World War II Operations
In 1941, she began work in intensive development exercises with submarine and mine groups in the Philippines, and as war came closer, spent December on patrol in the Taiwan Straits. According to an account given by Yeoman 3C A. Glenn Pratt, a crewmember aboard the Finch, she was assigned, along with the Heron, a sister vessel with a diving bell, to escort two US Navy river gunboats back to Manila Harbor from their station in China since the Japanese had sunk one such vessel, the Panay, in 1937. During the return leg of this mission, the vessels were temporarily surrounded by Japanese naval vessels headed toward the Philippines. The gunboats scouted the Japanese column, then pulled ahead to report the naval activity to Washington, while the Finch and Heron stayed behind, eventually being left by the Japanese as well. The two vessels returned to Manila Bay on 6 December 1941.
As the Japanese began aerial bombardment of bases in the Philippines, the Finch continued her task of sweeping for mines to keep the channel into the harbor open for incoming shipping. Yeoman Pratt reported that machine gunners on board the Finch downed one Japanese aircraft during an air raid, and though the Captain congratulated them, he asked them not to repeat the feat so that they would not become a special target and be able to continue mine sweeping operations. After running out of fuel in March, Finch was anchored in shallow water and her crew taken to shore defense positions.
Read more about this topic: USS Finch (AM-9)
Famous quotes containing the words world, war and/or operations:
“If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.”
—Rachel Carson (20th century)
“The funny part of it all is that relatively few people seem to go crazy, relatively few even a little crazy or even a little weird, relatively few, and those few because they have nothing to do that is to say they have nothing to do or they do not do anything that has anything to do with the war only with food and cold and little things like that.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“There is a patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more extensive and regular.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)