not we were going to sweat inside or whether or not we were going to sweat up on top of the boxcars because it was very hot and eventually decided that I was going to be sweating up on top of The Boxcar and I probably would have stayed up there except there was one thing that I didn't count on there was a swarm of locusts he said right around the time we got through Algiers there must have been thousands of these locusts that just came up out of nowhere and I said okay well do I really want to endure an Old Testament plague or am I going to endure all all of this human refuse that's down on the bottom and I said well I think I'll take my chances down below so finally he gets to Tunis and that's when he is assigned to motor torpedo Squadron 15 otherwise known as Ron 15. and he is assigned to PT 306 now I'm going to warn you guys ahead of time that it is Naval convention that they give their ships nicknames and back in 1944 there was no pretense of political correctness back then and the nickname that they gave their ship is probably probably going to offend some but yeah just go ahead and take a look at the name they called their ship the fascinating [Music] and if I can point out with this laser pointer can everyone see that that is Marty Romano who was there at the Helm of the ship so that's PT 306 and that begins his nearly year-long tour in the Mediterranean and here are some of the highlights from those operations he said it was very interesting being a PT crewman in the Mediterranean at that time because most of the naval threats that we had at that point in the Mediterranean were all gone but there were still a lot of very interesting Mission sets that we had at the time he said the first thing that we had to do when we were stationed up at Sardinia was we had a lot of Search and Destroy missions along the western coast of Italy he said that really was our primary Mission we had to do these reconnaissance patrols and if we saw something that belonged to the enemy we had to open fire on it and he he said something that I'll never forget he said I have to admit that an eerie feeling came over me when I saw the Italian Coast for the first time this was the land of my forefathers he said this was the land that I had heard about from my mom and dad for years but I had never had the opportunity to see it I had always wanted to visit it at a tourist at some point in my life but here I was the very first time I was seeing this at all was as a as a sailor at War and I was technically at war against the people of my ancestral Homeland he said there was something that that he as an Italian-American wrestled with and as did a lot of other Italian Americans who were serving in the military at that time and he said that one of the things that really stood out to him is that throughout all these nighttime patrols that we did he said we were we were off the coast about you know probably probably a good 15 to 20 miles off the coast he said I could look and I could actually see the fighting even though it was even though it was at night I could tell that it was fighting because I could see the muzzle flashes from the American tanks on one side and I could see the responding muzzle flashes from the German tanks on the other side he said I could see these muzzle flashes all throughout the night but the thing that encouraged me was that throughout every nighttime Patrol that we did I would notice that these muzzle flashes would always be moving farther up the peninsula and that was an indication to me at that point that we were winning the war because we were gaining ground against the Germans pushing them up against the uh up against the Italian Peninsula and that's how I knew that we were gaining ground he said another thing that we did in fact most of what we did when we weren't running a lot of these nighttime patrols we were a taxi service for the OSS because all of these Allied spies what they would do is they would come through the Allied headquarters in Sardinia and they would get their mission briefs they would get their missions they would hop right on a PT boat and then we would take them to their drop-off point and that actually constituted a lot of our nighttime missions we would drop off one spot at one point on the coast and then we would go probably 10 to 15 miles up the coast and then we would pick up another spy we would take him back to base and it was it was this constant game of dropping off and picking up and we would do that throughout all of these uh throughout all of these spy missions but it was a very critical it was a very critical mission for us because we knew that for every Spy we picked up that they were bringing back critical intelligence and also critical information and that they were helping us when the campaign on the Italian peninsula but it was fraught with Peril as a matter of fact he recounted quite a few instance instances where he had some near brush with fratricide now it was problematic being a PT boat crewman in the Mediterranean because the Germans and the Italians both had PT boats of their own and as luck would have it the PT Silhouettes very much resembled an American PT Boat the Germans called them e-boats and the Italians called them Moss boats now now if if you look at it from a distance with an untrained eye or even worse with a fatigue die it could very easily resemble um in in enemy watercraft and that was the situation that Marty found himself on at least one occasion where he had where he had an Allied pilot mistake pt-306 for an enemy PT Boat opened fire and even though he was very lucky that nobody aboard his craft got hurt he said that there was a very scary experience for us he said even still to this day I don't know how that pilot could have mistaken US foreign enemy boat because we had the American flag raving and we had all of our we had all of our our signals to identify us as a friendly craft but he said Even In The Heat Of War even if you think you're safe there is always that lingering threat of fratricide now some more Mission highlights that he told me about was supporting operation Dragoon the operation Dragoon was the invasion of Southern France and it's another one of those things in American history that I don't think gets as much attention and it also doesn't get as much press coverage as the invasion of northern France everybody seems to know about D-Day but the invasion of Southern France really doesn't get that much attention but part of the part of the support missions that he did in support of operation Dragoon consisted of ferrying the British Commandos to the beaches near Khan along the French Riviera and there was one mission in particular that he told me about where he was fearing these British Commandos he said that we had to offload them at certain sites and we we essentially had to pray that they would find their targets well this particular team of British Commandos that they had dropped off unfortunately did not make their mission because one of the Commandos accidentally tripped a tripwire and the entire team was captured by the Nazis he said that these were always the things that you had to wrestle with because you know you're doing an important Mission you you know you know that you are delivering a set of Commandos who are very highly trained they're very highly specialized and you really hope that the mission is going to go in their favor but you always have to accept those odds that something's going to happen and your mission in getting them to the beach is probably going to be for not at least at that particular moment another thing that he told me about and one thing that I had absolutely never come across in any of my historical studies was that he would have to fight off these Kamikaze style attacks from the other Italian PT boats he said one of the things that he never really counted on was that a lot of the desperate Italian Crews would resort to these Kamikaze style attacks where they would load up their PT boats with dynamite and they would try to Ram the American PT boats he said this was a very scary thing that happened a lot more frequently than he had anticipated but he recalled One mission where or his own PT craft PT 306 had to open fire on on an incoming Italian boat that was Laden with dynamite and that the offending craft exploded only mere feet from his own it was a very new brush with death now towards the end of 1944 as the Battle of Bulge is going on he actually redeploys from the Atlantic he comes home for some R R Leaf and again that is in December he rotates out of the Mediterranean but even though he's on R R Leaf it's pretty much an accepted fact at this point that if you redeploy from the Atlantic and you go home on r r leave you're going to be redeployed to the corresponding theater of war so after he goes on R R Leaf he deplisted the Pacific but this is where things really start to slow down for him because he is assigned to Borneo and he is dead sure that he is going to be signed as another machinist mate to another PT craft but they said well you know we have a lot of influx of sailors coming in from the states so what we need you to do is we need you to stay here inside of the replacement Depot for a little while and you need not to worry because we are going to find another ship for you well they did find another ship but it wasn't a PT boat he was actually assigned to the USS Oyster Bay which was not a PT boat but a PT Boat tender now for those who are unfamiliar with the term a PT Boat Tender Is a logistical ship that follows a PT Squadron and they're responsible for facilitating the fuel and the maintenance Parts it's basically just like a floating repair station for any number of the PT squadrons but he said here's where things get a little even more ironic I was a machinist mate but I essentially had no machine to operate because all of the PT Boat tenders they had a completely different engine Suite than what the PT boats themselves had so here I was raided and trained to handle a PT boat engine but the USS Oyster Bay had their own contingent of Engineers who were all doing a bang-up job to keep the engine steady there was really no mission for me to do so I was an engineer without an engine I had absolutely nothing to work on and they didn't even put me as a registered person on the ship's company I was just extra weight I was just an extra person on the Manifest I wasn't even part of the ship's company he said well okay I guess I'll just sit around and find some way to make myself useful made back in volunteer in the galley maybe I can swab a deck here or there or maybe if one engineer gets sick I can you know help move around some lug nuts but turns out he didn't have to wait very long because only a few weeks after he got there that was when both of the those when both of the nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki suddenly the war was over and he's just charged on January 12th of 1946. now his legacy lives on here as a very prominent engineer here in the Twin Cities because after he was discharged from the Navy he went back to his native New Jersey he picked up pretty much right where he left off with his girlfriend that they got married he went to school on the GI Bill and he he got in he he got a degree as a civil engineer so after receiving his Bachelor of Science in civil engineering he says you know what I really want to do with my life I want to build Bridges I want to build tunnels and I want to try to provide any points of infrastructure anywhere I can well his one of his first jobs fresh out of college is working for an engineering firm called Edwards and Kelsey Edwards and Kelsey had offices all across the U.S he starts working in their New Jersey office but then he gets a call from a team that has just set up an office here in Minneapolis and says hey we have a by name request there's a guy who's working for you we know that he is a top-rated structural engineer his name is Marty Romano and we know a lot of the infrastructure points that he's done around New Jersey we want to bring him out here because we're starting to build uh we're we're starting to build up this interstate system we're starting to build a lot of things here in the Twin Cities and we think we can use a guy like him so he takes his wife and his two young daughters and he he goes to he goes to Minnesota a place he's never been before doesn't know a thing about the culture doesn't know a thing about the people the winters are probably a lot more than he bargained for but he gets here and he very quickly adopts it as a second home and as a member of Edwards and Kelsey he becomes one of the managing directors and he was the head engineer for a lot of projects that uh that you and I as as residents of the Twin Cities uh have are familiar with and even points of infrastructure that we've driven through on a regular basis for instance he was the chief engineer and designer of the Lowry Hill Tunnel if you look right here yeah this big Tunnel right here that's under 494. yeah this this Tunnel right here one that you and I have driven through many times he was the lead engineer he was the uh he was a structural designer for that aside from the Lowry Hill Tunnel on 94 he was also the he was also the principal designer and chief engineer for the 11th Street South Bridge which you can see right there and not only that his seminal project one that he worked shortly before his retirement was the Richard ibong Memorial Bridge which many of you are probably familiar with this is what connects Duluth to Superior Wisconsin here is the Duluth side here is the Superior Wisconsin side this for a long time was the prominent Bridge across all of the Great Lakes so here you have a man of a very humble background who really fits The Narrative of the greatest Generation he was a he was a regular person just like you and me who Rose to the occasion and when the chips were down and the odds were stacked against him he rose he accomplished great things and not only that after he served his country he continued that Legacy of service and even as a even as a transplanted fellow from New Jersey came here to the Twin Cities and left his Mark in ways that will outlive him and outlive all of us really all of these all of these key points of infrastructure here are a testament not only to his Brilliance not only to his uh not only to his stick-to-itiveness and his perseverance but also a standing Legacy to a regular Man Who Rose to the occasion when his country called even at a time when his own people were being discriminated against here at large throughout America so and that is the story of Marty Romano who as of a few weeks ago has has been dearly departed thank you at this time we like to go to uh q a trying to build what what type of was that that was that one happened to be a liberty ship they built 2 700 Liberty ships during the war and about a thousand Victory ships which had the same function it was just an all-purpose transport vessel carried about displaced about 10 000 tons could carry general cargo not Personnel generally but just to get stuff from place to place there's one of them still afloat the brown is in Baltimore Harbor and open to visitors so you can go on board and take a look at it even goes out to sea you can you time it right you can get a cruise around the bay on it I have a question about your book The Nimitz at War where did you get most of the information background on him and did you spend a lot of time in his hometown of Fredericksburg Texas uh yes to both um most of the information not by most I mean more than half probably came from the collections special collections in the Nimitz Library how appropriate is that at the United States Naval Academy I find it very interesting that the field house when I was teaching there was named for Bill Halsey appropriate but the library was named for Chester Nimitz and I think somehow that's pretty appropriate too but they have in there a lot of letters that he wrote and letters about him and oral histories of people who knew him and then a second probably the second most important was at the Navy Yard in Washington DC there's a collection that generally called The Gray book I don't know why it's called the gray book because they're in blue bindings but the gray book is eight fat volumes about a thousand pages each of that tissue paper that they use for carbon copies in World War II all the messages that went in and out of nimitz's headquarters throughout the war as well as a running summary that was kept by his chief of staff Captain Steele every day and he would have a stop meeting every morning at nine o'clock and he'd say all right where are we what are we talking about what are we doing and they're minutes from those are in all of those volumes so that's a great source you ask about uh the Nimitz uh Museum in Fredericksburg Texas of which I was a a director for six years it's a great museum if you haven't been I highly recommend it it's in the Hill Country of Texas you wouldn't expect the national museum of the Pacific War to be in the Hill Country of Texas but it was established there because that's where he was born and where he was raised in nearby Kerrville um and so they have a lot of material as well those are probably the three best places for material on Chester Newman's thank you for the question the British Navy operated in Norway and off Dunkirk and uh Greece uh did that affect the U.S Navy's uh thinking of how they would be able to operate by the Japanese yeah there are a couple of ways in which the experience of the royal Navy in the Mediterranean influence I think thinking about the war not only for the Americans and how we would respond but for the Japanese as well you know the British launched a daring airplane torpedo attack on the Italian Fleet at Toronto uh early in 1940 and interested observers were included representatives from the Imperial Japanese Navy look at this airplanes from carriers can sink battleships at anchor what a good idea that may not be the sole inspiration for their subsequent attack but I think it did contribute to it and you mentioned uh the Royal Navy in Greece and what was the other one where else Norway you know the Norway operation is understudied I notice we talk about uh you know the German conquest of the lowlands and for the fall of France and so on the conquest of Poland Norway the Norway expedition was entirely conducted by sea subsequently supported by air but in a curious sort of way the Germans loaded all their soldiers onto destroyers and just ran them into harbors and they climbed out over the side and took over the country I mean it was an astonishingly bold maneuver and should not have worked and somehow did so I think paying attention to the Norwegian campaign the Greek campaign and as I already mentioned the Toronto campaign lots of lessons to be learned by both sides from the Royal Navy experience and of course it's useful to remember the Royal Navy had been at this for two years before we're even in the war and their whole attitude was like we know what we're doing you Yanks are late to the party here and we like your money and we like your ships and your tools of war and your Manpower is going to be useful she'll leave our women alone but but we know what we're doing here stop trying to affect our strategic thinking so there was a bit of pulling and tugging uh throughout the entire war in that respect the picture that you showed of MacArthur and Nimitz uh got me thinking I'm curious about how well did they collaborate and coordinate their strategies in the in the Pacific was there any Clash of egos Nimitz one of nimitz's several great skills was his ability to read the room and judge of circumstances and deal with people where they were effectively um he knew MacArthur was a difficult guy to work with and went out of his way to be agreeable he had the same relationship by the way with Ernie King another tough guy to get along with King and Nimitz met 16 times during the war and king would start telling him what to do and Nimitz would yes sir it fine idea have you considered this possibility we all have dealt with people in our professional and personal lives where you just have to calibrate how you're going to deal with those folks and uh MacArthur uh would simply not leave his headquarters on for his part he would he would be ordered you know why don't we meet in Guam why don't we meet in Hawaii no I'm busy I don't have the time I can't the one time he did go to Hawaii in October of 1944 he went he was invited by the president of the United States to have a conference with Nimitz and FDR in Hawaii I can't come I'm too busy so uh Roosevelt's Chief of Staff uh Leahy rewrote the invitation as an order and so MacArthur showed up but he was not happy about it there's a famous photograph I probably should have showed it here of the three of them Roosevelt's sitting in the middle MacArthur on one side Nimitz on the other Nimitz is in a summer whites MacArthur's in a leather bomber jacket now this is July in Hawaii uh but there he is in the bomber jacket um and and I just think Nimitz is is the guy who tried harder to make sure it didn't ever come to an open confrontation uh MacArthur didn't have to try he was MacArthur Craig what a wonderful presentation and I I don't want to overshadow that but I want the audience to recognize these two young historians who did such a wonderful job when I was planning this program uh Mike mentioned that he interviewed him we'd actually plan to have Marty as one of our speakers this evening and I attended his funeral I think Marty would have appreciated the interpretation of his diction as well sure he would you Skies okay support for this program provided by viewers like you thank you additional support provided through the Catherine B Anderson fund of the Saint Paul Foundation upcoming Roundtable topics can be found at www.mn WW2 roundtable.org Production Services provided by barrows Productions [Music] [Applause]

Channel: World War II History Round Table

Views: 16,187

Keywords: WWII Pacific Navy Nimitz

Id: ycQfjedeJ_I

Length: 94min 47sec (5687 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 04 2023