When the first big amphibious operations in Europe were analyzed, one of the most obvious needs was a tender to specialize in replenishing the consumable supplies of small auxiliary vessels and landing ships and craft in the forward area of operation. The Mediterranean landings had shown that the logistic problems of these craft, from LCVP’s to LCI’s, were far more varied and complicated than any pre-D-day paperwork could provide for.
In the early invasions many naval units were forced to “live off the country”—to forage for provisions wherever they could find them and at whatever moments seemed necessary or auspicious. Here each crew fared in proportion to its officer’s innate capacity for “scavenging.” One week the menu might be spam and bouillon, the next week, steak—at breakfast, dinner, and supper. Hearsay relates that some small- craft officers became quite adept at the practice of blackmailing an apprehensive merchant ship into providing with alacrity the choicer items by clustering about him and continuing their importunities, meanwhile drawing in his direction an uncomfortable amount of fire from shore batteries.
While excellent for developing self-reliance and individual enterprise among amphibious officers, these methods left much to be desired in maximum total efficiency.
The Normandy invasion forces, having a smaller distance to traverse but many more craft to provide for, adopted more systematic, but hardly less colorful, expedients. For receiving ships, two ancient wooden Chesapeake Bay excursion steamers had creaked their stately way across the Atlantic, and when matters quieted down sufficiently off Omaha and Utah beaches these took their stations in shallow water there. (One of these, incidentally, the President Warfield, now under the name of Exodus 1947, recently popped into the news when it tried to disembark a load of Jewish regufees in Palestine.)
For berthing, messing, and supplying small boat personnel, a merchant ship, the Thomas D. Robertson, was altered slightly. Hatches were enclosed between decks as wardrooms, a movie theatre that ran morning, afternoon, and evening was set up forward, and berthing and messing facilities were arranged in the hold. A pontoon, which wallowed astern when it was rough, was moored in calm weather at the foot of the gangway. There LCVP’s and LCM’s could beat their gunwales to a pulp against each other while their weary crews slept in the reverberating hold despite the bass-drum beats of their craft against the side of the ship.
Small boat control was effected from LCI’s while two British cruisers of World War I vintage, minus their batteries, served as tenders to a string of SC’s and CGC’s that swung along a stern hawser. Small craft were generally oiled from small merchant tankers carrying every flag among the United Nations.
Ingenious as these methods were, many of them were adapted only to an invasion of English Channel dimensions. It was evident that a different system would have to be devised for the “island hopping” to come in the Pacific. Small ships, far from their bases, should not have to rely primarily on the generosity of larger vessels, who might themselves be short of supplies, and who would certainly be busy with their own duties. Nor should these small craft, with limited storage facilities, be forced to canvass ship after ship for their essential fuel, food, and water. These craft, on arrival off Okinawa, Honshu, and China, would require these three necessities immediately, and later during their stay in the combat areas would frequently need replenishment of refrigerated provisions, medical supplies, ship’s service articles, dry stores, clothing and small parts, as well as laundry, disbursing, and medical service and simple engineering know-how.
Because of the risk involved, large tenders were out of the question. Cargo and troop ships would each serve in certain respects, but both were badly needed in their own capacities. The obvious answer was the versatile LST, which had often done much the same job in Europe, but which would require drastic modifications to cope with the distances and supply problems of the Pacific.
The Commander, Administrative Command, Pacific Fleet, drafted modifications of the LST type which would enable it to meet in a measure all these demands until shore based facilities were available. This would relieve the larger supply ships, which would not have to remain in combat areas, partially loaded, over long periods of time.
The modifications would also equip the mother ship for its second job, that of providing transient berthing and messing facilities for small boat and Seabee barge personnel. These men were to be dropped from large transports returning to rear areas, or launched from LST’s, and would have no definite means of subsistence nor any assigned place to wash, sleep, eat, or receive mail.
After approval of the Commander-in-Chief Pacific Fleet, and Chief of Naval Operations, work was begun in September, 1944, on the temporary conversion of several LST’s in the Hawaiian area. Additional LST’s to be converted from new construction were requested for delivery in early 1945.
There were questions and problems in abundance involved in altering the former ships: Love Sugar Tares 575, 676, 677, and 678. Because the naval base at Pearl Harbor was jammed with vessels being repaired after the battle damage of the summer campaigns, it was decided that the Waipio Amphibious Base, a small boat repair unit in West Loch channel, Pearl Harbor, would undertake their conversion. It was an enormous task for the green base personnel, most of whom had never previously worked on anything larger than an LCI. Under the pressure of com paigns ahead, however, there was no time for prolonged planning nor slow, painstaking construction.
Plans were quickly formulated, and work began on the first ship on October 4. Each ship’s force turned to with the base personnel. The first problem was the addition of sufficient provision space for both fresh and frozen supplies. This was met by the installation of sixteen BuDocks Walk-in Type reefer boxes in two fore and aft lines on the tank deck, with a center-line passageway four feet wide. Twenty-two electrical reefer units provided variable temperatures in each box. Bins were provided on top of each reefer for dry provisions, while the large center ballast tank (A-412-W) was converted for additional stowage of the same type. To facilitate loading a monorail was installed, running the length of the tank deck. The freeze boxes were designed so they could be filled to within 18 inches of the overhead with chill boxes stored checkerboard fashion to allow adequate circulation.
Since the ship’s evaporators could neither care for the requirements of the additional personnel nor supply fresh water for the dependent craft, four additional evaporators—one on each side of the ship forward of boat davits 1 and 2, and two aft of the forward deck ramp—were welded to the main deck. Another ballast tank was converted for fresh water stowage, and still another for the purified fuel which small vessels have to have for smooth and efficient operation.
Several alterations were necessary to accommodate the transient personnel. The old sick bay facilities were increased by enclosing a portion of the port side of the after crew’s living compartment. This gave an extra ward, with twelve bunks, while the original sick bay was retained for laboratory work. The laundry was enlarged to embrace approximately 150 square feet of the after tank deck plus the chemical equipment storeroom, and in these areas were added four washers, a dryer, and a presser.
Bunks for 300 men were installed in the after section of the tank deck. A 20 by 48 foot Quonset hut—the one type of “superstructure” which the base was equipped to install—was set up on the main deck to berth and mess 30 officers. Another was built just aft of it as a galley and bake shop, to aid in subsisting the extra personnel. Showers and heads were provided for them on the main deck outboard of the Quonsets, with wooden cat walks between the heads and the newly installed “superstructure” to accommodate fore and aft traffic. Two ladders on the tank deck aft provided access to the heads topside. By this time the after loading hatch was completely enclosed, except for a small hatch and a davit by which stores could be handled.
To carry the load of the extra equipment and machinery, two caterpillar generators (Model D8-AC, 120-240 volts) were installed on the starboard and port sides of the tank deck forward of the reefers.
Naturally the personnel and accounting problems of these dozens of small craft and hundreds of men were going to fall into the laps of the ship’s company, and reams of paperwork were in the offing. So officers’ staterooms were taken over as a supply office, and were equipped with desks, typewriters, calculators, and a safe.
Later, crowded conditions led to the conversion of half of the starboard head into a disbursing office, a transformation which made the paymaster’s personnel the annoyed object of frequent attempts at broad humor.
The final resort was to enclose the supports of number 3 boat davit to form a provisions office. Here, from the registration desk or front office of this hostelry-cum- warehouse, ships alongside could dicker for their supplies or sign in their men.
As demands pyramided for increased space to take care of one mechanical, administrative, personnel, or storage problem after another, every inch was utilized, and every cubic foot saved for those ubiquitous spuds was a minor triumph.
The work was on a twenty-four hour schedule, and the staccato bark of the chipping hammers and the weird light of the welders’ arcs attracted passersby to stop in to inquire, and to stay to marvel. Man-o- war’s men had become hardened to floating things of odd shapes and sizes in the amphibious fleet, and most of the ’Phib personnel had not been at sea long enough to consider their blunt craft unusual. But even they resented the transformation of the homey lines of the familiar LST: the two full-grown Quonset huts like malignant swellings on the main deck, and the four evaporators like pimples forward of them.
Except for the odd jobs left to the ship’s company, the Waipio base completed work on the first of the four vessels on January 1, 1945. The others were finished within several days of each other. The crews of the LST(M)’s (an appellation neither official nor approved—the “M” stood for “Mother”) had been trained from boot camp to fight and beach a landing ship. Now they had to learn the specialized function of a mother ship.
A shakedown cruise suggested some minor alterations. Following a final drydocking and a two-tone camouflage, capacity loads of fresh and dry provisions (spuds a specialty) were put aboard. The 676 and 678 steamed out for the Iwo Jima operation; the 575 and 677, delayed a little, were in time for Okinawa.
On March 30, 1945, the Chief of Naval Operations, in view of their ambiguous functions, changed the designation of the four ships from LST to APB (Auxiliary Barracks, Self-Propelled) and gave each a name. The 575 became the APB 41 (Wythe); the 676, the APB 42 (Yavapai); the 677, APB 43 (Yolo); and the 678, APB 44 (Presque Isle). With the new names came something more vitally needed—-a larger and more specialized complement of officers and men. Extra storekeepers, machinist’s mates, cooks, bakers, stewards, water tenders, supply officers, and a doctor increased the crew from 111 officers and men to 162. To those vessels, commissioned with 85 per cent of the crew and 72 per cent of the officers inexperienced, the addition of another group of green hands (90 per cent had never been to sea) was no problem. The most grizzled chief aboard had never sailed in a Quonset barge like this before.
Though on different islands and different beaches, their experiences were about the same. Each encountered similar difficulties, and each crew prided itself on its original solution. But when they compared notes later they discovered that the lightnings of genius had often struck twice in the same place.
At the target the APB anchored just off shore by either bow or stern hook. Her berth number had been well advertised over every amphibious circuit, so the baby fighting vessels would waste no time weaving in and out among the hundreds of other ships in the anchorage to locate her. They didn’t. By D-day plus one every small craft in the fleet seemed to be standing off waiting for permission to come alongside in order to sign up for an appointment, or just ask “is it true that we can get steak and ice cream here at any time?” Their ardor was cooled by the announcement that potatoes were available in any reasonable quantity.
Communications by radio, blinker, semaphore, and the indispensable bull horn were jammed. To insure fairness, a priority schedule was drawn up daily on the basis of the “ships present list,” and the little fellows lined up for their meat and cigarettes just as the crews’ wives and mothers were doing back home.
Since the capacity of the APB was approximately 250 tons of dry provisions and 165 tons of fresh and frozen food, this proportion was the basis of a “unit issue” plan, which insured a balanced ration to even the smallest craft, and insured equitable distribution of all “in demand” items as long as they lasted.
Provisions were transferred by a working party from the ship serviced, after they had been broken out by the storekeepers from the APB. While it was originally planned to pass stores through the small after hatch, this proved too slow and laborious a process. So most of the supplies were passed from hand to hand up the port ladder to the main deck. One of the mother ships was ingenious enough to install a homemade elevator.
The problem of transfer to the ships alongside was naturally tougher. When the receiving craft was well below the main deck of the mother ship, the stores went down a wooden chute. In calm weather, with stores packed so they could neither be damaged nor damage the deck onto which they plummeted (or deck fittings, if they took a notion to leap), this was a fairly satisfactory method.
Breakouts from inside the reefers were back-breaking jobs, fully as much as the storekeeper complement could handle; and the stowage space in the bins atop the reefer boxes soon proved so inaccessible that it was often left empty.
The lack of a boom and adequate cargo hatch made replenishing stores from the holds of departing transports and provision ships a slow task. The easiest method was to take in supplies from LCM’s and LCVP’s through the bow doors and down roller chutes to the reefers. These rollers were installed after the monorail had proved impracticable because of the amount of time involved in the handling of each article.
The refrigerator ships, transports, and general stores ships gave the APB an “as required” priority on loading while they were in the area, in view of the number of small vessels she was responsible for servicing.
As soon as the 120,000 gallons of water and the 235,000 gallons of fuel brought along on D-day began to diminish, these items also went on the ration list. Since the APB’s distilling capacity was 20,000 gallons per day, water issues, except in extreme cases, were restricted to 2000 gallons per ship. The water was moved by two 35-GPM pumps forward and a submersible pump aft. The principal hindrance was the limited ability of the smaller craft to receive it, since most of them were watered with a one and one-half inch line.
The mother ship’s fuel capacity was completely overtaxed even with her purifiers running steadily. Priorities on diesel oil went to small craft and other vessels without purifiers. The AOG’s eventually took over the larger part of this job.
The ship’s store ran on a continuous basis, with most articles rationed according to the “customer’s” complement. Bulk sales and transfers were impossible because of the limited bulk stowage space available aboard the APB as well as aboard most of the ships asking for supplies.
Many ships requested pay, and some were disappointed, since the mother ship’s disbursing stall was small and her first duty was to her transient, small boat, barge, and pontoon personnel.
As LCI’s, LCT’s, LCS’s SC’s, AGS’s, APD’s, ARS’s, ATR’s, DE’s, AN’s, LST’s, PGS’s, LSM’s, LSM(R)’s, PCE’s, PC’s, YTL’s, YMS’s, CGC’s, and AMS’s came alongside, the larger ships in ones and twos, the smaller ones in fours, the APB’s hull and equipment took a steady beating. Heavy seas and misjudgment of distance in coming alongside often resulted in damaged baffle drains and dented plates, and sometimes in large holes in the side of the ship.
“I’d rather have the Kamikazes,” one disgusted boatswain commented. “They are likely to pick out anybody, but every mother’s son in that bunch,” (indicating the small craft waiting astern) “wants to ram us.”
Wooden camels, formerly LCT launching ways, were used as fenders for a time, but the movements of the ship made it impossible to secure them at the water line. Cane fenders were useless. Sapling fenders were satisfactory, but did not last. Discarded rubber tires from army trucks, lashed together in twos and threes, proved the best protection, and with a fringe of these swinging along her side the APB took on the appearance of a weightly hula dancer.
Akin to the fender problem was that of securing the LCVP’s, LCM’s, and pontoon barges that literally swarmed about. Boat booms were used, but had marked limitations. Some boats nested alongside, others lined up along a stern hawser or the stern anchor cable while their crews had chow and hot baths. In rough seas one coxswain would stand off with the boat until his mate finished eating, then they would exchange places.
Getting underway amid all these small craft proved most difficult, for the mother ship was home to them. When she shifted berth, she had, almost by force sometimes, to detach them from her apron strings, and even then they tagged along behind like a brood of chicks. The anchor ball was the signal to swarm alongside once again.
The APB was a receiving ship, but she was also headquarters for security patrols, smoke boat patrols, gunnery training groups, and small boat operations and repairs. Consequently, she always had large numbers of officers and enlisted transients aboard. Some were quartered there, others merely stopped in for a hot bath and shave, chow, ship’s service items, pies and cake, mail, recreation, and movies and laundry.
At the familiar radio warning “Bogie bearing——distance——! Make smoke!” the APB oozed a dense white fog, and numerous small boats, equipped with smoke pots, shoved off from her side to cover the windward position of the anchorage. Still the provisioning went on, more by touch than sight.
While the work of the APB fluctuated from day to day and week to week according to innumerable factors, the average day would see IS to 20 ships provisioned—8 to 10 tons of dry, and 6 to 8 tons of fresh provisions would go over the side, and 20,000 gallons of water and 5,000 gallons of fuel would pass through the hoses. Approximately 350 men and officers were aboard for berthing, messing, and bathing. At this rate a capacity supply of fresh provisions would last for 20 days, dry provisions for 30, and fuel for 47. But because of the varied nature of her services, the APB would generally have to move once a week from her berth just off shore to deeper water where she could restock some of the more essential items from departing ships.
The principal task of the amphibious planners would now seem to be the development of more realistic APB operational doctrines, fitting the ships more closely into the over-all strategy, without altering their flexibility and versatility. The fact that these ships are inevitably in the thick of the buildup operations would indicate that with increased speed they would be ideal command-ships for lower echelon staffs.
A graduate of the University of Virginia, Lieutenant Bast enlisted as an apprentice seaman in June, 1941, then attended Midshipman’s School and was commissioned ensign in January, 1942. He chased Jap subs in the North Pacific for eighteen months, and then after fire control and other training he was assigned to command the LST 677, which was later converted into the APB 43, U.S.S. Yolo. In this command Lieutenant Bast served another eighteen months through the Philippine and Okinawa invasions and the occupation of Japan. At present he is Assistant Frofessor of History at Roanoke College, and Training Officer for the Naval Reserve Division at Roanoke, Virginia.