Tag Archives: Pearl Harbor

From Branchport to Commander-in-Chief: Admiral Frank Schofield

Until a couple of years back I hadn’t heard about Admiral Frank H. Schofield, who was born on a tenant farm near Branchport, back in 1869, and even then I had only the sketchiest information.

*But then on February 1 we had a Steuben County Historical Society Winter Lecture by Rich MacAlpine, who has studied 12,000 family letters relating to this unfortunately-forgotten man. (The admiral died in 1942.) Rich has also written a book on the man.

*Frank’s father, who had fought in the Civil War, was a tenant farmer around Yates County. This meant that they moved from time to time.. and it also meant that they didn’t have much money.

*All of which together meant that it was hard for a driven, high-achieving boy like Frank to get an education. Luckily his parents supported his efforts, sacrificing the contributions he could have made on the farm, and he attended Penn Yan Academy for what we would call high school.

*Until the money ran out. Without tuition, Frank would miss or delay his senior year. But the principal suggested that he sit the exam for West Point, where he could get a free education. He did excellently, but the Point balked at admitting a 16 year-old. Hard-driving Frank took the exam for Annapolis, won admission as a midshipman, and finished second in his class.

*When the Spanish-American War broke out he wrangled a transfer from the Pacific to the Caribbean, served as executive officer on a gunboat, and took part in combat. Later he served the navy at the Colt factory in Hartford as an insoector of naval weaponry, and patented a quick-release mechanism for shipboard guns.

*As our entry into World War I approached he was part of a naval team working out convoy systems. Their work was successful, and when we joined the fight Frank went to London, where he served on the staff of our European naval commander. This in turn led to his being appointed as a technical advisor at the Versailles peace conference in 1919.

*Both before and after the war he had command experience, helming a supply ship, a destroyer, and the battleship Texas, then commanding squadrons and divisions of ships, besides a few weeks as acting governor of Guam.

*In 1931 he jumped two steps in rank to full admiral, becoming Commander-in-Chief, U.S Fleet, the highest position in the navy. As part of maneuvers the following year, he tested out an aerial attack on Pearl Harbor. (Commanding the aviation forces was future admiral John Towers, who learned to fly at Hammondsport in 1911.)

*The “attacking” force raced toward Hawaii from the north and launched aircraft from carriers at dawn. Referees ruled that they had wrecked the army air fields AND the battleships in harbor. The attackers then escaped, completely evading the defenders.

*If all this sounds familiar, it’s the same playbook the Japanese used nine years later. Schofield retired a few months after the war games, and his successors insisted that the spectacular “attack” had been a fluke… that airplanes and aircraft carriers were actually only a minor threat. The whole world would soon learn differently, but Admiral Schofield died just two and a half months after Pearl Harbor. Too bad we didn’t listen to him, Jack Towers, and other far-seeing officers.

*At least we can recognize that Yates County is honored to be the home of a man like Admiral Frank.

After Pearl Harbor: Americans Race Into War

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Americans got the word about Pearl Harbor mighty quick by radio… almost while the attack was under way. On the following day President Roosevelt announced that damage had been “severe,” and that “very many American lives” had been lost.

*But it would be a long time before anxious families heard from their loved ones. A river of telegrams started bringing bad news, and that river kept flowing for four years. If families were lucky, instead of a telegram they finally got a post card, on which servicemen and -women had not been allowed to write a message. All they could do was check off pre-printed information, from “I am fine” to “I am in the hospital,” and various choices in between.

*Steve Carassas, a naval musician from Hammondsport, was blown off his ship in Pearl Harbor while playing the National Anthem. He would later be cast into the sea at the Battle of Kula Gulf, and spend the night in the water as a great sea battle raged around and above him. He survived the war but not by much, and his untimely death was presumably driven by his war experiences.

*He wasn’t the only one. Corporal Reuben Shettler of Pulteney died in a Japanese prison camp in 1942, shortly after the Bataan Death March and the surrender of the Philippines. Army nurse Eunice Young was captured on Corregidor, and remained a P.O.W. for almost three years. China missionary Bessie Hille of Bath spent most of 1943 interned as an enemy civilian until exchanged with the help of neutral Sweden.

*Manufacturing of consumer goods almost evaporated. There were no new cars. Tires, shoes, gas, and sugar were rationed. Rural electrification, just getting under way in Steuben, immediately stalled.

*Manufacturing for war, on the other hand, boomed. Mercury Aircraft jumped from two employees to 850, making components for Curtiss military aircraft. Women, elderly people, African Americans, Latin Americans, and underage kids found new employment opportunities. Sixteen million Americans went into uniform, and the civilian work force still grew. Haverling School raised salaries across the board. At least one man from Bath worked on the “Manhattan Project” to build the atomic bomb.

*Hammondsport graduated 14 students in 1939, but a wartime yearbook listed 90 alumni and faculty in the service (14 of them died). George Haley of Bath went from Syracuse University into the Tuskegee Airmen and the first of three wars he would fight in… opportunities he would have been denied a year or two earlier.

*Rochester Business Institute taught military office management, Civilian Pilot Training, and aviation ground school instructor courses… for men and women. Hammondsport opened a Defense Training School to teach the skills needed in war factories.

*Hornell High School became an air-raid warden’s post. Aircraft spotters watched the skies over Hammondsport, and over Arkport Dam. An air-raid warden in Corning was issued a large noisy rattle, specifically for signaling gas attacks.

*Over a hundred Nakajima dive bombers took part in the Pearl Harbor attack — Lieutenant Nakajima had come to Hammondsport in 1911, to learn to fly. Glenn Curtiss was long dead, but the very few American airplanes that got into the air were mostly Curtiss P-40 Warhawks and Curtiss P-36 Mohawks. Seaplane tender USS Glenn H. Curtiss was one of the few American vessels to get into motion, shooting down two airplanes and helping sink a midget submarine, while suffering 19 dead. New vessels in the expanded navy included USS Hammondsport (an airplane transport), USS Chemung, USS Cohocton, and USS Canisteo (all oilers).

*Every month the county draft contingent was sworn in at the courthouse in Bath, then marched (no doubt very badly) to the DL&W depot. The Old-Timers Band performed for each contingent, their numbers padded out by a few callow youths waiting for their own turn.

*President Roosevelt developed the G.I. Bill of Rights to reward the men and women in uniform, but also because it was a massive social engineering program designed to give millions of Americans college educations, and turn them into homeowners — dreams out of reach for most Americans until then.

*The end came with explosive rejoicing, but also left many empty spaces behind. Millions lived the rest of their lives with physical or emotional wounds… and so did those who were close to them. And, of course, America was now deeply and permanently engaged with the rest of the world… something nobody would have predicted on December 6, 1941.