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as
remembered and recorded
by
William F. Thorpe
of
Kings Park, New York
who served then aboard
USS MILLS - DER 383
U.S.S. MILLS
DER 383
Where Mills was
and what she did during the Cuban Missile Crisis
“The First to
Know”
It was mid-October
in 1962 and USS Mills was at sea. We were steaming toward
Portugal’s Azores Islands for a couple of days of liberty before
reporting for our normal assignment. Mills was slated to resume
her oft-times arduous duties as a floating radar station high in the
North Atlantic where she would steam round in circles in the general
vicinity of Denmark’s Faeroe Islands. The Azores would be a
welcomed port of call prior to our heading north and into the turbulent
seas of the North Atlantic where sea swells of winter often are taller
than the ship’s highest mast.
Mills
was an aging WWII warship named for a young naval aviator, Ensign Lloyd
Jones Mills of Rock Springs, Wyoming, who lost his life in the Aleutian
Islands Campaign in mid-1942. He was posthumously awarded the
Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism and extraordinary achievement in
action. At her launching in 1943, Mills, a Destroyer Escort (DE),
was turned over to the Coast Guard and served her country well by
providing escort service to a number of convoys in the Atlantic between
1944 and 1945. After the war she was retired but in the mid-1950’s, she
was reclaimed from the mothball fleet. By October 1957, she had been
converted and re-fitted for radar surveillance operations and was
re-designated as a radar picket ship (DER).1
Her new assignment was to relatively
obscure duties in the sometimes boring but vital work of NORAD, the
North-American Air Defense System.
And so
it was, that October day in 1962, when President John F. Kennedy spoke
to the American people and to the world and told us all of the Soviet
missiles being installed in the communist island of Cuba and of the
threat they posed to the American homeland just 90 miles from our
shores. As he spoke, a flotilla of Soviet ships, carrying even more
missiles, was headed toward Cuba. President Kennedy assured us that he
had told Premier Khrushchev of the Soviet Union that, under no
circumstances, would the United States allow those ships to land and
offload their cargo in any Cuban port. He advised Mr. Khrushchev
to turn those ships around and to bring the missiles back to the Soviet
Union. And now, as the stage was being set for a major military
conflict, the world awaited Mr. Khrushchev’s reply. All
branches of the American military were put on the highest alert and soon
the Florida Peninsula became an armed fortress just as Britain was in
the days leading up to the invasion of Europe.
A message was received canceling Mills’ liberty in Punta Delgada.
We were sent instead on the unusual but fascinating mission of following
a Soviet Navy refueling and supply ship named Terek.2
This same Soviet ship had been observed days before by one of our
reconnaissance aircraft as she left the North Sea and was entering into
the North Atlantic Ocean.. Her present course was leading her in
our general direction. Her presumed mission was to re-fuel and re-supply
Soviet submarines operating in the wide North Atlantic. We were
dispatched to follow her. And so we did. Unrealized by us
then, we had now been given our role and we had entered into that period
of a dozen or so nerve shattering days that would become known in the
English-speaking world as the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Our job
now was for Mills to rendezvous quickly with
Terek and to stay with her until receipt of further orders. We
hadn’t long to wait before contact was made. After making visual
contact, we slowly closed the range between us and approached her to a
point about 500 yards off her port side. We observed her carefully and
stayed with her for a while and then we withdrew to a point about 1000
yards back on her starboard quarter. Indeed, if Terek’s job was
to re-fuel and to replenish Soviet submarines, she would not want to do
so with us hanging about. No navy wants to expose her electronic
and warring capabilities to the eyes of an unfriendly foreign power.
Much can be learned about a ship’s capabilities by studying her size and
configuration and by careful observation and study of her externals such
as masts and antennae. These details were of great interest to our
own Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington, D.C. We took many
pictures of Terek and relayed them promptly to ONI in Washington.
Years later, I learned that my own brother, Paul, then a lieutenant, but
trained in electronics and nuclear power, and having served as an
engineer in the nuclear submarine Nautilis, had been assigned during
these very times as an electronic intelligence officer right there at
ONI. He, along with others, were studying and interpreting the
very pictures Mills was taking and transmitting to Washington.
Terek, like so many other Soviet ships, seemed better equipped for
intelligence gathering than we who were especially designed for such
work. Even the Soviet trawlers of the day seemed better equipped
for gathering electronic intelligence than for gathering fish. We
used to see these ‘trawlers’ down off Florida whenever we were assigned
go on a turkey shoot’. Those were the days in which the U. S. was
trying desperately to close the gap in the space race with the Soviet
Union. We tested men in space by first testing monkeys in space.
We would shoot monkeys high into the sky in a space capsule and then
wait for them to come back down. Mills was assigned on one or two
occasions to take part in these operations. I was never sure of
exactly what our assignment was but we were always made to believe that,
whatever it was, it was top secret. We were told not to tell
anybody where we were going, what we were doing, and we were not
allowed to take any pictures. All I know is that when we got
there, the Soviet ‘trawlers’ were already ‘on station’ and waiting
for us, and the event was usually televised later in the day on the
networks’ evening newscasts. So much for secrecy.
Our job
now with the Terek was to stay with her and, I suppose, by our
very presence, to passively impede her from accomplishing her mission,
especially if that mission was to re-supply submarines operating in the
Atlantic. She would not want to surface her submarines with us in
the immediate area.
It was
my own personal habit each morning after breakfast to go out on the
fantail with my cup full of coffee and smoke a cigarette. I
referred to it as having my coffee on the “back porch”. There were
always one, two or three shipmates there to join me. And, it
became our Captain’s habit each morning at about this same time to pull
up alongside the Terek and to flash a signal to her Captain.
The Russian would always signal back his reply.
One
day, the quartermaster and I had an exchange that went something like
this,
5
“What are the Captain and the Russian talking about with all that
signaling going back and forth?”
“Well“, he said, “It goes like this. Every morning we pull up alongside
the Russian and then the Captain signals something like,
‘Good morning, Captain, how are you today?’
And the Russian says,
‘Get out of here and stop bothering us!’
Then, we just pull back about a thousand yards off his starboard quarter
and we pretty much stay right there until tomorrow”
In
honesty, I can’t tell you if that was really what the signal exchanges
said, but I can tell you that whenever we came alongside
Terek, honors were never rendered. Let me explain. It is the
custom amongst the navies of the world for junior ships to “salute”
senior ships --- to lower the national colors on the mast and to raised
them again smartly when naval vessels pass each other. The ship
commanded by the junior officer would “dip her colors” to the ship
commanded by the senior officer. This is a form of salute. A
courtesy extended from a junior to a senior. Terek never
dipped her colors.
We kept abreast of the world’s affairs by keeping the civilian radio
station playing and by listening to the news broadcasts. Tensions
were growing stronger and the governments and peoples of the world were
growing more and more anxious over the events taking place near Cuba.
Each day, as the Soviet ships approached that Caribbean Island, the
American Navy came in closer contact with them and were prepared to
board them to inspect their cargo. The world sat by and wondered
what would happen when the real gun-pointing challenges began.
While diplomats scurried to find a political solution, we were still
there on station following the Terek
with a Russian submarine following us.
We broke off contact with
Terek a couple of times in those days to chase after sonar contacts
thought to be from a trailing submarine. On several occasions, a
few of our crewmen even reported seeing a periscope following astern.
One day, I was on the bridge and I asked the Captain what his plan was
if they started shooting for real down there off Cuba. He told me
that he hoped to be close enough to Terek to take her down by
ramming her before we got torpedoed. He thought, of course as we
all did, that the USS Mills would most likely be the first
American ship lost in action and that action would surely come from a
Soviet torpedo aimed straight at us at very short range from a submarine
close astern.
One morning after breakfast, as was my custom, I went onto the fantail
with my coffee and a couple of my buddies. We were just standing
around and talking when the Captain pulled his usual routine and came up
alongside the Russian and they exchanged signals.
“Did you see that?”, I nearly shouted.
“See what?”
“The Russian. He just dipped his colors.”
Meanwhile, caught off guard on the bridge, our quartermaster ran to
return the salute.
"So … what’s that supposed to mean?”, one of them asked.
“That’s a sure sign that the Russian’s been ordered to be nice to us.
I’ll bet you that the word went out to all of those Russian ship
commanders out there to be nice to the Americans.
That’s why this guy’s finally dipping his colors. I’ll bet it
means that those Soviet ships heading for Cuba are going to turn around
and head for home. Yup, those ships are gonna be heading home”.
Sure enough, later that day, the radio news broadcasts began reporting
that an agreement had been reached between Kennedy and Khrushchev. To
the great relief of the entire world, a major military conflict
and crisis had been adverted. And we, practically alone in
mid-ocean, serving unaccompanied in the Mills, were witness to an
event so subtle that it went largely unnoticed. Yet, though unreported,
the simple dipping of colors between ships of hostile navies was the
very first signal that, at least for now, the world would be spared from
a terrible war … and we, in the Mills, were the first to
know.
Bill Thorpe, YN3
USS Mills - DER 383
July 1961 - July 1963
1 I am grateful to Captain Henry
C. Morris, USN, (Ret), for these early details and history of the Mills
as posted on the USS Mills website.
2 Probably named for the river
Terek that runs through Georgia then known as the Georgian S.S.R.
one of the Republics of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.).
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