![]() ![]() One ship detail Smedley adamantly remembered is “no lights at night. I don’t think they ever bombed Northern Ireland during (World War II).” We were in Londonderry and Axis Sally (a European version of Tokyo Rose who broadcast English-language propaganda) made the remark we were going to get bombed there. Smedley said the ship would get false reports “that we were going to run into this or we were going to get bombed. “Getting supplies over there, that was important,” Smedley acknowledged. An estimated 28,000 to 30,000 German U-boat crewmen died. It came at a price: some 3,500 Allied merchant ships and 175 warships sunk resulting in the deaths of about 80,000 crew members and troops. England relied on the material being sent over, everything from arms to iron and steel to foodstuffs at a time it was being choked off in Europe by Germany. The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest continuous military campaign of World War II, even preceding U.S. The ship went to different ports, including Casablanca in northern Morocco, usually for five to seven days before heading back to the States. Smedley said his ship, which maintained a lot of the same crew members for its 11 trips, docked at Londonderry five times and Liverpool or Gibraltar three times each. ![]() “We always felt a little safer,” Smedley said, “when we could see an airplane.” Smedley also recalled “the Black Pit,” stretches of days when the British couldn’t provide air cover and the potential for a rendezvous with U-boats ratcheted up a notch. ![]() My opinion was that we were killing the ship, the submarine, not the people aboard.” “We did throw quite a few depth charges (as a precaution), but we never picked up any debris or any bodies coming up (through the water). “I’m not positive we came across any (German) U-boats,” Smedley said. Smedley’s job was to give officers the range and the bearings from sound beams going out from the ship’s sonar - sonar that was manufactured by Sangamo Electric in Springfield - and coming back at about 2,000 feet per second. #ASHLAND HERO ACADEMY PLUS#He would serve as a sonar operator - usually there were six operators, plus a chief working on the ship during the nearly two-week convoys-for all 11 of the round-trips. Originally a radio man, the Navy sent Smedley to sonar school in Key West, Florida. The guy in the lower bunk, you had to get him out so you could get in your locker. “The bunk rooms,” Smedley recalled, “were three high and below were three lockers where all your goods went in. #ASHLAND HERO ACADEMY HOW TO#One of the tests? Learning how to sleep on a narrow canvas hammock without rolling onto the floor. Smedley had once been turned away by the Navy because he told a recruiter he was “a sleepwalker.” On a second attempt to join, he found himself at the Great Lakes Naval Station in Chicago on the brink of his 18th birthday. “He gave up how much of his life (for his country)? But he was also a good citizen.” “I think he’s a hero,” countered Davis, of her father, in a separate interview at Smedley’s home in Ashland. I didn’t save anybody’s life or didn’t shoot anybody.” ![]() I just done my job like everybody else did. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |