Lake Michigan and World War ll: Submarines, Aircraft Carriers, PT Boats and Fighter Planes

2014

With a population of just over 3,000, Algoma would seem to have been too small a place to have any kind World War ll prominence, but it did. Though Kewaunee wasn’t any bigger, that city also had a huge impact on the war. So did Sturgeon Bay and Manitowoc. Each of the Lake Michigan cities had a profound effect on winning the war.

In today’s world it is hard to imagine Lake Michigan having any kind of military role, especially one as early as the War of 1812. The Louisiana Purchase was fewer than 10 years old and, although there was some westward expansion, Lewis and Clark completed their epic exploration only 6 years before.

Early in the 1800s the British sloop Felicity is believed to have been patrolling, years before the War of 1812 started. One story is that the sloop was supposed to prevent the Potawatomie from joining the Americans. Another is that the patrolling ship’s captain had reason to believe the Potawatomie near today’s Two Rivers had large stores of corn for which he hoped to trade rum and tobacco and then take the corn to the garrison at Mackinac. Histories mention the British ships Welcome and Archangel sailing Lake Michigan serving in similar capacities. 

One hundred thirty years later, Lake Michigan was again supporting war efforts, however somewhat differently than most would think. Cloaked in secrecy, roles played by the lake shore communities were not widely known until well after the War. Nobody knew who was trustworthy, and it was assumed that enemy spies were everywhere.

One of the most well kept secrets is the subject of a soon-to-be released TV documentary, one which will appear on WPTV in mid-June. This blogger was among the privileged who saw the documentary at Sturgeon Bay Maritime Museum in late May.

Well before World War ll, tour boats were popular on the Great Lakes. As touring by auto and train got easier, interest in the tour boats began to wane. At the advent of World War ll, the Navy had 7 aircraft carriers and not enough planes or pilots. That the Pacific aircraft carriers Enterprise, Lexington and Saratoga were not at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 was miraculous.

Lt. Col. Edwin Goetz

Aircraft carriers are ocean-going ships, not Great Lakes side-wheel excursion vessels, but that’s where and how pilots learned to land and take off from a carrier. The Navy purchased two of the old cruise ships, removed the top levels and built a flight deck on each. Reconstruction expected to take 4 months was accomplished in two. Bomber pilots, some of whom were trained in Alabama by friend Ed Goetz, were sent to Glenview Naval Air Station in Illinois, just north of Great Lakes Naval Training Station.  

It was there on Lake Michigan that men such as future U.S. president George H.W. Bush completed training by taking off from Glenview and then practicing landing and taking off from the tour-boats- turned-aircraft-carriers.  After 8 or so landings and take offs, the crews were on their way to the Pacific. The Lake Michigan program was secret and when the war was over, it was estimated that over 17,000 pilots, signal officers and other personnel had trained aboard the two tour-boats-turned-aircraft carriers.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Wolverine_(IX-64)

Crashes killed men in the planes and men on the deck crews. Seventy years later, planes on Michigan’s bottom are being located, raised, towed into Chicago and refurbished. These important pieces of history are being preserved in museums throughout the country, monuments to those who served and gave their lives so we might have ours.

Even before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Algoma’s U.S. Plywood production was gearing up for war production. As men were drafted, women who had never before worked in manufacturing positions took over the jobs. Estimates are that the Plywood “boat works” was made up of no less than 85% women. Algoma-made plywood was used in the PT motor torpedo boat that in 1942 rescued General Douglass MacArthur, his wife, their son Arthur, Arthur’s Chinese nurse and other military personnel, taking them from Bataan to Mindanao.  Hulls from the boat works were sent elsewhere to be finished. Airplane wings and nose cones constructed at the Perry Street plant were also built from Algoma plywood.

An August 1943 Algoma Record Herald reported that five Japanese planes had been shot out of the air over Guadalcanal by Lt. Murray Shubin flying a Lockheed P-38 Lightening plane for which Algoma Plywood supplied parts. The article pointed out that not only was it a red-letter day for Lt. Shubin, but also for the Algoma Plywood. The workers received a pat on the back in a telegram from the assistant chief of the Army's Air Force staff, Major General Giles. In the telegram, Giles praised those on the production line who "had done your work exceedingly well and I thought you would like to know it."  Algoma Plywood was also awarded the Army-Navy “E” for Excellence. Where did Shubin get his training? On a Lake Michigan aircraft carrier?

At 17 when he graduated from high school, Algoma’s Jim Evans was several months too young to enlist in the Navy so he got a job in Sturgeon Bay as a welder at Laethem-Smith Shipyards. Living next to St. Agnes-By-the-Lake, Jim had a perfect view of what was happening on the lake, and sometimes it was seeing a submarine surfacing. A sub on Lake Michigan?  The deepest part of the lake is off Manitowoc and to just south of Algoma. Subs built in Manitowoc were retrofitted in Sturgeon Bay and there were days Jim was leaving for work only to see a sub surfacing, also on its way north. Jim’s welding brought the young man a new awareness: he knew what a faulty weld would do to a ship, and to the men on it who were already giving their lives. In the years to come, it was something that often crossed the mind of the young seaman.

Finally old enough to enlist, Jim was beyond basic training, in Florida and enjoying a little liberty with his new shipmates. As the men watched a vessel come up river (inter-coastal waterway) one night as they returned to their ship, Jim was stunned to see it was built in Sturgeon Bay and one on which he had worked. The thing was, nobody believed him. After all, Jim was just a kid and a seaman who was out enjoying new-found liberty.

Sturgeon Bay’s yards built 257 vessels in 3 ½ years. The yards grew so fast that within 6 months the city’s population exploded, nearly doubling overnight from 6,000 to about 11,000 people. It has been said about 40% of the shipyard employees were women and young women meant child care. Clarice Chapman Reynard began teaching kindergarten in the Quonset at Sunset Beach, a few hundred yards north of the Laethem-Smith yard. The war meant a shortage of teachers and Clarice had 125-135 kindergartners in a class! Those kindergartners were not as old as 5. The old Quonset was the building on the south end of Sunset Park in which Ray Christianson began the museum that is now Door County Maritime Museum.

On July 5, 1944 Kewaunee Shipbuilding and Engineering was the county’s second company awarded with the Army-Navy “E” for Excellence. By the time of the award, the company had launched 70 boats from diesel tenders to cargo and transport ships, 64 of which had been delivered. The company’s employees were recognized for their morale, their excellence in production and the records they continued to beat. Noting that the company had a remarkable training program which transformed farmers, merchants and professional men into exceptionally skilled shipbuilding workers, the high ranking military officials had nothing but good things to say about it. Production in what was a strip of swampland began in late 1941 and was going strong by May 1942. Note: A similar project began in 1917 with World War l but it failed.

Algoma Plywood, now Algoma Hardwoods, Kewaunee Shipbuilding and Engineering, now Kewaunee Fabrications, Laethem-Smith Shipyard, later Sturgeon Bay Shipbuilding and now Fincantierie, Sturgeon Bay's Peterson Builders and Manitowoc Shipbuilding Co. were forces in the World War ll effort. Manitowoc Shipbuilding and Peterson Builders no longer exist, however the other companies continue to provide employment to residents of Northeast Wisconsin.

To learn more about World War ll pilots and carrier training on Lake Michigan, watch for Heroes on Deck, a John Davies documentary that will be broadcast in mid-June on the Wisconsin channel of WPTV. More about the war time roles of the industries of Northeast Wisconsin can be found in area newspapers, libraries and by Googling.

Sources: Algoma Record Herald; Sturgeon Bay Advocate; Women of the Plywood: The World War ll Years, c. 1996; earlier blog posts; Photos except where cited are in the blogger's collection.