"Henry Was A Talker" Part II

More of the story of Henry Glinski by Jim Allen as excerpted from his Polaris article....

We got underway starting Wahoo's second patrol, and headed for the Solomon Islands; our area was off the NE coast of Bougainville, near a little island called Buka. We sank a large loaded freighter that was probably headed for Guadalcanal. A Jap destroyer worked us over pretty good. A little later we sank a Jap submarine.

One day in the crew's mess, Henry told Paul Phillips the baker he had worked in a bakery in Chicago and he could show Phillips how to bake better bread. He kept talking until finally Phillips said, "I think you're full of it, Glinski. But tonight you can bake the bread. That way the whole crew can enjoy your expertise."

Henry assembled the ingredients: flour, eggs, milk, shortening. And he asked for some yeast. Phillip handed him a one pound block. This is where Henry's memory and expertise fell apart; he put the whole pound into the mix. And poured the dough into a wash tub so it could rise.

Well, it rose alright. In fact, Henry was up most of the night punching the dough down trying to keep it in the tub. To Phillips and the crew this was like watching a Buster Keaton movie. The finished product had so many air holes it looked like mice had tunneled through it. It wasn't bad tasting but it gave everybody intestinal gas. But Henry just kept talking.

We ran submerged the next day, and when it came time to surface I heard the OD say to the Quartermaster, "Be careful when you crack the hatch. The pressure in the boat is as high as I've ever seen it."

We pulled into Brisbane for our overhaul and after two weeks at a downtown hotel we were ready to go out again. Pappy Rau told me the new skipper, Lt Cmdr. Dudley Morton, said no more hot bunking. Since I was low man on the totem pole, F3/C, I was transferred to the relief crew on board the USS Sperry.

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Next time JIm recounts Glinski's wounding during Wahoo's third war patrol

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Jim Allen Remembers Henry Glinski

One of the highlights of my trip to Hawaii was getting to meeting Jim Allen, who served in Wahoo during her second war patrol. On the bus to Pearl Harbor he told me about his friend and fellow shipmate Henry Glinski. Jim mentioned he had written an article about him for Polaris, the official SubVets of WWII magazine. He graciously forwarded me a copy so I could share it with you:

"Henry Was A Talker"

By Jim Allen
Polaris/August 2005

I met Henry Glinski at the Pearl Harbor Sub Base in 1942, when we were assigned to the USS Wahoo. Henry was a transfer from the USS Hornet, where he was a Gunner in a 20mm gun crew that had been badly shot up, and he volunteered for Sub duty "to get away from the guns." Henry was 19 years old and I was 18, and we were both 6 foot 3 inches tall and skinny as rails. I was a recent graduate from the Sub School at New London having arrived at Pearl on board the Lurline, a luxury liner converted to haul troops. Henry was a talker; he could talk about anything and everything. We got along because I was a good listener.

The COB, Pappy Rau, assigned our bunks and put us to work. He sent me to John Rowls, the cook, who was delighted as he showed me a mountain of dirty pots, pans, and dishes. I was up to my armpits when Yeoman Forest Sterling came down the ladder to the crews mess, reporting on board, to the pleasure of the Exec., Lt. Richard O'Kane because there was no Yeoman aboard for the previous patrol. Years later, Sterling wrote the book "Wake of the Wahoo" and he mentioned seeing "Jim Allen washing dishes."

Late one afternoon, Henry and I went ashore to the sub base beer garden and of course Henry never stopped talking. I didn't think it was possible, but a few beers made him talk even more. When we got back to Wahoo, it was dark and the Gunner's Mate Bill Carr was working on top of the storage locker in the Conning Tower trying to assemble a large gun; he had rigged a lamp overhead and was clearly agitated. He was grease up to his elbows, trying to turn pages on a manual, but the pages were sticking.

Henry recognized the 20mm gun pieces and had to ask if he could help. I could tell the Gunner was thinking about throwing Henry overboard but he said, "Okay, wise guy, can you put this thing together?"

Henry waded right in -- click-click-push-pull -- and there it was all assembled. Carr said, "Wait a minute. Do that again but slower." Henry took it down and re-assembled it at a slower pace and Carr was amazed, delighted and grateful all at the same time saying, "Glinski, you're my gunner in this crew."

Henry replied, "No way, I volunteered for sub duty to get away from all guns."

The next morning, Pappy Rau told Henry he was the gunner in the 20mm gun crew and that was that. I wondered if Henry had learned to keep his mouth shut but it didn't take long before I found out he couldn't keep his mouth shut...

To be continued.

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"War Fish" Story

One of the anecdotes described by George Grider in "War Fish" that stayed with me through the years was his exploration of Wahoo's bow buoyancy tank with Roger Paine during their first war patrol. While at the SubRon5 event at Batfish I had the chance to do a little investigating to get a better feel for their experience.

You may recall from the book that after a torpedo was accidentally misfired with the muzzle door closed, Wahoo began having difficulty operating her bow buoyancy tank vent valves during dives. Ultimately they failed to operate altogether. Captain Kennedy ordered his engineering officer, Grider, and torpedo specialist, Paine, to open up the manhole on the top of the tank and check out the valve operating mechanism from the inside. They did this while surfaced at night in Japanese waters.

With the ability to slip past the ropes on Batfish, I ventured out to her bow buoyancy tank. It is located over the torpedo tubes in the extreme forward end of the boat and is open to the sea at the bottom through a row of half-round flood holes. On the upper deck are two grated vents which open from the inside to allow air to escape during a dive and to trap the air in the tank when it is blow dry for surfacing. Due to its location the tank helped get the boat heading down and pointing up at the appropriate times.



On deck I found the vents and the manhole cover of the type Grider used to gain access to Wahoo's tank. It was oval shaped, secured with a series of bolts around its perimeter. On Batfish these bolts had been removed and the cover loosely set on top of the studs. The cover itself looked roughly a foot and a half wide and two and a half feet in length. A tight squeeze even for athletic young men in their late twenties and early thirties.



I picked it up and looked inside. The manhole was situated over a ladder mounted to the aft bulkhead of the tank. To port were actuating rods that ran from the bottom of the tank up to the valve mechanisms themselves. The rods went down through the bottom of the tank and were presumably damaged by the misfire in Wahoo's tube 1. There were no baffles in the tank on Batfish only a large space open at the bottom through the flood holes.

Grider describe it as being slick and slimy with an antifoul coating. And dark seawater would have swirled around their feet through the floods. The real threat was being surprised by the Japanese on the surface. In that event they both knew Kennedy would take Wahoo down and they would be on their own.

Making light of the situation, Grider reminded Paine he was senior and entitled to leave the tank first. Paine pointed out that it would never vent, and the boat would fail to dive, with Grider's fat behind stuck in the manhole trying to get out. Now I know how right he was.

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Sun N Fun 2008

Over the July Fourth weekend I got to spend some time with my model submarine running buddies of SubRon5 at our annual get together. This year it was held at Batfish Park in Muskogee, Oklahoma, home of the museum boat USS Batfish (S-310).

Our arrangement with the park was mutual. We would demonstrate our models in a pond constructed next to the submarine in order to help draw interest to the park. At the end of the day, we were allowed to spend the night aboard the boat with free reign --a submarine buff's dream.

It made for a long night. Member Tom Kisler crafted a fast cruise program with submarine trivia, Jeopardy style, and a submarine qualification scavenger hunt. It was fascinating and fun. None of us wanted it to end.

The following morning we climbed all over the exterior of the boat before the crowds arrived. We got tons of images and went everywhere our curiosity led us. From the periscope shears to the ammunition magazine, with stops in the conning tower (usually off limits) along the way.

Hats off to Don Baker for setting the event up, and park manager Rick for welcoming us in. By all accounts attendance increased greatly over the weekend and we had a blast.

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