AVGWarhawk
01-06-10, 11:26 AM
Glenn comes every year to the Diablo reunions. Our WW2 hero (89) travels alone from the west coast. Glen made seven war patrols.
Glenn Minteer's recollections as told to Tim Calvert(I work with Tim on the Torsk :up:), Lou Large, Barb Hagele, Bill and Judy Davy
Glenn was born August 16, 1920. He was the youngest child. His father died in an auto accident when Glenn was 11. His dad was getting onto a street car when he was hit by an auto and died hours later. His mother used the insurance money to buy a house and an acre of land; she reasoned that they would always have a roof over their head and could grow their food.
In the summer of 1937 between his junior and senior year he worked at an American tourist camp/gas station/restaurant. He was paid $1.00 a day. At the restaurant a hamburger cost 25˘ and a coke was 5˘. When school started he quit the job to go back to school. He was the captain of the football team. After football season was over, the owners of the tourist camp wanted him to work for them. He told them he didn't want to quit school. They worked out a schedule so that he would work from 9:30 PM until 8:00 AM. He would sleep with his clothes on. If a customer would ring the bell he would get up and wait on them at the gas station. He would go from there to school. After school he would go home and sleep and then come back to the tourist camp. A man and his wife came in every Friday night and the man, who was the assistant stationmaster for the Union Railroad, asked Glenn if he ever thought of doing other work. When Glenn said he would consider doing something else, the man offered him a job as a Red Cap. He had to get a waiver to work for the railroad since he wasn’t 21. He met his wife, Helen, when she and a friend came to the station to meet a friend. They were married in July of 1941. A year later a position opened as a Pullman reservation clerk. At that time Kansas City had 12 railroads. There was a pigeonhole wall cabinet with a box for every Pullman sleeping car. His next job, upstairs, was an auditor of ticket sales.
Glenn didn't want to be drafted and so on May 17, 1942 he enlisted in the Navy. His sister had married a submariner and he told Glenn that he should also join the submarine service. He went to boot camp at Great Lakes, IL and then volunteered for submarine duty and was sent to New London, CT submarine school where he learned about sub diesel engines. After sub school, he rode the train to San Diego, then a ship to Pearl Harbor, and then on to Midway Island. In January 1943, he was assigned to a relief crew; three months after the battle of Midway.
Then, he was assigned to the Trigger. He was a fireman in the engine rooms. Glenn qualified on his first patrol. (A patrol usually lasted 60 days.) The XO, Edward L. Beach, took two days to take Glenn through the qualification process. He would put his hand over a valve and ask Glenn what it was. There were 87 enlisted men onboard and every one hot bunked. During that patrol they sank a freighter. They also experienced depth charges. The Trigger had four 9 cylinder Fairbanks Morse engines.
After that patrol he returned to Midway Island. Midway Island is 7 x 3 miles. He was there for 3-4 months for refit. He became a 2nd class motor machinist man, a Motor Mac. In 1950 the name was changed to engineman.
He was then assigned to the Spearfish SS190, a thin skin boat. Glenn was called the Old Goat by the other crew members because he was older at 24. He was on three war patrols off Japan. During this time he became a 1st class “Mac Man.” One time they got close enough that they could see Japan “with one eye.” Every crew member got the opportunity to look at Japan through the periscope. The Spearfish had HOR (Hoover Owens Renchler) engines; it was a German design, but built by the US. The engine had copper tubes for lubrication and they would snap. Then you would have to shut down the engine to repair with spare tubing. This would happen every day. They devised a way to loop the tubing so when it snapped, the spare tubing was right there. A freighter came along the coast and the Spearfish was between the freighter and its escorts. They fired three torpedoes. Sonar detected a destroyer and the Spearfish went down to 290 feet. There were six depth charges and it raised the submarine up to 140 feet. This caused the sub to shake. It blew the packing, which was like waxed rope, out of the shaft. More chargers were dropped, but not near them. Thereafter they had packing rings prepared in advance.
After those patrols he was eligible to come back to New London for new construction-- a new submarine, because he had been on four war patrols. He had 30 days leave at home. He was in the US for 4 months and 4 days before leaving New London on the USS Blenny 324 which was barely finished before they left. They were running the engines to break them in as they were boarding. The USS Blenny had a General Motors engine. Glenn preferred the Fairbanks engines; he thought they were more reliable. They went through the Panama Canal to Pearl Harbor. He was on 4 war patrols with the USS Blenny. The first patrol was in the South China Sea. They had to go through the Lombok Straits in Bali, a seven mile long strip. They had to go on surface at night at full speed.
They had two weeks R & R in the harbor of Fremantle, Australia twelve miles from Perth. They stayed at the Ocean Beach Hotel at the Cotterslow Beach, which had been commandeered. It was on the sea front. The sailors went downstairs and opened the bar. Three blocks down from the beach was a dance hall and was opened on Wednesday and Saturday.
After the R & R, the relief crew had overhauled their submarine and had done all the repairs that were listed. They had to go back through the Lombok Straits and then on to Subic Bay in the Philippines in January 1945. The US had taken back the Philippines the previous fall. While in Subic Bay they had two weeks of R & R and they had to build their own cabins. Each cabin held one crew. One day Glenn and two other sailors hitchhiked to the Air Force base which was between Subic Bay and Manila. They got a ride in a truck, sitting on top of a load of bombs, to the Air Force Base. They stayed overnight there--the air force guys were great--they took us in and made us one of them. Manila was a "wreck," only a church survived the bombing. On the way back they stayed overnight again at the Air Force Base.
At the end of the third patrol they were back in Perth. They stayed in a hotel there.
The next patrol was to the Gulf of Siam. By now they had gone through the Straits of Lombok four times. They participated in a full blockade off Singapore. They would run on the surface and stop all sampans and junks. We pulled up alongside of them and always had a boarding party up on deck. Whoever was off watch would grab a gun and come up on deck, about four or five guys. We would pull up alongside of them and tie them to the side of the submarine. They all carried a rowboat. We would have all the crew get into their rowboat. After searching their ship we would drag it off into deep water then back off from it and sink it with a deck gun. Sometimes they would put demolition charges in the bottom of the sampan. Well, (chuckle, chuckle) one time we saw the sampan come out of the harbor there and head up the coast and (chuckle, chuckle) we started to go in toward him; we were on the surface, of course. This afterdeck house, a little house on the deck, disappeared and there was a 37 mm gun sticking out there. And he fired that gun, one round went over us they said and one came forward of the ship in the water and by that time we were turning full steam heading the other way. Most of them were not armed. They stopped 53 sampans and junks during the blockade that lasted 30 days. We sank more than one a day. The captain was William H. Hazzard, nicknamed Wild Bill Hazzard. The USS Blenny SS324 had 5” deck guns fore and aft.
"And what we had rigged up in the engine room was a fuel line up into the engine from our auxiliary stand by fuel pump, a little line up into the engine exhaust. And right into the big exhaust line where the engine exhaust came out, we built a little orifice and that line hooked up there to spray raw fuel into that exhaust while the engine was running, and when we did that the exhaust came out there in white clouds, huge clouds. We did that early on, we figured if we ever got caught on the surface and we couldn't dive we could run and hide ourselves in that fog.”
After that patrol they came back into Subic Bay; that was the closest place to get into. "The day we got into Subic Bay the war was over.
After the war the USS Blenny along with other submarines followed a submarine tender; there were three lines of submarines headed for the USA, or so they thought. The USS Blenny and two other subs went to Guam. They were told that they had to stay for 4-5 months. Glenn said that he had signed up “'for the duration” not for four years. Only he and a couple of other guys were able to leave on an LST. It took them four weeks to get from Guam to Meyer Island, San Francisco. From there he took the train to St. Louis where he was discharged.
He returned to his home in Kansas City where he returned to his job of auditor at the railroad that had been held for him.
He felt that there was no future for him at the railroad. The next step up was the head of the department and his boss was not going to retire soon. He knew that he would have to work until he was 65 to retire, whereas if he went back into the Navy, he could retire earlier with a bigger pension. Twenty three months and four days after getting out of the Navy he re-enlisted.
He had to go back in as a 3rd class Motor Mac. He went to New London where he got his orders to report to the USS Diablo which was stationed in the Panama Canal. He had to wait for the Diablo to come back from the Panama Canal to board. He asked around for housing for his wife and daughter Judy who had been born in 1946. Someone told him a local barber had rooms to rent. They lived there 3-4 months and then they got an apartment in Navy Housing. The Diablo was transferred to Norfolk and from 1948-1949 they rented a house on Ocean Beach.
In 1951, he transferred to New London and was assigned to the Tusk. He passed the test for Chief Engineman, but because of quotas he was passed up 3 or 4 times. Glenn became an instructor for basic diesel class. He also instructed officers on how submarines were constructed.
He took warrant officer class for six months. Glenn then had three years shore duty. During his last year he finally made Chief.
Then he was transferred to the USS Trutta USS 421 out of Key West where they had Navy housing. The USS Trutta then went to the Mediterranean. They stopped in Turkey, Greece, France, and Gibraltar. On the way back to Key West the Skipper got a letter that Glenn had made Warrant Officer. After that he began to stand Officer of the Deck watches.
Next Glenn was assigned to the USS Chanticleer ASR7, a submarine rescue vessel out of San Diego. He was an Engineering Officer for 2-3 years. They went as far as Japan.
There was talk of doing away with all warrant officers. Glenn got a letter for the Bureau that he had made Lt Junior Grade. The ships captain swore him in right then. He served on the Chanticleer for four years.
From 1962 to 1964 he served on the Boxer LHD 4.
He then became a recruiter for the Armed Services. He was Officer in charge of the Armed Forces Examination in St. Louis. He was there from 1965-1967. During his second year in St. Louis, Glenn went to lunch and when he came back to his office, he saw large bars hanging from the ceiling with strings. That is how he found out that he had made full Lt.
From 1967 -1969 he was Officer in Charge of advance training in the Recruit Training Command.
He got orders to go to Vietnam. He was Maintenance officer for the River Division 553.
Glenn retired from the Navy in 1971; he had served 27 years in the Navy.
Glenn Minteer's recollections as told to Tim Calvert(I work with Tim on the Torsk :up:), Lou Large, Barb Hagele, Bill and Judy Davy
Glenn was born August 16, 1920. He was the youngest child. His father died in an auto accident when Glenn was 11. His dad was getting onto a street car when he was hit by an auto and died hours later. His mother used the insurance money to buy a house and an acre of land; she reasoned that they would always have a roof over their head and could grow their food.
In the summer of 1937 between his junior and senior year he worked at an American tourist camp/gas station/restaurant. He was paid $1.00 a day. At the restaurant a hamburger cost 25˘ and a coke was 5˘. When school started he quit the job to go back to school. He was the captain of the football team. After football season was over, the owners of the tourist camp wanted him to work for them. He told them he didn't want to quit school. They worked out a schedule so that he would work from 9:30 PM until 8:00 AM. He would sleep with his clothes on. If a customer would ring the bell he would get up and wait on them at the gas station. He would go from there to school. After school he would go home and sleep and then come back to the tourist camp. A man and his wife came in every Friday night and the man, who was the assistant stationmaster for the Union Railroad, asked Glenn if he ever thought of doing other work. When Glenn said he would consider doing something else, the man offered him a job as a Red Cap. He had to get a waiver to work for the railroad since he wasn’t 21. He met his wife, Helen, when she and a friend came to the station to meet a friend. They were married in July of 1941. A year later a position opened as a Pullman reservation clerk. At that time Kansas City had 12 railroads. There was a pigeonhole wall cabinet with a box for every Pullman sleeping car. His next job, upstairs, was an auditor of ticket sales.
Glenn didn't want to be drafted and so on May 17, 1942 he enlisted in the Navy. His sister had married a submariner and he told Glenn that he should also join the submarine service. He went to boot camp at Great Lakes, IL and then volunteered for submarine duty and was sent to New London, CT submarine school where he learned about sub diesel engines. After sub school, he rode the train to San Diego, then a ship to Pearl Harbor, and then on to Midway Island. In January 1943, he was assigned to a relief crew; three months after the battle of Midway.
Then, he was assigned to the Trigger. He was a fireman in the engine rooms. Glenn qualified on his first patrol. (A patrol usually lasted 60 days.) The XO, Edward L. Beach, took two days to take Glenn through the qualification process. He would put his hand over a valve and ask Glenn what it was. There were 87 enlisted men onboard and every one hot bunked. During that patrol they sank a freighter. They also experienced depth charges. The Trigger had four 9 cylinder Fairbanks Morse engines.
After that patrol he returned to Midway Island. Midway Island is 7 x 3 miles. He was there for 3-4 months for refit. He became a 2nd class motor machinist man, a Motor Mac. In 1950 the name was changed to engineman.
He was then assigned to the Spearfish SS190, a thin skin boat. Glenn was called the Old Goat by the other crew members because he was older at 24. He was on three war patrols off Japan. During this time he became a 1st class “Mac Man.” One time they got close enough that they could see Japan “with one eye.” Every crew member got the opportunity to look at Japan through the periscope. The Spearfish had HOR (Hoover Owens Renchler) engines; it was a German design, but built by the US. The engine had copper tubes for lubrication and they would snap. Then you would have to shut down the engine to repair with spare tubing. This would happen every day. They devised a way to loop the tubing so when it snapped, the spare tubing was right there. A freighter came along the coast and the Spearfish was between the freighter and its escorts. They fired three torpedoes. Sonar detected a destroyer and the Spearfish went down to 290 feet. There were six depth charges and it raised the submarine up to 140 feet. This caused the sub to shake. It blew the packing, which was like waxed rope, out of the shaft. More chargers were dropped, but not near them. Thereafter they had packing rings prepared in advance.
After those patrols he was eligible to come back to New London for new construction-- a new submarine, because he had been on four war patrols. He had 30 days leave at home. He was in the US for 4 months and 4 days before leaving New London on the USS Blenny 324 which was barely finished before they left. They were running the engines to break them in as they were boarding. The USS Blenny had a General Motors engine. Glenn preferred the Fairbanks engines; he thought they were more reliable. They went through the Panama Canal to Pearl Harbor. He was on 4 war patrols with the USS Blenny. The first patrol was in the South China Sea. They had to go through the Lombok Straits in Bali, a seven mile long strip. They had to go on surface at night at full speed.
They had two weeks R & R in the harbor of Fremantle, Australia twelve miles from Perth. They stayed at the Ocean Beach Hotel at the Cotterslow Beach, which had been commandeered. It was on the sea front. The sailors went downstairs and opened the bar. Three blocks down from the beach was a dance hall and was opened on Wednesday and Saturday.
After the R & R, the relief crew had overhauled their submarine and had done all the repairs that were listed. They had to go back through the Lombok Straits and then on to Subic Bay in the Philippines in January 1945. The US had taken back the Philippines the previous fall. While in Subic Bay they had two weeks of R & R and they had to build their own cabins. Each cabin held one crew. One day Glenn and two other sailors hitchhiked to the Air Force base which was between Subic Bay and Manila. They got a ride in a truck, sitting on top of a load of bombs, to the Air Force Base. They stayed overnight there--the air force guys were great--they took us in and made us one of them. Manila was a "wreck," only a church survived the bombing. On the way back they stayed overnight again at the Air Force Base.
At the end of the third patrol they were back in Perth. They stayed in a hotel there.
The next patrol was to the Gulf of Siam. By now they had gone through the Straits of Lombok four times. They participated in a full blockade off Singapore. They would run on the surface and stop all sampans and junks. We pulled up alongside of them and always had a boarding party up on deck. Whoever was off watch would grab a gun and come up on deck, about four or five guys. We would pull up alongside of them and tie them to the side of the submarine. They all carried a rowboat. We would have all the crew get into their rowboat. After searching their ship we would drag it off into deep water then back off from it and sink it with a deck gun. Sometimes they would put demolition charges in the bottom of the sampan. Well, (chuckle, chuckle) one time we saw the sampan come out of the harbor there and head up the coast and (chuckle, chuckle) we started to go in toward him; we were on the surface, of course. This afterdeck house, a little house on the deck, disappeared and there was a 37 mm gun sticking out there. And he fired that gun, one round went over us they said and one came forward of the ship in the water and by that time we were turning full steam heading the other way. Most of them were not armed. They stopped 53 sampans and junks during the blockade that lasted 30 days. We sank more than one a day. The captain was William H. Hazzard, nicknamed Wild Bill Hazzard. The USS Blenny SS324 had 5” deck guns fore and aft.
"And what we had rigged up in the engine room was a fuel line up into the engine from our auxiliary stand by fuel pump, a little line up into the engine exhaust. And right into the big exhaust line where the engine exhaust came out, we built a little orifice and that line hooked up there to spray raw fuel into that exhaust while the engine was running, and when we did that the exhaust came out there in white clouds, huge clouds. We did that early on, we figured if we ever got caught on the surface and we couldn't dive we could run and hide ourselves in that fog.”
After that patrol they came back into Subic Bay; that was the closest place to get into. "The day we got into Subic Bay the war was over.
After the war the USS Blenny along with other submarines followed a submarine tender; there were three lines of submarines headed for the USA, or so they thought. The USS Blenny and two other subs went to Guam. They were told that they had to stay for 4-5 months. Glenn said that he had signed up “'for the duration” not for four years. Only he and a couple of other guys were able to leave on an LST. It took them four weeks to get from Guam to Meyer Island, San Francisco. From there he took the train to St. Louis where he was discharged.
He returned to his home in Kansas City where he returned to his job of auditor at the railroad that had been held for him.
He felt that there was no future for him at the railroad. The next step up was the head of the department and his boss was not going to retire soon. He knew that he would have to work until he was 65 to retire, whereas if he went back into the Navy, he could retire earlier with a bigger pension. Twenty three months and four days after getting out of the Navy he re-enlisted.
He had to go back in as a 3rd class Motor Mac. He went to New London where he got his orders to report to the USS Diablo which was stationed in the Panama Canal. He had to wait for the Diablo to come back from the Panama Canal to board. He asked around for housing for his wife and daughter Judy who had been born in 1946. Someone told him a local barber had rooms to rent. They lived there 3-4 months and then they got an apartment in Navy Housing. The Diablo was transferred to Norfolk and from 1948-1949 they rented a house on Ocean Beach.
In 1951, he transferred to New London and was assigned to the Tusk. He passed the test for Chief Engineman, but because of quotas he was passed up 3 or 4 times. Glenn became an instructor for basic diesel class. He also instructed officers on how submarines were constructed.
He took warrant officer class for six months. Glenn then had three years shore duty. During his last year he finally made Chief.
Then he was transferred to the USS Trutta USS 421 out of Key West where they had Navy housing. The USS Trutta then went to the Mediterranean. They stopped in Turkey, Greece, France, and Gibraltar. On the way back to Key West the Skipper got a letter that Glenn had made Warrant Officer. After that he began to stand Officer of the Deck watches.
Next Glenn was assigned to the USS Chanticleer ASR7, a submarine rescue vessel out of San Diego. He was an Engineering Officer for 2-3 years. They went as far as Japan.
There was talk of doing away with all warrant officers. Glenn got a letter for the Bureau that he had made Lt Junior Grade. The ships captain swore him in right then. He served on the Chanticleer for four years.
From 1962 to 1964 he served on the Boxer LHD 4.
He then became a recruiter for the Armed Services. He was Officer in charge of the Armed Forces Examination in St. Louis. He was there from 1965-1967. During his second year in St. Louis, Glenn went to lunch and when he came back to his office, he saw large bars hanging from the ceiling with strings. That is how he found out that he had made full Lt.
From 1967 -1969 he was Officer in Charge of advance training in the Recruit Training Command.
He got orders to go to Vietnam. He was Maintenance officer for the River Division 553.
Glenn retired from the Navy in 1971; he had served 27 years in the Navy.