On January 16, 1944, the submarine rescue vessel USS Macaw (ASR-11)
ran aground at Midway Atoll while attempting to get a towing line
to the stranded submarine USS Flier (SS-250). The Flier was pulled
free six days later, but another three weeks of salvage efforts,
plagued by rough seas and equipment problems, failed to dislodge
the Macaw. Then on Saturday, February 12, amid an episode of
freakishly enormous waves, the sea accomplished that task, nudging
the ship from her perch backward into deeper water. As night fell
and the ship slowly sank, the 22 men on board face=Calibri>- Lt.
Cmdr. Paul W. Burton, USN, the captain, his executive officer and
twenty enlisted men-sought refuge in the pilot house. By about 0230
Sunday, that compartment having flooded almost entirely, Burton
gave the order to open the portside door and make for the foremast.
Three men got to it and climbed it. Most of the rest were swept
overboard. Five of the men, including Burton himself, died, as did
three sailors from the base at Midway in a pair of unauthorized and
effectively suicidal rescue attempts that morning. Drawing on
contemporaneous written statements by survivors of that night and
interviews conducted over a span of thirty years, this book traces
the lives of the Macaw and her enigmatic captain, from birth on San
Francisco Bay to death at Midway. It tells a war story short on
combat but not on drama, a wartime tragedy in which the conflict is
more interpersonal, and perhaps intrapersonal, than international.
Ultimately, for Paul Burton and the Macaw the real enemy was the
sea, and in a deadly denouement told here in riveting detail, the
sea won. Highlighting the underreported role auxiliary vessels
played in the war, A Strange Whim of the Sea: The Wreck of the USS
Macaw should engage the military historian and lay reader alike
with the previously untold story it tells of struggle, sacrifice,
death and survival in the Pacific in World War II.
General
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