Ties to Action

This is the third in a series of excerpts taken from Sheer Will: the Story of the Port of Houston and the Houston Ship Channel, Chapter 8 War and Recovery, which highlights the impact of Pearl Harbor and World War II on Houston.

Houston’s deep-water port and its protected location from open waters made it ideal for locating other defense facilities. The U.S. Army established an ordinance depot, and close by was the Hughes Tool Company’s Dickenson Gun Plant. And then there was shipbuilding.

World War II gave birth to two shipbuilding operations on the channel. The first was a subsidiary of New York’s Todd Shipbuilding Corporation—the Houston Shipbuilding Corporation. The other was the Brown Shipbuilding Company. Together, they churned out over 572 vessels for the United States that included Liberty Ships, sub chasers, landing craft, and destroyers. Before the first hull was launched, however, Houston would suffer a blow to her morale.

The USS Houston (CA-30) steamed into the Port of Houston to visit her namesake back in 1930, but she was still close to the hearts of Houstonians. Just two months after Pearl Harbor, early in 1942, the Houston and the Australian cruiser Perth were inadvertently caught in a trap while taking on superior enemy forces. They sank one transport and forced three others to beach before meeting their fate. Perth succumbed to enemy fire first, leaving the Houston to fight alone for another hour until she was sunk. Of the original crew of 1,061 men, 368 survived. On May 30, 1942, 1,000 new Navy recruits, known as the Houston Volunteers, were sworn in at a dedication ceremony in downtown Houston to replace those believed lost on USS Houston. They would serve on the new light cruiser Houston (CL-81), which was formerly to be named Vicksburg.

Launch of the Samuel B Roberts from Brown Shipbuilding.

Two years later, another ship with Houston ties would fight against overwhelming odds with honor and courage. The ship was the product of the Brown shipyard and christened USS Samuel B. Roberts (DE-413) She was part of Taffy 3, an epically heroic group of small convoy escort vessels that confronted a Japanese battleship force during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944. Specifically, Taffy 3 only consisted of six escort carriers, three destroyers, and four destroyer escorts. The escort carriers withdrew from the main battle leaving the destroyers. These were not big or heavily armored vessels. And they stood toe-to-toe with four Japanese battleships, including the largest, meanest battleship ever built, the Yamato, along with six heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, eleven destroyers, and some odd aircraft piloted by Kamikaze. It was akin to a Chihuahua taking on a bull elephant. In the end, Taffy 3 suffered heavy losses, but it inflicted enough damage on the Japanese to necessitate their retreat from the battle.

Samuel B. Roberts cruising in the Pacific shortly before
engaging the Imperial Japanese Navy In October 1944.

The Taffy 3 incident took place in late October of 1944. Six months later, Germany surrendered and four months after that, Japan surrendered. Having gained control of the seas in early 1945, U.S. commercial shipping resumed. Ship arrivals to the Port of Houston quickly climbed, and cargo tonnage started increasing, too. In fact, within a year of the end of the war, cargo handling exceeded the pre-war peak set in 1939 and reached almost 32 million tons.

The Home Front Takes Shape

This is the second in a series of excerpts taken from Sheer Will: the Story of the Port of Houston and the Houston Ship Channel, Chapter 8 War and Recovery, which highlights the impact of Pearl Harbor and World War II on Houston.

While the war dammed up shipping from the Gulf, activity at the Port of Houston continued. Re-entering the port “scene” at this point is Jesse Jones. In 1940 he’d been tapped by President Roosevelt to serve as Secretary of Commerce. It is worth noting that Mr. Jones was a Republican serving in a Democratic administration. And he had proven himself repeatedly as an economic leader. Benefitting from that leadership, time and again, was the Port of Houston. Throughout World War II, he made sure industrial growth was heaped upon the channel.

Jones making calls during lunch. 

The first to get phone calls from Mr. Jones were the oil companies. The engine of modern warfare, after all, is the internal combustion engine. Not only did the refineries along the channel shift into high gear to meet wartime production needs, they also expanded. Aircraft, tanks, jeeps, and ships immediately needed fuel. And munitions factories needed toluene for trinitrotoluene—TNT. Toluene is basically a solvent that emerges during the gasoline production process. Add some nitric acid and things go boom. Actually it’s not quite that simple, but refineries along the bayou meant that TNT would not be in short supply.

Also at the behest of Mr. Jones, the petroleum industry helped solve a basic military need. Japan’s early command in the Pacific meant that rubber was under their control. America needed either another source of rubber or had to figure out how to synthesize it. In addition to paper drives and scrap metal drives, there were rubber drives.

For much of the war, American drivers rolled on bald tires and patched up holes in tubes as best they could. Many companies, like the milk industry, reverted to horse-drawn carriages to service their routes. But conservation and recycling old tires weren’t enough. In 1942, a good synthetic rubber was developed, and its formula included a petroleum byproduct. Fully recognizing the abilities of his neighbors along the Houston Ship Channel, the can-do attitude of the workforce, and the advantages of the channel’s close proximity to oil supplies, existing shipping, and rail facilities, Mr. Jones made sure that two of the plants were located near Houston.

While all this was enough to keep things clicking at the Port of Houston and the surrounding areas, Mr. Jones had additional expectations for his home port.

War Comes to the Gulf of Mexico

This is the first in a series of excerpts taken from Sheer Will: the Story of the Port of Houston and the Houston Ship Channel, Chapter 8 War and Recovery, which will highlight the impact of Pearl Harbor and World War II on Houston.

In the opening months of America’s participation in the war, almost all commercial shipping halted. Pouring salt on the wound was that the wartime gathering of men and materiel was concentrated on the east and west coasts, which were logical and natural departure points for convoys heading across their respective oceans. But this left the ports along the Gulf of Mexico high and dry—at first. From a revenue standpoint, that was a drag, but it may have saved lives. Few Americans are aware of just how dangerous the Gulf of Mexico was by the summer of 1942. Earlier that year, night skies often lit up with explosions along the Atlantic coast as German U-boats picked off freighters, targeting their silhouettes against the bright skylines of coastal cities. Once the United States caught on and shifted tactics to restrict night navigation and to assign escorts to freighters and convoys, the Eastern Seaboard hunting grounds of the U-boats dried up. Undeterred, they went stalking in the Gulf of Mexico.

U-166 in 1942. Destination: The Gulf of Mexico.

At one point, a dark joke circulated that there were more U-boats in the Gulf than anywhere else and that it was a wonder they didn’t torpedo each other. American losses supported this assertion. In May alone, U-boats sank 56 merchant vessels. Germany also entered into a secret agreement with Mexico for fuel, and it was speculated that U-Boats were being refueled at Mexican ports on the Gulf. It was also speculated that at least a few espionage agents were put ashore at some of Texas’ more remote coastlines. Records are scant, but there were very deep incursions into U.S. waters by U-boats.

The last encounter with a German submarine in the Gulf was when U-166 sank the passenger freighter SS Robert E. Lee 50 miles south of New Orleans. The event took place on the evening of July 30, 1942. U-166 fell in behind the vessel and fired. Accounts say that the submarine surfaced and apologized to the passengers and wished them luck. Not long after, the Robert E. Lee’s escort, Coast Guard vessel PC-566, dropped six depth charges, destroying U-166, which now rests at the bottom of the Gulf.