By NUWC Division Newport Public Affairs
About 10,000 Sailors served aboard 130 landing craft support (LCS) ships during World War II. The last two surviving LCS Sailors, J. William Middendorf II and Eddy Desmond, visited NUWC Division Newport to share their stories with a full audience in Chafee Auditorium on Nov. 18.
Middendorf and Desmond were the most prominent members of a panel, which also included Dr. Christopher Lehman, national security and naval warfare expert; Christine Pitts, granddaughter of U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. John Joseph Shea; and Stephen Waisgerber, a history teacher at Marshfield High School in Marshfield, Massachusetts. Stephen O’Grady, head of Technology and Strategy in Division Newport’s Undersea Warfare Combat Systems Department, moderated the discussion, after Technical Director Marie Bussiere welcomed the distinguished guests.
“It’s fitting that we are holding this event one week after Veterans Day,” Bussiere said. “It is a reminder that every single day we benefit from the service and sacrifice of those who put their lives on the line to safeguard our nation and our freedom. No one day or celebration can capture our gratitude or repay the debt that we have and that we owe to our veterans, but events like ours here today give us all an opportunity to take a step back and reflect upon the real meaning of service and what each one of us can do to serve in our own way.”
Middendorf’s remarkable military service included serving as U.S. Secretary of the Navy from 1974-77, and as ambassador to the Netherlands from 1969-73, the Organization of American States from 1981-85, and the European Union from 1985-87. Middendorf, who turned 100 years old in September, was a successful businessman and published author.
He championed the Ohio-class submarine, the companion Trident missile, and the Aegis surface-launched missile system.
“One of the things I was most proud of as U.S. Secretary of the Navy, was when I took over in the early 1970s was I decided that no war that was ever fought, was ever won, and I had lived through several of them at that point,” Middendorf said. “I decided that the only way we could win a war, in light of the huge Soviet buildup at that time which was threatening everybody at the peak of the Cold War, was to have peace through strength.
“In 1973, I started the Trident submarine program, which is still, 50 years later, our overt deterrence in the battle between good and evil. At the same time, I was able to get through Congress the Aegis missile program, which is the fundamental program on the 88 Arleigh Burke destroyers, which exist to this day as our main surface combatant force. Also, the F-18 became the Navy’s aviation arm and CH-53E heavy lift helicopter gave the Marines new mobility instead of them having to come ashore in small boats. Ten years later it paid off once these ships were built and came on deck. The Soviets couldn’t match it and in the mid-1980s the Soviet Union collapsed as a result and we were able to achieve peace through strength, which was picked up by Ronald Reagan as his main theme.”
In 2022, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro announced that an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer would be named the USS J. William Middendorf (DDG 138).
Desmond, who turned 99 years old in November, recalled the two options he was presented after he completed basic training fresh out of high school in 1944.
“They said you could be an armed guard manning a merchant ship as a gunner or you could go to cooks’ and bakers’ school,” Desmond said. “I said, ‘That isn’t even a choice.’”
Desmond chose the cooking path and after basic training in New York and school in Florida, he boarded the LCS 128 as the ship’s cook. The ship, which carried 65 Sailors and five officers, traveled from Boston, Massachusetts, where Desmond was raised, to Okinawa, Japan.
“A lot of us would stay awake all night and when you finally went to sleep the Japanese bombers would fly just high enough so that they were out of reach of our anti-aircraft gun shells that would explode,” Desmond said. “We did scout patrol that involved laying smoke screens for the cruisers, destroyers, and battleships.”
Desmond’s ship was then sent to the Philippine Islands. What he witnessed when he arrived left a lasting impression.
“I can remember it like it was yesterday,” Desmond said. “There were so many ships, aircraft carriers, submarines, landing craft, you name it. I said, ‘What the hell is going on?’ Everything was very secretive, but it was for the invasion of Japan. If the invasion happened, I wouldn’t be here today because we were going to be in the first wave of landing craft that would have brought the tanks and soldiers in.”
Desmond and his fellow Sailors were however thrust into conflict during the Battle of Okinawa, which lasted from April 1 to June 22, 1945.
“You had to be ready 24/7,” Desmond said. “We were again laying smoke screens and fighting Kamikaze planes.”
Although Desmond was the ship’s cook, he was also a gunner’s mate. His battle station was to man a 20 mm anti-aircraft gun on the starboard side of the ship.
The Battle of Okinawa allowed enough time for the atomic bomb to be developed, which made an invasion of Japan unnecessary.
Ripple effect of a wartime letter
Two days before sailing out on the USS Wasp (LHD 1) on July 1, 1942, Lt. Cmdr. John Joseph Shea of Cambridge, Massachusetts, wrote a letter to his 5-year-old son Jackie. When Shea’s ship was attacked and sunk by Japanese torpedoes on Sept. 15, 1942, all 194 men onboard, including Shea, were declared dead or missing. The letter Shea wrote to his son, however, has not only endured, but has had a ripple effect for several generations and more to come.
“On June 29, 1942, my grandfather, like many servicemen facing the reality of not returning home to their families, wrote my father a letter,” Pitts said. “The family story is after my grandfather’s death, my grandmother may have shared the letter with his sisters, who were public school teachers in Boston. They in turn shared the letter with their classes and the Catholic Church, and thus made public the reading of my grandfather’s letter to Jackie.”
Pitts, who is a biology teacher at Marshfield High School and mother of three daughters, explained how the letter has influenced several generations of her family and others who have read or listened to a reading of the letter.
“There is a responsibility for action after reading and hearing a letter like this,” Pitts said. “How could we possibly honor the men and women who faced the violence and set the tone for what it means to be an American? Men and women like my grandfather gave their lives, sacrificed the privilege of raising their families, and never witnessed the benefits of their sacrifices.”
The letter was published with a series of personal letters in a pamphlet titled “Lest We Forget…” in 1943 by the Navy’s Industrial Incentive Division. Since then, the letter has been republished many times in magazines and newspapers. The full letter can be read here: https://hamptonroadsnavalmuseum.blogspot.com/2017/09/seventy-five-years-ago-letter-to-little.html
A couple of the more poignant paragraphs from the letter include:
“…When you are a little bigger you will know why your daddy is not home so much anymore. You know we have a big country and we have ideals as to how people should live and enjoy the riches of it and how each is born with equal rights to life, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness. Unfortunately, there are some countries in the world where they don’t have these ideals, where a boy cannot grow up to be what he wants to be with no limits on his opportunities to be a great man, such as a great priest, statesman, doctor, soldier, business man etc.
Because there are people and countries who want to change our nation, its ideals, forms of government, and way of life, we must leave our homes and families to fight. Fighting for the defense of our country, ideals, homes, and honor is an honor and a duty which your daddy has to do before he can come home to settle down with you and Mother. When it is done, he is coming home to be with you always and forever. So wait just a little while longer. I am afraid it will be more than the two weeks you told me on the phone…”
For Pitts the letter has resonated differently at varying stages of her life.
“As a child, his words seemed like a directive,” Pitts said. “I remember asking my father if the letter felt like a burden, a checklist of chores to complete. He made it clear that to him, the words were a guiding light. I began to understand this as a young parent when my grandfather’s words transformed into hopeful parenting goals. Now that my children have grown into adults, I hope they can continue to practice and spread the ideals of the letter.”
Preserving history
Lehman, through his role as the chairman of the board of directors for the Landing Craft Support Museum Foundation at the Mare Island Shipyard in Vallejo, California, attends speaking events involving the history of amphibious gunboats used in World War II and those who served on the ships. The museum is actually a restored LCS, nicknamed the “Yankee Dollar,” and the only World War II LCS that still exists out of the original 130 vessels.
After serving in the Navy Reserve and earning multiple graduate degrees in the field of national security, Lehman served for 10 years in senior positions in the legislative and executive branches of the U.S. government. He served as an associate staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee from 1976-81, was appointed by President Reagan as the director of the Office of Strategic Nuclear Policy at the Department of State in early 1981 and from 1983-85, he served as special assistant to the president for National Security Affairs.
“My work in the field of national security was to help make sure wars don’t happen,” Lehman said.
“Everyone here at NUWC is a part of that because you are on the other end of the pointy edge of the spear. The work you do here is just as important as those who are risking their lives. It’s a team sport and you are a valued and important part of the team. The way we’re going to prevent the next big war is by the work you do here to keep us ahead of the curve in terms of technology and being a strong nation. We need people who help defend this nation because that’s how peace prevails.”
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