June 14, 2024 • 26 mins
Newt is joined by Nathan Canestaro, author of “The Mighty Moo: The USS Cowpens and Her Epic World War II Journey from Jinx Ship to the Navy’s First Carrier into Tokyo Bay”. He discusses the history of the USS Cowpens, a WWII aircraft carrier. Despite initial setbacks and being considered a "jinx ship", the USS Cowpens served with distinction from 1943 to 1945, participating in nearly every major carrier operation. The ship and its crew, made up of second-string reservists and citizen sailors, faced a deadly typhoon and were the only U.S. aircraft carrier in Tokyo Bay to witness the Japanese surrender. Canestaro's research into his grandfather's service on the ship led him to uncover the story of the USS Cowpens and its crew.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
On this episode of News World, the USS Cowpens and
her crew weren't your typical heroes. She was a flat
top that the US Navy initially didn't want, but the
captain nearly scapegoaded for the loss of his last command,
pilots who self trained on the planes they would fly
into combat, and sailors that had been in uniform barely
longer than the ship had been afloat. Despite their humble origins,
(00:27):
Cowpens and her band of second string reservists and citizen
sailors served with distinction, fighting in nearly every major carrier
operation from nineteen forty three to nineteen forty five. Together,
they faced a deadly typhoon that brought the ship to
the verge of capsize and a war's end. There was
only one US aircraft carrier in Tokyo Bay to witness
(00:49):
the Japanese surrender The Mighty Move. In the years to follow,
Cowpen's service has become the well spring for a remarkable
modern tradition, both within the US Navy and the small
southern town that still celebrates her legacy with the festival
every year. The Mighty Moo is a biography of a
World War II aircraft carrier, as told through the voices
(01:11):
of its heroic crew, A band of brothers at sea,
here to discuss his new book. I'm really pleased to
welcome my guest, Nathan CANISTERO. He is a professional intelligence
officer whose research on his grandfather's service in World War
Two led to a decade long effort to undercover the
story of Calpen's and her crew. He is currently an
(01:32):
assignment to the National Intelligence Council. Nathan, welcome and thank
you for joining me at Newsworld.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Well, thank you, sir, it's great to be here. I
appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
I have to confess I found the topic absolutely fascinating
and from angles I would never have dreamed of. And
as I understanding, it began with research into your grandfather's
service in World War Two, and that led you to
a decade long research project of the story of the
USS Kalpens. What did you know about your grandfather's service
(02:14):
before he started researching? What was it about chatting with
your grandfather and his service in World War Two that
led you to a decade long research project.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
The simplest answer to that question is he wouldn't tell
me anything. Like many men of his generation. He was
traumatized by his experience in the war, and when he
came home he wanted to put it behind him, and
he would just sort of hint at things that had
happened to him without really getting into the details. So
for a guy like me who's interested in World War
two history and grew up with band of brothers and
(02:48):
saving Private Ryan, the fact that there was a story
here that he was uncomfortable sharing was kind of cat nipped.
And after he passed in twenty ten, I resolved to
go looking for this story to try and find out
what Grandpa wouldn't tell me. And so do We found
this amazing story about his ship and his crew which
no one had really ever heard of. It's kind of
(03:08):
a forgotten aspect of the Second World War.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Talk briefly about your grandfather's own experience in the war.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Sure, So, he was a tail gunner on a torpedo
bomber in the Pacific, an Avenger torpedo bomber, the same
sort of plane that George hw Bush flew in in
the Second World War. And he flew from this light
aircraft carrier called the USS Cowpens and he was part
of torpedo Scaraj in twenty two, and he arrived in
the war mid forty four and stayed until forty five
(03:40):
or so February March forty five, spent a lot of
time in the Battle for the Liberation of the Philippines.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Given that background, well, how did you then make the
leap to deciding you really want to know about the
aircraft carrier Cowpens?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Partly because I'd never heard of it. You know, when
you think about WARWICHI aircraft carriers like the Intrepid in
New York City or New York Town in South Carolina,
the little light aircraft carriers never come to mind. I'd
never heard of it, and the Navy is very good
at keeping records, and I started digging through all the
official documents and sort of learning the story of what
(04:17):
it went through and kind of some of the characters important.
I consider myself fairly and well informed on the war,
But I'm like, why have I never heard of any
of this? It's kind of this story that just hasn't
been told, and those are pretty rare these days where
the war were to history. I said to my then
girlfriend now wife at the time, I said, you know,
I think there's a book here, and she said, oh, yeah,
(04:37):
you should totally write it. And I don't think either
of us knew exactly how much that entailed or how
difficult that process is. But once I get a hold
of something and start pulling on the thread, the more
you discover, the more it becomes sort of an obsession.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
You had already done military history before this, in terms
of studying it and being aware of it.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Well, an intelligence officer by training. So the military history
I do is sort of the current day. Most of
my professional background is the war on Terror in the
Middle East. I've been in this business for twenty five years,
so nine to eleven and onwards. I'd always been sort
of a casual enjoyment reader of World War II history,
but never a professional historian. And sort of the sense
(05:20):
that you're alluding to.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
You have this curiosity, how do you go about digging
out the information, tracking it down, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Well, the first place to stop is the National Archives,
and now a lot of the records are being digitized.
You can get them available online, which is great, and
the Navy's a fantastic record keeper. And there was about
i'd say between three and five thousand pages of records
in terms of what the ship did on a day
to day basis. I also had the benefit of there's
(05:52):
a Cowpens Reunion Association that is active here in Cowpens
where I am today, that has been sort of collecting
these materials and is a hub for the folks who
served aboard the ship. And they have just been a
huge help in not only helping me locate the few
remaining veterans that are alive, but connecting me to some
of the families that have materials left over, both diaries
(06:15):
and journals and records. And it's some of those stories
that really sort of gives the Cowpins tail. It's life.
It's a biography of a ship told through the voices
of the men who served aboard.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
From that perspective, what did you find the most useful
in understanding the story of the USS Scalpens.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
There were a few particular individuals whose diaries and journals
were critical in helping me understand and I can talk
about a couple of those. The first one was a
guy by the name of Bob Price, and Bob was
the commander of the ship's first spider squadron, and then
he moved up to be commander of its air group,
a series of progressively steadily more important jobs aboard ship,
(06:58):
and sadly he was lost in a typhoon in December
forty four, but his family kept all his letters home
and donated them all to the Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola.
When you put his story, you know, because he couldn't
be too detailed because there was a censor, but he
would allude to things in his letters, and when you
put that up against sort of the chronology of what
(07:20):
came out of the official records, you could sort of
see the things that he was alluding to. There was
one letter their first combat mission did not go well
at Wake. They lost four men shot down. Two of
them just disappeared, two others were shot down but recovered
at sea. And he wrote to his wife and he
said something to the effect of, you know, familiar faces
fall by the wayside, and it hurts, but over time
(07:43):
we become accustomed and callous to it. And if you
hadn't sort of put those sort of the timeline up
against the letters, you wouldn't have known what he was
referring to.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Is there an official US Navy history of the.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Ship, Yes, and their daily reports.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Yes, Sir itself created an archival document just as part
of its operating procedure.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yes, and a lot of it. Every dog fight, every
bombing mission, every day, very very detailed.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
You know, it might help our listeners understand the nature
of these light carriers, which I think, are they the
same as what we call jeep carriers.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
No, they're slightly different. So the jeep carriers were built
on the hulls of merchant ships, tankers or freighters, and
they were slow. They couldn't keep up with the big
fleet carriers. The light carriers were kind of in between.
And essentially what they did is they took a light cruiser,
which you know, they could go thirty to thirty two knots,
and they put a flight deck on them. To be
perfectly blood, These were not great ships, and it was
(08:44):
only because the US Navy was so desperate at the
time that it would ever build a ship like this.
You have to remember that, you know, in that first
terrible year of the war, we started with six aircraft
carriers and by the end of forty two we were
down to two. And the situation was so desperate that
we went to the British and said, hey, can you
send one of your carriers out to the Pacific for
six months or actually ninety days, sorry, so we can
(09:07):
send Enterprise into dry dock and get our battle wounds patched.
So President Roosevelt, even before the war, he was worried
that there just weren't enough flat tops to fight Japan,
and he tried to convince the Navy to make these
little light carriers, and the Navy gave them a real fight.
They weren't interested. They had their construction program, they didn't
(09:28):
appreciate their boss messing around in it. They didn't think
such a small carrier would be valuable. And FDR gave
him a fight, and finally he prevailed, and so they
made one, and they were going to call it quits
at that, but then they started losing the big carriers,
and so every time you had a major loss at
seeing Wasp, Pornett, Lexington, New York Town, they'd queue up
a batch of two or three of these light carriers
(09:50):
and send them out to the fleet as a backup. Essentially,
they were only there until the Essexes, the big ones
started becoming available in large numbers in the end of
forty four.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
How many of the light carriers did they build.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
They built nine. There's a lot of things that are
notable above them, but one of the ones I find
the need is the two future presidents served aboard these
light carriers. You had George H. W. Bush served aboard
the Sanjacinto and Gerald Ford served aboard the Monterey.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
These all took what had been laid down as a
light cruiser hall and then just had a carrier put
on top of it.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Just put a carrier on top of them. And they
were tall. They had a very high center of gravity,
which made them kind of tippy. They were very unstable
and heavy seas. They had a seventy three foot wide
flight deck, which was the narrowest flight deck in the Navy,
and that consequently gave them the highest accident rate in
the Navy. These ships were very dangerous to fly from,
(10:47):
and they were really crowded for their crew. I mean
they were built the whole thirteen hundred sailors aboard a
light cruiser. The Navy packed fifteen hundred a board as
a carrier when you added the flight groups and things
like that, so they left a lot to be desired
as a ship.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
This is not on typical that you have FDR, who
was an extraordinarily powerful president, trying very hard to bully
the navy. And Roosevelt had been under Secretary of the
Navy under Woodrow Wilson and had a really deep interest
in the Navy. And only when reality intervenes does the
(11:39):
Navy agree finally to build these characters.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Yeah, there was a great quote from FDR. He said,
fighting with the admirals is like punching a feather bed.
You punching, You punch, and you punch, and you punch,
and then you stop punching, and you see the feather
bed is totally unchanged from when you started to begin with.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
At one point he said something to Admiral King, who
was the Chief of Naval Operations, like, I know you
think this is your navy.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
He knew the Navy. He knew a lot of the
major commanders when he was under Secretary of the Navy
during World War One. You know, he joked to you
he was his own secretary of the Navy.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
How many aircraft could these light carriers carry?
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Only thirty three that's about a third of the big
Essex class depending on circumstance, but usually twenty four fighters
and nine torpedo bombers.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Roosevelt is starting to build these things. It's a fascinating
story about how it got to be named the Cowpens.
This is such a classically American story.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
It really is. So there's a Revolutionary war, the battle
in upstate South Carolina. It was fought a cow field, essentially,
and they originally called it the Battle of the cow Pens,
which over time just became Americanized to the Battle of Cowpens.
And the little town that was nearby, probably ten fifteen
miles down the road, and the late nineteenth century changed
its name to Cowpens. And then in nineteen thirty two,
(12:59):
the local pharmacists sent a postcard to President Roosevelt. And
at the time the aircraft carriers were named for battles,
and he wrote the President and said, hey, could we
get an aircraft carrier named after our battle? And after
our approved the suggestion, passed it on to the Navy,
and the fourth of these Independence Class carriers became the Cowpens.
And there is a currently serving USS Cowpens in the
(13:22):
United States Navy. Sadly she'll be decommissioned in August. The
second ship was a guided missile cruiser and served with
distinction since the late nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
So Roosevelt basically names the ship at the suggestion of
a drug store owner, Yes, you, Mike. The point that
the Cowpens got off as an aircraft carrier after it
had been launched, that it's the initial experience is very tough.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
She had a terrible streak of bad luck and people
began to think, you know, sailors love their superstitions, is
this ship cursed? Had started joking about the Cowpin's jinks.
The air group when they flew board for the first time,
that was a total mess. They had several crashes. One
plane went overboard on their shakedown cruise. They fouled their
propeller on an anti torpedo net in Norfolk, and they
(14:14):
were hung there for three days. Then maybe had to
come down and cut them loose, and the captain got
a official admonishment on his record. They went out to
Pearl Harbor and I mentioned their first combat mission was awful,
and then afterwards they were doing training exercises and one
of their escorting destroyers slammed into her, cut into her side. Thankfully,
no one was hurt on the move, but six men
(14:34):
were killed on board the destroyer censored to the dry dock,
and in the dry dock they have a gasoline fire
and an explosion. So her first few months in combat
were just a real mess.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
When all of that got done, apparently its fate was turning,
except that it encounters Typhoon Cobra. If I understand it correctly,
Pacific typhoons were much bigger than Atlantic hurricane.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
There are some of the strongest storms on the planet. Yes,
they're really incredible. They're common at particular times of the year.
The Philippines gets quite a few of them. My grandfather
never talked about the combat, but boy, he was very
forthright and how terrified he was during Typhoon Cobra. I mentioned.
The ship is kind of top heavy, in a little
tippy you know, you're going into a storm with seventy
(15:22):
to ninety foot waves, ruins of one hundred to one
hundred and twenty knots. And on the bridge they have
a role meter and it goes forty five degrees to
either side, and according to the captain at the time,
guy by the name of George Debonn, the needle would
go all the way over to the forty five degrees
and bounce on the peg at forty five's degree roll
and then it would go back to the other side
(15:43):
and bounce on that peg. So the ship was somewhere
between forty five and fifty degree rolls for hours on end.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
They're able to keep the aircraft tied down, so they're
not rolling with the ship.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Well, they had one break loose and it caught fire
and the men had to go out on the flight
deck and put that out. But the bigger worry was
the bombs, and the magazine broke loose, So you've got
five hundred and one thousand and two thousand pound bombs
bouncing around like tennis balls down there. The sailors had
to go in and lassow them into place, which is
a pretty remarkable thing to do, given that the ship
(16:17):
is bucking like a wild horse.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
That must have been terrifying. Imagine you were part of
the bomb detail and you're down there trying to tie
down a bomb and the ship was literally going back
and forth under you in an uncontrollable way.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
There was one guy, his name was Heartpence, I believe
it was, and he went in and he refused to
come out until the job was done. And they said
that he would work for those brief seconds when the
ship was kind of level, and then he would jump
up and grab onto the overhead girders and pull himself up.
They said it was shades of Tarzan, because otherwise this
(16:52):
thing was going to roll over him and crush him.
There were three destroyers that were lost in that storm.
They capsized and sun killed almost eight hs and there
was a board of inquiry for Admiral Halsey. He was
nearly court martials for.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
It, for having allowed them to be out at Resk
grow up.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
The charge essentially was that he had had sufficient notice
that there was a typhoon coming and that he had
not acted with sufficient care to avoid it. Although in
his defense, meteorology in the nineteen forties was nowhere good
as it is today. You know, there wasn't a satellite
photo that you could say this is the direction the
storm was coming from. So there was a certain amount
of guesswork and of speculation in terms of the weather.
(17:30):
Where is the storm, which direction is it coming from,
and how close it is.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Why does the cow Pens become the first carrier to
go into Tokyo Bay.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
It's because Admiral Halsey didn't trust the Japanese. There was
a lot of speculation at the time, after sort of
the betrayal and the double cross of Pearl Harbor, that
this whole, you know, announcement that Tokyo will surrender was
a trap, that what they were going to do is
they were going to invite the Americans into Pearl Harbor
and then they were going to swarm them with kamakazies,
and it was going to be a terrible slaughter. So
(18:02):
Admiral Halsey has all his big, irreplaceable Essex class carriers
and he wants them safely out at sea where they
can't be hurt. It's kind of this irony that the
little carrier that could, that nobody expected so much from
is given the biggest honor in their wartime crid because
she was expendable. Dwaal Halsey didn't eat her.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
In your book, you note that in the course of
the war, this Jinx ship, if you will, steamed over
two hundred thousand miles, launched eleven two hundred and seventy
five sorties, dropped six hundred and twenty tons of bombs,
sank sixteen ships, damaged one of the others destroyed ninety
three planes in the air and another five hundred and
(18:56):
twelve on the ground and without ever being hit by
the enemy, and she earned twelve battle stars, the most
of any light carrier. That's a pretty remarkable record.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
She had quite a good run. Even from sort of
a clinical historical perspective, if you had no connection to
the ship, I think that's still very impressive. And for me,
my grandfather was there, and I've had the opportunity to
meet a lot of men and their families who were there,
and they're still intensely proud of what the ship did
for our country during the Second World War.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
When you had a chance to interview veterans, were they
willing to talk about their experiences on the ship?
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Perhaps the way to say it is sometimes they were
selective in the things that they were going to talk about.
They would be happy to talk about the good times
they had, the friends they made, what it was like aboard.
Getting them to talk about combat was harder. Perhaps that's
common of so many veterans even today. You don't want
to relive the trauma. You want to relive the good times,
the brotherhood, the comrade ship. I could sort of as
(19:58):
a historian, put the pieces together between what they told me,
the letters, the documents, and then the official records, which
were unsparing and describing the fighting at times how close
it was.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
As you researched this book, did it change your understanding
of World War Two?
Speaker 2 (20:14):
It did. I was listening to your podcast just this
morning about General Eisenhower. That's a great case of sort
of the great Man history theory of history, and I think,
you know, oftentimes we focus on the generals and admirals,
and you know, there's absolutely a great reason for that.
This was sort of, for me, a grassroots story of
the war. What was it like for the everyday Americans
(20:35):
who did their bid and came home? Everything from what
was the food like, what was the ship like to
live on? What was it like for my grandfather who
was twenty two years old and never been away from
upstate New York. What was it like to be on
a carrier in the middle of the Pacific when you'd
never done anything like that before. So I don't think
it changed my grand narrative of the war. I think
it helped me understand perhaps what it was like.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
As a historian, I really appreciate the to take a
thread like this and follow it all the way through
and figure out what it means and how it happened.
Now that you've done that with the galpouns, are you
considering writing more about either World War Two or about
military history in general.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Submarine warfare kind of peaked my interest. There was a
quote by Admiral Halsey. He was, I mean, he's a
carrier commander. He loves his carriers. And someone asked him,
you know, what are the top five things that led
to victory in the Pacific and he rated the carriers
third and submarines first. So the fact that this guy
who is he loves his carriers, that he says, well,
really it was kind of the submarines that was the
(21:37):
biggest factory to victory has got me pulling on that
thread now well.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
And of course World War two submarines were totally different
from modern nuclear submarines. You go visit one of these
museums and get into a World War two sub you
realize how small they were, and again the huge difference
between for example, the British subs has served mostly in
the North Atlanta and American submarines, which have to be
(22:04):
capable of operating across the entire Pacific, which is just
a huge, huge problem. That is one of the great epics.
So are you going to write about one or more
submarines or how are you going to approach it?
Speaker 2 (22:15):
I'm looking at nineteen forty four, which is when if
you take a look at the monthly sinkings total tonnage.
Essentially the submarine force did not resolve its problems until
late forty three in terms of his broken torpedoes and
some of his leadership and tactics problems. But by early
forty four they pretty much gotten it all together. It
honestly just took them till November of that year and
then the daily tonnage totals started plumbing and never recovered.
(22:38):
So forty four was the decisive year for submarine warfare.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Ironic way, our merchant marine submarine campaign was dramatically more
effective in isolating Japan than the much more famous German
campaign against North Atlantic merchants. I mean, the Japanese never
had the resources to actually wage and effective anti submarine war.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
And they didn't want to. Culturally, they viewed the war
entirely through an offensive lens, and so they came to
convoy tactics and destroyer escors relate in the game.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
You know, there's a funny scene in the beginning of
the Kinge Mutiny where this young ensign who's graduated from
college joined the Navy, and the chief petty officer who's
teaching a course on submarines, says that the submarine is
a fleet offensive weapon and is not a merchant reader.
(23:36):
And the young guy goes, sir, here's the front page
in the New York Times this morning telling us how
the Germans are using it against merchant marine, and the
chief petty officer says, son, in this navy, the submarine
is a fleet offensive weapon and not to be used
against merchant ships. Do you understand me. Herman Woke, who
(23:59):
wrote the book, told me one day that he was
the guy he's writing about. He was in the room,
he was the young student. He did raise the issue,
and of course, as long as it was the Germans
sinking Allied merchant ships, we were really against it. The
minute we did an analysis in the Pacific, we decided, okay,
we can really learn how to do this. It's an
(24:20):
amazing story. I look forward to your next book. It's
a great topic.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Well, thank you. Sir, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Nathan. I want to thank you for joining me. This
has been a great venture into an area I didn't
know all that well. Your new book, The Mighty Move
the USS Cowpens and her epic World War II journey
from Jink's ship to the Navy's first carrier into Tokyo Bay,
is available on Amazon and bookstores everywhere. It's well researched.
(24:47):
It's just a fascinating story, and I look forward very
much to a chance in the future to have you
come back into a future podcast on your book on submarines.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
It's a date. Thank you, sir. I do appreciate your time.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Thank you to my guest, Nathan Canastero. You can get
a link to buy his new book, The Mighty Move
the USS Cowpens on her epic World World two journey
from Jinkship to the Navy's first carrier into Tokyo Bay
on our show page at newtsworld dot com. Newtsworld is
produced by Gingrash three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer
(25:26):
is Guarnsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork
for the show was created by Steve Penley Special thanks
to the team at Gingrad three sixty. If you've been
enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcasts and
both rate us with five stars and give us a
review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now,
(25:49):
listeners of newt World can sign up for my three
free weekly columns at gingleshtree sixty dot com slash newsletter.
I'm new Gingrich. This is new World. H
On this episode of News World, the USS Cowpens and
her crew weren't your typical heroes. She was a flat
top that the US Navy initially didn't want, but the
captain nearly scapegoaded for the loss of his last command,
pilots who self trained on the planes they would fly
into combat, and sailors that had been in uniform barely
longer than the ship had been afloat. Despite their humble origins,
(00:27):
Cowpens and her band of second string reservists and citizen
sailors served with distinction, fighting in nearly every major carrier
operation from nineteen forty three to nineteen forty five. Together,
they faced a deadly typhoon that brought the ship to
the verge of capsize and a war's end. There was
only one US aircraft carrier in Tokyo Bay to witness
(00:49):
the Japanese surrender The Mighty Move. In the years to follow,
Cowpen's service has become the well spring for a remarkable
modern tradition, both within the US Navy and the small
southern town that still celebrates her legacy with the festival
every year. The Mighty Moo is a biography of a
World War II aircraft carrier, as told through the voices
(01:11):
of its heroic crew, A band of brothers at sea,
here to discuss his new book. I'm really pleased to
welcome my guest, Nathan CANISTERO. He is a professional intelligence
officer whose research on his grandfather's service in World War
Two led to a decade long effort to undercover the
story of Calpen's and her crew. He is currently an
(01:32):
assignment to the National Intelligence Council. Nathan, welcome and thank
you for joining me at Newsworld.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Well, thank you, sir, it's great to be here. I
appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
I have to confess I found the topic absolutely fascinating
and from angles I would never have dreamed of. And
as I understanding, it began with research into your grandfather's
service in World War Two, and that led you to
a decade long research project of the story of the
USS Kalpens. What did you know about your grandfather's service
(02:14):
before he started researching? What was it about chatting with
your grandfather and his service in World War Two that
led you to a decade long research project.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
The simplest answer to that question is he wouldn't tell
me anything. Like many men of his generation. He was
traumatized by his experience in the war, and when he
came home he wanted to put it behind him, and
he would just sort of hint at things that had
happened to him without really getting into the details. So
for a guy like me who's interested in World War
two history and grew up with band of brothers and
(02:48):
saving Private Ryan, the fact that there was a story
here that he was uncomfortable sharing was kind of cat nipped.
And after he passed in twenty ten, I resolved to
go looking for this story to try and find out
what Grandpa wouldn't tell me. And so do We found
this amazing story about his ship and his crew which
no one had really ever heard of. It's kind of
(03:08):
a forgotten aspect of the Second World War.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Talk briefly about your grandfather's own experience in the war.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Sure, So, he was a tail gunner on a torpedo
bomber in the Pacific, an Avenger torpedo bomber, the same
sort of plane that George hw Bush flew in in
the Second World War. And he flew from this light
aircraft carrier called the USS Cowpens and he was part
of torpedo Scaraj in twenty two, and he arrived in
the war mid forty four and stayed until forty five
(03:40):
or so February March forty five, spent a lot of
time in the Battle for the Liberation of the Philippines.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Given that background, well, how did you then make the
leap to deciding you really want to know about the
aircraft carrier Cowpens?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Partly because I'd never heard of it. You know, when
you think about WARWICHI aircraft carriers like the Intrepid in
New York City or New York Town in South Carolina,
the little light aircraft carriers never come to mind. I'd
never heard of it, and the Navy is very good
at keeping records, and I started digging through all the
official documents and sort of learning the story of what
(04:17):
it went through and kind of some of the characters important.
I consider myself fairly and well informed on the war,
But I'm like, why have I never heard of any
of this? It's kind of this story that just hasn't
been told, and those are pretty rare these days where
the war were to history. I said to my then
girlfriend now wife at the time, I said, you know,
I think there's a book here, and she said, oh, yeah,
(04:37):
you should totally write it. And I don't think either
of us knew exactly how much that entailed or how
difficult that process is. But once I get a hold
of something and start pulling on the thread, the more
you discover, the more it becomes sort of an obsession.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
You had already done military history before this, in terms
of studying it and being aware of it.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Well, an intelligence officer by training. So the military history
I do is sort of the current day. Most of
my professional background is the war on Terror in the
Middle East. I've been in this business for twenty five years,
so nine to eleven and onwards. I'd always been sort
of a casual enjoyment reader of World War II history,
but never a professional historian. And sort of the sense
(05:20):
that you're alluding to.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
You have this curiosity, how do you go about digging
out the information, tracking it down, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Well, the first place to stop is the National Archives,
and now a lot of the records are being digitized.
You can get them available online, which is great, and
the Navy's a fantastic record keeper. And there was about
i'd say between three and five thousand pages of records
in terms of what the ship did on a day
to day basis. I also had the benefit of there's
(05:52):
a Cowpens Reunion Association that is active here in Cowpens
where I am today, that has been sort of collecting
these materials and is a hub for the folks who
served aboard the ship. And they have just been a
huge help in not only helping me locate the few
remaining veterans that are alive, but connecting me to some
of the families that have materials left over, both diaries
(06:15):
and journals and records. And it's some of those stories
that really sort of gives the Cowpins tail. It's life.
It's a biography of a ship told through the voices
of the men who served aboard.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
From that perspective, what did you find the most useful
in understanding the story of the USS Scalpens.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
There were a few particular individuals whose diaries and journals
were critical in helping me understand and I can talk
about a couple of those. The first one was a
guy by the name of Bob Price, and Bob was
the commander of the ship's first spider squadron, and then
he moved up to be commander of its air group,
a series of progressively steadily more important jobs aboard ship,
(06:58):
and sadly he was lost in a typhoon in December
forty four, but his family kept all his letters home
and donated them all to the Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola.
When you put his story, you know, because he couldn't
be too detailed because there was a censor, but he
would allude to things in his letters, and when you
put that up against sort of the chronology of what
(07:20):
came out of the official records, you could sort of
see the things that he was alluding to. There was
one letter their first combat mission did not go well
at Wake. They lost four men shot down. Two of
them just disappeared, two others were shot down but recovered
at sea. And he wrote to his wife and he
said something to the effect of, you know, familiar faces
fall by the wayside, and it hurts, but over time
(07:43):
we become accustomed and callous to it. And if you
hadn't sort of put those sort of the timeline up
against the letters, you wouldn't have known what he was
referring to.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Is there an official US Navy history of the.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Ship, Yes, and their daily reports.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Yes, Sir itself created an archival document just as part
of its operating procedure.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yes, and a lot of it. Every dog fight, every
bombing mission, every day, very very detailed.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
You know, it might help our listeners understand the nature
of these light carriers, which I think, are they the
same as what we call jeep carriers.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
No, they're slightly different. So the jeep carriers were built
on the hulls of merchant ships, tankers or freighters, and
they were slow. They couldn't keep up with the big
fleet carriers. The light carriers were kind of in between.
And essentially what they did is they took a light cruiser,
which you know, they could go thirty to thirty two knots,
and they put a flight deck on them. To be
perfectly blood, These were not great ships, and it was
(08:44):
only because the US Navy was so desperate at the
time that it would ever build a ship like this.
You have to remember that, you know, in that first
terrible year of the war, we started with six aircraft
carriers and by the end of forty two we were
down to two. And the situation was so desperate that
we went to the British and said, hey, can you
send one of your carriers out to the Pacific for
six months or actually ninety days, sorry, so we can
(09:07):
send Enterprise into dry dock and get our battle wounds patched.
So President Roosevelt, even before the war, he was worried
that there just weren't enough flat tops to fight Japan,
and he tried to convince the Navy to make these
little light carriers, and the Navy gave them a real fight.
They weren't interested. They had their construction program, they didn't
(09:28):
appreciate their boss messing around in it. They didn't think
such a small carrier would be valuable. And FDR gave
him a fight, and finally he prevailed, and so they
made one, and they were going to call it quits
at that, but then they started losing the big carriers,
and so every time you had a major loss at
seeing Wasp, Pornett, Lexington, New York Town, they'd queue up
a batch of two or three of these light carriers
(09:50):
and send them out to the fleet as a backup. Essentially,
they were only there until the Essexes, the big ones
started becoming available in large numbers in the end of
forty four.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
How many of the light carriers did they build.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
They built nine. There's a lot of things that are
notable above them, but one of the ones I find
the need is the two future presidents served aboard these
light carriers. You had George H. W. Bush served aboard
the Sanjacinto and Gerald Ford served aboard the Monterey.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
These all took what had been laid down as a
light cruiser hall and then just had a carrier put
on top of it.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Just put a carrier on top of them. And they
were tall. They had a very high center of gravity,
which made them kind of tippy. They were very unstable
and heavy seas. They had a seventy three foot wide
flight deck, which was the narrowest flight deck in the Navy,
and that consequently gave them the highest accident rate in
the Navy. These ships were very dangerous to fly from,
(10:47):
and they were really crowded for their crew. I mean
they were built the whole thirteen hundred sailors aboard a
light cruiser. The Navy packed fifteen hundred a board as
a carrier when you added the flight groups and things
like that, so they left a lot to be desired
as a ship.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
This is not on typical that you have FDR, who
was an extraordinarily powerful president, trying very hard to bully
the navy. And Roosevelt had been under Secretary of the
Navy under Woodrow Wilson and had a really deep interest
in the Navy. And only when reality intervenes does the
(11:39):
Navy agree finally to build these characters.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Yeah, there was a great quote from FDR. He said,
fighting with the admirals is like punching a feather bed.
You punching, You punch, and you punch, and you punch,
and then you stop punching, and you see the feather
bed is totally unchanged from when you started to begin with.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
At one point he said something to Admiral King, who
was the Chief of Naval Operations, like, I know you
think this is your navy.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
He knew the Navy. He knew a lot of the
major commanders when he was under Secretary of the Navy
during World War One. You know, he joked to you
he was his own secretary of the Navy.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
How many aircraft could these light carriers carry?
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Only thirty three that's about a third of the big
Essex class depending on circumstance, but usually twenty four fighters
and nine torpedo bombers.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Roosevelt is starting to build these things. It's a fascinating
story about how it got to be named the Cowpens.
This is such a classically American story.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
It really is. So there's a Revolutionary war, the battle
in upstate South Carolina. It was fought a cow field, essentially,
and they originally called it the Battle of the cow Pens,
which over time just became Americanized to the Battle of Cowpens.
And the little town that was nearby, probably ten fifteen
miles down the road, and the late nineteenth century changed
its name to Cowpens. And then in nineteen thirty two,
(12:59):
the local pharmacists sent a postcard to President Roosevelt. And
at the time the aircraft carriers were named for battles,
and he wrote the President and said, hey, could we
get an aircraft carrier named after our battle? And after
our approved the suggestion, passed it on to the Navy,
and the fourth of these Independence Class carriers became the Cowpens.
And there is a currently serving USS Cowpens in the
(13:22):
United States Navy. Sadly she'll be decommissioned in August. The
second ship was a guided missile cruiser and served with
distinction since the late nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
So Roosevelt basically names the ship at the suggestion of
a drug store owner, Yes, you, Mike. The point that
the Cowpens got off as an aircraft carrier after it
had been launched, that it's the initial experience is very tough.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
She had a terrible streak of bad luck and people
began to think, you know, sailors love their superstitions, is
this ship cursed? Had started joking about the Cowpin's jinks.
The air group when they flew board for the first time,
that was a total mess. They had several crashes. One
plane went overboard on their shakedown cruise. They fouled their
propeller on an anti torpedo net in Norfolk, and they
(14:14):
were hung there for three days. Then maybe had to
come down and cut them loose, and the captain got
a official admonishment on his record. They went out to
Pearl Harbor and I mentioned their first combat mission was awful,
and then afterwards they were doing training exercises and one
of their escorting destroyers slammed into her, cut into her side. Thankfully,
no one was hurt on the move, but six men
(14:34):
were killed on board the destroyer censored to the dry dock,
and in the dry dock they have a gasoline fire
and an explosion. So her first few months in combat
were just a real mess.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
When all of that got done, apparently its fate was turning,
except that it encounters Typhoon Cobra. If I understand it correctly,
Pacific typhoons were much bigger than Atlantic hurricane.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
There are some of the strongest storms on the planet. Yes,
they're really incredible. They're common at particular times of the year.
The Philippines gets quite a few of them. My grandfather
never talked about the combat, but boy, he was very
forthright and how terrified he was during Typhoon Cobra. I mentioned.
The ship is kind of top heavy, in a little
tippy you know, you're going into a storm with seventy
(15:22):
to ninety foot waves, ruins of one hundred to one
hundred and twenty knots. And on the bridge they have
a role meter and it goes forty five degrees to
either side, and according to the captain at the time,
guy by the name of George Debonn, the needle would
go all the way over to the forty five degrees
and bounce on the peg at forty five's degree roll
and then it would go back to the other side
(15:43):
and bounce on that peg. So the ship was somewhere
between forty five and fifty degree rolls for hours on end.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
They're able to keep the aircraft tied down, so they're
not rolling with the ship.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Well, they had one break loose and it caught fire
and the men had to go out on the flight
deck and put that out. But the bigger worry was
the bombs, and the magazine broke loose, So you've got
five hundred and one thousand and two thousand pound bombs
bouncing around like tennis balls down there. The sailors had
to go in and lassow them into place, which is
a pretty remarkable thing to do, given that the ship
(16:17):
is bucking like a wild horse.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
That must have been terrifying. Imagine you were part of
the bomb detail and you're down there trying to tie
down a bomb and the ship was literally going back
and forth under you in an uncontrollable way.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
There was one guy, his name was Heartpence, I believe
it was, and he went in and he refused to
come out until the job was done. And they said
that he would work for those brief seconds when the
ship was kind of level, and then he would jump
up and grab onto the overhead girders and pull himself up.
They said it was shades of Tarzan, because otherwise this
(16:52):
thing was going to roll over him and crush him.
There were three destroyers that were lost in that storm.
They capsized and sun killed almost eight hs and there
was a board of inquiry for Admiral Halsey. He was
nearly court martials for.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
It, for having allowed them to be out at Resk
grow up.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
The charge essentially was that he had had sufficient notice
that there was a typhoon coming and that he had
not acted with sufficient care to avoid it. Although in
his defense, meteorology in the nineteen forties was nowhere good
as it is today. You know, there wasn't a satellite
photo that you could say this is the direction the
storm was coming from. So there was a certain amount
of guesswork and of speculation in terms of the weather.
(17:30):
Where is the storm, which direction is it coming from,
and how close it is.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Why does the cow Pens become the first carrier to
go into Tokyo Bay.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
It's because Admiral Halsey didn't trust the Japanese. There was
a lot of speculation at the time, after sort of
the betrayal and the double cross of Pearl Harbor, that
this whole, you know, announcement that Tokyo will surrender was
a trap, that what they were going to do is
they were going to invite the Americans into Pearl Harbor
and then they were going to swarm them with kamakazies,
and it was going to be a terrible slaughter. So
(18:02):
Admiral Halsey has all his big, irreplaceable Essex class carriers
and he wants them safely out at sea where they
can't be hurt. It's kind of this irony that the
little carrier that could, that nobody expected so much from
is given the biggest honor in their wartime crid because
she was expendable. Dwaal Halsey didn't eat her.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
In your book, you note that in the course of
the war, this Jinx ship, if you will, steamed over
two hundred thousand miles, launched eleven two hundred and seventy
five sorties, dropped six hundred and twenty tons of bombs,
sank sixteen ships, damaged one of the others destroyed ninety
three planes in the air and another five hundred and
(18:56):
twelve on the ground and without ever being hit by
the enemy, and she earned twelve battle stars, the most
of any light carrier. That's a pretty remarkable record.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
She had quite a good run. Even from sort of
a clinical historical perspective, if you had no connection to
the ship, I think that's still very impressive. And for me,
my grandfather was there, and I've had the opportunity to
meet a lot of men and their families who were there,
and they're still intensely proud of what the ship did
for our country during the Second World War.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
When you had a chance to interview veterans, were they
willing to talk about their experiences on the ship?
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Perhaps the way to say it is sometimes they were
selective in the things that they were going to talk about.
They would be happy to talk about the good times
they had, the friends they made, what it was like aboard.
Getting them to talk about combat was harder. Perhaps that's
common of so many veterans even today. You don't want
to relive the trauma. You want to relive the good times,
the brotherhood, the comrade ship. I could sort of as
(19:58):
a historian, put the pieces together between what they told me,
the letters, the documents, and then the official records, which
were unsparing and describing the fighting at times how close
it was.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
As you researched this book, did it change your understanding
of World War Two?
Speaker 2 (20:14):
It did. I was listening to your podcast just this
morning about General Eisenhower. That's a great case of sort
of the great Man history theory of history, and I think,
you know, oftentimes we focus on the generals and admirals,
and you know, there's absolutely a great reason for that.
This was sort of, for me, a grassroots story of
the war. What was it like for the everyday Americans
(20:35):
who did their bid and came home? Everything from what
was the food like, what was the ship like to
live on? What was it like for my grandfather who
was twenty two years old and never been away from
upstate New York. What was it like to be on
a carrier in the middle of the Pacific when you'd
never done anything like that before. So I don't think
it changed my grand narrative of the war. I think
it helped me understand perhaps what it was like.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
As a historian, I really appreciate the to take a
thread like this and follow it all the way through
and figure out what it means and how it happened.
Now that you've done that with the galpouns, are you
considering writing more about either World War Two or about
military history in general.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Submarine warfare kind of peaked my interest. There was a
quote by Admiral Halsey. He was, I mean, he's a
carrier commander. He loves his carriers. And someone asked him,
you know, what are the top five things that led
to victory in the Pacific and he rated the carriers
third and submarines first. So the fact that this guy
who is he loves his carriers, that he says, well,
really it was kind of the submarines that was the
(21:37):
biggest factory to victory has got me pulling on that
thread now well.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
And of course World War two submarines were totally different
from modern nuclear submarines. You go visit one of these
museums and get into a World War two sub you
realize how small they were, and again the huge difference
between for example, the British subs has served mostly in
the North Atlanta and American submarines, which have to be
(22:04):
capable of operating across the entire Pacific, which is just
a huge, huge problem. That is one of the great epics.
So are you going to write about one or more
submarines or how are you going to approach it?
Speaker 2 (22:15):
I'm looking at nineteen forty four, which is when if
you take a look at the monthly sinkings total tonnage.
Essentially the submarine force did not resolve its problems until
late forty three in terms of his broken torpedoes and
some of his leadership and tactics problems. But by early
forty four they pretty much gotten it all together. It
honestly just took them till November of that year and
then the daily tonnage totals started plumbing and never recovered.
(22:38):
So forty four was the decisive year for submarine warfare.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Ironic way, our merchant marine submarine campaign was dramatically more
effective in isolating Japan than the much more famous German
campaign against North Atlantic merchants. I mean, the Japanese never
had the resources to actually wage and effective anti submarine war.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
And they didn't want to. Culturally, they viewed the war
entirely through an offensive lens, and so they came to
convoy tactics and destroyer escors relate in the game.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
You know, there's a funny scene in the beginning of
the Kinge Mutiny where this young ensign who's graduated from
college joined the Navy, and the chief petty officer who's
teaching a course on submarines, says that the submarine is
a fleet offensive weapon and is not a merchant reader.
(23:36):
And the young guy goes, sir, here's the front page
in the New York Times this morning telling us how
the Germans are using it against merchant marine, and the
chief petty officer says, son, in this navy, the submarine
is a fleet offensive weapon and not to be used
against merchant ships. Do you understand me. Herman Woke, who
(23:59):
wrote the book, told me one day that he was
the guy he's writing about. He was in the room,
he was the young student. He did raise the issue,
and of course, as long as it was the Germans
sinking Allied merchant ships, we were really against it. The
minute we did an analysis in the Pacific, we decided, okay,
we can really learn how to do this. It's an
(24:20):
amazing story. I look forward to your next book. It's
a great topic.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Well, thank you. Sir, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Nathan. I want to thank you for joining me. This
has been a great venture into an area I didn't
know all that well. Your new book, The Mighty Move
the USS Cowpens and her epic World War II journey
from Jink's ship to the Navy's first carrier into Tokyo Bay,
is available on Amazon and bookstores everywhere. It's well researched.
(24:47):
It's just a fascinating story, and I look forward very
much to a chance in the future to have you
come back into a future podcast on your book on submarines.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
It's a date. Thank you, sir. I do appreciate your time.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Thank you to my guest, Nathan Canastero. You can get
a link to buy his new book, The Mighty Move
the USS Cowpens on her epic World World two journey
from Jinkship to the Navy's first carrier into Tokyo Bay
on our show page at newtsworld dot com. Newtsworld is
produced by Gingrash three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer
(25:26):
is Guarnsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork
for the show was created by Steve Penley Special thanks
to the team at Gingrad three sixty. If you've been
enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcasts and
both rate us with five stars and give us a
review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now,
(25:49):
listeners of newt World can sign up for my three
free weekly columns at gingleshtree sixty dot com slash newsletter.
I'm new Gingrich. This is new World. H
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.