Warship Wednesday, March 5, 2025: Poster Child for the Donald Duck Navy

Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

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Warship Wednesday, March 5, 2025: Poster Child for the Donald Duck Navy

USN 479855

Above we see the PC-461-class 173-foot subchaser USS Chardon (PC-564) underway during fleet exercises on 9 May 1951. The humble gunboat survived an excruciating convoy across the Atlantic during WWII to serve on the beaches at Normandy only to take part in what was the last surface naval action in Europe during the conflict– some 80 years ago this week.

Along the way, she saved hundreds of Joes from perishing on the sea in a bit of a Christmas miracle.

The PC-461 Class

Designed to provide a beefy little sub-buster– similar to Britain’s corvettes and sloops– that could float in shallow enough water (10-foot draft) to perform coastal operations but still have enough sea-keeping abilities and range (4,800 nm at 12 knots) to escort cross-ocean convoys without needing the same anti-ship capabilities as found on patrol frigates and destroyer escorts, the Navy ordered some 400 small submarine chasers based on a modified design of one of the pre-war Experimental Small Craft program’s “X-boats” the diesel-powered USS PC-451.

PC-461 was laid down in July 1941– just five months before the attack on Pearl Harbor– and eventually, some 343 of her class would be constructed by March 1945 across 13 small shipyards, all non-traditional to the Navy.

The PC-461s were some of the smallest U.S. Navy ships to carry a legit sonar listening set.

A motor whaleboat was carried amidships along with a small crane to launch and recover it.

The PC-461s ranged far and wide, seeing service in every theatre. Four (PC 566, PC 565, PC 624, and PC 619) claimed kills on German U-boats, two (PC 487 and PC 1135) with sinking Japanese fleet boats, three (PC 558, PC 626, and PC 477) with scratching German and Japanese midget subs, two (PC 545 and PC 627) with killing Italian torpedo boats, and two (PC 1129 and PC 1123) with stopping Japanese suicide boats.

When it comes to the butcher’s bill, six PC-461 class sisters were lost to a combination of enemy action and accidents during WWII while another 24 were seriously damaged.

Meet PC-564

Laid down on 25 January 1942 by the Consolidated Shipbuilding Co. in the Bronx (Morris Heights) PC-564 launched on 12 April and was commissioned on 2 July. In all, her construction spanned just 158 days, including the commissioning ceremony.

The Donald Duck Navy

Assigned to the Atlantic, our little subchaser spent the bulk of the next two years on unsung routine coastal patrol and escort duty, typically out of New York.

That is, after she passed out of shakedown and skills training at the U.S. Navy Subchaser School in Miami. It was there that her crew left a lasting impact on the school, with one of her crew, Signalman Jim Dickie, doodled a sort of fighting version of Donald Duck, complete with a depth charge Y-gun strapped to his back, a flag on his stern, listening gear, a “PC” brassard, and binos.

The combat duck insignia made it to PC-564′s crow’s-nest and the school personnel liked it so much it became the unofficial emblem of the SCTC.

The Donald Duck Navy insignia Mary Mclssac Collection. HistoryMiami. 2001-421-33N

In addition to dodging U-boats along the eastern sea frontier, the sea proved dangerous to our little patrol craft, with three men swept from her decks in the mountainous seas of Tropical Storm Seven off Cape Hatteras on 29/30 September 1943 while escorting a coastal convoy. SA Richard Tull (06508483) was never seen again while CBM John Black was amazingly tossed back on deck by a subsequent wave. The third man, RM Daniel Riley, was pulled from the cold embrace of the Atlantic by EM3 Norman Scaffe who wrapped a line around his waist and went after him, earning a well-deserved  Navy and Marine Corps Medal.

PC-564′s first skipper was Lt. Roland H. Cramer, USNR, who left the ship eight months later to commission a new sister, USS PC-1079, then left that ship six months later to command the destroyer escort USS Riddle (DE 185).

Her second skipper, Harvard-educated lawyer Lt. Alban “Stormy” Weber, USNR, likewise rotated out by June 1943 to command a tin can in the Pacific, leaving her to a third commander, NYC-born Lt. Seabury Marsh, USNR.

The Goofiest convoy

It was Marsh that pulled the short straw to join TF-67 in Convoy NY‑78, perhaps the most unusual Atlantic convoy of the war. As detailed in a past Warship Wednesday (Slow Going), NY-78 included 34 large (250 feet on average) NYC railway car barges specially modified into “Pickabacks” to make the voyage, which would be desperately needed to move ammo to the beaches on D-Day. Also, part of the convoy was two dozen tugs that would remain in Europe for Overlord and 11 other subchasers which were needed to work as control and support boats just off the surf line during the landings.

The pickaback convoy, Aug 1945 Popular Science

TF-67 wallowed 25 days from late March to mid-April on the 3,400nm trek from New York to Plymouth that averaged just under six knots! PC-564’s war diary for the period has her primarily chasing down loose barges, running ASW sonar lookouts, and acting as the convoy’s mail ship.

D-Day

The dozen 173-foot subchasers brought over in the convoy formed PC Squadron One and served as shepherds to the waves of LCIs headed to the beaches on D-Day, where PC-1261 was sunk off Utah Beach by a German coastal battery 58 minutes before H-Hour. Often while sidestepping German E-boats, midget subs, fire from shore batteries, mines, and aircraft, their war was one of up-close and sudden death.

Marsh would command PC-564 during the operation, leaving Portland Harbor, England at 0300 on 5 June, D-1, to function as the guide for Convoy Group 2 (O-2A), “riding herd” over the LCT flotillas in the convoy in the rough weather to the assembly area. On D-Day the next morning, she was assigned to function as a control vessel at Easy Red Sector, Omaha Beach, for Assault Group O-3, riding in with the 20th wave to the line of departure.

‘Easy Red Sector’, Omaha Beach – approx. 0700 on the 6th of June 1944. Men of Easy Company, the 2nd battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, US Army 1st Division hide under Czech Hedgehogs while under fire during fighting during the Landing at Normandy.

The afternoon of 6 June saw PC-564 standing as part of the ASW/anti-E-boat screen off Omaha Beach, a role she maintained until 1800 on the 7th. Over that night, 12 enemy planes were reportedly shot down near her line.

Normandy Invasion, June 1944, USS Ancon (AGC-4), command ship for the Omaha Beach landings, stands offshore on 7 June 1944. USS PC-564 is in the foreground. 80-G-257287

On the evening of 7 June, she was ordered by USS Ancon (AGC-4), the command ship for Omaha Beach, to proceed to Easy White Beach to serve as a control vessel there, closing to the two-fathom curve where she experienced several enemy shells landing close-by. She would maintain her position off Easy White, directing incoming and outgoing vessel traffic, until dark on 12 June when she was dispatched to ASW/E-boat screen duties to T.G. 122.4 just offshore through the 17th.

Leopoldville

Marsh left PC-564 in late 1944, his place taken by Lt. James E Spencer, USNR.

When the troop transport HMTS Leopoldville, packed with men of the U.S. 66th (“Panther”) Infantry Division, was torpedoed just five miles short of her destination on Christmas Eve 1944, PC-564 was one of the ships that went to her immediate assistance. Spencer ordered her to close with the much larger ship in the darkness, and, throwing lines over, tied up as Leopoldville settled slowly into the water, taking men aboard until the dying troopship threatened to drag the subchaser to the bottom with her.

As detailed by the NHHC:

HMS Brilliant came alongside and rescued about 500 soldiers, while the other escorts pursued the submarine. The U.S. tug ATR-3 reached SS Leopoldville from Cherbourg in time to rescue 69 soldiers, and PC-564 and PT-461 also contributed to the rescue of a further 1,400 U.S. soldiers.

As recalled by Thomas Kay, a British DEMS gun layer on one of Leopoldville’s 3-inch HA gun that found himself in the frigid water unexpectedly:

When I hit the water the red light on my life jacket lit up and I kept on swimming as hard as I could go. I stopped once to look back, there was a crowd of men near and behind me. I saw the bows of the Leopoldville sticking up in the air and men dropping off her like flies. I turned away and kept on swimming hard for a while, then as I looked around me, I seemed to be quite alone.

I must have been in the water about 15 minutes or so, I really couldn’t tell, when a PT boat came alongside me. I later learnt it was the PC 564. It had a scrambling net hanging over the side and I grabbed hold of part of the net, but I could neither climb up or let go of the net I was so exhausted. I was rising and falling with the swell on the sea and the rise and fall of the ship. Two American sailors came down the net and somehow dragged me up it. I was so exhausted I collapsed in a heap on a canvas on the deck and one of the sailors said to me “don’t’ lie there buddy” and lifted the corner of the sheet up and I could see two or three dead bodies underneath in army gear.

They half carried me to a short steel ladder, took me down and put me in a bunk. I thought it was a sick bay at the time but later learned it was an officer’s cabin and I had been put in the bunk of Lt. Wesley Johnson, an officer on the ship.

The Granville Raid

With the war in Europe in its last act, just eight weeks before VE-Day, VADM Fredrich Huffmeier, late of the battleship Scharnhorst, was in charge of the isolated German garrison in the occupied Channel Islands, a command that would not capitulate until after the war. Looking to keep Allied forces tied down, he ordered Kpltn. Carl-Friedrich Mohr to sea with a motley force of 600 troops crammed into six minesweepers, three AAA barges (Artilleriefährprahms), three motor launches, and a tugboat with an aim to raid the French coast for sorely needed coal. With escapees from the POW camp at Granville providing intel, that harbor was chosen as the easy target.

Lt. Percy Sandel Jr, USNR, the 30-year-old son of Judge Percy Sandel of Monroe, Louisiana, was in command of PC-564 at the time. Our subchaser was the only American warship in Granville harbor crowded with Allied merchant ships other than the Royal Navy anti-submarine trawler HMT Pearl (T 22), which was armed with just a single old 4-inch gun and was set to escort British colliers back to Plymouth in the morning.

Asdic trawler HMT Pearl (ex-Dervish). She did not make contact with the German forces other than to fire star shells. IWM FL 17276

Things got squirrely just before midnight on 8/9 March 1945.

Per PC Patrol Craft of WWII, based on Sandel’s nine-page after-action report:

At 2315 hours, the radioman on PC-564, which was on patrol off Granville, picked up an alert for his ship. The radio station blurted out the positions of three radar contacts between the islands of Chausey and Jersey. After they tracked and identified them as German, they sent orders to the PC to intercept them. Percy Sandel, USNR, the Skipper of PC 564, rang General Quarters. The PC charged toward the contacts. After a series of radar and navigational plots to intercept the largest, the captain commanded, “All ahead two-thirds.”

At a range of 4,500 yards, Sandel ordered the crew on the three-inch gun to illuminate the targets. The night sky flashed to brilliance as PC 564 fired three star shells over the enemy ships. Fear raced through the men on the bridge as they stared at the sight of three German gunboats knowing that even one gunboat had them outgunned.

Seconds later, a star shell from the German ships burst over the PC.

The PC opened fire and after one round from the main gun it jammed. The German ships opened up with their larger guns, and their shells pounded the PC. A few minutes later a German 8.8 cm shell bored through the bridge of the PC and exploded. The blast, heat, and flying metal struck down all hands on the bridge, killing all but one person. As sailors raced to fight the fire another shell tore through the chart house. A third round splintered the ship’s boat. Then, German shells riddled the 40mm gun tub and crew. Motor Machinist’s Mate 2/C Elmer “Scrappie” Hoover tumbled from his post as pointer. Shrapnel had riddled his body and splintered many of his bones. His buddies lashed him to a bomb rack as the ship rolled in the heavy sea. Bodies sprawled about the deck and the bridge.

Because of the severe damage to the engine room, the steady roar of the PC’s diesel engines faded to silence. The Skipper ordered the men to standby to abandon ship. Sailors scurried about the deck twisting tourniquets, wrapping bandages, and shooting morphine into shivering men with legs and arms bloodied and dangling or blown away. Below decks, the engineers lit off the engines again. Under the direction of Lt Sandel and Lt. Russell Klinger, the ship plowed ahead for the shore. It ground onto the rocks of La Baie du Verger near Cancale. Larry Jordan, Seaman Ist Class, wrote, “‘I never knew that land could look so good in all my life, but boy! That was the most beautiful land that ever looked at!”

The shells of the German gunboats killed fourteen men. wounded eleven and left fourteen missing. Dazed survivors who heard only the last words of the captain, “abandon ship,” jumped into the frigid water. From there they watched as Sandel, steering by hand, beached the heavily damaged ship. German sailors on the E-boat scooped up some of the men, who had gone overboard, before the ship ran aground. Those PC sailors ended the war in a German prison camp. A small group of men swam or went hand over hand along a line from the beached PC to shore. Though unable to speak French, they raised help from a French doctor and fishermen who went to rescue and care for the men still on the grounded ship.

Sandel’s damage report:

• Shell through the Pilothouse exploded inside causing extensive fire damage.
• Mast Damaged by shrapnel
• Hull and deck have extensive damage due to shell holes and shrapnel.
• Shell through deck at base of Pilothouse
• Minor damage to 40mm gun, tub full of holes
• Depth Charge release gear inoperative
• Steam lines broken, electric cables cut.
• Shell exploded in small boat, boat cut in half
• Starboard rudder missing
• Port rudder badly damaged
• Both props badly damaged
• Starboard strut shaft missing

Casualties: 2 Officers and 12 men dead, 11 men wounded, 12 men missing out of a crew of 5 officers and 60 men. At least five of those lost are buried at the Brittany American Cemetery, Montjoie Saint Martin, France.

The Germans lost one ship during the raid, the 224-foot M1940-class large minesweeper M-412, which had run aground in shallow waters and evacuated, was scuttled in place.

Commander, U. S. Naval Forces, France, endorsed the fight of PC-564 against hopeless odds at Granville as “The PC 564 closed the enemy rapidly, engaged vigorously, and did her best to break up the attack. The resultant loss of life and injuries to personnel is to be regretted, but the courage of the Captain and his crew was of a high order.”

VADM Laurence DuBose, chief of staff and aide to the commander, Naval Forces Europe under ADM Harold Stark, in May 1945 further endorsed Sandel’s report from Granville by saying, “The Commanding Officer displayed courage in fortitude in bringing superior enemy force to action. This action delayed and shortened the enemy’s subsequent activities in Granville.”

Beached on the French coast at the Pierre de Herpin Lighthouse, PC-564 was later salvaged and towed to Amphibious Base Plymouth, England, where she was repaired by late April and returned under her own power to the states. After more extensive overhaul on the East Coast, in June 1945 she was assigned to the Commander, Submarine Force in New London, Connecticut to serve as an ASW asset for new boats.

Cold War

Postwar, PC-564 was dispatched to Pearl Harbor where she was placed in service as a Naval Reserve Training vessel and general district craft assigned to the 14th Naval District. While stationed there, she was named Chadron on 15 February 1956, one of 102 sisters who lasted long enough to earn a name.

She is likely named for the small maple syrup-rich Ohio town established in 1812, with a slim runner-up being Anthony Chardon, a French exile and American patriot in Philadelphia who hobnobbed with Thomas Jefferson– he provided the wallpaper for Monticello– and whose image is in the Navy’s collection.

Her time at Pearl was spent in a series of training evolutions for reservists and as a guard and exercise asset for COMSUBPAC’s boats, as detailed in this log entry from January 1957:

She was decommissioned and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 1 November 1962 at Honolulu, as directed by the CNO in 1561P43 and placed in the reserve fleet.

Picking up a Taegeukgi

Ex-Chadron was transferred to the Republic of Korea on 22 January 1964 at Guam as Seoraksan (PC 709), seen in Janes at the time as Sol Ak.

The ROKN had a long record with the 173s, with the country’s first naval purchase being ex-PC-823, commissioned as Baekdusan in 1950.

Ultimately, the U.S. Navy transferred another five PC-461s to the ROKN during the Korean War– no cash required!

Three were lost to assorted causes and the three remaining of these PCs were retired in the 1960s and replaced by Chadron and two sisters– ex-USS Winnemucca (PC 1145), and ex-USS Grosse Pointe (PC 1546)– again giving the South Koreans a three-pack of PC-461s on patrol into 1975, by which time they were replaced by a six-pack of larger (1500-ton, 306-foot) Rudderow-class destroyer escorts.

ROK 173-foot class via Jane’s 1974.

Epilogue

Little remains of our subject.

Of her skippers, Alban “Stormy” Weber retired as a rear admiral and passed in 2007. He joined with other PC-564 crewmembers including Lt. Wesley Johnson, whose bunk the rescued British gunner from Leopoldville used, to form the Patrol Craft Sailors Association in 1987. Once some 3,000 strong in 1998, it is increasingly sunsetting with the end of the Greatest Generation.

Weber was preceded by Seabury Marsh, PC-564‘s skipper on the slow-going NY-78 Convoy, and during Overlord, who passed in New York in 1973, aged 63. Likewise, Percy Sandel Jr., who commanded her during the one-sided battle at Granville, passed in Louisiana in 1994, aged 80. James Spencer, who commanded her for the Leopoldville rescue, faded into history. I cannot find where he was even decorated for his role in the debacle, one that was classified for decades.

The “disposable” PC-461 class, besides the U.S. and ROK navies, served under the flags of more than 20 other countries. They remained in service around the globe until the late 1980s when the last two in active, ex-USS Susanville (PC 1149) and ex-USS Hanford (PC 1142), were retired by Taiwan.

Some 40,000 bluejackets sailed on the PCs during the “Big Show” and immediately after. The chronicle of their war is the out-of-print 400-page PC Patrol Craft of World War II: A History of the Ships and Their Crews by William J. Veigele, a former PC sailor, first published in 1998.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

Ships are more than steel

and wood

And heart of burning coal,

For those who sail upon

them know

That some ships have a

soul.

***

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