News-Info-Alerts

Re: Sending Messages

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: March 19, 2002

"Groton — A half-century ago, the flags fluttering from the sails of submarines just back from a war patrol gave the first sign of how they had fared.

A white rectangle with a red circle meant it had sunk a Japanese merchant. A red sunburst signified that it laid claim to an enemy warship. Parachutes connoted a rescued airman, and eight-balls related that it had taken a prisoner of war.

The flag created by the crew of the Jack, which won seven battle stars during the war, is crowded with the symbols of success, as well as a feisty-looking fish that is supposed to resemble the boat's namesake.

Today the Submarine Force Library and Museum has 23 original flags from boats like the Jack and the Flasher, which won the Presidential Unit Citation and six battle stars for sinking more than 100,000 tons of enemy shipping. It also has 33 “crew copies,” generally a smaller flag distributed to anyone who made the patrol.

“It was all about bragging rights,” said Bob Moore, who was a torpedoman aboard the USS Angler. The more symbols that crowded the flags, the less likely that the crewmen would be buying their own drinks at the waterfront bars their first night in port.

But the battle flags, which survived enemy depth-charge and bomb attacks, are slowly being lost to the ravages of time. Some of the eight balls are starting to peel off, the stitching is starting to unravel, and some of the coarse white backing material is starting to fray. Only a few of the flags are ever displayed at one time.

“This piece is painted, and what happens is every time we move it that paint has become brittle, so it flakes and begins to fall off,“ said museum curator Steve Finnegan, who dons white cotton gloves before touching any of the flags so the oils on his hands don't cause them to degrade further.

“They're in fairly good shape — they can still take a fold or two,” Finnegan said. “But if you don't make an effort to preserve them now, we'll begin to see some problems soon.”

As a result, the museum has teamed up with Submarine Veterans of World War II to launch a $130,000 fund-raising effort to restore and preserve the flags.

Personal meaning
“It's a significant amount of money,” said retired Navy Capt. Michael G. Riegel, executive director of the Submarine Force Library and Museum Association. “But a lot of the members of subvets of World War II have memories of seeing these flags on their ships, and may have a personal interest in seeing them restored.”

Finnegan said there is no definitive history of battle flags. They are not known to have existed before World War II, but the tradition continues today.

The Navy still will not disclose publicly how many missiles the USS Miami fired during the opening salvo in the NATO war on Bosnia three years ago, but visitors to the museum can figure it out from the boat's flag. The USS Pittsburgh's flag from the Persian Gulf War is also on display, and the flag of the USS Providence, which fired the opening shots of Operation Enduring Freedom, will go to the museum.

The flags of the World War II boats, though, are the ones that established the tradition. They were designed and sewn by hand or on portable sewing machines from any material that was at hand, often by the ship's quartermaster, to depict graphically what happened on the patrol.

“They're probably the most valuable items we have in our collection, next to the ship's bells,” said Finnegan. “Each one of these is a record of individual accomplishments that were extremely significant to winning the war.”

Flags are often found when family members are cleaning out a cedar chest or foot locker that belonged to a former submariner. Many were tucked away after the war ended, when they were a curiosity, not a historic artifact.

“We probably get a donation of two, maybe three a year at best,” Finnegan said of the flags.

Fighter pilots and bomber pilots often painted symbols just below their cockpits, but those personal accounts of battles were lost when the planes were scrapped. Submarine battle flags represent a record that has survived depth-charge attacks by destroyers and bomb attacks by aircraft.

As he looked over a few of the flags that were being examined recently, Moore said they bring back memories of the friends he had on each of them — the submarine force was a small enough service that many men knew someone on just about all of the boats.

“A guy off the Jack was the best man at my wedding, Jack Emerson,” Moore recalled. “And I still keep in touch with one of the guys off the Flasher, Joe Ferrell in Arizona.”

Moore said he was on the Angler when it was conducting “wolf pack” operations on a patrol with the Crevalle and Flasher it did not get to add many icons to its battle flag.

“The most senior CO (commanding officer) was supposed to fire first, and then the next senior CO, and so forth,” Moore said. “We had the least senior skipper, so we were supposed to fire last, but the first two hit all the targets and we never got a shot.

“The Crevalle and the Flasher sank 36,000 tons, six ships in three nights.”

Costly venture
Finnegan said depending on the size of the flag, it would not be unusual to cost $4,000 to $9,000 each for cleaning, restoration and preservation because it must all be done by hand in a careful, deliberate fashion.

Each flag will likely require three solid weeks of work by a specialist, Finnegan added.

When the work is done, the flags will be mounted behind special glass so they can be displayed while remaining protected from harmful ultraviolet rays and dust.

Lt. Cmdr. D. Benton Howard, commanding officer of the museum, said he would like to see the flags permanently ensconced in the area of the museum that is devoted to World War II, behind some early torpedoes and a model of a Gato-class fleet submarine that helped to win the war.

“It's a big, blank wall right now,” Howard said. “Room for a lot of battle flags.”   "