New 3rd Edition

2nd Edition, 6th printing: A few still available.

Joining the War at Sea 1939-1945

Annunciator Speaks!

World War II Sinking

British Rescue Ship Sunk

Self Inflicted Wounds

No Abandon Ship for Ingraham

Rohna Tragedy Tops Transport, Destroyer Toll

Four Chaplains

Order Book

Warship Building

The Keel, the Hull, the Propulsion, the Armament,

the Awards, and Mrs. Edison

Author invites comment.

(In crediting Edison News as an important source of original information in this Chapter on the USS Edison, it is appropriate to provide an insight into the "staying power" of her crew. This staying power served Edison well in convoy operations, in submarine and aircraft defense, and in shore bombardment especially during the complex phase of getting landing craft to their debarkation point, onto the shore, and into defensible, expanding perimeters against resourceful, battle tested, enemy forces. The Edison crew's staying power is being exhibited long after Edison herself went to the scrap yard. In January 1970, The Edison News was born in Lafayette, Indiana. Founder, Publisher and Editor Robert Cloyd had been a Motor Machinist 1/c aboard Edison. Cloyd kept his letter size, multi-page, slick paper tabloid going for 32 issues and then turned it over to Jean Whetstine in Linden, Michigan, in the Spring of 1976. Jean was the wife of Larry Whetstine, another Edison sailor. It is still being published in Byron, Michigan by Jean in 2008. She has survived husband Larry Whetstine's death and her own near fatal brush with cancer.)

Configuration Changed Rapidly

In the page entitled "U.S. Military Draft and Pearl Harbor" (link below and to the left), the photo of the USS Edison underway showed no main battery gun mounts at all. Launched in late November 1940 at Federal Shipyard and Drydock in Kearny, New Jersey, Edison was commissioned at the Brooklyn Navy Yard on 31 January 1941. She made short shake down cruises in February and March 1941 and returned to the Brooklyn Navy Yard for a six weeks installation of her main battery of five 5"/38 cal. DP guns.

Edison had five war paint "appearances" during her relatively short life. The first was plain gray. Then came a North Atlantic wavy camouflage paint job, followed by one of Mediterranean medium gray over dark blue. Her fourth, and most used, was a Mediterranean/North Atlantic "zigzag" camouflage. She finished her duty in the Pacific painted in the dark gray used there.

The number of different Edison "appearances" has not been restricted to wartime paint jobs. The Edison underway photos reveal three different main battery configurations, namely no guns, five guns, and four guns, in that order. In a letter which appeared in the Edison News' 20th issue in September 1971, her first Commanding Officer, Admiral Albert C. Murdaugh USN (Ret.) provided information not available in official records.

"I was ordered to the Edison from duty at the Naval Gun Factory in Washington, DC. The first thing I did, on getting the word unofficially, was to hand-pick a main battery. Meanwhile, the Federal Shipbuilding Corporation, seeing a war coming on and wishing to establish a good performance reputation for the sake of future contracts, decided to deliver the Edison six weeks ahead of schedule. A classmate who was superintending construction at Kearny, tipped me off. I hastened to get the guns shipped and found, to my consternation, that F.D.R. had given them to one of the small British AA cruisers in the Mediterranean, who were then hard-pressed. Next, I went to BuPers (Bureau of Naval Personnel), who simply didn't believe me. (that Edison would be ready early) Finally, I persuaded them to look into it, and they ended up by ordering the Edison detail (officers and men who would put the ship into commission), which I had just begun to assemble. Some of the men arrived for commissioning with only three weeks of boot camp. Fortunately, in desperation I at last reached a sympathetic ear at OpNav (Naval Operations). They, in effect, told us (the ship and its crew) to go and get lost for six weeks. Things couldn't have worked out better. The recruits learned far more aboard ship than they would have at Newport (the Navy's torpedo station). We were able to concentrate on basics and when the guns were finally installed, gunnery technique was quickly mastered, as the record shows."

"On the question about the number on the bridge wings in the old photo (the "old" photo he referred to is the one which follows), my recollection is somewhat hazy after so many years. The circumstances were somewhat as follows. Few people, except specialized historians, now know that on 1 September 1941, Admiral King (Ernest J. King, Commander-in-Chief Atlantic, later Chief of Naval Operations) issued an operation plan setting up regular convoy operations in the North Atlantic. Presumably, to delay full realization by the Germans of what was happening, orders were issued to paint out bow numbers and put them on the bridge wing, like the British and Canadians. Many ships were just too busy at the time to get around to it. The order reached us in the Navy Yard, where compliance was easy. After Pearl Harbor, the numbers were put back in the accustomed place."

This next picture with guns installed shows Edison still without "war paint". The five 5" 38 cal. guns installed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard after her launch and commissioning are shown in this photo.

The 5"/38 cal. gun on the forward edge of the after deckhouse behind the second stack was removed soon after this picture was taken as compensation for other topside weight to be added. Edison's war history was compiled with four 5"/ 38 cal DP guns as her main battery. The high superstructure on the after deck-house would be removed at this same time and a lower profile 36-inch searchlight inserted in its place. It could reasonably be assumed that this high superstructure aft had been originally intended to give the after conning officer a high visibility platform in situations where the bridge, pilot house and forward conning structure had become inoperable due, for example, to battle damage. But, topside weight considerations eventually dominated all modification decisions. U.S. Navy destroyers had capsized in storms. Boards of inquiry decided that one source of concern was too small a margin of metacentric height (a linear measurement representing the difference between the center of gravity and the center of buoyancy). In a ship's roll, a sufficiently positive measure of metacentric height provides the lever arm in the restoring moment to bring the ship back level. Later additions to Edison and her class were two 40 mm Bofors AA gun mounts to complement the 20 mm Oerlikon guns already installed. Torpedo directors were also added, one on each wing of the bridge. The cylindrical object on the after quintuple torpedo tube mount aft of the second stack just forward of the after deckhouse was also removed.

USS Edison DD439; Build, Commissioning and Outfitting Data

Keel laid 18 March 1940 at Federal Shipbuilding and Dry Dock, Kearny, New Jersey. Built alongside her sister ship, USS Ericsson DD440. Launched 23 Nov. 1940. Named for Thomas Alva Edison, famed US inventor. His widow wielded the champagne bottle. Governor Charles Edison of New Jersey, his son, was present at commissioning. Ship construction details were 1630 tons displacement, 348 feet at waterline, 36 foot beam, just under 12 foot draft. There were two Westinghouse, 25,000 shaft horsepower, steam turbines, driven by four Babcock & Wilcox triple drum boilers, rated 600 psi, 750 deg. F. Rated top speed was 37 knots. She was of the Benson/Livermore class, two stacks with a foc'sle deck. Commissioned 31 Jan. 1941 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Her armament: Four 5"/38 cal dual purpose guns controlled by General Electric Mk 37 (amplidyne drive) Director, Sperry stable element (gyro), and Ford Mk 1(mechanical, analog) Computer; two quad mount 40 mm AA guns; eight single 20 mm AA guns.; ten 21-inch torpedoes in two quintuple mounts; two racks (tilted, for roll off) of 600 pound depth charges on stern, and 6 K-guns for 300 pound depth charges, three on each side from midships aft. Edison's complement varied from seven officers and about 100 men at commissioning in 1941, to 24 officers and over 250 enlisted men when the U.S. finally got its military manpower at war strength in 1944. Sonar and radar: High frequency sonar transmitter and echo detector in a faired dome on the hull. SC long range aircraft detection radar, antenna on main mast high.. FD fire control radar, with antenna on top of MK 37 Gun Director, azimuth controlled by training director, elevation control independent of director. Used "lobe switching". Not very effective. When the number of ship's officers became too large for the number of bunks in the officer's quarters, I was shifted to Division Commander's cabin (we had no DivCom aboard) and slept next to the FD radar magnetron. I was directed to wear a bite-wing (dental) x-ray patch pinned to my undershirt. Good intentions for sure, but no one ever checked it to see if radiation had affected me. Also, the spare magnetron for the FD radar ("maggie") was stored under the FD radar cabinet and only Holmes Bridges, Edison's Chief Radioman, who had gone to the Bellevue Laboratories Radar School in Washington DC, knew it was there. But, I discovered it. I have not told anyone until writing these lines. Radar was very secret in early WW II. In late 1942, after the North African invasion, the Navy Yard installed the Raytheon SG radar. The SG radar's PPI-Plan Position Indicator-a large oscilloscope with the main glass up and the gun down, was installed in the pilot house next to the binnacle. The SG radar's horizontally rotating antenna was installed on the main mast under the fixed SC radar antenna. More about how the huge technology advance of the SG radar meant changed everything comes in later chapters. SG radar was one of a very elite number of U.S. wartime tools that made the crucial difference in WW II. We had it. They did not.

Not exactly armament, but important in some enemy action situations, were the smoke generators. These were used on several occasions, one of which was a surprising close call for Edison at Ventimiglia along the northern Mediterranean coast of Italy. Look for a description in a future chapter.

In her total period of service, 940 officers and men served aboard Edison. Eight enlisted men served the entire period of just over five years, from commissioning to decommissioning. (This statistic on the total number of personnel who served on Edison is not found in official Navy records, but was compiled by Edison sailor Robert Cloyd in 1971.)

Service Summary

Edison's main service was in the Atlantic and Mediterranean from 1941-1945. After a brief period in the Far East in the last half of 1945, Edison returned to Charleston, South Carolina in early 1946. She was decommissioned there on 18 May 1946. Her last years were spent as part of the inactive "mothball" fleet in the Philadelphia Navy Yard. In June 1965, Edison along with Ericsson (440), and Woolsey (437) were sold for scrap. Edison was sold to Lipsett of New Jersey for $87,000. She began and ended her life in New Jersey.

The Shipyard

Let me add a personal note. As the ship's welfare officer for most of 1942 and 1943, I handled large, semi-annual, money contributions to the ship's welfare fund from the workers at Federal Shipbuilding and Dry Dock who had built Edison. These funds were used for ship's parties and other "worthy" uses. I can never forget the unparalleled generosity of the shipyard personnel who built an extraordinarily seaworthy ship. If any them survive to read this, let them know that their efforts and financial generosity were matched by a dedicated crew, mostly reservists and draftees, who fought the Edison brilliantly against an unforgiving sea and a desperate enemy.

The Ship's Armament Usage

The official Edison launch data was covered above. Usage summaries are offered here which will help the reader anticipate some of the engagement activity in which the ship participated. This activity will be told in future chapters. In this way, the later pages can emphasize the flow of the action while the reader will already have an overall picture of the ship's life cycle.

The torpedo battery: The World War II destroyer evolved from the pre-war WW I torpedo boat. In WW I these torpedo boats evolved over a series of class building upgrades into destroyers. In the sea war in the Pacific in WW II, a few division or squadron-strength destroyer torpedo attacks were pressed home. No mass torpedo attacks were recorded by US destroyers in the Atlantic or Mediterranean theaters. While the Edison fired torpedoes in training, she never fired one in action against an enemy. Interestingly, the Edison was part of the destroyer detachment which screened the battleship USS Iowa with President Franklin D. Roosevelt aboard when he made the famous trip that culminated in the Cairo meetings with Chiang Kai-shek of China and Prime Minister Churchill. Edison was part of the Mediterranean screen from Gibraltar east. A different screen brought Iowa from US waters to Gibraltar. It was during that part of the trip on 14 November 1943, that the USS William D. Porter (a destroyer later sunk in a Pacific battle) fired a torpedo, mistakenly, at the Iowa. Porter was conducting a training exercise and the crew in training made the mistake of choosing Iowa as the training target. The destroyer then compounded the mistake by actually firing the torpedo. The crew likely did not know what "cargo" the Iowa carried. According to one newspaper story, reprinted in the Edison News, Iowa took evasive action and the torpedo exploded in her wake. Training exercises took an enormous human toll in the period of the author's tour aboard Edison and some situations will be cited later in our story.

The secondary AA batteries, 20mm and 40mm guns: Ring sights were used in early engagements. Later a MK 14 gunsight was added to the 20mm guns and included in a MK 51 director for the 40mm guns. The guns themselves worked fine. Profiiciency with the MK 14 gunsights came slowly and in many action firing situations, personnel fell back on the old ring sights. One 40mm "premature in the breech" due to a tracer ignition in a lot of Triumph (manufacturer) shells caused eye damage to a young Gunner's Mate. The author (then the Gunnery Officer) had just received an urgent message warning of this possibility in a given lot of 40mm shells and was consulting the magazine inventory when the ship went to General Quarters against air attack. It was then that the accident occurred. Edison, unfortunately, had that lot of 40mm shells aboard. The failure specifics were precisely as predicted. Also, Edison's first quad 40mm gun mounts had to be replaced because the drives were friction-coupled and salt water quickly decomposed the friction surfaces (sandpaper). Pouring a quart of oil into a hole marked "Oil Here" did not help. The later hydraulic drives worked fine. Edison's secondary AA batteries were in action frequently. German planes did not press attacks home like the Japanese so leading the enemy aircraft sufficiently in azimuth was usually the key to fire control success.

(While some formal training was given for torpedoes and for the light AA guns, most of this training was what the ship itself could work in on its own. Priority for training, with full exercises scheduled, was given to ASW and to AA and shore bombardment for the main battery 5"/38 cal guns. For the Edison, which seemed always to be selected for close-in support of the amphibious forces making landings, priority was given to shore bombardment.)

Depth charges: Used frequently against sonar targets which were classified by the sonar operator as probable submarines. Edison trained several times during each watch in setting various "patterns" for depth charge explosions. These drills came without warning to the watch standers. Setting a given pattern in less than 30 seconds was an objective. For the crew, this involved going from a lookout watch station down to the main deck, often in rough weather, and getting enough illumination and "feel, to make the setting, if at night. Any setting other than "safe" armed the charge, causing it to go off at a given, "set", depth. Edison SOP (standard operating procedure) was to leave charges on "safe" at all times except when attacking a suspected submarine. The reasons for the SOP will become clear in one of the chapters. When conditions permitted, Edison also trained with other destroyers in "creeping attacks", where one destroyer pinged with its sonar and barely kept steerage way in order to provide minimum sea noise, while the other did not ping but was vectored in by the pinging destroyer in a creeping movement to get over the target for release of depth charges. The British came up with this scheme which provided better sonar performance and kept the sub puzzled about what was going on.

Main battery, 5"/38 cal. Dual Purpose guns: Edison had to be re-gunned (new barrels) twice while the author was aboard. Very likely the ship was near the top in all US Navy WW II destroyers in rounds fired per 5" gun barrel. A gun barrel could "wear out" in several hundred rounds, with extensive firing intensively concentrated in relatively short time periods causing the most wear. The only other "wearing" components were the "bloomers" which (almost)sealed the aperture in which the gun moved in elevation in the mount, against the salt water elements. The bloomers would simply burn up during concentrated periods of fire. The early leather bloomers were replaced with canvas when the Navy figured out that bloomers had become a "consumable". This battery of guns, director, computer and when needed, stable element (gyro), experienced near flawless system performance. The Chief Gunner's Mate (Kerns) and Chief Fire Controlman (Jackson) and their men deserved much of the credit. These gun mounts had hydraulic drives. Tiny air bubbles in the hydraulic fluid were an occasional cause for a given gun mount to "hunt" in azimuth or elevation. This took some maintenance crew nursing, but could be dealt with. The extremely reliable General Electric MK 37 Director had an amplidyne drive. The director, mounted above the flying bridge, was up and clear of most of the sea spray. (Number 1 Gun mount up on foc'sle often would be bashed in due to heavy seas. One way we learned to minimize this damage was to leave the # 1 gun trained out to the starboard bow, so the sea did not have a flat surface to pound.) The range finder in the main director had both coincidence and stereo options. Chief Fire Controlman Jackson had sharply curved eyeballs and I often thought he did not need the rangefinder's stereo feature at all; he certainly used those optics with deadly effectiveness. In AA shooting he would open up in range right on the enemy plane and usually with one small azimuth or elevation spot (correction) would be able to call for "rapid fire". The Sperry gyro and the Ford computer allowed the ship to go into "automatic" fire with just small spots needed for correction. After the Raytheon SG radar was put aboard, the Skipper would on occasion have the shipfitters make a floating metal target to anchor near a beach whose shallow gradient did not give good SG radar echoes. Then, shore bombardment could proceed in "automatic" with reference to this marker, again with just small spots radioed from shore fire control parties (SFCPs). The computer would simply take into account the ship's movement and grind out the "problem". The 5" battery used "semi-fixed" ammunition, a shell, and a brass cylinder which held the "powder" propellant. These had to be mated in the gun's loading tray and a rammer pushed them "home" and then the breech could be closed. An electric plus impact primer was in the brass cartridge. On the port side about amidships was a 5" gun "loading machine". It was used constantly to train crews. Edison could fire with a Condition ONE gun crew, the battle station situation, or with a ready gun crew , Condition THREE, or a watch and watch crew, Condition TWO. These different gun crew personnel situations required a lot of men to know a a variety of jobs in firing the guns. On the loading machine, for one, two or three minute periods, the crew objective was 20 rounds per gun per minute! Edison crews achieved those rates in combat. The Germans likened our effective rate of fire to machine guns with large shells. The ship usually carried some star shells for night illumination, some armor piercing shells for special targets, some 'influence" or "proximity" shells essentially for AA, and some white phosphorus shells to help spotters move our fire to the target. We used all of these on appropriate occasions. The proximity shells, with so-called VT fuses, came with so many restrictions to their use (so the enemy would not capture a dud and learn the secrets of construction) that we never used them in action situations on the Edison while I was aboard. The preponderance of shells aboard were referred to as High Capacity or HC. These could be fired at ground or air targets. There was a nose ring time fuze, set in the fuze setting hoist, which derived its setting remotely and automatically from the computer's solution. This was the primary fuze for AA fire and also for anti-personnel fire on ground targets when seeking an above-ground detonation. There was a nose impact fuze. And there was a base detonating fuze. In other words, fuzing was redundant. After all the work to deliver the shell to a target vicinity, if the most optimum detonation did not occur, the backup objective was to make "something" occur. I was aboard when two sets of gun barrels were worn out and I do not recall a malfunction of this battery during action. If one held a contest to name the most effective piece of conventional ordnance in WW II, my nomination would be the 5"/38 cal. gun system in the US Navy.

The Edison's Engineering Plant Usage

I was involved directly in ordnance aboard the Edison and the amount of detail on ordnance furnished in this Chapter reflects that. Of necessity, officers specialized in wartime. I rarely got into the engineering spaces. Many below-decks personnel had to actually be ordered to come topside when we were in port. The sparseness of detail on engineering here reflects those wartime realities. Also, deck logs are the officially archived logs of a ship. Little information has been preserved of the record of Edison's power plant for her active years.

I can say that the Edison power plant was always on line when it was needed. It never failed. The conning officers, and I was one, often called for tremendous acceleration, well beyond the printed curves for increasing speed. The Captain at his General Quarters battle station with the con was occasionally warned by the engineering officer below, of the dire results if we changed speeds so fast, but we certainly always got the desired result. Sometimes the impact of a shell landing close aboard silenced the protests from below. Yes, we lost "suction" occasionally, but Edison's corrective procedures restored the situation immediately. These lines are written with gratitude, if not with a complete grasp of what these men contributed.

Engine Miles Steamed

Year Nautical Miles

1941 43,769

1942 78,680

1943 60,875

1944 52,855

1945 51,979

1946 4,973

Total 293,131

The peak year 1942 reflects a period in which Edison repeatedly operated in escort of convoy duty. In 1943 and 1944, the convoy duty was restricted to escorting combat forces to an amphibious landing or coming back from one, and the Edison's "steaming" was prioritized toward actual landings and shore gun fire support. There were fewer trips back and forth across the Atlantic and Edison was actually home-ported at Mers-el-Kebir, Algeria, near Oran, on the south shore of the Mediterranean.

Fundamental maintenance went to the boilers which had to be "re-bricked" after extensive steaming or more frequently if there had been emergency accelerations or decelerations. Printed schedules were followed for bringing boilers on line in carefully timed sequences and shafts were slowly rotated before getting underway to make sure that the turbine-propeller systems was working properly. Edison's "black gang", as the propulsion system personnel had become known from coal-fired days, were very conservative and always let the bridge know when the (getting) underway "special sea details" of personnel in the pilot house would try to "speed things up". Edison was fueled by bunker fuel #6 with a little Diesel laced in to help keep the innards clean. Fueling at sea in bad weather was an often risky all-hands evolution. This will come up in the later chapters. One skipper of a US cruiser was relieved on the spot by the Task Force Commander because the cruiser CO was so reluctant to take on oil from a tanker in rough seas.

"Skipper" and "CPO" Usage.

This might seem an unusual category to include in a materiel-emphasized portion of this ship's story. The point of view is helpful in setting forth another toll of war. That toll is on the lives of men who are not killed or even wounded n action, but on whose lives the war took a big toll. It applies to both officer and enlisted personnel, and it relates to the age of persons enduring periods of intense vigilance and conflict. Generally speaking, the young endured physically much better than the middle-aged. This does not mean that any age bracket acquitted their assigned responsibility better than any other but reflects my own observations on what happened to these groups after the war.

The plank-owner detail of the Edison included a high percentage of experienced officers and senior petty officers. The term "high" is used in comparison with ship's company at later periods in the war. My observations in this matter are anecdotal. I did not keep statistics. In the years following WW II, I subscribed to Shipmate, a magazine for alumni of the US Naval Academy, and to an Annual Report of the Navy Mutual Aid Society, an insurer of Naval personnel, mostly officers but also of some higher ratings in the enlisted category. Both sources published death notices. My observations were that personnel of "middle age" (in the 1940s, men in their 40s were regarded as on the threshold of middle age) who had been actively engaged in combat roles in the Atlantic or Pacific theatres often died relatively soon after the war's end.

In the next table, a list of the Edison's Commanding Officers, will illustrate how a rapidly expanding wartime Navy forced down the age of its combat personnel. As time went on, the younger men were not less experienced. Experience had simply come to them faster.

Edison Skippers

Name/ Naval Academy Class/ Took Command /At age

LCDR A.C. Murdaugh/ 1922 31 Jan. 1941 40

LCDR W.R. Headden/ 1925 1 Mar. 1942 38

LCDR H.A. Pearce/ 1931 24 Feb. 1943 33

LCDR W.J. Caspari/ 1940 1 Apr. 1945 26

Awards

Edison Combat Awards: a total of six battle stars were authorized on the European-African-Middle Eastern Area Service Medal for participating in these operations:

1 Star/Escort, ASW and special operations, Convoy ON-67; 21-26 Feb. 1942

1 Star/North African Occupation

Actions off Casablanca; 8 November 1942

Algeria-Morocco Landings; 8-11 November 1942

1 Star/Sicilian Occupation, 9-15 July, 28 July-17 August 1943

1 Star/Salerno Landings; 9-21 Sept. 1943

1 Star/West Coast of Italy Operations

Anzio-Nettuno Advanced Landings; 22-31 Jan. 1944, 2-5 Feb. 1944, and 8-11 Feb. 1944

1 Star/Invasion of Southern France; 15 August to 25 Sept. 1944

The USS Edison also earned the Navy Occupation Service Medal, Asia for the periods from 2-26 Sept. 1945 and 20 Oct. to 4 Nov. 1945.

I was not aboard for the last Medal, nor did I earn the star awarded for work in Convoy ON-67 because I had not yet reported to the ship.

The new Third Edition of the book, "Joining the War at Sea 1939-1945," is now available. A free 8-page index of 300 ships the Edison served with or for in WW II has been developed by Mark Hinshaw. Write Dailey International Publishers, 500 Laurel Oaks Lane, Alphartta, GA 30004, or e-mail franklyn21@earthlink.net for a free copy of this index and a companion index of aviation and army units mentioned in the book. To see the Ship's Index, go to index.htm

Finally, obscured in the tabulation of this kind of data, it needs to be noted that while the Edison was a "small boy", a term applied to destroyers by Pacific Admirals in command of large carrier task forces, the 940 men who served aboard Edison related to: nearly 2,000 parents, hundreds of wives and children, and countless neighbors; this extended family made up the 'home front", checking V-mails and public news sources every day to obtain wholly insufficient lines about what "their boys" were doing. I have a few fragments of these saved and will offer them at appropriate points. Order Book