USS Kearny torpedoed! (10-17-41)

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (October 20, 1941)

Wheeler urges Kearny inquiry by committee

Connally says U.S. Navy should sweep sealanes clean

Washington, Oct. 20 (UP) –
Senator Burton K. Wheeler (D-MT), non-interventionist leader, today called for a “thorough investigation” of the torpedoing of the USS Kearny which the Navy announced last night had resulted in several injuries and 11 “missing.”

Senator Wheeler suggested that the investigation be made by the Senate Naval Affairs Committee.

He said:

If the Germans are shooting at our ships that is a very serious matter. If the Kearny was chasing a German submarine, as was the case in the Greer attack, the Senate should know about it.

Connally comments

He referred to the report last week by the Navy Department that the USS Greer had followed a submarine in the North Atlantic several hours before the submarine launched torpedoes at it and missed. That incident occurred early in September.

Chairman Tom Connally (D-TX) of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, said of the Kearny incident:

This murderous and foul crime shall be avenged. Our vessels ought to sink every submarine in our defensive waters. It is revelation of the utter contempt of Hitler and his Nazi terrorism for all law, human and divine. We shall not tolerate the assassination of our sailors and destruction of our ships. They will shoot and shoot to kill.

‘Attack invited’

Senator Frederick Van Nuys (D-IN) of the Foreign Relations Committee thought the Kearny incident was “regrettable” but not one to alarm the public:

…because the attack was invited by the sending of the Kearny into the war zone without a declaration of war.

Chairman Sol Bloom (D-NY) of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said it demonstrates that the Germans:

…are a lot of mad men both on land and sea who do the most despicable things without regard to life or property.

House Democratic Leader John W. McCormack of Massachusetts charged that it was:

…an overt act of intimidation by the German government…

…in concert with the Japanese cabinet shakeup:

…to bring pressure on the United States in the Atlantic and the Pacific.

[NormanStewart]

Hull calls Hitler a highwayman

Washington, Oct. 20 (UP) –
Secretary of State Cordell Hull, in a press conference statement, described Adolf Hitler as a highwayman, and declared today that the attack on the USS Kearny was one more instance in the German leader’s effort to win control of the seas.

Hitler has sought to take over a large area of the Atlantic, Mr. Hull said, noting that Germany has asked all nations to keep their ships out of an area 1,600 miles by 1,500 miles.

No nation, he said, can send ships into or through this area without danger of having them sunk. It is part of Hitler’s plan of conquest by force, he said.

Asked whether the United States planned to send any diplomatic note of protest to Germany regarding the Kearny, Mr. Hull said the U.S. does not often send diplomatic notes to international highwaymen.

[NormanStewart]

Mother ‘had feeling’ her son was dead

Another Pittsburgh area sailor injured in Kearny incident

No casualties – that’s what the announcement had said.

But a mother’s premonition told Mrs. Mary Gray Stoltz differently.

She repeated:

It isn’t true.

…fumbling a letter she had just received from her son.

I know he’s dead. I have a feeling he is.

And yesterday, two days after the news of the torpedo attack on the USS Kearny, came the official Navy announcement:

Missing – Stoltz, Iral William (F1c) of Spangler, Cambria County, Pa.

Had received letter

It was just a few hours before the announcement of the attack on the destroyer was issued last Friday, that Mrs. Stoltz, a widow, had received a letter from her son.

He wrote:

I’m aboard the USS Kearny. And we’re having a wonderful time.

Sailor Stoltz, 36, was in his eighth year of service. He had enlisted first in the Navy in April 1924 and following completion of his term he returned to his home and took a job in the coal mines.

In July 1940, he reenlisted.

He visited his home several days last June.

Mrs. Stoltz was in Baltimore when she received word that her son is missing. She was at the bedside of her sister, Mrs. Anna Murphy, who is seriously ill.

Brother gets notice

The Navy Department’s notification was received at Spangler by Sailor Stoltz’s brother Olan last midnight.

Olan, 23, said:

We still have hope they’ll find him, or his body at least. We would like to have him home with us, no matter how.

Iral’s father, John R. Stoltz, died seven months ago. A brother was killed in a motorcycle accident 11 years ago.

Surviving brothers and sisters are Olan, Harry, Cecil and Lavanis Stoltz, of Spangler; Robert Stoltz, of Baltimore; Mrs. Larue Tyler of Hastings, and Mrs. Vivian Feightner, of Hastings, Pa.

Critically injured

Another Pittsburgh district sailor, Samuel R. Kurtz (TM3c) of R.D. 3, Erie, was critically injured in the attack on the Kearny and rushed to a hospital after the ship limped into an unnamed port.

At Erie, Mr. Kurtz’s mother, Mrs. W. J. Weed, was so shocked by the news that she was given sedatives by a physician and was not able to make a statement.

There are seven other children in the family, four boys and three girls. Samuel was the only one in the U.S. armed forces. He joined the Navy in the spring of 1940.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (October 21, 1941)

Missing from Kearny

Iral W. Stoltz – Still missing from the USS Kearny, the first American warship to be torpedoed, is 36-year-old Mr. Stoltz (F1c). His home is at Spangler, Cambria County, Pa.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (October 22, 1941)

‘It’s this waiting… waiting.’

An American sailor’s mother learns her boy is missing in action… ‘just missing’
By Jean Lightfoot

Mrs. Jenny Dobnikar: “Just ‘missing,’ it reads. Maybe still alive!”

Cleveland, Oct. 22 –
Eleven “next of kin” received the “missing” telegrams:

The Navy Department deeply regrets… USS Kearny… torpedoed…

A mother in California, one in Carolina, Mrs. Dobnikar in Cleveland. Her three sons are in the Navy. Louis (WT2c) was on the Kearny. He is missing.

At present the Department has nothing but bare facts… will let you know…

Louis Dobnikar

What does the paper say? His picture – there. See? Eighteen years a sailor! The radio. Could we call Washington? Another broadcast at 4 o’clock? It’s this waiting… this waiting…

Mrs. Jenny Dobnikar is small and gray and 70, has brown, work-weathered skin and bright Balkan eyes, speaks little English. She lives in two small rooms at the back of a shingled house in northeast Cleveland, on a narrow street that is putty colored with industrial smoke. It is the money her three sailor sons send so regularly that keeps her comfortable here, and the presents and pictures they send that have kept her proudly happy.

Enter by the kitchen. It is crowded. There are Yugoslavian friends, some who have known her since she came from the old country when the century was just beginning. They are speaking in Slovenian.

There is Mrs. Bandelean from the Navy Mothers’ Club.

We were all so frightened… and it was to have been such a nice Navy Day Monday, marching to the square and all…

There is Mrs. Edward Davis. Her Lithuanian accent soft with sympathy, she says:

My Ozzie knows well her boys and Louis comes by us only last time he is home.

The three married daughters, bright, pretty, their light makeup streaked with tears, take wraps, pour coffee, spin radio dials, stroke their mother’s shoulder with nervous fingers.

I suppose the boys know…

Louise explains:

John is a third class chief petty officer on a ship at Hawaii. He’ll be a warrant officer someday!

And Marie:

Frank is the youngest. In Washington now, after Iceland on a destroyer. An electrical engineer at the Navy school there. Second class, soon to be first!

They are so proud of the boys.

Jean begins to cry again:

But Louis… Maybe he is trapped in one of the boiler rooms?

Just missing, it reads. Maybe still alive?

It does not matter that you do not know what Mr. Dobnikar is saying because her eyes and their tears are telling you. The voice is telling you, making lachrymose music of the grief it speaks in Slovenian, sob-broken, mournful, the strange words rising from a gentle moan to ride the crest of a wall, to break there, to begin again in low, bewildered tones.

But most of all it is the hands that tell you. Like lost brown birds they fly in sorrow to her tired brown face. She rubs them sorrowfully together. She cries:

My Louie! Bring 'im home!

And the brown hands tell her rosary that tomorrow there will be candles to the Virgin.

My boys… keep them safe…

Jean whispers:

She prayed all night.

Louise whispers:

He always said:

Pray for me, mama.

Their mother mutters something, rubbing the brown hands along her lap as if to warm them.

Marie whispers:

She is saying Louis did not think he would see her again when he was home last summer.

Jean whispers. the tears starting:

She is saying – she is saying Louis was always afraid the fish would get him…

Pointing to a Last Supper by the crucifix over the metal bed, Jean says:

A picture Louie sent from Rio de Janeiro.

The names are in Spanish – Pedro, João, Jacobi, Philippe, Thadeu.

The border – see how it shines? – is made from butterfly wings.

She takes the picture from the wall and holds it gently.

Brown fingers move slowly over the rosary:

Jesu… Jesu…

Ave Maria…

Presently the hands are still, the gray head lifted.

Mrs. Dobnikar, finishing the slow, thoughtful sentence in Slovenian, begins:

When de vater…

Jean translates, listening as she speaks:

She is saying that when the water comes in and you cannot get out there is nothing a sailor can do.

Now she is saying how proud she is her boys fight for America. We are proud, too. See?

She points to the wall. Blue are the letters on a white satin banner: God Bless America.

John sent it. We will put it in the window now.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (October 23, 1941)

Henry McLemore’s viewpoint –
Writing note about Kearny would be like asking burglar to apologize for robbing you

By Henry McLemore

New York –
If I hadn’t been such an oaf of a boy and flunked manual training, I certainly would get to work on a lathe and make Cordell Hull a nice present. The Secretary of State deserves a lampstand, a magazine rack or some candlesticks for refusing to write Germany a note of protest on the torpedoing of the American destroyer Kearny.

This must have been a difficult decision for Mr. Hull to make because he has been in the striped pants, silk hat and morning coat business for a long time, and almost the first thing a beginning diplomat learns is how to pen those politely disagreeable messages to foreign powers.

He has undoubtedly written hundreds of notes in his time, and the chances are that he instinctively reached for his fountain pen when the news of the Kearny reached him.

Like writing to burglar

But good for the man from Tennessee! He ceased for a moment to be a diplomat and became an indignant human being and said no note would be sent to an international highwayman.

It would be hard for anyone with as many as one and a half red corpuscles in his veins to disagree with the Secretary of State’s policy. To write Hitler a note of protest would be little different from dropping the burglar who ransacked your house a note something like this:

My dear burglar:

It has been brought to my attention that in Thursday last you broke into my home, blackjacked the cook and stole everything of value I possessed. You cannot imagine how deeply hurt and offended I am at these unwarranted actions of yours. My whole family has been called into discussion and is in agreement that you are in the wrong. We feel you deserve this rebuke and I have been instructed to tell you that until such time as you make proper apologies we shall continue to be deeply offended. I will expect an immediate answer from you and your promise that you will not rob me in the near future.

What good would it do?

If Mr. Hull had sent a note, what good would it have done? The Germans have made it plain over and over again that they are a peaceful, fun-loving people and that the last thing they’d ever do would be to shoot at one of our boats.

We sent them notes on the Greer and our other boats which have been shot at and you know what happened. They were horrified at the suggestion that the kind, fatherly commanders of their submarines would fire on boats of a nation they love the way they do the United States and implied that our boats had not been damaged by torpedoes but by flying fish gone berserk or by collision with English driftwood.

Too, if Mr. Hull had sent a note, the Germans could have pointed out that they certainly would not have done such a thing right on the eve of paying a pretty compliment to President Roosevelt. They did pay him a compliment, you know.

Hate him worst of all

Right out of a clear sky, they announced they hated him worse than they did Winston Churchill and promoted him to the position of “Warmonger No. 1.” So that is no small honor, coming from the Germans, because they have a fair country warmonger of their own. Give Herr Hitler a saddle and he could ride with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and not need to ask for a head start.

But to get back to Mr. Hull and his refusal to waste State Department stationery on notes to the Nazis, he is right in taking the first step toward cutting a lot of red tape which is meaningless and outmoded. The day of diplomatic courtesy is past.

The pen may still be mightier than the sword, but the pens of France, Poland, Norway, Holland, and all the others haven’t done anything to prove this point.

[grayknight1781]

@NormanStewart

A picture Louie sent from Rio de Janeiro.

The names are in Spanish – Pedro, João, Jacobi, Philippe, Thadeu.

I think you mean Portuguese Jean.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (October 30, 1941)

Kearny points way –
Naval experts acclaim design of destroyers

Fact that ship was not sunk, proves it is sturdy craft

Washington, Oct. 30 (UP) –
Failure of a German submarine to sink the U.S. destroyer Kearny – torpedoed and damaged with a loss of 11 lives southwest of Iceland – convinced naval experts today that the United States’ newest destroyers are the sturdiest in the world.

That was the appraisal in informed quarters of a report describing the incident and damage to the $7.5-million speedy destroyer. Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox issued the report late yesterday.

‘Almost miraculous’

Naval experts said there was no other recorded instance in which a thinly-armored destroyer was struck squarely by a torpedo and survived. The fact that the Kearny, escorted by other nearby American warships, safely reached port under her own power with her dead and 10 wounded was described as “almost miraculous” and a tribute to American naval designing and engineering.

Pictures of the damaged destroyer taken by the Army Signal Corps and released by the Navy showed the torn steel of the ship.

Mr. Knox’s report said the Kearny, one of the so-called “top-heavy” class because of its speed and radical design, was escorting a convoy of merchantmen on the nights of Oct. 16-17 when it received distress calls from another group of cargo ships being attacked by German submarines. Speeding to their aid, the Kearny sighted a merchantman, according to Mr. Knox, under attack by a German submarine. The Kearny, he said, then dropped depth bombs.

Mr. Knox continued:

Sometime afterward three torpedo tracks were observed approaching the USS Kearny. One passed ahead of the ship, one astern, and the third struck the USS Kearny on the starboard side in the vicinity of the forward fire-room.

Deck ripped out

The force of the explosion killed the men in the boiler room, which was flooded, and the men stationed on deck above it. The blast, according to the report, ripped out the deck, deckhouse, and bridge above the room. In addition, it flooded a compartment ahead of the boiler room.

The report, prepared by Rear Admiral Samuel M. Robinson, chief of the Bureau of Ships, said the destroyer was able to use her own power to get into port. This is explained by the fact that there are, in the new destroyers, two sets of boiler rooms and two engines.