June 1955

[BosnMate]

Just out of high school I joined the Navy, and just out of Boot Camp, I was assigned to my duty station, which was the USS Merrick, AKA97. I hadn't been aboard long when we were sent to Seattle to take on cargo, and then in June of 1955 we joined the convoy sent to the Arctic to establish the DEW Line (Distant Early Warning) line of radar stations across the top of Alaska and Canada. If the Russians were to fire missiles or send bombers, then these radar stations would be the first warning of the impending attack. The Korean War was just over, and the Cold War was going in high gear. We were an armed cargo ship in the Amphibious Navy, and our main battery was the two dozen landing craft we carried. Where we were going there were no docks, so the radar stations had to be unloaded onto our boats and taken to shore. We didn't know if the Russians were going to try to stop us, so there was ammunition in the ready racks, but as it turned out, there were no incidents. I don't remember how many ships were involved, but this was the largest convoy since WWII, as I recall, there was quite a bunch of ships involved. Our final destination was in the Coronation Gulf, just north of Great Slave Lake. Another convoy from the Atlantic completed the line where we stopped off. The navy didn't use regular names for where we spotted the radar sites, they were called pins, and for some reason I remember Pin Charlie, but not why. However there were Eskimo towns close by some of the Pins. We went around the top of Alaska, and at one point we were something like 400 miles from the north pole. The water was very shallow, on of the ships ran aground but was re-floated, and we had navy Frog Men aboard that would, in places, swim into an area where we were going, to check on the bottom and water depth. Frog men were the beginning of the SEALS. Those guys were interesting to talk to and hear their sea stories. Anyhow, due to the shallowness of the water, I think I was on the largest ship to ever get into the Coronation Gulf.

One of the ships in the convoy had a hole punched in it by the ice we had encountered, so that ship was unloaded at Point Barrow, and the cargo was taken overland in the winter on the ice and snow. This picture is the front end of an LCM landing craft, with the ramp partially down, on the beach at Point Barrow. The LCM was 55 feet long and weighed 56 tons, with twin Grey Marine diesels engins, twin screws and rudders. I suppose due to all the ice around Point Barrow there was no surf, no big waves, it was just like in a bath tub.

This picture was taken late at night. It never got dark, we had encountered lots of ice south of Point Barrow, but the ocean was fairly clear around that point, but then closed in again as we traveled east.

I took this picture on the mid watch, the sun would sink down to the horzion, then about 1:AM it would start back up.

At this point the ice pack was up against the land, and we were being towed through the ice by the US Coastguard ice breaker Northwind. Once we got through this, it was open ocean until we started back, then we hit that same ice pack again.

 

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[tamrock]

What an adventure and a great story. Those are some wonderful color shots. In 1955 I still had a year to go before I became a reality. Boy have things changed since the days of the Cold War era.

 

[BosnMate]

My mother saved this letter from me, and I snapped a picture of the envelope. Thought I would ad it to the mix. Mail certainly didn't go out every day, we were 66 days at sea.

 

[vpnavy]

Nice photographs BosnMate. Funny, my only experience aboard ship was open house on a submarine and another time a destroyer! Thanks for sharing...

 

[worldtalker]

Nice photographs BosnMate. Funny, my only experience aboard ship was open house on a submarine and another time a destroyer! Thanks for sharing...

Subs.....best chow goin!

 

[Meadow]

The DEWline was the largest construction undertaking since the Panama Canal, if I remember my facts correctly. The staggering logistics of it have never had much publicity because it was largely classified. The most remarkable thing about it, I've always thought, was just how well it had been initially designed, with back-up systems for everything, every contingency planned for, down to the smallest detail.