Poopie Suits Series, Book 4
History – US submarine Force
Date Published: 09-08-2023
Sub Tales 4 is the latest offering by brothers Charles and Frank Hood in
their prolific output of nonfiction books about the US Submarine Force. Like
the three volumes preceding it in the series, Sub Tales 4 offers a detailed
recounting of some of the most pivotal and poignant moments in the rich
history of the Silent Service. Arranged as an anthology of individual short
stories, the book covers many subjects with prose, photographs, maps,
schematics, and other illustrations to complement the narrative.
EXCERPT
Tragedy Mars the Operation SUB TALES 4 Operation Barney was a decisive strategic victory for the US, but it came at a cost. One of the nine submarines did not survive the mission. The original orders for the three wolfpacks called for a rendezvous at a specified location in the northern aspect of the Sea of Japan at sunset on 23 June in preparation for exodus via the La Perouse Strait. However, Bonefish failed to appear, and later evidence revealed that she had been depth-charged four days earlier off the western coast of Honshu. All 85 hands were lost. The eight subs that survived the mission exited the Sea of Japan at its northern perimeter at the La Perouse Strait at nighttime on 24 June. The sobering loss of Bonefish dampened any celebratory notions following Operation Barney. The war ended less than two months later after relentless aerial bombing campaigns—culminating with the dropping of atomic bombs at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki—that finally brought the Empire of the Sun to its knees. The details of Operation Barney remained obscure to the general public until Lockwood’s book hit the shelves in 1955. Columbia Pictures purchased the rights to the movie adaptation and began pre-production the following year on a fictionalized version of the story. The screenplay was written by David Lang and Raymond Marcus. Nathan Juran, a former Oscar-winning art director for his work in How Green Was My Valley (1942), was chosen as the film’s director. Today, Juran is best remembered as the director of such cult classics as Attack of the 50-Foot Woman and The Deadly Mantis. The Navy liaison overseeing produc tion as “technical advisor” was Lieutenant Commander William R. Boose. The title of the movie differed slightly from the book that inspired it: Hellcats of the Sea became Hellcats of the Navy. The Star of Hellcats of the Navy Ronald Reagan, the man who served as the 40th president of the United States, did not visit a submarine during his two terms in office (1981 1989). However, he had roles in two submarine movies. His first was as the sailor Paul in the 1937 release Submarine D-1; unfortunately for the aspiring actor from Tampico, Illinois, his brief scenes were omitted from the final cut. Twenty years later, however, Reagan received top billing as submarine commander Casey Abbott in the film Hellcats of the Navy. 278 Hellcats: Real-Life and Big-Screen Reagan’s career as a movie star began in the late 1930s when a studio agent noticed Reagan while he was in California covering baseball spring training as a radio broadcaster. Reagan passed a screen test and began appearing in motion pictures for the next twenty years. Some of his most famous roles included George Gipp in Knute Rockne: All American (1940) and Professor Peter Boyd in Bedtime for Bonzo (1951). All told, Reagan appeared in more than 60 motion pictures between 1937 and 1964. Although he suffered from poor vision, Reagan enlisted in the US Army Reserves in 1937 and attained the rank of second lieutenant attached to a cavalry unit in Des Moines, IA. After Hollywood came calling, he continued his reserve service in Los Angeles. During World War II, Reagan served as a public relations officer in the Army Air Forces from April 1942 to December 1945. He appeared in more than 400 training films for the military during this time and achieved the rank of captain. After the war, Reagan returned to Hollywood. In 1947, he was elect ed president of the Screen Actors Guild. He held this powerful post for five years during one of the most tumultuous periods in Hollywood history. Reagan’s term engendered no small amount of controversy for his handling of the Hollywood blacklist scandal during the Second Red Scare. It was during this period in the late 1940s and early 1950s that prominent political leaders, most notably Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, accused many actors, directors, and other artists in the entertainment industry of having un-American or Communist ties. The Reagans cut their wedding cake on 04 March 1952 at a private ceremony in Studio City, CA. The only two people in attendance were the actor William Holden and his wife. 279 SUB TALES 4 Such witch hunts turned Hollywood upside down and ended many promising careers. The affair took a toll on Reagan’s personal life as well. His first wife, Jane Wyman, filed for divorce in 1948, in part because of the couple’s differing views on blacklisting. Rebounding quickly, Reagan met an actress under contract to MGM named Nancy Davis. The two fell in love and were married in 1952. Reagan became a familiar household fixture in the 1950s as Ameri can households, by the tens of millions, embraced the burgeoning phenomenon of network television. He served as the host of the weekly program General Electric Theater, a popular show airing on Sunday evenings from 1954 to 1961. Although there was a radio version that preceded the television format, Ronald Reagan was the only host of the latter incarnation during its eight-year run. Ronald Reagan was nearing the end of his cinematic career when he accepted the starring role in the Columbia production of Hellcats; It would be his fifty-second movie role and his penultimate screen appearance ever as a leading star. By the time Hellcats went into production, Reagan had already pivoted from movie star to television host, and given his good looks, affability, and polished oratorical skills, even greater aspirations in the political arena were taking root. Part of his contract with General Electric (GE) also called for his giving motivational speeches and touring GE plants around the country; this arrangement allowed Reagan to plant the seeds of a nationwide network of future campaign financiers and supporters for his later (and successful) gubernatorial run in California in 1966. General Electric Theater was an hour-long anthology series that featured a range of programming from comedy to romance to drama. Ronald Reagan was its host. 280 Hellcats: Real-Life and Big-Screen Reagan’s agreement with GE allowed him to take the occasional movie role, and the chance to portray the romantic interest opposite his real wife Nancy, cast as the Navy nurse Lieutenant Helen Blair, was too much to pass up. (Side note: General Electric played an outsized role in the development of the modern nuclear reactor for use aboard subma rines! (For more information, consult the chapters about USS Seawolf (SSN-575) and the S5G reactor in our book Sub Tales 3.) Reagan looks serious while checking his watch as Commander Casey Abbott. A One-Week Shoot for Reagan Filming for the low-budget movie began in San Diego on 04 December 1956. Ronald Reagan reported for duty on 02 January 1957. The production occurred with the full cooperation of the Navy which lent the use of one of its submarines for some of the action. Some of the outdoor scenes were shot along Palos Verdes Peninsula and Long Beach, while many of the interior scenes were filmed on a Columbia Pictures set in Hollywood. Action footage at sea, as well as a portion of the soundtrack, were recycled from other movies to hasten completion. For example, a scene of men struggling to survive in water contaminated by flaming fuel was lifted directly from Crash Dive (1943), while an underwater scuba scene came from The Frogmen (1951). Much of the Max Steiner score for Hellcats appeared three years earlier in The Caine Mutiny. The screenplay loosely follows the exploits of Operation Barney but 281 SUB TALES 4 dilutes any serious effort to maintain historical integrity by the insertion of an awkwardly scripted love triangle among Captain Abbott, Nurse Blair, and Lieutenant Commander Don Landon, played by Arthur Franz. The operational details fade into the background for not only the romantic fiction but also an overblown conflict between Reagan and Franz (as CO and XO of Starfish) about whether the fate of a single sailor should jeopardize the entire crew. The controversy makes for interesting fodder but detracts from the larger context of the mission. Stars Ronald Reagan, Nancy Davis Reagan, and William Leslie The role of the fictional submarine USS Starfish was played by the USS Besugo (SS-321), a Balao-class submarine based out of San Diego that had completed five war patrols during World War II. Her com manding officer (CO) during the movie shoot was Lieutenant Commander Merrill E. Kelly. Kelly had come to Besugo only nine months earlier after a stint as the CO of USS Sea Dog (SS-401). Earlier, Kelly had served two war patrols aboard USS Hawkbill (SS-366) during World War II. In the 1960s, Kelly was promoted to captain and become a commander of US naval forces in Taiwan. He and Reagan remained lifelong friends. The executive officer aboard the Besugo at the time of the filming of Hellcats was Lieutenant Lloyd Bucher. He garnered worldwide attention a decade later as the CO of USS Pueblo (AGER-2) when the spy ship was attacked and captured by North Korea in January 1968. One crew member was killed, and the other 82 were taken prisoner and subjected 282 Hellcats: Real-Life and Big-Screen to harsh treatment and torture over the next eleven months until their release. (Pueblo, although still a commissioned ship in the US Navy, remains in the possession of North Korea today.) Before the cameras rolled, Reagan spent several hours with the crew of the Besugo familiarizing himself with the operation of the periscope and other instruments in the control room. He also toured the ward room, engine room, and torpedo rooms. However, Reagan suffered from bouts of claustrophobia and required frequent breaks from the cramped control room set. He found relief by climbing into the conning tower, ascending to the bridge, and gulping some fresh air. Whenever he was unable to vacate the control room while working during such disquieting moments, Reagan relieved his anxiety by peering through the periscope between takes. Film critic Kate Cameron described her conversation with Reagan in 1957 about the difficulties of filming aboard the submarine at San Diego: Reagan told me that the space they had to work with was so lim ited that they had to have special cameras to photograph the action in the interior of the sub. Even when they had to shoot a scene in the conning tower, the producer was unable to be on the set because the control room and conning tower could only ac commodate 16 people.
About the Author
Charles Hood is a Physician in South Carolina. He is the principal author
of 7 of the 8 books in the Poopie Suits Series of True Stories, not fiction,
from the US Submarine Force. Covering decades and wars and the Cold War,
these stories offer insight into the severe world of the men (and now women)
living inside a steel tube designed to sink. What were the pressures
they faced, the close calls, the unique encounters in ports, how did their
families cope? These subjects, and a whole lot more are covered in the
Poopie Suits Series.
Frank Hood served on a nuclear submarine from 1968-1972 and his story
“Poopie Suits & Cowboy Boots – Tales from a Submarine Officer
During the Height of the Cold War” was his story. Surviving
an odd interview with VADM Hyman G. Rickover was the first test. His
story interweaves with the culture of the time, the Vietnam War, campus
protests, the race with the Soviets to build deeper diving, quiter
submarines, and a lot more.
Contact Links
Purchase Link
