Tag John L. McCrea

FDR: Humanity and Humor

Julia C. Tobey 1 Comment

Garner FDR laugh(John Nance Garner and President Franklin D. Roosevelt meet on the presidential train in Uvalde, Texas in September 1942.)

According to John McCrea, FDR’s naval aide, President Roosevelt was typically light-hearted and full of good cheer. He liked people and went out of his way to show his interest in them. He loved to banter and joke with his associates and enjoyed a good laugh over a joke or an amusing story. For FDR, humor was means to alleviate stress and fatigue, bond with others, and repair tattered relationships. The story behind this picture is a case in point.

John Nance Garner was FDR’s vice president during his first two terms. Their relationship soured when Garner strongly disapproved of FDR’s quest for a third presidential term in 1940. After finishing his term as vice president, an alienated Garner retired from Washington, D.C. to his hometown in Uvalde, Texas. In mid-September 1942, FDR embarked on a two-week tour of U.S. war production plants and troop training facilities, making a large loop around the country by train. Upon learning that his train would pass through Uvalde, FDR invited Garner to visit him on the train, and despite the rift in their relationship, Garner accepted.

McCrea was standing outside the president’s car after Garner was escorted in to see the president. Soon peals of laughter were emanating from the president’s sitting area, and McCrea concluded that the two men were evidently having a good time. After a half-hour visit, Garner walked to his car escorted by Ross McIntire, the president’s physician, Steve Early, the president’s press secretary, and McCrea.

Garner remarked how he appreciated the opportunity to see the president again. Turning, he placed his hand on McIntire’s shoulder and said, “Ross, a great man is in your hands. Take good care of him, because this country needs him badly.” McCrea was impressed with the earnestness of Garner’s charge. Afterwards the president told McCrea, “It was fine to see John Garner again. He is a great, great American and a great friend.” FDR’s humanity and humor were the lubricants that brought reconciliation between these estranged associates who clearly shared great respect for one another.

 

Source:

Captain McCrea’s War, Chs. 12, 13.

This Ship Was Named for a Joke

Julia C. Tobey 2 Comments

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(USS Shangri-La CV-38), an Essex-class aircraft carrier in August 1946)

This U.S. aircraft carrier is the USS Shangri-La, built during World War II and commissioned on 15 September 1944. Most aircraft carriers are named after battles or earlier U.S. Navy ships. Why was this one named after a fictitious place in a novel, the book Lost Horizon by James Hilton? The answer lies in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s sense of humor and the daring “Doolittle Raid” on Tokyo on 18 April 1944.

The early months of U.S. involvement in the Pacific war were marked by Japanese advances and Allied defeats. To shake Japan’s sense of invincibility and boost U.S. morale at home, the Navy developed a plan to bomb Tokyo and other targets in the Japanese homeland by launching bombers from an aircraft carrier. This project was no mean feat. The bombers—U.S. Army B-25B Mitchell medium bombers—were land-based planes that had to be significantly modified to carry out the mission. Most particularly, they had to be fitted with larger fuel capacity for their long range deployment. The crews of the planes, all volunteers, were specially trained to take off on a short runway. The planes were too big to land on an aircraft carrier so after delivering their payload, they were supposed to fly to Allied fields in China to land.

On 18 April, sixteen bombers, led by Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle of the U.S. Army Air Corps, took off from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet. They dropped their bombs over Japan, doing little physical damage but delivering a psychic blow to the Japanese and a lift to the American public. Then the planes flew on to China and the Soviet Union. Because the planes had had to launch further east of Japan than initially planned, they didn’t have enough fuel to reach their target air fields, and most of their crews had to crash land or bail out. Despite all, most of the plane crews survived the war.

President Roosevelt was at Hyde Park on the day of the raid. John McCrea, his naval aide, called him from Washington the following day to deliver his morning briefing. In Captain McCrea’s War, McCrea described their conversations about the raid:

“The most important item of the morning’s report, Mr. President, is that U.S. planes made an air attack on Tokyo.”

“Really?” said the president with a laugh. Of course, he was privy to the whole operation, and the raid was no surprise to him. “And where, John, do you suppose those planes came from?”

“That, Mr. President, is what the Japanese want to know. According to our intelligence sources, that question is on the lips of everyone in Tokyo.” I moved on to the other items of my report.

About one o’clock that afternoon, the president called me. “I think I can answer the Japanese who are asking where the air raid came from. Ask Ernie King if he doesn’t think it would be a good idea to say the raid came from Shangri-La. If we do, when this story reaches Japan, every Japanese will be busy looking at his or her equivalent of the Rand-McNally Atlas trying to find Shangri-La.”

I called Admiral King and told him what the president had said. Admiral King laughed softly and said he thought rather well of the idea. Soon a press release was issued stating that it was “rumored” that the attack planes were from their base in Shangri-La.

The name of the carrier USS Shangri-La derives from FDR’s little joke on the Japanese people. When the carrier was launched on 24 February 1944, the ship was christened by Mrs. James H. Doolittle, wife of the leader of the Doolittle Raid.

 

Sources

McCrea, Vice Adm. John L. Captain McCrea’s War: etc. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2016. Pp. 89-90.

 “Doolittle Raid,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doolittle_Raid, last accessed 4.19.2017.

“USS Shangri-La (CV-38),” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doolittle_Raid, last accessed 4.19.2017.

The Commissioning of USS Iowa

Julia C. Tobey 1 Comment

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(The commissioning of USS Iowa on February 22, 1943.)

On February 22, 1943, George Washington’s birthday, the USS Iowa, the nation’s newest and largest battleship, was commissioned at the New York Navy Yard in Brooklyn, NY, under the command of Captain John L. McCrea. The commissioning took place a record six months after the ship was launched on August 27, 1942.

The ceremonies were held on the stern of the ship. The speakers, including Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, Captain McCrea, and others, were assembled facing aft under the big 16″ guns of the ship’s after turret. Invited guests were seated before them, and the ship’s company stood in ranks on either side. Others witnessed the ceremony from adjacent piers and buildings, and from ships moored nearby.

Captain McCrea was the last speaker. He addressed most of his remarks to the ship’s company. He stated unequivocally his demands for the ship: “I expect a clean ship. I expect a smart ship. Above all, I expect a fighting ship.” He then spoke of the need for rigorous training, and as he did so, he shifted to the pronoun “we,” suggesting a common interest shared by captain and crew. He concluded:

“As you all know, much remains to be done. The tremendous amount of work thus far accomplished augurs well for the future which you and I face together–the future which you and I face together with confidence and determination. Our Commander in Chief, our Secretary, and our brothers in arms expect much of us. We cannot and must not fail them.”

It was not the last speech to the ship’s company where McCrea conveyed that he and his men were part of the same team.

After the ceremony, McCrea hosted a luncheon in his quarters. During the luncheon the Secretary Knox hit it off with McCrea’s mother, who had come east from her home in Marlette, Michigan, for the commissioning. According to the Secretary, Mrs. McCrea remarked to him that her son was too young to command such a large ship. He was 52 at the time.

Source

McCrea, John L.. History of the USS Iowa (BB 61) (Unpublished history of Iowa’s first year). John L. McCrea Papers. Library of Congress.

Young In World War II

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(A group of very youthful bluejackets sunbathing on USS Iowa)

My husband and I sent a copy of Captain McCrea’s War to Elmer, my husband’s 90-year-old cousin who, after 20 years of farming, had recently moved to a retirement community in Nebraska. Some years ago, we attended a family reunion at the farm that Elmer and his wife ran in northeastern Nebraska. At the time, Elmer expressed great interest in my wok editing John McCrea’s memoirs because he too had served in the navy during WW II, although at a far lower rank, he hastened to add.

I was moved and intrigued by Elmer’s letter about our gift. He was amazed by the book’s pictures and was thrilled to have this “lesson in history.” He signed off as “a swabby Electrician’s Mate second class,” and I sensed his pride in the role he had played in defending our country and his powerful emotional connection to that important time.

With his note, Elmer enclosed a recent article written about him when he and his wife moved to their retirement community. Entitled “Brookdale resident fondly remembers his days in the Navy,” the article offers a glimpse of Elmer’s WW II experience, which was very different from John McCrea’s, but important service none the less:

“I was drafted into the Navy. When we went to the induction place, they said ‘Army, Army, Navy, Marine,’ I happened to be the third one so I was in the Navy. This was in 1944.”

[Elmer] graduated from Lincoln High on May 19, and headed off to boot camp in June. He worked on a ship where they delivered ‘frog men.’ These ‘frog men’ were guys dressed in rubber suits, fins, goggles and had good swimming ability. They would set charges out for ships.

Specifically, he was an electrician on an amphibious personnel destroyer, and received his training as such up north in the Great Lakes. [Elmer] said that his most memorable Navy experience out of his two years was WWII’s ending.

“We saw that little boat come up by our ship. We were tied up to the [USS] Missouri, and the Japanese Generals and Admirals were going up the ladder on the Missouri to sign the surrender. We watched, and when it was over, they came back. That was the highlight of my life in the Navy.”

The worst experience [Elmer] remembers about the Navy is a typhoon that came up while his boat was docked at Tokyo Bay. This typhoon ended up destroying two ships and killing 46 men.

I was struck by two features of Elmer’s story. First, his description supports the impression I have from photographs that the lower ranks in Navy ships were full of teenagers and very young adults. It must have been an enormous challenge for commanding officers such as John McCrea to mold these youngsters into an effective fighting team and to maintain their morale when many had never been away from home before. Second, was the randomness that shaped wartime experience. Many battle veterans have spoken of the randomness of death–how some died and others, right next to them, survived. Not only was the draft random, but pure chance determined that Elmer went into the navy and not the army or the marines.

Source

Courtney Upah, “Brookdale resident fondly remembers his days in the Navy,” in “Golden Years,” Wayne Herald (Wayne, NE), December 13, 2016, p. 2.

What Is A Naval Aide?

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(Captain John McCrea escorting President Roosevelt in the summer of 1942. Note the aiguillettes on McCrea’s right shoulder, indicating a presidential naval aide)

On 16 January 1942 Captain John L. McCrea reported to President Roosevelt as his naval aide. Despite the honor of working for the president of the United States, McCrea was not enthusiastic about this assignment. He knew the job involved many ceremonial duties, and at least during peacetime, was none too challenging. McCrea had hoped for a ship command. He wanted to fight the war.

What exactly is a presidential naval aide? The simple answer is a naval officer assigned to the president who does whatever the president wants him to do. The job is authorized by navy regulations, but it is undefined. By tradition the naval aide serves as a liaison between the Navy Department and the president, but beyond that there are few parameters.
One constant for all presidential naval aides is a feature of their uniforms. Naval aides wear ornamental braided cords, known as aiguillettes, looped over one shoulder. Aides to high ranking naval officers and certain civilians wear aiguillettes on the left shoulder. By contrast, aides to the U.S. president wear aiguillettes on the right shoulder and thus can easily be picked out in photographs.

The man who knew the most about the job of presidential naval aide was Rear Admiral Wilson Brown, who had three tours as naval aide and served four presidents. Two tours were during peacetime. The first was working for Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover in the ‘20s, and the second was working for FDR in in the mid-30s. Brown’s third tour was during WW2, when he worked for FDR a second time upon relieving John McCrea.

Brown’s peacetime duties were the sort for which McCrea had little enthusiasm. For Coolidge, Brown commanded the presidential yacht and stood on formal receiving lines to introduce visitors to the president. Anticipating Hoover’s presidency and knowing that Hoover was a fisherman, Brown scoped out good fishing grounds in Chesapeake Bay accessible to the president’s yacht. However, Hoover decided the yacht was an extravagance so Brown presided over its decommissioning and helped to develop a presidential trout fishing camp in the mountains of Virginia. During his second tour at the White House, Brown played the same role at FDR’s receptions and state dinners as he had for Coolidge and Hoover. FDR was an enthusiastic sailor, and Brown commanded FDR’s presidential yacht and went on many fishing trips with the president.

When McCrea arrived at the White House about a month after U.S. entry into the war, his activities were vastly different than those of a peacetime naval aide. He immediately launched into setting up the White House Map Room, the communications hub and repository for war information from all branches of the military and for FDR’s dispatch correspondence with Churchill, Stalin, and Chiang Kai-shek. Coordination with the Navy Department, keeping the president current on war developments, maintaining security, handling the press, and dealing with countless dignitaries visiting the White House all assumed vital importance, and McCrea found himself in the center of the action. He personally briefed the president at least twice a day–in his bedroom in the morning and in the afternoon, often in his doctor’s office–and at additional times, as necessary. Because the secret service discouraged FDR’s use of the presidential yacht because of the danger U-boat attack, McCrea was assigned to set up and administer Shangri-La, now known as Camp David. Highly compatible, FDR and McCrea worked closely together on many matters, and McCrea undertook to alleviate as many pressures on the president as he could.

When Admiral Brown returned to the White House as McCrea’s relief, he confirmed that “the office of Naval Aide in war was a very different, and much more interesting job, than during peace.” He inherited the responsibility of administering the Map Room, and attended all FDR’s wartime conferences with Churchill subsequent to the Casablanca Conference. Brown especially enjoyed morning presidential briefings, but they were more formal than in McCrea’s day. Brown and Admiral William D. Leahy, the president’s chief of staff, briefed the president together, and they did so in FDR’s office.

Sources

“Aiguillete, United States,” Wikipedia,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiguillette#United_States, (last accessed 1.30.2017).

Wilson Brown, “Aide to Four Presidents,” American Heritage 6, No. 2 (February 1955), http://www.americanheritage.com/content/aide-four-presidents?page=show (last accessed 1.30.2017).

Vice Adm. John L. McCrea, Captain McCrea’s War, (New York; Skyhorse Publishing, 2016).

January 30 – FDR’s Birthday

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(Returning from the Casablanca Conference during a flight from Trinidad to Miami, President Roosevelt celebrates his 61st birthday. Seated (L to R): Guy Spaman, secret service; Admiral William D. Leahy, FDR’s chief of staff; Lt. Cone, captain of the plane; and FDR. Standing (L to R): Charles Fredericks, secret service, Capt. John L. McCrea, presidential naval aide; Elmer Hipsley, secret service; Lt. George Fox, naval medical corps; Rear Admiral Ross T. McIntire, surgeon general of the navy)

On January 30, 1943 on the return trip from the Casablanca Conference, President Roosevelt celebrated his 61st birthday in an unusual venue, aboard a Pan Am Clipper flying from Trinidad to Miami. The event was organized on the initiative of John McCrea during the journey to Casablanca. There were champagne toasts, a birthday cake, and the president received a gift, a book of prints showing scenes of Trinidad, where the presidential party had had overnight layovers on the way to and from North Africa. It was the first time—and possibly the last—that a president of the United States had celebrated his birthday in the skies.

Casablanca Conference

Julia C. Tobey 1 Comment

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(President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill addressing reporters at the joint press conference at the end of the Casablanca Conference)

On 24 January 1943, at the conclusion of the Casablanca Conference, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill held a joint press conference. Seated in chairs on a beautiful sunny day, with the correspondents spread out on the lawn before them, the two leaders discussed what had been accomplished during the conference. The president spoke first. Near the end of his remarks he stated:

“…I think we have all had it in our hearts and our heads before, but I don’t think that it has ever been put down on paper by the Prime Minister and myself, and that is the determination that peace can come to the world only by the total elimination of German and Japanese war power.

“Some of you Britishers know the old story—we had a General called U.S. Grant. His name was Ulysses Simpson Grant, but in my and the Prime Minister’s early days, he was called “Unconditional Surrender” Grant. The elimination of German, Japanese and Italian war power means the unconditional surrender by Germany, Italy, and Japan. That means a reasonable assurance of future world peace. It does not mean the destruction of the population of Germany, Italy, or Japan, but it does mean the destruction of the philosophies in those countries which are based on conquest and the subjugation of other people.

“While we have not had a meeting of all of the ‘United Nations,’ I think that there is no question—in fact we both have great confidence that the same purposes and objectives are in the minds of all of the other ‘United Nations’—Russia, China, and all the others.”

John McCrea attended the press conference in a position where he could clearly see the prime minister. When the president spoke the words “unconditional surrender,” the prime minister sharply turned his head in a manner that suggested to John that this announcement came as a surprise to Mr. Churchill. John learned later that the president and the prime minister had discussed, and were in complete agreement on, this point.

Presidential remarks (click here)

IOWA Is Big

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(This photo shows Iowa’s commissioning ceremony at the NY Navy Yard on February 22, 1943. The ceremony took place on the stern of the ship under the 16-inch guns of the ship’s third big gun turret)

As I selected photographs for my talk on December 7th at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum, I was struck once again by the enormous size of USS Iowa. She is the first of the Iowa class battleships, the largest battleships ever built by the United States. Her length is 887 feet, about the size of 3 football fields laid end to end. Her beam (width) is 108 feet. She was designed to be able to pass through the Panama Canal with a mere 22 inches of clearance, 11 inches on either side.

However, statistics fail to capture the size of the ship. This shot shows Iowa’s bow with 2 of her three 16-inch gun turrets. The photo was taken from sky patrol, where men with binoculars surveyed the ship’s surroundings.

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(In this photo, taken at Iowa’s christening and launch on August 2, 1942, her hull dwarfs the onlookers on the side of the launching ramp)

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(This shot shows a portion of Iowa’s superstructure)

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USS Iowa’s Big Guns

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(Iowa’s 16” guns at work during a drill in the Pacific.)

Another BIG feature of USS Iowa is the 16” guns. There are 9 of them, 3 in each of 3 turrets. Two of the turrets are forward of the bridge. The third is to the stern. When the guns were operational, they could fire a shell of approximately 2,700 lbs.–roughly the weight of a Mini Cooper car–a distance of 23 miles.

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(Captain John McCrea speaking under the guns of the aft turret.)

When I was 12 or 13, I had occasion to have lunch on board the USS Missouri, one of Iowa’s sister ships, as a guest of the ship’s commanding officer. After lunch I had a tour of the ship, including one of the 16” gun turrets. I was able to get my head and shoulders into a gun barrel. (They wouldn’t let me go in any further.)

The Trip To Casablanca

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[On board the president’s C-54 in North Africa. Seated, 1st row (L to R): FDR and Harry Hopkins. Seated, 2d row (L to R): Lt. George A. Fox and Rear Adm. Ross T. McIntire, FDR’s physiotherapist and physician, respectively; Guy Spaman (back turned), Secret Service; and Captain McCrea. Standing (L to R): unidentified man; Arthur Prettyman, FDR’s valet; Charles Fredericks, Secret Service; E.R. Hipsley, Secret Service; W.K. Deckard, Secret Service; and Captain Otis Bryan, pilot of the plane.]

In the evening of January 9, 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt and his party departed Washington by train for Casablanca, Morocco, for meetings with Winston Churchill and British military leaders about the next phase of the war. Among the president’s party were Harry Hopkins, presidential adviser, Admiral William D. Leahy, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and Captain John L. McCrea, the president’s naval aide. The president had placed McCrea in charge of all the travel arrangements for the trip to North Africa.

The itinerary from Washington to Casablanca was far from direct. The group was to travel to Miami, Florida by special train. There they would board two chartered Pan American Clippers and fly south to Trinidad and Belém, Brazil, and then east, across the South Atlantic Ocean, to Bathurst, Gambia on Africa’s west coast. From Bathurst, they would fly north in two army C-54 planes to Casablanca. The Clipper legs of the trip essentially followed the route used by U.S. Army Air Transport Command to fly war materiel from the United States to the African theater of the war. This route was chosen because it offered the relatively limited aircraft of the day the shortest passage across the Atlantic.