SS West Cheswald - Final Voyage

Final Voyage

West Cheswald had been selected to become one of the blockships for the Allied invasion of France, then in the planning stages. Though the specific modifications performed on West Cheswald are not revealed in sources, modifications for other ships do appear. In November 1944, The Christian Science Monitor reported that blockships dispatched from Boston, like West Cheswald, had been loaded with "tons of sand and cement" and had been rigged with explosive charges before departing the port. Further, existing antiaircraft weapons had been moved higher up on the ship and supplemented by additional guns. An account by Cesar Poropat, chief engineer aboard West Honaker, another blockship dispatched from Boston, mentions that transverse bulkheads aboard that ship were cut open to facilitate sinking.

West Cheswald departed Boston on 10 March and arrived at Halifax two days later. Departing from that port on 29 March, she sailed in Convoy SC-156 and arrived at Swansea on 14 April. She departed there on 30 April for Oban, where she joined the assembling "Corncob Fleet." The Corncob Fleet was the group of ships to be sunk to form the "gooseberries", shallow-water artificial harbors for landing craft. Poropat reports that once the ship crews were told of their mission while anchored at Oban, they were not permitted to leave the ships. After five weeks of isolation at anchor, West Cheswald headed south for Poole, to join the first corncob convoy.

West Cheswald sailed from Poole on 7 June in a convoy, consisting of what one author called the "dregs of the North Atlantic shipping pool", and reached the Normandy beachhead the next day, two days after the D-Day landings. Poropat reports that the corncob ships traveled under cover of darkness and, stripped of all unnecessary equipment, carried no radios, having only a signal lamp (with a spare bulb) for communication. Once at the designated location, the ships were put into position and scuttled over the next days, under heavy German artillery fire. Naval Armed Guardsmen manned the guns on all the gooseberry ships to protect against frequent German air attacks; West Cheswald's gunners were credited with downing one plane on 10 June. All the while, harbor pilots—about half of the New York Bar Pilots Association, according to one source—carefully positioned the ships. West Cheswald and West Nohno were the last two ships sunk off Utah Beach when they went down on 11 June. Even though she had been sunk, West Cheswald continued to serve as an antiaircraft platform manned by Navy gun crews until 19 June, and by Army crews after that date. West Cheswald's naval gunners were awarded a second battle star for participation in the Normandy Landings.