Russell Zapel

Russell Zapel served in the Navy in the Atlantic, Caribbean, and SE Pacific from 1943-1946

If you just want to tell us about your experiences.

I was born and raised in Chicago. We got married after the war and moved to Des Plaines and I am still there. I graduated from Austin High School in February 1943. I was going to be eighteen two months later so instead of waiting for the draft, I went in and volunteered with supposedly the promise that I could pick my branch of the service. I didn’t want to go into the Army. My father said to join the Navy – they always have a white sheet and a white pillow and a bunk to lay on. He was in WWI. That turned out to be just a fairy tale. I was called up right after my 18^th birthday and went through the induction center and by pure luck got in the right line. A couple of weeks later I was called down there and got in the Navy line so I was all set. I went to Great Lakes May 7, 1943, my sister’s birthday. I got out of Boot Camp in July. We were shipped to the Norfolk Navy Yard. They weren’t ready for us so they put us in a fenced in enclosure and we spent a couple of weeks putting supplies on a carrier, the USS Card.

In those days the USS Card was looking for submarines. We escorted convoys to Europe and we did Air-sea rescue because there were a lot of merchant ships sunk along our east coast. That is what we did until the beginning of 1945. They had the German wolf packs under control by that time. There were a lot of squadrons out there at that time so they started moving them over to the Pacific. We were one of them that went to the Pacific side and got stationed at Coco Solo, Panama, which is at the eastern end of the Panama Canal. We did some patrolling there and then they said they were going to send us out to the islands.

We ended up in the Galapagos Islands for the rest of the time. We were supposedly hunting for Japanese submarines which no one thought there were any within 1000 miles. We never did spot one and neither did anyone else that was there. We did escort convoys that were headed for the South Pacific and performed Air-sea rescue work. We roamed from Managua, Nicaragua to Santiago, Chile until the war was over.

We were shipped back to Coco Solo in the Canal Zone because they didn’t know what they were going to do with the squadron. What they finally did was break it up to different sections. They sent a three plane detachment to Guantanamo, Cuba and I was on one of those planes. We did Air-sea rescue and we were looking for submarines because there were still a few rogue people out there, or we thought there was and didn’t know what to expect. We did a lot of rescue work because the war was over and the Army and Navy were turning back their old transport planes to Pan American Airways and they were pretty badly beat up. They were having a lot of trouble with those because they were going down on beaches because of engine trouble. We would have to land on water and bring a raft in to bring those people out of there.

After that I got discharged after a lot of fooling around. They promised me the moon, but I said the moon was Chicago. I got home on March 17, 1946, which was my younger sister’s birthday.

There was nothing exciting. We did home in on a few submarines and worked very, very hard to catch because they only came up at night to recharge batteries. You could pick them up at fifteen miles on that antiquated radar we had at the time. We would circle around to get close, but they were already down. You would drop the charges on them but you weren’t sure if you hit them or not. Our plane could never prove a kill but we assisted in a few others.

There is one little side thing I want to tell that had nothing to do with me, but had to do with the squadron. At that time, the squadron was stationed in August, 1941 in Iceland living in tents. They were assisting the convoys through the North Sea until the British could pick them up and get them to Murmansk, Russia. We were neutral, but we had a bomb bay full of depth charges. The Germans knew we were neutral. The pilot made a low approach toward a German submarine on the surface. The German submarine captain got antsy and he fired at the plane. The pilot wasn’t going to put up with this, so he made a quick bank and came back and sank the submarine. It never got into the records. The only people who knew about it was the VP74 because it got into their records.

How close did German submarines come to the East Coast?

Very, very close. Are you familiar with Cape Hatteras and the Diamond Shoals by the lighthouse? The German submarines would sit out there at night and pick off the ships that were silhouetted against the lighter shoals. It was like shooting tin cans. It was bad. The freighters came up from Brazil where the bauxite mines were. They would come up through the Caribbean and up the inter-coastal waterway. Also, ships from New Orleans would have to swing out to get to the waterway to get up north to join the convoys. All these ships were sitting ducks. The only thing that kept the submarines at bay were patrol squadrons like I was in and there were a lot of them out there all the way up and down the coast. There were Navy and Coast Guard blimps and the Civil Air Force and anybody with a private plane and a radio were all patrolling for submarines. They were there in the early years of the war from the time we declared war.

There were German submarines that got into New York Harbor. They didn’t do any damage but came in to survey the harbor – passenger ships, Navy vessels, the Brooklyn Ship Yard. They would wait for the ships to leave the harbor and would attack them when they reached the open sea.

Churchill wrote after the war that the greatest battle of the war was the Battle of the Atlantic. We would have been sunk if it hadn’t been for the British Air Force and the American Navy keeping the submarines under control. If a convoy couldn’t get through, we would have nothing. We wouldn’t have been able to get troops over there, or anything else. But they were basically under control by the end of 1944 and stayed closer to European waters.

Our squadron rescued over 250 seamen during the time I was in it. Some of them were our own because they went down because of engine trouble.

Because of all your details, did you study this after the war?

No, you keep up with it and it is all in the Squadron history.

I wasn’t with the squadron in Iceland. I didn’t join them until they were in Norfolk, Virginia. We went to Puerto Rico and Trinidad. We got as far as Rio de Janeiro. It was all under sealed orders. I wasn’t on the ship, but we did get a submarine off of Rio de Janeiro which the Brazilian Navy is now in the process of raising. Most of South America was neutral. They weren’t our enemies. They would allow us harbor facilities and beaching facilities for flying boats. The Army would fly DC3s down to Natal, Brazil transporting troops. They flew from New York south along the coast and through the Caribbean to Brazil and then across the Atlantic to Dakar Africa because that was the shortest route. Then they would fly to Casablanca and southern France, before the Germans got there, and then to England. They would then fly to Iceland and Newfoundland and back to the field in New York. That is how they flew the USO troops, dignitaries, and generals there. Also, anything that was needed in a hurry, such as an airplane engine, would be put on board. I had a cousin that did that over and over.

Do you remember where you were when you heard about Pearl Harbor?

I was in high school at the time. I was sitting in my parents’ living room when they announced Pearl Harbor on the radio. My mother got white because she knew what was coming. Everybody did. I had two younger sisters, one born in 1939. When I was discharged, no one knew I was coming home. They dropped us off on Wells Street. I walked down to Wells and Randolph and had my “ruptured duck” badge sewn on my uniform. I hopped on the Lake Street El and took it to Austin and walked home with the sea bag on my shoulder and knocked on the door. My little sister answered and she went crazy. It was her birthday.

I was in the Galapagos when I heard about VE Day. There was a big celebration - us and the iguanas and the penguins.

Galapagos was known as “the rock”. Everyone would say “I hope I don’t go out to the rock” for the obvious reasons. There was nothing there – no girls, no taverns, nothing. We were on Baltra, a high, flat plateau island. The Army was on one side flying C24s and we were on the other side on a sea plane base. There was also a submarine refueling base on our side where they topped off the tanks before flying to Japan.

Do you still keep in touch with your crew mates?

Yes, up until last year, we had a squadron reunion every year. Every year someone would hold it around their house so we were all over the country. The very last reunion was in Bowling Green, Kentucky. There were only three of us from the squadron. The rest were “groupies” – those interested in PBM aircraft because they were so rare compared to other aircraft used in the war. There were a few wives of deceased members and some children and cousins. There was the nephew of the pilot that was shot down by a submarine off of Rio de Janeiro. He came every year and is involved in the raising of the submarine off of Rio that his uncle helped sink.

Does PBM stand for something or is it just the name of the plane?

“P” means patrol; “M” means Martin, the name of the manufacturer – Martin Aircraft; and “B” means bombing. Do you know what a PBY is? It is a flying boat with the wing up high.

Squadron 55 was split into two about the time I got there. Half the Squadron was sent to the South Pacific and nobody survived. It was a whole different war out there. The rest of them were the old timers and they brought us over from the Naval Operating Base. I was very lucky and I realize that. Everybody was 18 or 19. The pilots were old men – they were 20.

We didn’t fly high altitudes. We flew 7,000 to 8,000 feet so you could see something. One time a ship put 3 men in a raft with smoke bombs and we circled around for 4 hours and never did spot them because of the wave crests. The ship knew where they were, but we never spotted them.

Your memory is so crisp and clear.

You know why? Because we had reunions every year, from 1947. I didn’t attend all of them at first because of family obligations, etc., but after that, I hit most of them. Originally, it was mostly the officers and chiefs. But then they put more pressure on the enlisted men to attend because the officers were older.

You said your Dad was in WWI?

Yes. He was in Scotland on the North Sea Mine Force. They had the Germans all bottled up in their home ports and couldn’t get out. He was in Inverness and he never let us forget about it. He had his girlfriend’s picture on the wall in the basement. My Mom didn’t care – she married him, not her.

Did you marry soon after you got home?

I met my wife in 1947 and we married in 1949. In 1948, I went to work for Bell Telephone for 48 ½ years. I had the best time of my life right here in Park Ridge. We have 3 children, one boy and two girls who are both in California. My son is almost ready to retire. He is a biological engineer and got in at the beginning of the environmental or green movement and works for a company that goes around the world to help companies with cleaning up their operations.