My sea duty in the Navy was aboard a minesweeper: a class of ships designed to clear mines from harbors and shipping lanes. In a fleet of steel hulls and armor plate, minesweepers were an oddity because they were made of wood. That’s because most mines in those days were triggered by magnetism, and sweeping them in a steel-hulled ship would have been embarrassing.
USS Woodpecker
My ship, USS WOODPECKER (MSC-209), was small but sturdy and seaworthy. The hull had two layers of wood planking – which made the ship creak in heavy weather — and the superstructure was mostly plywood. Naturally, minesweeper sailors called themselves the Iron Men in Wooden Ships.
We probably were no more vulnerable to enemy fire than other ships (and, happily, never had a chance to find out). When I visited a Coast Guard cutter in Vietnam the crew proudly showed me the bullet holes where a rifle round had gone completely through its deckhouse, in one aluminum wall and out the other.
No one anticipated an attack by a swordfish.
In early 1967 one of our sister ships, USS WIDGEON (MSC-208), was operating in a task force off the coast of North Vietnam. In our home port of Sasebo, Japan, the daily message traffic included reports from the task force. One report noted that USS WIDGEON had been holed by a swordfish.
It’s a gag, we thought. They’ve been at sea for a long time and are getting bored. But in the following days we saw reports of the ship’s hull damage and repair requirements. When WIDGEON returned to Sasebo several of us were waiting on the pier as the ship moored. We don’t believe you. Show us your swordfish.
We were escorted to the ship’s forward engine room. There, a few feet below the waterline, about 10 inches of swordfish bill protruded through the hull. The collision broke off the swordfish bill, we were told, and the fish went its not-so-merry way – much to the disappointment of the ship’s cook.
There was no leakage because the swordfish bill effectively plugged the hole it had created. I think the ship had to go into drydock to repair the hole and remove the swordfish bill – which probably was mounted on a plaque in the wardroom.
I still visualize a surprised engineman aboard WIDGEON calling the bridge: Captain, you’re not gonna believe this…