Sea Control - Sea Control 484 - LST-325: From Normandy to Indiana with Ken Rupp

Episode Date: December 7, 2023

Links1. USS LST-325 Ship Memorial Website.2. Bringing Back a Hero, by Robert D. Jornlin, Jornlin Farm, 2014.

Hey folks, it's Jared and Nate Miller is back as host, editor, and producer today. And he's joined by Ken Rupp to talk about LST-325, the only operational LST in World War II configuration afloat in U.S. waters. Here at SimSec, we aim to further international maritime security through an exchange of ideas and the rigor of critical thought and writing. If you haven't already, please check out SimSec.org for new articles on the most important maritime topics. If you'd like to contribute to the discussion, and check out the Write for SimSec tab to learn how you can submit articles for publication.

Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec podcast network, The Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of Iron Brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. And with that, Kimber's Men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Hello and welcome aboard the Sea Control Podcast. I'm Nathan Miller.

My guest today is Ken Rupp, the cruise director for LST325. We're discussing LST325, her history, and how she came to be home ported in Evansville, Indiana. Ken, welcome aboard. Could you start by telling the listeners a little bit about yourself and your background, please? Hey, thanks. Absolutely. Like previously mentioned, I'm the cruise director on the LST. And I also do a couple other jobs. When you get into a volunteer organization, you tend to wear many hats.

I do medical on board the ship. I'm an EMT, and I'm active in that. I'm also a snipe, what's called the engineering people on the ship. I'm down in the engine room pulling a shift just like everybody else, making those big diesel engines run. And as a reminder to our listeners, all opinions expressed here are strictly our own and not reflective of any of the institutions with which we might be otherwise associated. Can you tell the listeners a little bit about what an LSD is, when they served, and what their role was in World War II? Oh, absolutely. First off, the official designation for an LST is landing ship tank.

It's a landing ship that's a ship that's available to beach itself. It's the only ship that the captain can run aground and not get fired. That's one of the unique things about that particular ship. But the Navy also calls it a large slow target because it is very slow. our top speed is around 10 to 11 knots. So nobody likes to be on an LST. But it's one of those unique things about the ship. And a little bit about the history of the ship is, if you go back to World War II and the battle at Dunkirk, this is the Germans have pushed across France. And There was a number of British troops in France supporting the French.

Well, they all got pushed to the city of Dunkirk, and they had to get evacuated. Nobody had a system of getting people off of the shore without docks. All of the vessels were ocean-going that had deep keels. They couldn't get near shore. So they got very, they used their Yankee ingenuity, so to speak, or their British ingenuity. They got a whole flotilla of boats. Basically, the call went out to get every boat you can to Dunkirk to get these guys off of the shore. So every fishing boat, any boat that could navigate the channel was there getting these guys off the shore.

Winston Churchill learned a very valuable lesson. When that happened, he says, we have to have a ship that can go right to shore. And so that's where the concept initially started. Now, what kind of ship do you have to have to go on shore? You've got to have a flat bottom. You can't have a keel. So they were talking to an individual, and I don't know the name off the top of my head, but I do know he designed submarines.

He sat down with a napkin, and somebody said, well, the basic thing is we want to get 20 Sherman tanks on this ship to make it worthwhile to go on shore. So he started sketching things out on a napkin. Next thing you know, within a couple hours, he had some conceptual drawings of a ship capable of doing exactly what Winston Churchill needed to have done. You've got to get equipment and materials on a shore that you don't have a dock. So that's what started the whole LST thing To the point where they built over a thousand of these ships They had many shipyards around the country doing these

They had one on Philadelphia where the LST-325 was made They also had one in Evansville Which is located about a mile from where it's currently docked It was a huge shipyard They made more LSTs in Evansville than any of the other shipyards. There's a cornfield shipyard, they call it, up in Illinois, where they literally, I believe it was outside of Seneca, where they literally took a cornfield and turned it into a shipyard. And what the generation of people, we call it the greatest generation, did is absolutely remarkable. I mean, it's just incredible.

not only the soldiers, but the people back home, all the men and women that made this all happen, so we did have something to play with. So that's a little bit of the background on LSTs. There were, like I said, designed for delivering materials and equipment to shore. You'll see, we've got pictures of a locomotive coming out of an LST, bulldozers, ducks, and tanks, and materials. You're able to get ammunition right on shore with an LST. All those things was part of the uses for LSTs. I'm curious, with LST-325 in particular, how did she come to Evansville, Indiana? And for those of you that are not familiar, There are there's a pretty extensive system of waterways and rivers in the central part of the United States, and they are largely navigable.

So even Midwestern states like Indiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, all of those states are accessible through the river system. That being said, Ken, how did 325 come to Indiana? Well, the 325, there's a group of LST sailors that decided that we need to put an LST in a museum. You've got aircraft carriers, you've got the battleships, all the glamour ships, I call them, or the warships that are out there, all have their own museums. But nobody did an LST. It was kind of the forgotten stepchild. But it had such a great role. So these LST sailors decided that they were going to put one in a museum.

And Evansville raised their hand saying, hey, you know, this was after that ship was brought back from Greece. We'd like to have the LST in Evansville because we had that shipyard in Evansville. So they worked out a deal with these group of LST sailors, the LST Memorial that we're dealing with now. and that were organized under, that's where it all kind of came together. That's how Evansville got an LST. So you mentioned there that she came over from Greece. Was she part of an aid package to Greece or other allies? How did she get there?

Okay, well, if you don't mind, I could start with the initial history. It was built in Philadelphia. A hull was struck in 1942 1943 it went into commission And it saw service in northern Africa Sicily and Salerno Which had received battle flags for both of those operations After that it went to Normandy

Made 44 trips across the channel In supporting of the D-Day operation at Normandy It was on the beach 11 o'clock in the morning D-Day plus one so and during that particular mission it made many trips across the channel like i said 44 in total carrying anything from tanks ducks prisoners of war coming back to england the tank deck was converted into a hospital several times to bring wounded back to england from france i mean it was like the swiss army knife of the u.s navy if you needed something done you put

on an LST. And I stated earlier that there was locomotives that were delivered. They literally welded rail into the bed of this ship to bring a locomotive onto shore in France. I mean, it's phenomenal what they would do to get this equipment in and out of that ship. And just the ingenuity, the word no wasn't ever spoke. It's like, okay, how can we make this happen. War ends in Europe. We're getting the LST ready for the South Pacific because that's the next battle. And if you look at the old pictures, you'll see there's no defensive weapons on the LSTs when it's in Europe. They did not have anti-aircraft guns. They had no defensive weapons whatsoever and no offensive weapons on that ship, other than a few carbines down in the armory.

And when it came back to the U.S., they did two things to it. They fitted anti-aircraft guns on the ship, both the bow and the stern, because the kamikazes were really raising cane with the naval vessels in the South Pacific, so they're preparing it for that. And another thing they put on is the Brody system, which would allow you to take a small aircraft and actually catch it on a hook on the side of the ship and land and take off from the ship. It's an amazing device. We've got a video on the ship, but I probably watched it for two hours. It's like a 40-second clip, but it's like, I want to fly that plane. I mean, it's just amazing. So I was getting ready to go to the South Pacific and behold, the war ended. So they mothballed it for a while.

Then there was the dew line that they were setting up in the northern hemisphere, which came about in the late 50s. So they decided to take LST-325 and insulate it and get it for Arctic service. They loaded up in bulldozers this time and different construction equipment. They set it up to the Arctic Circle to build bases for these radar sites. When that project got completed, the government decided, you know, we don't need these LSTs at all. So they gave them to the Greek government or they sold them for a dollar. And the Greek Navy used them until the early 90s. And that's why if you tour the ship, you're going to see Greek markings on it as well as the U.S. markings.

Because they had actually spent more time in the Greek Navy Than it did in the U.S. Navy Fast forward The Greek Navy decides they don't need them anymore So these LST sailors hear about these Five LSTs in Greeks That's sitting there rotting Let's go get one

So it literally took an act of Congress to get permission for these guys to go get this ship. So that was under the Bill Clinton administration. They were able to go. It finally got pushed through Condis, and it took a while. It wasn't easy because these naval assets, the Navy doesn't want them coming back. That's one of those things.

Once it's gone, it's gone. It kind of messes up the system when we bring a ship back to the United States. And I know I'm definitely glossing over all the nuances of that. But these guys went over to Greece. There was two crews. There was the gold crew and the silver crew. The silver crew was guys in their 70s, went over, got the ship ready to come back.

Gold crew went over and brought the ship back. Now, these guys are spending their own money. Each one of these guys, I believe, had to pay $3,500 to go over and work on that ship and then to go bring it back. That's money out of their pocket. So hats off to those individuals. The Coast Guard was not in favor of this old vessel. And keep in mind, this was built in 1942. That being sailed across the ocean to the United States.

They told the captain, if you sail that ship back to the United States, you're going to get arrested when you get to the United States. The Greek government would not give it a flag. The U.S. government would not give it a flag. It basically sailed back as a pirate ship, which is a whole, there's a whole book written about it. Captain Jorlin, who was the individual who was captain at that time, wrote a book on it. It's a great story. and I don't want to spoil the whole book but it bottom line though nobody got arrested when they got to Mobile the LST then spent some time around the southern states did actually an east coast

tour up to Boston and Virginia and then it settled into the Evansville area and the museum started We were at a location further, let's see, that'd be upstream, maybe about a mile initially. And then most recently, the casino decided that they know the laws have changed where they didn't need a ship anymore. So they offered the casino boat mooring to us, which is a much better location right downtown in Evansville for the permanent mooring for the LST. but once a year we take it out on tour it's an operational ship that's the other part about it all these other ships everywhere are not operational we actually take this thing out we run it up and down the river we're a coast guard approved vessel so that's all part of the excitement of the ship we bring the museum to the people i'm really curious about what it takes to

get LST-325 underway and who crews it and how you make your decisions about where to stop and that kind of thing. So I guess you could start by who's the crew, who's maintaining this? What does that process look like? Well, we've got a number of individuals. We've got some former LST sailors. Now, this wouldn't have been during World War II or Korea sailors. These are the ones that were on the ship in Vietnam. The later built ones, now 325, that's a fairly low number. When you get her up over 1,000, those are the newer LSTs. Those were in Nam, but there's a lot of similarities. And our diesel engines that we have in the LST, I volunteer at a railroad yard. We've got a diesel engine and a locomotive just like it.

The U.S. government actually went to the different locomotive manufacturers and said, we need those engines. We're putting them in LSTs. You're not getting them for your locomotive. That's what happened during the war. So that's an interesting. But we've got a, it's this group that is pretty amazing. We've got a NASA engineer that's part of the crew. crew. Several electrical engineers that are part of the crew. We've got a guy that fixes tractors

and lawnmowers. We've got old farmers. I'm not going to say old farmers. Jerry would be upset with me for that one. But we've got farmers that are used to working on diesel tractors and equipment. Navy chiefs. We got a little bit of everything on that ship. And what one guy doesn't know the other guy knows and we're pulling out the old manuals and reading those we we figure it out uh it's it's a fun group to work with we have one mission we got to keep the ship running and we that's our goal you know it's fun for us to cruise down the river and you see the boats that assemble next to us people on the shore that's waving flags and hollering at us bridges i mean it's just it's a regular movement every lot we went through on a trip from evansville to lacrosse

and i mean like two o'clock in the morning you've got spectators they're going through they wanted to see the lst i mean that's that's what's exciting about it also the the crew that you were talking about the that group they're all volunteers correct absolutely we're we're all volunteers we um basically you need to become a member and there's membership forms online for the at the lst memorial site and you do 80 hours of volunteer work while it's in the museum we do several work weeks a year where we're painting where we're taking something apart uh depending on what's broken uh i myself have replaced probably a half a dozen power packs on the engine itself where you pull these big sleeves out of the engine you put new ones back

in you rebuild the power packs all those things uh the generators i mean there's it's a a variety of systems on that ship that has to be maintained and fixed when they break so we do all that and then after you get your 80 hours in then you get asked to cruise if we've got a room on the roster we'll take up around 45 to 50 people and then during the cruise you're literally working a shift you might be up on deck handling the lines going through the locks you might be at the helm adjusting the throttles or you might be down in the engine room running the engines there's three different teams that work to keep that underway when we're going up and down the rivers speaking of going up and down

the rivers how do you all decide where you're going to go and and when and as part of that how could our listeners find uh find you all when you're underway and and they want to come see the it? Very good questions. As cruise director, it falls on my shoulders to try to determine where we want to go. Now, certainly there's a lot of input from the crew and the staff on, well, we haven't been there or we have been there. Example was lacrosse. We actually started working on the lacrosse venue probably two and a half years before we actually got there with COVID and everything else. Things got rearranged and pushed back, but we thought it would be a good spot. We had very good luck five years ago in Dubuque, so that was one of them. Then we try to do three

stops. We don't want the cruise to be too long because we'll lose the volunteers, but it's got have to be long enough to pay just gotta remember we're burning 11 gallons of fuel every mile on the river so to move the ship we've got quite the expense just in diesel fuel and then we've got to feed the crew and everything else so there's expense involved in moving the ship that we've got to cover we don't want to go too far uh the cross is about the farthest we've gone and that is a six and a half day cruise. So after six and a half days, we're all ready to get off the ship, quite honestly. And people call me up and say, hey, I'd like you to come here. We're looking at Pittsburgh for next year. I've been in discussions with those folks. So we'll be

going up the Ohio River. I got a call from Virginia the other day that'd like us to come back up the east coast well we don't go on salt water anymore so unfortunately we're not going to be able to accommodate them but um when you have an economic impact like we do and people the different cities learn of this uh we're a sought after commodity in a lot of cases is there anything that you feel like i missed or any um anything that you want to leave the listeners with really what i i'd like to do with the listeners is tell them thank you and it's because of all the people that come see the ship that's why we get to do it without those visitors we would not have this ship out on the water it would not be in the museum because the museum

as a static display does not generate enough revenue to support it it's those all the visitors that come see us when we're traveling that really make it happen and we have as much fun bringing that to the all the different people as they do walking the depths of history and you're literally walking and touching history is just an absolute opportunity for people to connect to relatives and current people in the military and just understand the history that this country was founded on. Well, thank you very much. I'm sorry that that is all the time that we have for today. Where can we find you online and the LST online? And when will you decide where you're going next year? Well, the lstmemorial.org is the website. And that's the one out of Evansville,

Indiana. And probably next weekend is when we decide where we go next year. I've got some tentative points that I'll be presenting to the board in October and we'll be putting that in stone and getting that out there to everybody Well thank you again for joining us and to the listeners, thanks for tuning in we'll see you next time

There I met with Greta Yanni for the action © transcript Emily Beynon © transcript Emily Beynon