Subject: WWII-L Digest - 23 Jul 1993 to 24 Jul 1993

From: Automatic digest processor <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1993 00:00:21 -0400

There are 7 messages totalling 649 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. BIO: MARSHALL AND THE 8TH REGIMENT (2)
  2. hi
  3. Moscow trip notes: May-June '93
  4. STRAT: Prodical Raider? (2)
  5. USN KOHI, and YAGs in the SW Pacific, 1942-3

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Date:    Sat, 24 Jul 1993 12:52:54 +0200
From:    John Ausland <[email-masked]>
Subject: BIO: MARSHALL AND THE 8TH REGIMENT

  Oslo, July 24.  FOR LARRY JEWELL.
  In your biographic data of Marshall, you said the following:

*** was promoted to colonel and placed in command of the 8th
Infantry at Fort Screven, September 1933

*** was senior instructor of the Illinois National Guard, 1933-
1936

I have known he commanded the 8th but have not been sure how long.
>From your data, it looks like it was a brief command.  Can you
clarify this?

*******************************************************************
* John C. Ausland               Tel: +47 22 14 17 68              *
* Land Productions              Fax: +47 22 16 30 92              *
* Sondreveien 4, Entry 2        CIS: 73240,2704                   *
* 0378 Oslo, Norway             Internet: [email-masked] *
*******************************************************************

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Date:    Sat, 24 Jul 1993 07:12:55 EST
From:    Larry & Kim Jewell <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: BIO: MARSHALL AND THE 8TH REGIMENT

John, I'll check the library for more information on Marshall.  The book
I'm transcribing is a "one page of data and a portrait" type work.  It's
very nice but limited.

Larry J

------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 24 Jul 1993 09:56:40 -0400
From:    [email-masked]
Subject: Re: hi

Arnaud, my two cents worth in addition to the other sites mentioned, is
Battleship Cove in Falls River, MA.  The battleship USS Massachusetts,
the destroyer USS Joseph Kennedy, and a submarine (name forgotten) are
moored under the bridge carrying Interstate 95 from Providence, RI to
Fall River.  Next to the moored boats is a dinky gift shop, and the official
PT Boat museum.  You can view up close 2 restored PT boats, and see several
pretty good dioramas.  The eating in both cities is good if you want to
try Portuguese food.

                                        Richard Kaplan
                                        [email-masked]

------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 24 Jul 1993 07:06:10 PDT
From:    Eric Fenster <[email-masked]>
Subject: Moscow trip notes: May-June '93

>From efenster Sat Jul 24 06:24:19 1993
Received: by igc.apc.org (4.1/Revision: 1.100 )
        id AA05365; Sat, 24 Jul 93 06:24:19 PDT
Date: Sat, 24 Jul 93 06:24:19 PDT
From: Eric Fenster <efenster>
Message-Id: <[email-masked]>
To: efenster
Subject: Moscow notes: May-June '93
Status: RO

  Aeroflot's flight from Brussels started almost as usual.  If the new
carpeting--attached flat to the floor at least in most places instead of
bunching up to trip the unwary--was a surprise, the baggage piled in front of
the emergency exits but unnoticed by the cabin crew was not.  My first
request to a flight attendant got him to move the baggage... and to jam it
behind the hinges so as to defeat any attempt to open the door. Finally I
moved it myself under seats of the business cabin--to the smiling approval of
all the flight attendants, who were taking advantage of that empty cabin to
flirt before takeoff.
  After more than a year, the meal tray at my favorite seat still tilted at a
dangerous angle and meant another meal eaten with one hand while other would
be used to keep everything from sliding onto the floor.  When lunch was
served, only a flivker showed that the attendant realized he was commiting
the tray to the forces of gravity, but would a report be made?

  The flight ended with another of the Aeroflot pilots' feather landings.

 The trip in May 1993 was 17 months into "shock therapy," and in many ways
turned out to show that everything had changed and nothing had changed.  An
early example: On the second night in Moscow, we went to the Obratsov Puppet
Theater. It was almost exactly a year after he had died, at the age of 91. In
July 1991, Obratsov was honored on his 90th birthday.  A poster montage of
photos tracing his life was hung on a wall in the theater and, next to it, a
framed letter of congratulationg from President Gorbachev.  Both were there
last October; this May the letter was gone.
 I asked a woman attendant why.  Time passed (proshol vremya), she answered,
any display only stays up for a certain time and then its usefulness is
ended.  I looked at her: "It was a political decision, wasn't it?"  "Yes,"
she acknowledged, quietly.
 Gorbachev is rejected today, so history is dealt with by being erased.
Again.

  We visited a publishing house of children's literature, and those in our
group who know printing were impressed by the quality.  The enterpprise is
still state-owned, and the director felt reasonably confident:  After food,
the first thing a Russian family thinks of buying is books for its children,
he said. In the West we imagine Russia to be hungry, but we don't always know
in what way.  It was reassuring.  Book prices are low, partly because the
publisher wants them to be so that the books will be accessible, partly
because margins over 50% kick in excess profits taxes.
  The problem is that speculators buy up the books from the bookstores and
resell them on the street for several times their true price.  Here, as in
other sectors, state retail stores are converted into wholesale distributors,
doing neither the producer nor the consumer any good, but pushing inflation
up.  (The state store employees surely receive payoffs to sell their goods in
bulk. Whether any portion of these bribes find their way back to producers, I
don't know.)
 The publishing house earns real money, hard currency, via a contract with
McDonalds to make apple pie cartons.
  In May the average monthly wage of the 207 workers was 15,000 rubles, about
$19 an an exchange rate which was varying rapidly, with the highest paid
worker at about 33,000 rubles.  When we came back in June, the average salary
had jumped to 28,000 rubles, about $27 at the current exchange rate, and
there had been another 23% of inflation (officially!).

  May 9, Victory Day. After the events on May 1, our host felt obliged to
officially warn us against going to Gorky Park; it was unknown whether
"unapproved" demonstrations would take place there and whether there would be
violence if they were attempted.
  Our host was covering his bases; that I understood.  But he also believed
that trouble was likely, and that I did not understand.  That is, I did not
understand how his assessment of the political opposition could be so far
off.  The sacrifices and vistory in World War 2 (the "Great Patriotic War")
were sacred.  For either the nationalist-patriotic or the communist
oppositions to deliberately disturb the commemoration in Gorky Park by
bringing violence to the midst of aged war veterans and their families would
thoroughly discredit them and their cause.
  If there was to be violence, it would be because the authorities refused to
grant a parade permit for a march from Belorussia Station.  It was ironic
that Yeltsin was now applying the same restrictions on demonstrations which
had been used against his followers in Spring 1991: The freedom to
demonstrate depended upon "permission" from authorities, who could refuse on
flimsy grounds.  The same authorities could decide how many demonstrators
would be allowed, which was to say that they would determine the existence
and the extent of any grievance against their own authority.
  At the last minute, the authorities avoided confrontation by backing down
from their denial and allowing all marches.
  In the Park, my group managed to talk with a number of veterans, but the
most memorable was with a woman who was a doctor and whose campaign medals
showed she had moved from one difficult front to another during the war.  She
married a soldier in 1952, and returned to her home in the Urals which she
hadn't seen for 9 years.  Her husband died in 1954, of his war wounds she
said, before they had children.  She never remarried, and continued to
practice medicine all her life.
 We came upon one of the many typical knots of people gathered around a few
musicians.  One veteran had an artificial leg and walked awkwardly with a
crutch, but every time the music started he'd hand his crutch to somebody to
hold and dance with grace and pleasure.

  Our visit to an agricultural machinery factory was, in itself, almost the
story of today's Russia.  The original building dates from 1902 and was put
up by an American firm.  The plant made mowing machines, 26 per day, and
employed nearly 9,000 people at its peak.
  In May, production was down to 2 per day.  The machine is too expensive for
the farms, too big for private farms, fuel price increases make it too costly
to run--and, anyway, it's almost impossible to get the engines because they
are made in what is now another country.
  When I came back with another group in June, production was 1 per day and
scheduled to stop in July.  Components were already piled up around the
assembly line, which wasn't functioning.
  To survive, the factory was producing a new, small mower, designed to bee
HORSEDRAWN.
  We toured the plant, trying to avoid the puddles, slippery floors and
debris.  Any filmmaker who wanted to depict a worker's hell would find the
foundry a perfect set.  In the press room, five workers were just finishing
lunch next to their 1902 drop press.  It was still working perfectly well,
but to what purpose?  I watched the process.  Four 80-cm metal stakes at a
time were hand-held under the press, a diamond-shaped bar was held over them
and the press bent in a 20-degree angle.
  Another huge building was filled with a line of modern heavy presses, but
there was no work for them to do.  Both times, in May and June, the
production director, who was taking us around, stopped talking to us and
stared at this contemporary albatross: still there each time he looked, still
useless.
  The director impressed us because he seemed to know all his workers.  On
several occasions, he pointed out bent, withered old men.  "That one's 45."
"That one's 42."  Workers could retire at 55 bu, according to the director,
they usually don't live that long.
  The workers were eager to talk--angry and without hope.  Those in the press
room, where the bad conditions mean a premium, claimed in June that they
earned 15,000 rubles/month, about $14.  Later we were told that in June the
average wage was 15,000 and the range was 7,000-60,000 rubles, the low end
for white collar employees.  In June, the "physiological survival" income was
estimated at 13,000 rubles!
  The enterprise is selling off its social property in order to meet the
payroll.  This includes a stadium, a house of culture, a kindergarten and
housing.  Since sport, cultural and pre-school facilities were usually linked
to enterprises under the Soviet system, this means a major loss to the
workers and to their families.
  The factory is privatizing, and it voted to use the "second variant" by
which the workers buy 51% of the shares and become the "owners."  In this
case, that means 66,000 shares at 1,800 rubles.  But 1,800 rubles is a lot
for the wages being earned, and the workers hadn't bought all the shares.
The "solution," according to the editor of the factory newspaper, was that
many shares were bought by a "worker" who had also established four
businesses on plant property.  "He's not at all intelligent." she said.
  What she meant was that he had got himself on the payroll so as to legally
be a worker entitled to buy shares, but that he was really fronting for
racket interests.  The racketeers have colossal sums at their disposal, and
at the current rate of exchange the whole 51% of the shares would cost only
about $240,000 with all the buildings, machinery (some modern), use of the
land, etc.
  According to the editor, not just this relatively small factory but the
major successful ones (eg, automobile with new automated assembly lines) were
being bought up in this way by the mafia in a mockery of "privatization."
Under the privatization law, the new "worker" owners can sell their shares in
just three years.
  With privatization, the agricultural machinery plant's workforce is
expected to drop to about 2,300.

  We visited a dairy farm whose owner, Peter Illyitch (as in Tchaikovsky)
began it as a private venture more than five years ago, as soon as land
leasing became possible.  He had experience in animal husbandry, and needed
it: state farms would only sell their worst cows, and he is still breeding
them back to quality.
  The finances make your head spin. Peter has taken out several loans and
buys equipment as fast as he can to keep ahead of inflation; the grounds are
strewn with machinery that still has no use. The interest rate keeps rising,
but when we were there in May, Peter showed us a tractor which he bought for
600,000 rubles last year on an 8% loan but which was now worth 18 million.
Since his total indebtedness then was 15 million, if he had gone bankrupt he
could have sold the tractor, paid his debts and been 3 million ahead!  By
now, interest on the most recent loan was 80%, but with inflation at 2000% in
the last year, that meant a highly negative interest rate.
  The farm is in a region near Moscow known for its clean air and forests, a
coveted place for a dacha.  And near the farm ostentatious 3-story brick
dachas were under construction. Under a new law, Russian citizens can own
0.15 hectare plots of land, but local authorities decide on how the land is
distributed. Here, the prospective owners convince the authorities by
agreeing to bring gas and telephone lines in exchange for the land
assignments.  And, as the village mayor told us, he preferred to give the
land to the rich.  Put this together with other reports that country houses
near Moscow were selling for $100,000-250,000 (in a country with a $30
average monthly wage, remember), and it is clear that corrupt officials and
racketeers are the beneficiaries.  In fact, despite the continuing severe
housing shortage, there is a virtual building boom of luxury dachas
observable around Moscow.
  "We lack suburbs with individual houses," a young Russian businessman
explained to me.  I reminded him of the traffic jams which now clog Moscow
and talked about Los Angeles.  Imagine Moscow's suburbanization, starting
with a core population of nine million, to say nothing of the destruction of
the surrounding forests and country which have been preserved until now.

  In May we went to St. Petersburg, where robbery of foreigners was practiced
officially and unofficially.  Last year, I remember one museum which tried
charging foreigners triple admission.  This year the rate for foreigners was
70-100 times the price for Russians.  If that wasn't enough, we visited the
Hermitage and St. Isaac's on International Museum Day, when all museums were
free.  That didn't stop both museums from charging admission as usual, and
only when one was inside was a small sign visible announcing the free
admission.
  At a street kiosk, a Russian woman with our group bought a pastry for 50
rubles.  A minute later, her American companion tried to buy one and was told
it was 500 rubles.  When he said he knew the correct price via his friend,
the kiosk owner came out and began beating up our Russian woman.  For
"betrayal," I suppose.
  On arrival back in Moscow, one person each in three of the five train
compartments we occupied discovered he had been robbed. We went to the
railway police to file a complaint.  They were not suprised by the robbery,
because "it happens everyday," but that we bothered to report it.  "I believe
we were gassed," I said.  The police said I was probably right.  "The French
had this problem, but they finally made the effort and caught the gang," I
said.  The French were here to advise us, the police replied.

  We had a cultural program, but few people decided to go to the Bolshoi on
their own and went with a Russian friend to buy tickets at the theater.  The
Russian verified the price, came to tell the group, then hustled them away.
When they were a sufficient distance, he explained that a scalper had
overheard the woman at the ticket office quote the proper price.  While the
group was being informed of it, the scalper warned the woman that if she sold
the tickets at that price, she would be "hurt."  "Why are you doing this to
me?" she pleaded.  "I have a daughter to feed."  It was to keep her out of
danger that the Russian stopped the purchase and took the group away from the
scene.

  In May, we met a woman who, despite many difficulties, had launched a
successful publishing company whose proceeds helped her run a foundation to
support education and culture without external interference.
  In June, we visited the commercial side of the activity, which involved not
only publishing but other branches, including real estate.
  When I asked about the real estate, the reply concerned a major research
and business center south of Moscow's center which had gotten off to a shaky
start because of "bad publicity."
  I was shocked.  "So you're the ones!" I blurted.  And they were.  The story
was that some time after Moscow's mayor decided he had absolute control over
the city's land and buildings, he ceded 700 acres on Lenin Prospect from
October Square to Gagarin Square to an organization which planned a major
"development" program.  We're talking about some of the most valuable urban
real estate in the world, and it was disposed of in this way.
  The French were involved, and the French ambassador came to the
groundbreaking ceremony last year.  Yeltsin was also expected.  A big hole
had already been dug, and when the officials arrived they found the hole
filled by demonstrators who believed they would be losing their apartments
and who had not even been consulted.  Yeltsin got wind of the demonstration
and stayed home.  When the French ambassador realized what was happening, he
scolded the organizers and left the ceremony.
  Last October, I brought a group to give a seminar on business methods. One
person, who was in PR, made contact with a Russian group which was a
potential client.  A Russian friend of mine went with him to translate his
negotiations.  A short way into the conversation, she discovered she was
talking to the group involved in the "development" project, which needed a PR
person to save its image problem.  The irony was that she lived in (and had
been born in) one of the apartments thought to be menaced, so she suddenly
seemed to be helping to negotiate her own homelessness!
  Anyway, there we were in the bowels of this organization.  In response to
my questions, they claimed that nobody would lose housing, and that all the
fears raised about this were just a "communist plot."  Then they said they
had had a survey of the district done which showed that 43% of the area was
"garbage" land!!  (Anybody reading this who knows Moscow will have his jaw
around his knees by now.)

  When tongues wag in Moscow, they claim that absolutely every government
official and every transaction is corrupt. I'd like to think that isn't true,
but I do know that raw materials are a major Russian export, and I do know
that a Russian friend who works for a Western company which buys such raw
materials was told to have his company representatives bring $300,000 in cash
on their next trip and that it would be collected right at the airport in
exchange for the signatures approving the export.

  What one sees of so-called business are street kiosks selling alcohol, soft
drinks, cigarettes, shampoo.  Many products are imported, others are domestic
but put in Western packaging to deceive customers.  All sorts of
"entrepreneurs" are running about starting new businesses, but they're all
involved in import and trade or in tourism and "services."  I almost never
meet anybody who plans to PRODUCE anything.  Those who claim they want to say
it's impossible.  Maybe so, or maybe colossal overnight profits can't be
resisted.
  Also, in a country with abacuses instead of cash registers, no checks or
credit cards and an inappropriate accounting system, it is overwhelmingly
tempting to engage in businesses with all cash transactions and to hide
income from everybody, including the tax authorities.

 Three Americans arrived for a conference on "Socialism Today."  The
organizer sent an 18 yr-old university student to meet them at the airport
and take them around the city.  Well-dressed, well-mannered, but when he took
them to visit the Kremlin churches, he told them the cost for foreigners was
$15 but if they kept out of sight while he bought them tickets he could
probably get them in for the Russian price of $5.  The real price, for
everybody, is 5 cents!  What pushed this young man to cheat foreign guests
who were, to boot, his COMRADES at a conference on socialism?

 Contrast.  In October I dropped in on a secondary school where I knew French
was taught.  A teacher invited me to a literature course where 12 yr-olds
were following a lecture completely in French. The lecture surveyed several
centuries of French and Russian writers, their styles and the influences they
had on each other. The children not only followed everything, it was clear
they had read many of the authors.  Afterwards, the teacher asked me is I was
bored.  It was the most positive thing I've seen in Moscow, I replied, but
how do you explain to these children why their friends are making fortunes on
the street but that they should continue their education?  We tell them it's
temporary," she said, lamely.

 Another contrast, the efficiency with which all the aspects of our visit
were carried out, and the care--whether it was in the friendliness of the
kitchen staff in the tears of the woman guarding our floor when she thought
our late return from a trip might have meant we had an accident.

  Overall, there were changes since last year.  People claimed to be
optimistic, often adding that they had no other option.  And it's true that
high prices have replaced rationing and empty shelves as the barrier to
goods.  My friend in St. Petersburg explained the difference succinctly: Last
year if one were desperate enough to trade the shirt off one's back to
survive, there was still nothing to buy; this year there is. According to
him, being able to postpone ultimate poverty is a tangible increase of
security,

 What struck me most, however, were the things which remained the same:
First, yet again, the acceptance--the seeking even--of a force to play the
"leading role" in society.  Before, it was the (good) Czar or the Party; now,
the entrepreneurs.  This faith that, given a free hand, they will magically
restore the economy is the fad among the intelligentsia, one of whom assured
me that studies proved that only one in ten people were inherently capable of
true business initiative.  Even trade unionists have taken up the slogan that
they must help "create their own exploiters" and then struggle against them.
  Put in this context, the tolerance for the outrageous wealth being
accumulated by a very few becomes understandable and resembles the
concentration of power rationalized under the previous ideology so that the
new system is less a break with the past than the legacy of it.
  Presumably, at some point the "entrepreneurs" will become satiated with
what they have either appropriated or amassed without producing anything, and
they will cease sending it abroad or consuming it ostentatiously and really
invest in restructuring.  It will be the economic equivalent of the
Khrushchevian political liberalization, a Russian version of the famous
American trickle-down theory.
  This attitude is accompanied by a new dose of determinism which condones
all the criminal or negative aspects of change as "inevitable" or "to be
expected" and predicts their eventual disappearance.  I almost expected to
hear that, "you can't make an omelette without breaking an egg," the version
of the-end-justifies-the-means which bathed the sins of the previous
ideology.
  Why Russia will see the abdication of a mafia which is being given a unique
opportunity penetrate ubiquitously when organized crime is estimated to be
America's third largest industry and has a firm grip Japan and other wealthy
countries is not explained.

  The second stable idea is the attitude toward workers as lazy drunkards.
This is neatly linked with the first, of course; after all, that's why the
workers' state needed the Party as a guide.
  I am allergic to scapegoating workers for the failures of a system they
didn't create and, at some periods, would have been criminally liable for
challenging.  In fact, throwing one's labor into a workplace which wasn't
supplied for production for most of every month would have been insanity.
And far better to "steal" cement and construct something with it as a side
job than leave it harden in the rain.  Surviving Soviet absurdities and being
lazy are contradictory terms; it took energy and ingenuity to satisfy one's
needs.
  What people do seem to have engraved in their minds is that an open direct
line between two points can only be an illusion.  Inordinate non-productive
energy is spent fabricating alternatives, and the (il)logic makes corruption
a completely natural part of the landscape.
  The attitude toward workers is paradoxical.  Private ownership is touted as
the savior which will improve people's work by giving them a direct stake in
its outcome.  The same people who blow this horn will condemn the option for
workers to buy their own enterprise on the grounds that if they are the
owners they will not take the hard decisions for the enterprises's good, or
that if left to elect their own management they will choose only directors
who do not demand performance.
  What is also forgotten in the euphoria is that in the capitalist countries
supposedly being emulated most people work for salaries, not because they
have a private property stake in their work.  Yes, there are owners, but I
daresay the average schoolteacher works with as much dedication as any shop
owner, and probably for much less pay.  Our societies would collapse if good
performance required greed and/or private property as the motivator because
we just don't have that many social functions where those are relevant.  Even
for people who are owners by virtue of investment--stocks, for example--their
own incentive to work and the performance of the companies they "own" are
completely unrelated.  Success in modern capitalist economies depends largely
upon how well the riddle of making bureaucratic management perform wisely is
solved.

  An alarm also needs to be sounded about the threat to the human
infrastructure.  Paying educators and scientists sub-starvation wages means
they all have to look for a side "business" and, as often as not, neglect
their primary work just when the whole educational system needs revision and
attention.  A similar pressure is placed on health professionals at a time
when a crisis, aggravated by enviromental degradation may be striking at the
fundamental level of the gene pool itself.
  The dichotomy is between an insane policy to privatize much of education
and health when the large majority of the population must spend most of its
income for food, while an elite can assure its implantation by sending its
children to schools which cost two months' average salary per day!
  Students from former Soviet republics enrolled in Russian universities are
being told they must pay for previously free education and that $3,000-4,000
would be a bargain because it's so much less than American universities
charge.  (As expensive is US higher education is, and as unusual among
industrial countries in charging for it at all, it is still not ten times the
average annual salary per year!)  This policy can not only hurt relations
with CIS countries, it threatens the human capacity in countries very much
part of Russia's economic geography.

  Many people have claimed that socialism has been proved not to work by the
failures of the Soviet Union's version of it.  If present trends continue,
fairness and logic may oblige those same people to assert that capitalism is
also an unviable system.

 June 29 at Sheremetyevo Airport.  The line to go through exit customs wasn't
moving.  The officer was examining exiting Russians with all deliberate
sloth.  In half an hour, two people were cleared.  The next woman had
forgotten to fill out a currency declaration and was sent back to get one and
fill it out in front of the officer while he waited lazily.  Suddenly, there
was a loud noise.  A senior officer spotted what was going on.  At the top of
his lungs he screamed at the officer:  WHY are you holding everybody up? Take
care of the others while she is writing! Our officer woke up and waved us
through.
  After passport control, we were in the international zone.  I looked up at
the railing on the mezzanine level just in case and was surprised to see the
drying clothes still there.  I went upstairs.  There weren't as many, and the
children seemed to be gone,but after about ten months there was still a group
of stranded Somalians living in the airport, sleeping on cardboard.  The UN
is planning to do something, an airport policeman insisted.
 I looked for the local (free) phone which used to be near the coffee shop.
Gone.  But there was another phone, installed by a Western company, and the
cost for a LOCAL call was $2.00 PER MINUTE!  Let anybody who questions
regulation take note.

----

 These notes do not paint a balanced picture of an exciting country
undergoing unprecedented transformation. Nor do they sufficiently celebrate a
people who are loyal friends and who can transform a kitchen table and a cup
of tea a place of privilege and learning.  Instead, I have isolated points
which may help explain the current crisis.

  I also don't want to provide an excuse for self-righteousness.  The
profiteering from East Europe's difficulties is a Western affliction, as
well.  It would be hard, for example, to imagine anything more cynical than
the behavior of the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development in
spending twice as much money on its own luxuries as it distributed to the
East (leading to Jacques Attali's belated resignation last week).  But that,
and the rest of the economic crisis in the West, is another aspect of the
analysis.

  On the way back from Moscow, I attended the annual Economics Colloquium at
NATO.  This year's subject was E. Europe and the CIS.  I ran into a long-time
Russian acquaintance who worked at a Soviet institute which studied the
world's labor movements.  We had chatted a couple of times when he drew close
and said, "You know, Eric, I am surprised to see you here.  NATO is usually
associated with right wing politics."  I looked at him, and  remembered the
past.  Then I remembered that the new darlings of Russia's democratic
intellectuals are Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and that the same
company which was grabbing off Moscow's best real estate was also publishing
translations of Ayn Rand.
------------

Eric Fenster
July 1993         [email-masked]  [email-masked]

------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 24 Jul 1993 09:14:07 EST
From:    Larry & Kim Jewell <[email-masked]>
Subject: STRAT: Prodical Raider?

This ship seems to be a bit lost.  Anyone know the story behind
this incident?

10/17/43 Sun.  German raider sunk:
                Schiff No. 28 (MICHEL), by submarine TARPON
                 (SS-175), off Chichi Jima, Bonin Islands.

(From: UNITED STATES NAVAL CHRONOLOGY, WORLD WAR II)

Larry J

------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 24 Jul 1993 13:05:53 EDT
From:    Thomas Stuart <[email-masked]>
Subject: USN KOHI, and YAGs in the SW Pacific, 1942-3

Hello,  I am a reference librarian at the Penn Yan Public Library in
Penn Yan, New York.  We have a patron who is researching for a book
he hopes to write about his adventures as a member of the crew of the
USS KOHI, in World War II.

The patron, Robert "Rusty" King, served as an electrician's mate
on the KOHI.  He became re-interested in the story of the KOHI, and the
group of other YAGs which operated from New Zealand, and decided in 1990
to seriously research the subject.  He has been to the National Archives
in D.C., the Library of Congress, and has written to navy officials both
here in the US and in New Zealand.  He has found many individuals to be
very interested and willing to be helpful, but has in fact not uncovered
much information beyond what he already knew.   He is stalled at this
point by inability to find much of any information about the former
commander of the KOHI.  Mr King does have his name, service #, and knows
for example that he retired as a full Commander, USN, in December 1954.
(It is my suggestion that we not "broadcast" the person's name over the
net in this initial inquiry).

So really we are looking for two kinds of help at this point.
1) any suggestions on how to track down his former commanding officer
(who Mr. King would greatly like to contact, if he is still living) and
2) suggestions on leads for sources of information on the KOHI and the
other YAGs and their role in the SW Pacific in 1942-43.

I've extracted the following from some notes made by Mr. King, which he
will be using in a presentation he'll be making at our library in a
couple weeks:

     ================================================================
In late 1942 there were no U.S. Navy small craft in the South West Pacific,
just warships on daily, unending combat duty.  The New Zealand government
made several wooden and steel-hulled smallcraft available to the United States.
These were then used for supply work in and around the battle areas of New
Caledonia, the islands of the New Hebrides, Fiji and elsewhere. These boats
flew the Stars and Stripes, and were now USN craft.
An Ensign assumed command of one of these ships, newly commissioned as the
USS KOHI, YAG 27, in Wellington, NZ ...  Other crew members came aboard
included a survivor of the USS Quincy, CA 39, sunk at Guadalcanal, and
others who formerly served on the carrier WASP, the crusiers SALT LAKE CITY
and ATLANTA, and other warships lost in naval actions. ...
[The USS KOHI] was a 100-ton wooden-hulled sailing coaster with two masted
schooner rigging, four sails, flat bottom and center board, two diesel
engines, 20mm canon, two machine guns and a crew of 12. ...

[Activities of the KOHI included:]
ferrying island natives, Navy Seabees, rice, ammo, aerial torpedoes,
diesel fuel for shore based radar stations, mail, barrels of gasoline and oil,
missionaries, coast watchers and whatever could be carried on an open cargo
deck.  The KOHI's activities included an attempt to "ram an enemy sub
making an island landing" and other actions to "smack the enemy in numerous
ways wherever we could" in a series of "whopper" adventures -- adventures
about which there appears to have been almost nothing written and for
which there is little he has been able to find in the way of an official
record.
======================================================================
Thomas Stuart
Reference Librarian
Penn Yan Public Library
Penn Yan, NY, USA
email: [email-masked]

for

Robert E. King, ex USN 224-19-12
3109 Bath Road
Penn Yan, NY  14527
telephone: (315) 536-9507

------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 24 Jul 1993 20:35:51 +0100
From:    Bob Smart <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: STRAT: Prodical Raider?

> This ship seems to be a bit lost.  Anyone know the story behind
> this incident?
>
> 10/17/43 Sun.  German raider sunk:
>                 Schiff No. 28 (MICHEL), by submarine TARPON
>                  (SS-175), off Chichi Jima, Bonin Islands.
>
> (From: UNITED STATES NAVAL CHRONOLOGY, WORLD WAR II)
>
> Larry J
 Look in Silent Victory by Clay Blair ( page 513-514 of my paperback edition)
It is in the Index under Michel.

Tarpon under Tom Wogan found large fast unescorted ship at night.  Tarpon
fired 4 torpedoes, got two hits.  Damaged ship turned to ram forcing Tarpon
deep. Tarpon came back to periscope depth, fired two 'up the kilt', both
missed. Ship opened fire with 6" at the periscope.  Tarpon fired another
single torpedo hit in the stern, appeared to stop gunfire.  Tarpon circled
target fired another which sank target. Tarpon was credited with a '10,000 ton
Japanese Naval Auxilery although there was no radio conformation ( no distress
calls or decrypts).  It was not until postwar that analysis showed that it was
the Raider Michel which had come from the Indian Ocean with 'High Priority
cargo' to Japan."She was the first - and one of the few - German ships sunk by
U.S> subamrines in World War II, all in the Pacific."  from Blair.
Later he gives this summary
"In all U.S. submarines sank four German vessels in the Pacific: the two
U-boats, Herb Andrews freighter, and Tom Wogans merchant raider Michel."

Hope this helps

Bob Smart ([email-masked] or [email-masked])

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End of WWII-L Digest - 23 Jul 1993 to 24 Jul 1993
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