The weapons they manned on each ship were usually: one 5-inch/38 naval deck gun one 3-inch/50 anti-aircraft gun and eight 20mm anti-aircraft guns. Navy personnel: an officer in charge 24 gunners manning naval guns and anti-aircraft weapons and three communications specialists. Typically, an Armed Guard crew on each merchant ship consisted of about 28 U.S. Navy sailors had passed through the schools and had served as gunners on merchant ships. By the end of the war, nearly 145,000 U.S. Armed Guard training schools, concentrating on teaching the sailors gunnery skills, were established at Chicago, San Diego, Gulfport, Mississippi and Little Creek/Shelton, Virginia. Navy Armed Guard gun crews were placed aboard 6,236 merchant ships sailing in all of the world’s oceans. Navy Armed Guard was created to provide the ships with some protection against enemy attack, particularly to defend them from enemy submarines and warplanes.įrom 1942 until the end of World War II in 1945, U.S. Therefore, since these merchant ships would be sailing into harm’s way in the ocean’s combat zones, the U.S. Yet, unlike the Navy’s warships, merchant ships were normally not armed with naval guns or anti-aircraft weapons. Navy battle fleets, the massive logistical burden would have to be borne by thousands of civilian merchant ships – troop transports, cargo vessels and oil tankers. Although this monumental effort in power projection would be spearheaded by U.S. Of the many challenges facing the United States confronting Axis forces in a global war after it entered World War II in late-1941 none was more daunting than moving troops, weapons, equipment and supplies across the world’s oceans to the fighting fronts. Navy Armed Guard (1942-45) Gunners to Protect Merchant Ships By Jerry D.
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