Navy Oiler Finds Second Life in the Great Lakes – Spring 1991
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The Great Lakes… 84% of the continent’s fresh water… a different story in every drop.
By Howard W. Serio
After serving in WWII, Neshanic is now a freighter.
She wears no ribbons. Her guns and gray paint were removed almost a half century ago. And her outward appearance has been altered with a conveyor unloader and bow-mounted pilot house.
USS NESHANIC at San Francisco, November 1945. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Yet, the former Navy oiler USS Neshanic (AO-51), now sailing as a Great Lakes freighter, is still basically a T-2 tanker, one of 100 such hips built during World War II for the Navy. She was built at Bethlehem Sparrow’s Point Shipyard in Baltimore.
Her tall funnel, tuba-like ventilators and graceful bow have not changed, and she can still steam at 18 knots – the speed that kept her apace with the task force she once refueled during the most crucial – and bloodiest – days of the war against Japan.
During those operations Neshanic became one of the most decorated ships of the war. She earned nine battle stars – one for each major campaign in which the oiler participated. That is more than the number received by many carriers, battleships and cruiser active during the war.
But that was yesterday. Today, as she steams past the glitzy office towers along the waterfront of downtown Detroit carrying iron ore or lime tone, Neshanic – now renamed Middletown – attracts little attention.
It is quite possible the ship is the only surviving World War II tanker in operation – a fact, that according to her owners, Oglebay Norton Co., has nothing to do with her illustrious past.
“We are very much aware of the ship’s colorful Navy history,” said Jack Yewell, public relations director for the company. “However, our decision to continue sailing her is one of simple economics. Because of her relatively small size, she can take cargoes of stone and ore to a lot of places our larger ships can’t.”
Another factor contributing to her longevity, Yewell said, is the fresh water of the Lakes, which doesn’t corrode steel hulls like salt water. “With the current demand for lakes’ shipping we see no indication that the Middletown will be retired anytime soon,” he said.
Neshanic’s continuing service is a source of pride to members of the USS Neshanic Veterans Association. The hundred or so surviving crew members-now in their 60s and 70s- have held annual reunions for the past 20 years. They see their ship as a living symbol of the dangerous and essential mission of the fleet oilers, part of the hundred of support ships that carried “beans, bullets and black oil” to the fleet.
MIDDLETOWN. Image courtesy of Alpena County George N. Fletcher Public Library.
But carrying highly flammable fuel oil and gasoline in a war zone was on the crew’s mind all the time. Navy scuttlebutt during the war held that the three most dangerous ships were submarines, ammunition ships and oilers. Indeed oilers were not only potentially dangerous but preferred targets of Japanese who knew if they could cut the flow of oil to the fleet by sinking the plodding support ships they could significantly reduce its effectiveness.
In Neshanic’s case they had plenty of opportunities. The oiler’s combat record reads like successive episodes of the prize winning TV documentary Victory at Sea: battles of the Gilbert and Marshall Islands, Western New Guinea operations, Marianas turkey shoot, capture of Guam and Iwo Jima, Okinawa campaign and finally 3rd Fleet operations against Japan.
For most members of Neshanic’s crew, one moment of the long Pacific War stands out. That was when the ship was attacked by a swarm of Japanese planes as the oiler was preparing to refuel ships near Saipan.
“June 18, 1944, I’ll never forget it,” reflected Jon Palik, former machinist’s mate, now a retired air brake engineer living in Elyria. “We had been in a lot of skirmishes, but that was the first time we were actually hit.” From Palik’s battle station on Neshanic’s forecastle he could see a flight of 10 high-flying Japanese bombers approaching.
“Our ships were firing in all directions and these planes began diving. In fact one went over the top of us, and I saw the big red Japanese insignia, and I think even to this day that I saw the pilot’s face.” A second later there was a “loud thud,” and smoke billowed up from the midsection of the ship. “Carrying all that oil I thought we were doomed,” Palik said.
It was a reasonable conclusion. A bomb had struck the ship’s cargo deck, aft on the starboard side, amongst drums containing lube oil. The explosion blew fragments that cut fuel hoses, destroyed fueling station rigs and blew three sailors over the side. Thirty-three crew members of the 250 aboard were badly burned. While damage control parties worked feverishly to prevent the fires from turning the ship into a raging inferno, Neshanic’s gunners exacted vengeance. Two Japanese bombers were splashed before the attack ended.
If Neshanic was battered, she was not out of service. That night the damaged oiler refueled the ships, which, the next day, went out to meet the enemy in what would be known as the Battle of the Philippine Sea.
It might seem that sitting on a million gallons of fuel oil and gasoline in a raging battle would induce many crew members to request reassignment at the first opportunity. Yet Palik said after the battle no one was eager to transfer to another, less dangerous ship. “Some of our regular Navy guys had come from battleships, cruisers, and I never heard anyone resent the fact that they were on an oiler,” he said. “Everyone had a job to do – the war had to be won. We could see our contributions every day.”
Jon Palik. Image from the NAVY TIMES, August 6, 1990.
Palik also was aware that others had it worse. There were occasions when Neshanic’s crew had a ringside seat to the island hopping amphibious assaults when cruisers, battleships and destroyers moved in to bombard Japanese-held islands while landing craft full of Marines churned toward the beach in a maelstrom of hostile fire.
Neshanic was usually far back from the shooting. “It was at times like that that I felt lucky to be on a tanker,” he said.
The oiler’s crew also had a close-up view of the commanders who achieved fame in the war. When the fleet flagships came alongside, Neshanic’s men had an opportunity to glimpse such greats as Halsey, Spruance and Mitscher. “Every important battleship, the Iowa, the Missouri, and all the big carriers, we were right alongside them for hours pumping fuel,”Palik said. “We could see everything very clearly.”
At the conclusion of the war, Neshanic steamed into Tokyo Bay and joined the greatest gathering of warships ever assembled. Liberty for the crews of the combined armada was a bit sobering, though.
“Well, it was quite a contrast. To go in there and mingle with the former enemy on the streets of Tokyo. It gave me an uneasy feeling at times,” Palik said, recalling visits to the burned out central section of the city.
Palik’s Navy career ended with his discharge two months after VJ Day. Neshanic was decommissioned in 1946 and sold to an oil company that sailed the ship for several years before laying her up.
“We thought she had been scrapped,” Palik recalled. But in I988, he saw a newspaper article indicating that Neshanic was still afloat and sailing on the Great Lakes. There was a double connection. For a year Palik had sailed on a Great Lakes ship after getting out of the Navy. “I said, ‘My God, that’s my old ship.’ ”
Neshanic, now Middletown, had been sailing out of Lorain, Ohio, IO miles from Palik’s home, for the previous 20 years.
He wrote a letter to Oglebay Norton in April and was invited to visit his old ship. Stepping aboard for the first time in 45 years there were flashbacks to people and times long ago. “I had spent over two years aboard that ship and knew every inch of that ship from stem to stem. It brought back a lot of memories,” Palik said.
Mostly, Palik wandered through the machinery spaces where he had often been assigned to turn the ship’s throttle wheels on orders from the bridge. The solid brass wheels, which he had last touched as a young man, were still there, gleaming just as he had left them. “Except for the color of the paint on the bulkheads, it’s all the same,” Palik said with a smile.
And the ship’s future? “I think that she ought to be preserved,” Palik said. He pointed out that there are dozens of Navy ships from World War II preserved around the country – but no tankers – or former tankers. That is even more reason, Palik believes, to save Neshanic as a museum when she is finally retired.
“This is a ship that goes back to World War II, a Navy tanker that’s served her country in war and peace,” he said. “What better ship could there be?”
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