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7 Fun Facts About the Trapp Family, Before & After The Sound of Music

There’s a lot more to the Trapp Family Singers than you’ll find in The Sound of Music, one of the most beloved (and lucrative) movies of all time.

In the film, an Austrian novitiate named Maria leaves the convent temporarily to work as a governess for the seven children of Georg von Trapp, a wealthy widower. She sings with the children and plays outdoors with them. The widower and the novitiate fall in love as Hitler rises to power. They win the Salzburg Festival and start singing professionally. Finally they decide to flee when Hitler annexes Austria. In the final scene, they carry their luggage to freedom over the Alps.

The broad outlines of the story are true. Baron Georg von Trapp was indeed a widower, and Maria a young novitiate. The von Trapp family did live in Salzburg and they did sing professionally, starting in 1934.

The rest of the real story takes place elsewhere. They toured internationally, then arrived in the United States in late 1938 with little money. They continued performing to critical and popular acclaim. Within four years they could buy a 660-acre farm in Stowe, Vt., which they turned into a summer camp and later a ski lodge. Until 1956, the Trapp Family toured extensively. Then they followed separate careers, though they kept the ski lodge in Stowe.

The movie came about because Maria published her memoirs in 1949. She called it The Story of the Trapp Family Singers.

A West German film company, Gloria, bought the rights to the book and made a musical comedy drama called Die Trapp Familie, released in 1956. A sequel, The Trapp Family in America, followed in 1958. Rodgers and Hammerstein turn it into a Broadway musical in the fall of 1959, and it ran for more than three years.

Then in 1965 came the big one: The Sound of Music, the film

But what really happened before – and what happened after — the film now viewed as a cultural treasure? Here are seven fun facts.

1. Georg von Trapp was a war hero.

The patriarch of the von Trapp Family, Baron Georg von Trapp, was a highly decorated naval hero for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He served as commander of two U-boats during World War I, sinking 13 Allied vessels.

Baron Georg von Trapp, when he was commander of U-5

He received the Military Order of Maria Theresa, Knight’s Cross, for sinking the French armored cruiser Leon Gambetta – the first underwater nighttime attack on a vessel in the Adriatic. While Georg had been born a hereditary knight due to honors bestowed on his father, his valor earned him a knighthood in his own right. Then he was later elevated to baronetcy.

But the collapse of the Austro-Hungary Empire after World War I left Austria landlocked and Georg without a naval post.

He didn’t need to work for a living, but he did.

Georg lectured and wrote on military history and strategy, published his memoir, To the Last Salute, and ran several international shipping companies.

He married Agathe Whitehead, the granddaughter of Robert Whitehead, who invented and manufactured the torpedo. Agathe inherited quite a bit of wealth, but died of scarlet fever in 1922. Georg then married Maria in 1927, when he was 47 and she was 22.

Georg von Trapp aboard his U-boat

2. Some of the Trapp Family Singers wanted out.

Not all the children wanted to spend their lives singing The Carol of the Drum on stage. By the time the group disbanded, most had reached their thirties and forties and were ready to focus on their own careers, families and interests. Both Rupert and Werner served in The Tenth Mountain Division during World War II and had already spent long stretches not performing during their service.

Only Maria’s iron will kept them together until 1956.

The real Maria was indeed a novitiate in an Austrian convent. However she bore little resemblance to the sweet, lovely character played by Julie Andrews. She could be difficult and demanding, with an explosive temper.

Maria herself told the Washington Post in 1978 that the characters “were too gentle — like girls out of Bryn Mawr.”

The Trapp Family Singers actually included Georg’s seven children by his first wife and three with Maria. Later non-family members joined the group as the children moved on to their own careers.

Rupert went to medical school and became a doctor. Agathe taught kindergarten in Maryland, and Werner went into farming, Hedwig taught music and Johanna married and eventually returned to live in Austria. Martina also married and died in childbirth; Rosmarie and Eleonore both settled in Vermont.

The Trapp Family Singers.

When the group broke up, Maria and three of the children went to Papua New Guinea as Catholic missionaries. Maria Franziska worked there as a missionary for 30 years. Johannes ran the Stowe lodge as a ski resort.

Years later, the von Trapp grandchildren and great-grandchildren continued the family tradition. Elisabeth von Trapp, Werner’s daughter, became a folk singer who toured, recorded albums and sang the Star Spangled Banner three times at Fenway Park. And four of Werner’s grandchildren formed a singing group, recording five albums over 15 years before disbanding in 2016.

Others record and perform in various groups, and some perform with professional symphony orchestras.

3. The Trapp family traveled in a bus for their first two years in the U.S.

The bus had “The Trapp Family Singers” painted on the side. They had arrived in the United States in 1938 with only $4.00, having left all their possessions behind. To support themselves, the von Trapp family traveled the country performing. Their first big U.S. concert happened at The Town Hall in New York on Dec. 10, 1938.

For 15 years their Town Hall performance was a Yuletide tradition in the city.

In December 1940 they performed at Jordan Hall in Boston. They also visited the Massachusetts Statehouse and signed Gov. Leverett Saltonstall’s guest book. Baron Von Trapp gave their address as 252 Merion Rd. in Merion Pa.., where a music lover had offered them refuge.

The von Trapps didn’t move to Stowe until 1943. They chose it as their home because it reminded them of the Austrian Tyrol.

4. They didn’t hate The Sound of Music. But they didn’t love it.

Some people find The Sound of Music too saccharine. Among those critics were Maria von Trapp and her youngest son, Johannes.

Johannes von Trapp said in a 1998 New York Times interview, “it’s not what my family was about. . . . [We were] about good taste, culture, all these wonderful upper-class standards that people make fun of in movies like ‘Titanic.’ We’re about environmental sensitivity, artistic sensitivity. ‘Sound of Music’ simplifies everything. I think perhaps reality is at the same time less glamorous but more interesting than the myth.”

The family especially didn’t like the film’s portrayal of Georg as a cold martinet. In reality, he was a warm, attentive father.

Maria, appearing on Julie Andrews’ TV show, told her she was “wonderful” in The Sound of Music.

Maria complained the film got geography all wrong. “Don’t they know geography in Hollywood? Salzburg does not border on Switzerland!” Had they crossed the Alps from their home in Salzburg, they would have reached Germany.

And in reality, they didn’t walk over the Alps. They just crossed the railroad tracks behind their house to the train station. And they went to Italy, not Switzerland.

However Maria, a devout Catholic, praised the film for its religious sensibility. She said it brought joy and hope to millions of people, according to her New York Times obituary in 1987.

“The great good the film and the play are doing to individual lives is far beyond money,” she said. “So many people write about how much the film has helped them in restoring their confidence in God.”

The von Trapp family only made very little money from the movie, which grossed $180 million.

5. Maria didn’t turn the family on to music.

The family, including Georg, already sang together when Maria arrived in 1926. They all had grown up with music in the household, and all played instruments. Maria did teach them to sing madrigals.

Maria von Trapp from her naturalization photo

In 1935, the von Trapps lost a large portion of their money in an Austrian bank collapse. Maria, who had married Georg eight years earlier, dismissed the servants and took in boarders to make ends meet.

A local priest, Father Franz Wasner, came to their home to perform a Mass. He was a musical genius who recognized their talent. He taught them Baroque and Renaissance music, ultimately becoming their musical director and helping to mold them into professionals.

According to Maria’s book, Trapp Family Book of Christmas Songs, their repertoire included a sixth-century Ambrosian chant, medieval lullabies, dance carols from France and Sweden, a somber Spanish song, a majestic Polish air, a bagpiper’s tune from Naples, gay and haunting German and Austrian music and American folksongs. At Christmas they sang Carol of the Drum, Shepherds Come A-Running, and Il est ne, le Divin Enfant.

6. When the Trapp Family Singers fled their home, they had already been to the U.S.

They had gotten their big break when a famous opera singer, Lotte Lehman heard them sing in their home. She suggested they compete at a folk song festival in Salzburg. Then they decided to go on stage.

Then known as the Trapp Family Choir, they performed in Austria and Germany in 1936. In 1937 that expanded into Italy, France, the U.K. and Scandinavia.

Georg didn’t like the idea of the family performing in public because he felt protective of his children and was uncomfortable with the attention. But Eleonore told the Washington Post in 1987 that he “accepted it as God’s will that they sing for others.”

From 1937 to 1938, they toured France, the U.K., the Netherlands, Italy and the United States. In 1939 they returned to Europe where they toured Scandinavia and the Netherlands.

Several developments led to the family’s decision to leave Austria. Rupert, who had just finished medical school, was offered a post at a hospital that had sudden vacancies left by known Jewish doctors who had gone missing. Then Hitler offered Georg a naval commission and invited the family to sing at his birthday party. The von Trapps realized they could either go with Hitler or go against him. So they left for the United States.

Heinrich Himmler, who engineered the Holocaust, later moved into the von Trapps’ Salzburg home, turning one of the children’s bedrooms into his office.

7. The family went to court over the Trapp Family Lodge.

Johannes von Trapp, Maria’s youngest son, was one of several family members who managed the lodge as president. Maria had run the lodge after Georg passed, then Johannes ran it. His nephew George took over for a time until Johannes returned.

He said he resented his older siblings because they couldn’t or wouldn’t run the business.

Johannes had earned a master’s degree in forestry at Yale while still an undergraduate at Dartmouth and designed the ski trail system. In the late 1960s he hired a Norwegian ski instructor to teach guests to cross country ski.

The Trapp Lodge at Christmas

The original lodge, a rustic chalet with 28 small rooms and shared bathrooms, expanded but in 1980 burned to the ground. The von Trapp family lost the contents of the lodge and some of their personal effects. They replaced the lodge with a 73-room, $7.5 million building, since expanded to 96 rooms.

When Maria died in 1987, 32 family members owned stock in the lodge. By 1994, they wanted to leave the business. The rest of the family sued, believing they didn’t get enough money for their share of the business. Five years later, they won the lawsuit.

He regretted it, according to a New York Times interview on Dec. 24, 2008. He said he really wanted to ranch in Montana, and would have preferred a tasteful, dignified hotel to the Trapp family tourist resort.

Johannes was horrified when he discovered the gift shop sold a stuffed goat that sings The Lonely Goatherd. The staff hid it from him, and when he found out about it he let it stay because it sold well.

The Christmas holiday actually began in ancient Rome — and so did Italian cookies. The New England Historical Society’s new book, 24 Historic Italian Christmas Cookie Recipes, tells you how to make those delicious treats. It also bring you the history of the Italian immigrants who brought them to New England. Available now on Amazon; just click here.

Images: The Sound of Music poster By May be found at the following website: https://www.etsy.com/listing/125297296/the-sound-of-music-movie-musical-poster, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6639403. This story last updated in 2022.

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The Massachusetts Camouflage School that Taught How To Razzle-Dazzle

In 1917, the U.S. government set up a camouflage school for women artists in Marshfield Hills, Mass. About five dozen women artists came to the month-long training camp to learn how to camouflage cars, locomotives and battleships. Their work would help save lives on the European front and in the shipping lanes of the Atlantic during World War I.

Painting of the Mauretania in razzle-dazzle

Camouflage was a very big deal during that war, though deception had been part of armed conflict since the Trojan Horse. But not until World War I did camouflage become an official branch of warfare. Architects, artists, cabinetmakers, stage designers, carpenters, ironworkers, chemists – and women artists — brought camouflage to a new level.

The so-called camoufleurs designed uniforms that disguised soldiers as rocks, as sky, as ice. They painted designs on guns and covered them with camouflaged nets to hide them from aerial surveillance. And they tried to make artillery emplacements invisible to the enemy.

Camouflage perhaps reached its apogee with razzle-dazzle battleships, a technique the women were to learn at the Marshfield camouflage school. They painted bold geometric designs onto 1,250 US. battleships, no two alike, to confuse the German U-boats about where to aim torpedoes.

RMS Mauretania painted in dazzle. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

The fantastic razzle-dazzle designs inspired none other than Picasso to claim the Cubist school of art invented the technique. Artists from the camouflage school left their mark on New England in ways that can still be seen.

Roots of the Camouflage School

A Dublin, N.H., painter better known for his angels made key advances in the science of camouflage. Abbott Handerson Thayer, an ardent outdoorsman, studied animals’ protective coloring. He and his son Gerald in 1909 wrote and illustrated an influential book called Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom. The book discussed disruptive patterning (they called it ‘razzle-dazzle’), which breaks up an animal’s outlines. The Thayers also wrote about masquerade, as when a creature mimics something in its environment. And they described countershading, such as the white undersides of animals that make them seem less round and less solid.

Illustration from the Thayers’ book, showing a concealed ruffed grouse.

Abbott Thayer and his friend, fellow Dublin artist George de Forest Brush, proposed camouflaging ships during the Spanish-American War. They failed to interest the military. Theodore Roosevelt later mocked Thayer’s theories about camouflage, calling him ‘a poor lunatic goose.’

But Thayer’s ideas about camouflage reached across the Atlantic. For a time, it seemed, every country adapted his ideas about the strange art of Yankee origin — except for the United States.

Norman Wilkinson, a British artist who served in the Royal Navy Reserves, read the Thayers’ book. During World War I, he served on submarine patrol. When German U-boats began sinking British ships with abandon, Wilkinson suggested using razzle-dazzle camouflage to confuse the Germans.

Template for a razzle-dazzle design on a warship. Courtesy National Archives.

In the summer of 1917, Wilkinson took charge of a special Dazzle Section for the Royal Academy of Art. In a year or so, the Dazzle Section painted about 2,300 battleships in bright abstract patterns. (To see templates for the designs, click here. They’re fascinating.)

Norman Wilkinson painting of a battleship painted in a dazzle design, 1918.

The French had also formed a special camouflage unit in 1915, and called its artists camoufleurs. They, too, painted thousands of battleships in dazzle patterns. And in In Australia and New Zealand, women made camouflage nets to disguise guns from the enemy’s aerial photographers.

Back in the USA

Before the U.S. entered the war in April 1917, a younger generation of U.S. artists began to promote the art of camouflage. They formed the New York Camouflage Society, a group that included Gerald Thayer, Thayer’s cousin Barry Faulkner, Brush’s son Gerome and Homer Saint-Gaudens, son of the Cornish, N.H., sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens.

They offered their services to the War Department. As usual, the War Department didn’t have much interest. But by the end of July, a military mission sent to Europe recommended the Army Corps of Engineers create a 260-man “camouflage park.” In September, the first recruits reported to camp in Washington, D.C. By December, the camoufleurs had their own section, Company A of the 40th Engineers.

Camouflaging artillery in World War I.

They shipped off to France on January 4, 1918. Barry Faulkner spent the rest of the war in France, camouflaging artillery and machine gun positions.

Upon his return to the States, Faulkner painted murals, most notably the ‘Faulkner Murals,’ which adorn the rotunda of the National Archives. He also painted murals in the Senate Chamber in the New Hampshire Statehouse, Hartford’s Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts, and the old John Hancock building in Boston.

Dazzled by the Faulkner Murals at the National Archives.

Camouflage School

When the male camoufleurs went off to war, the ladies took over at home.

On Dec. 3, 1917, newspapers picked up a wire service report that reported about the camouflage school.

“An appeal has been issued to women artists urging them to enroll in a camp for the training of women camouflage workers,” it said. Seventy-five women had already joined and as many as four a day were signing up. Camouflage school would last as long as six months. Before they arrived, the women were urged to practice at home by painting sailcloth with house paint.

As the men before them did, some of the women migrated south to New York City from New England. In 1918, the Army formed the American Women’s Reserve Camouflage Corps.

The women worked on camouflage uniforms, trying them out in Van Cortlandt Park and Kykuit, a Rockefeller estate, just north of New York City. Disguised as rocks and trees, they often fooled visitors. One police officer told a journalist in 1918, he knew they were there, “but ye can’t see thim till they move.”

Now you see her…

Now you don’t.

The military soon learned of the public attraction for razzle-dazzle camouflage. Women went to work painting crazy patterns on tanks, ambulance and trucks for parades and other wartime events.

One of those women, Edith Barry, grew up in a wealthy New Jersey family but summered in Kennebunkport. Before the war, she studied painting and sculpture at the Art Students League in New York and abroad, in Paris, Rome, Austria and Spain.

Edith Barry, self-portrait.

Razzle-Dazzle

Barry painted portraits and landscapes, at least until 1918 when she started painting razzle-dazzle camouflage onto military vehicles in New York City. She belonged to a group of camoufleurs who painted bold abstract patterns onto a replica battleship in Union Square.

Women artists painting a replica warship in Union Square. Photo courtesy National Archives.

The ship attracted a great deal of public attention. That, after all, was the point of the exercise as the razzle-dazzle ship served as a recruiting station.

The razzle-dazzle battleships also enjoyed popularity among critics, who compared them with crazy quilts at a county fair, a Russian toy shop gone mad and a flock of sea-going Easter eggs. Those critics failed to understand the purpose of the razzle-dazzle: to deceive the eyes about the speed and direction of the ship.

Since then, scientists have tried to ascertain whether the razzle-dazzle camouflage really protected battleships.

The Brick Store Museum..

At war’s end, Edith Barry resumed her art and her world travels. She painted a mural in the Kennebunk post office in 1939 as part of the Treasury Department’s Section of Painting and Sculpture. Also during the Great Depression she inherited a historic brick building in Kennebunk. She turned it into the Brick Store Museum in 1936. Dedicated to the history of the Kennebunks, it was one of the few museums founded during the Depression.

With thanks to the Camoupedia blog and Camoupedia, by Roy Behrens.

Images: Edith Barry portrait: By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54578744; Brick Store Museum, By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18018629. This story was updated in 2022.

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Chopmist Hill, Rhode Island’s Secret Listening Post in WWII

Just before Pearl Harbor, Chopmist Hill in Scituate, R.I., was the center of the world. That’s what the Federal Communications Commission discovered in 1941. The hill’s geographic and atmospheric conditions were extremely favorable for radio reception, and its receivers could grab wireless signals from much of the globe.

With America on the verge of joining a global war, this was good news, especially for the FCC’s hardworking Radio Intelligence Division (RID). Chopmist Hill would become the most productive listening post for the men of this little-known civilian agency. Their work helped clinch victory for the United States and her allies.

The Radio Intelligence Division worked out of large, but hidden, radio listening posts – not only on Chopmist Hill but along the east and west coasts. These patrolmen of the ether prevented German intelligence from establishing a single wireless connection in the United States. They also discouraged Japanese agents from setting up U.S. radio links. They knew the FCC would nab them as soon as they went on the air, according to the Radio Intelligence Division’s director, George Sterling.

The Radio Intelligence Division also guided more than 600 lost airplanes to safety. They intercepted enemy agents’ secret transmissions to their bases and submarines. They even discovered a secret German weather station in Greenland, enabling the US Coast Guard to destroy it. Amazingly, from stateside, RID aided Philippine guerrilla operations.

And in the end, a Radio Intelligence Division outpost spent 37 hours establishing communications between the Japanese command and Gen. Douglas MacArthur. That set the stage for the Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri.

A listening post with equipment similar to that used on Chopmist HIll.

Chopmist Hill Gets Ears

Chopmist Hill first came to the FCC’s attention before the United State entered the war. Thomas B. Cave, an RID technician, had to find the best spot for a listening post to detect illegal private and commercial radio transmissions.

Cave had already settled on a spot in Greenville, R.I., when he discovered Chopmist Hill in Scituate. He found conditions there strangely ideal for receiving radio traffic from a large portion of the globe. Beyond its value for simple rule enforcement, Chopmist Hill served as the perfect global listening post as war loomed. Cave moved his operations there in March 1941.

Cave had discovered a quirk of nature up on 731-foot-tall Chopmist Hill. Line-of-sight mobile communications and low-frequency signals meant to travel just a few hundred miles bounced off the atmosphere and straight down to Chopmist Hill.

But setting up a top-secret listening post was no small matter.

Cave leased a 14-room farmhouse surrounded by 183 acres for his 40-member team. Fences and armed guards bordered the complex, which had its own blockhouse, barracks and generator. No one could approach or enter without a state police escort.

Like the 11 other primary listening posts, Chopmist Hill had state-of-the-art receiving and recording equipment manned by highly trained operators.

Outdoors, the station bristled with poles and wires, more than 16 miles of them. It had rhombic antennas, wires strung on poles in the shape of a rhombus, or diamond. And it had four-pronged Adcock radio direction finders, which rotated to get a geographical fix on the source of a shortwave signal.

A satellite view of the Chopmist HIll area today, image courtesy Google Maps.

Nine Feet Under

The poles, set nine feet in the ground, didn’t poke up above the tree line and attract attention.

To improve reception, Cave called the local utility company, Narragansett Electric, to send out foreman Charlie Weinert to move the antenna poles. Sometimes a pole had to move just a few feet. Cave later said, “Weinert thought I was clean crazy.”

So effective was the secrecy on Chopmist Hill that the listening post’s very existence was revealed to the public only after the end of hostilities.

But when the government finally declassified the station, Cave told Weinert, “Every time you moved those poles you were following Rommel as he was backing up across North Africa.”

Weinert reportedly shot back, “Why, if I had known that, I’d have dug poles all the way to Cairo.”

Chopmist, Up and Running

Cave claimed Chopmist Hill could zero in on the location of any radio transmission within 15 minutes. Skeptical army brass tested Cave’s assertions, secretly setting up an impromptu station and transmitting a signal. It took Cave and his crew seven minutes to notice the signal and identify its source as the Pentagon.

The Chopmist Hill post could receive radio transmissions from Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and South America. Cave later said it could even pick up tank-to-tank transmissions from German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Corps in North Africa. Chopmist Hill forwarded those messages to the British commander in the area, Gen. Bernard Montgomery.

RID chief George Sterling later said he often wondered if everyone at Chopmist Hill would get home safely.

“If the enemy had known how we were recording messages sent between agents right in Germany, they would have eliminated the Scituate Station and everyone in it, provided they could.”

Chopmist Hill could listen in on General Rommel’s Panzer Division.

The Airwave Harvest

At Chopmist and elsewhere, much of what the RID intercepted was encrypted or in non-English languages. These messages were recorded and forwarded to the Signal Security Agency in Washington, D.C., for deciphering or translation. How some transmissions got deciphered—specifically, messages encrypted with Nazi Germany’s top-secret Enigma code—remains a mystery.

“Was there a twin Ultra machine [British military intelligence’s ultra-secret decryption computer] in Washington to which Scituate fed…?” asks Paul Eno, author of the 2005 book Rhode Island: A Genial History. “If not, how were secret interceptions in the secret German code translated?” The answer may have to wait until declassification of the RID’s wartime files in 2049.

One of the seemingly mundane tasks assigned to the Chopmist Hill unit was to home in on German weather reports from Central Europe. Chopmist forwarded them to the British bomber command. Once the United States joined the war, it sent them to U.S. Army Air Forces commands based in England. The reports were essential for planning air raids over Axis targets.

Ferreting Out Spies

One of Chopmist Hill’s tasks was to find radio spies. The problem of espionage had become apparent in Central and Latin America as early as 1940. That October, the RID station in Tampa, Florida, picked up maritime radio signals and narrowed them down to small vessels of the Gough Brothers line, operating out of British Honduras. Further investigation suggested these vessels were carrying fuel to German U-boats in the Gulf of Mexico and passing information to them.

A sting operation snared a total of 20 men, including principal owner George Gough. But the persistent problem of Axis espionage in Latin America led the FCC to help ferret out radio spies.

The FCC then sent some of its top monitoring officers south of the border. They succeeded everywhere except Argentina, officially neutral in the war. Spies pushed out of other South American countries found a safe base in Argentina, where even commercial radio transmitters were sending vital information to Axis Japan, Italy and Germany. The RID men tried to shut down enemy radio transmissions there, but the Argentine government became so hostile that the FCC withdrew the agents for their own safety.

Chopmist Hill To The Rescue

In addition to spying and counterspying, Chopmist Hill saved Allied lives.

Once, when a USO plane carrying American actress Kay Francis got lost, the Chopmist Hill listening post came to the rescue. It picked up the pilot’s radio transmissions, pinpointed his location and guided him to safety.

Chopmist Hill saved the life of Kay Francis, pictured here with Mitzi Mayfair.

The station also saved many American lives aboard the British ocean liner Queen Mary. She then ferried U.S. troops to fight in Europe. While the ship docked in Rio de Janeiro for fuel and supplies in March 1942, local German spies somehow learned her future course and alerted their superiors. Fortunately, operators on Chopmist Hill intercepted the message. The Queen Mary’s captain changed course, avoiding the wolf pack of German U-boats lying in wait and saving the lives of some 14,000 GIs on board.

On yet another occasion, a place carrying wounded men home to the States from Europe crash-landed in Canada’s far-northern Labrador province, so close to the magnetic North Pole that getting an accurate fix on the plane’s exact location was difficult. But the Chopmist Hill team did it, and rescue operations got underway. Even then it took three months to get all the plane’s passengers to safety.

Listening to Japan

Chopmist managed to pick up Japanese radio traffic before the December 1941 raid on Pearl Harbor, according to RID chief George Sterling.

The Rhode Island site also detected signals from radio transmitters on incendiary balloon bombs the Japanese had launched into the jet stream to float across the Pacific and explode in America and Canada.

Each bomb-laden, hydrogen-filled balloon emitted a tracking signal so the Japanese could follow its progress. The Chopmist Hill listeners forwarded balloons’ locations to West Coast fighter squadrons, which attempted to intercept and shoot down the floating bombs before they did any harm.

Most of the fighters’ efforts were in vain. They managed to shoot down less than 20 of the more than 9,000 launched. Fortunately, few of the balloons that reached inland North America exploded. One did kill a pregnant woman and five children on a Sunday school outing in Oregon.

The Queen Mary as she looked in World War II.

Chopmist Hill Revealed

Soon after the war, the FCC gave Thomas Cave permission to grant an interview to the Providence Journal. He could reveal the Chopmist Hill station’s existence, its purpose and some of its wartime successes.

The FCC maintained a station there until 1950 with a skeleton crew to fulfill the original purpose of catching unlicensed radio transmitters. Rhode Island’s Civil Preparedness Division then took over the facility as its headquarters.

In 1965 the hilltop site reverted into private hands. One Frederick Leeder purchased it at auction in 1968; by then, a scant five acres of the original 183 remained. As Leeder learned about the property’s history, he and others tried in vain to get the site listed on the National Register of Historic Places. However, the FCC equipment had been removed, so the site did not meet the criterion of substantial conformity to how it looked during its period of historic activity.

Why isn’t Chopmist Hill spiked with surveillance antennas today? The answer is simple: change. The rural, backcountry location has grown immensely since 1945. Houses, factories and other buildings interfere with radio reception. The feats performed there in the past cannot be replicated.

In an interview shortly before his death, Cave told Eno, “It was not the receptivity of the location, but the advanced secret radio equipment used there that made Chopmist Hill’s place in history.” He added, “Though reception was remarkably good, it was 99 percent knowhow that created such a success between 1941 and 1945.”

Maybe. In 2049, perhaps we’ll know the whole story of Chopmist Hill, the FCC’s Radio Intelligence Division and their role in winning World War II.

The Radio Intelligence Division by the Numbers

To intercept enemy transmissions and prevent America’s airwaves from leaking secrets to the enemy, the agency eventually established 12 primary monitoring stations, 60 substations, and 90 mobile units in the U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. At its peak, the Radio Intelligence Division employed 893 people.

The RID had mobile units, too—automobiles crammed with radio equipment,. Each had a surveillance man at its controls. These could follow up on a received signal, getting closer to pinpoint its source. The units relied on single-loop antennas, simple receivers based on a circle of wire or other conductive material.

For even closer investigation, the agency developed a handheld unit called the Snifter. This device was so sensitive that a radioman could detect not just the building but the room from which a signal was emanating.

On average, the radio intelligence men pinpointed, or fixed, more than 800 locations each month. It was quite an accomplishment, considering that each fix required operators to collect 6,000 bearings. But the intensive effort paid off.

Images: Queen Mary By derivative work: Altair78 (talk)Queen Mary forecastle.jpg: :Altair78 – Queen Mary forecastle.jpg, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5144133.

This story was updated in 2022.

Leo Caisse, the author of this story, passed away in 2020. He published the book, The Civilian Conservation Corps: A Guide to Their Works in Rhode Island. He has also published a number of historical articles, including Ears On the World in America in World War II Magazine, October, 2017. Leo earned a B.A. and M.A. in American History from Providence College and he lived in East Providence, R.I.

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Private Snafu, Horny WWII Cartoon Character, Teaches Soldiers How To Behave — And Dr. Seuss How To Write

Well before the Grinch Stole Christmas or the Cat in the Hat Came Back, Dr. Seuss gave voice to Private Snafu, a cartoon character decidedly not for children.

Snafu was a horny, stupid, sloppy big mouth who did everything wrong. That was the point. Private Snafu starred in propaganda cartoons for the U.S. Army during World War II. By constantly messing up, he taught lessons about why it’s important to do things right – or at least, to do them the Army way.

Dr. Seuss – Springfield, Mass’s own Theodor Geisel – wrote many of the 23 cartoons ultimately shown to soldiers between June 1943 and 1946. Because some of his audience was only semi-literate, Dr. Seuss used simple, easy-to-remember rhyme for his characters. He later used the same technique in his books for children.

Private Snafu

Snafu, the narrator explains, stands for “Situation Normal…All Fouled Up.” But he pauses before the word “fouled,” to hint at the F-word usually used.

The cartoons were risqué, with bathroom humor, bosomy women, mild cursing and racial stereotypes of the enemy that would horrify people today.

Private Snafu was described as “a patriotic, conscientious guy who thinks the army’s swell.” But he gets himself into hot water by disobeying orders. In the process, Private Snafu shows how to handle a rifle, manage personal hygiene, avoid malaria, put on a gas mask – and why it’s important.

He has a good angel on his shoulder, though, or rather a cigar-smoking, unshaven Technical Fairy First Class, who persuades Private Snafu to do the right thing

In one episode, Snafu complains about peeling potatoes on KP. The Technical Fairy, in a dream, shows him what would happen if Snafu ran the Army. The soldiers would all get booze and women, but their enjoyment would end when the Luftwaffe catches them unprepared.

“The moral, Snafu, is the harder you work, /The sooner we’re gonna beat Hitler, that jerk,” the Technical Fairy tells him in pure Seussian.

Warner Brothers

The cartoons came about after Warner Brothers Cartoons won the bid for the contract from the U.S. Army. Frank Capra, who directed It’s a Wonderful Life, dreamed up Private Snafu. Dr. Seuss was joined by such giants of animation as Chuck Jones, Mel Blanc and Bugs Bunny creator Fritz Freleng.

Bugs Bunny, in fact, makes cameo appearances in two of the shorts. Daffy Duck appears as well.

Dr. Seuss

In one cartoon, Private Snafu starts a rumor and ends up in a padded cell, driven insane when it multiplies into word that the Allies lost the war.

“The hot air is blowing, a rumor is growing,” says the narrator in more Seussian.

Several of the Private Snafu shorts deal with leaking classified information. In Spies, he lets slip that he’s taking a transport ship to Africa. Axis spies find out, the information lands on Hitler’s desk and U-boats end up killing Private Snafu. He finds himself in hell and asks the devil who let the secret out. The devil puts a mirror in front of him and he sees a horse’s behind.

In one of the last cartoons, however, Dr. Seuss may have let his imagination get a little too close to the truth. In Going Home, Private Snafu lets slip that the United States plans to drop an imaginary secret weapon onto Japan. At the same time, scientists were working on the real atom bomb. Going Home was never released, with no explanation. Was it because the writer who warned against leaking classified information had inadvertently released classified information?

Dr. Seuss would later collaborate with Chuck Jones on the ever-popular television special, How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Rhode Island’s Little Annapolis: The PT Boat Training Center at Melville

During World War II, Rhode Island residents could hear the roar of PT boat engines from Narragansett Bay all day and see tracer bullets fired over the ocean at night.

They could watch the PT boats racing around either in formation or practicing maneuvers. Perhaps Richard Nixon saw them from the Quonset Point Naval air station while he trained there in 1942. Perhaps George H.W. Bush had an aerial view of the little boats while training at the Charlestown Naval Air Station. And maybe they caught a glimpse of John F. Kennedy racing around the bay, leaving a rooster tail in his wake.

PT Boat 140 off Melville, R.I.

Birth of the PT Boat

The Navy had recognized early in the war that it needed small, high-speed, heavily armed gunboats to use among the hundreds of small islands in the Pacific. From that insight came the Patrol Torpedo boat, known as the PT boat. You may have seen PT boats in motion pictures such as They Were Expendable and PT 109 or the comedy TV show, McHale’s Navy.

Nearly all of the 14,000 PT boat officers and men trained at the small navy base on Narragansett Bay in the village of Melville, a part of Portsmouth, R.I. The Navy didn’t just train its men there, but developed PT boat policies and tactics as well.

Not many histories of these small bases have been written. Melville, however, graduated a disproportionate number of extremely successful men. In addition to a president of the Unite States, Melville graduated a U.S. Supreme Court justice, three movie stars, five U.S. ambassadors, four NFL coaches, six top corporate executives and a U.S. attorney general – to name a few.

This is their story.

Devil Boats

Leo Caisse, the author of this story about the 1916 U-boat visit, has published 10 historical articles, including Ears On the World in America in World War II Magazine, October, 2017. He has a B.A. and M.A. in American History from Providence College and he lives in East Providence, R.I.

PT boat logo

The base was formally known as the Motor Torpedo Boat Squadrons Training Center (MTBSTC). The Japanese called them Devil Boats, and the Navy fondly called them the Mosquito Fleet, after their logo. The Secretary of the Navy signed an order establishing the PT boat fleet on Feb. 17, 1942.

In the beginning, a Massachusetts firm began construction on the small base. But then the Navy largely turned it over to the Rhode Island companies of Gilbane, Coleman and Collins. When all was said and done, there would be 59 buildings and 150 Quonset Huts (a Rhode Island invention). These buildings and huts would house classrooms, mess halls, warehouses, machine shops, living quarters and more — everything you’d find in a large Navy base.

The builders literally built a boat basin for the PT boats out of a swamp. It was staffed full time by 57 officers and 280 enlisted men. Motorists could see it from the Mt. Hope Bridge, which connects Bristol and Portsmouth.

Alongside the PT boat training unit was the Motor Torpedo Boat Repair Training Unit (MTBRTU). This unit had a staff of 30 officers and 950 enlisted men. Here they trained on maintaining the three 1500-horsepower Packard engines on a PT boat either in dock or the field. On the other side of the base was the Naval Fuel and Net Depot – a good location because those Packard engines gobbled up huge amounts of high-octane fuel.

Melville also had the advantage of having the Navy’s Newport Torpedo Station on Goat Island down the road from it. The torpedo station could provide training duds, sometimes live, for the torpedo boats to practice with. It also supplied experimental torpedoes to try out and a seven-mile torpedo range running north from the torpedo station up Narragansett Bay toward Prudence Island.

Mount Hope Bridge

Specht Tech

The Navy organized the PT boats into 44 squadrons, generally comprised of 12 boats. All told, the Navy commissioned over 650 PT boats by the end of the war.

The men nicknamed the squadrons ‘RON’, from the last three letters of ‘squadron,’ and added their number. RON 4 began operations at the Newport Navy Base on Jan. 13, 1942. It later moved to the crowded Melville base and remained in operation for the duration of the war. RON 4 patrolled the Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts coastline. Thus Narragansett Bay provided a safe haven for training and experimentation.

Lt. William C. Specht, soon promoted to lieutenant commander, was tapped to serve as Melville’s first commander in March 1942. He also ran the repair and fuel depots. Specht oversaw the construction of the base as well as the development of its curriculum. Navy men assigned to the course at Melville joked they attended “Specht Tech.”

Lt. jg. John F. Kennedy in PT 109

Plenty Tough

The PT boats were built mostly by the Higgins Company in New Orleans and the ELCO Company, a division of Electric Boat, the submarine builder. They had to measure at least 77 feet long in order to carry and launch Mark 8 torpedoes. They also carried twin 50-caliber machine guns. Some of the PT boats had 20 mm cannons.

The crewmen did their gunnery training at the Anti-Aircraft Center at Price’s Neck on Newport’s Ocean Drive. George Donovan, now 92, remembers them practicing at night. Along with his brother and cousins, he watched from his grandmother’s bedroom window, which faced Ocean Drive. They were fascinated and mesmerized watching countless tracer bullets fired out over the ocean at practice targets towed by small airplanes. These trainees used live ammunition, and occasionally they strayed off target and accidently shot down the tow plane.

The men trained in their PT boats on Narragansett Bay and in the ocean between Block Island and Martha’s Vineyard, 10 miles south of Newport. People said the rooster tail and the roar of the engines was most impressive the first time you heard and saw them. These boats could travel between 40-45 miles an hour at full throttle and were physically demanding to operate. So demanding they sometimes said that “PT” meant the men had to be ‘plenty tough.’

A PT boat underway near Midway

Accidents Happen

Occasionally, things went wrong.

Whenever the torpedo station was going to launch a test torpedo along its seven-mile range off Gould Island, it blew a very loud warning whistle. But one day in 1942 the commander of PT 122 did not hear the whistle, understandable over the roar of three Packard engines. He strayed into the test range and was nearly sunk by a test torpedo.

On another occasion that same year, PT 59 launched a torpedo in error. It traveled an estimated seven miles and struck the cargo ship USS Capella, anchored off Jamestown, and it began to sink. The quick-thinking skipper used his powerful engines to push the Capella to shallow water and thus save her from sinking. She was later repaired and put back into service. However, the entire incident was kept secret until the 1970’s.

Then in 1943, another PT boat launched a torpedo that went off course and sank a freighter anchored off the Quonset Point Naval Air Station.

And while patrolling Rhode Island coastal waters, PT 200 struck an unknown submerged object and sank.

Melville Today

Soon after the end of World War II, the Navy decommissioned the Melville Training Center and dismantled it. All that remains today are a couple of buildings and a plaque to commemorate what once was there. A busy marina operates in the PT boat cove.

When I was a youngster in the early 1960s, my friends and I used to play on an abandoned PT boat, which had been stripped of its armament and beached on the shore of what is now Hanley’s Beach, on Jacobs Point along the river in Warren, R.I. It had apparently crashed into something submerged because it had a large hole in its hull. We could enter the PT boat through the hole and play around, imagining what once might have taken place aboard her.

According to the Warren Preservation Society, what remained of the PT boat burned to the ground about 1970. All that’s left is some iron from what once must have been her engines.

Today there are precious few PT boats remaining, perhaps 10 in the world. Two fully restored boats can be seen on display at Battleship Cove in Fall River, Mass. If you want to experience what they were really like, take a trip to New Orleans and the National WW II Museum where they have fully restored the PT 305 to fully operating condition. You can even take a 45-minute ride on it in Lake Ponchartrain.

As noted previously, about 14,000 people went through the Melville Training Station out of about 12 million men and women who served in the armed forces during the war. What seems to me remarkable, and far out of proportion to its size, is the number notable men who served there.

The PT boat in Battleship Cove

Melville Alumni

Here is an incomplete listing:

Anthony Akers, U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand

Paul Austin, Chairman of the Board, Coca Cola

Howard Baker, U.S. Senator from Tennessee, chief of staff to President Reagan, U.S. Ambassador to Japan

William C. Battle, President of Field Crest Mills, U.S. Ambassador to Australia

Charles A. Black, husband of Shirley Temple and aquaculture pioneer

John D. Bulkeley, Navy Vice Admiral and one of the most decorated men in military history, including the Medal of Honor; skippered PT boat that took Gen. Douglas MacArthur out of the Philippines

Michael Burke, CBS Sports executive and President of the New York Yankees

John Clagett, author of 19 books

Bernard A. Crimmins, All-American football player, Notre Dame 1941; college football coach`

Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., part of the invasion of Southern France, organized the Beach Jumpers, movie actor

Paul B. (Red) Fay, Undersecretary of the Navy, author

John Harllee, Chairman, Federal Maritime Commission

Michael J. Holovak, All-American football player, Boston College, 1942; college football coach and NFL team executive

John F. Kennedy, U.S. President

Joe Kuharich, college football coach and head coach NFL teams

Elgar Laux, Vice Chairman, Chrysler Corp.

Walter Lemm, head coach Houston Oilers and St. Louis Cardinals

Henry Loeb, Mayor of Memphis, Tenn.

Carl Maddox, Athletic Director, Louisiana State University

Clinton McClain, player, New York Giants

Torbert MacDonald, U.S. Representative from Massachusetts

John N. Mitchell, U.S. Attorney General

Robert Montgomery, actor, President of the Screen Actors Guild

James Madden Newberry, founder of PT Boats, Inc.

Jack B. Olson, Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin, U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas

Paul T. Rennell, Vice President, Pan American World Airways

Don Rickles, actor and comedian

Raymond P. Shafer, Governor of Pennsylvania

Preston L. Sutphen, Sr., President of Electric Boat, builder of PT boats

Harold Thorkilsen, President and CEO, Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc.

Malcolm Troon, U.S. Ambassador to Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Israel and the Soviet Union

Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, millionaire

George Vanderbilt, millionaire

Byron White, U.S. Supreme Court Justice

End Notes

Leo Caisse, the author of this story about the 1916 U-boat visit, passed away in 2020. He published 10 historical articles, including Ears On the World in America in World War II Magazine, October, 2017. He earned a B.A. and M.A. in American History from Providence College and he lived in East Providence, R.I.

Images: PT Boat at Battleship Cove By Wikimaster97commons – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3846572; John F. Kennedy in PT 109 courtesy the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum. This story was updated in 2022.

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The Surprising German U-boat Visit to Newport, RI, During WWI

A surprise German U-boat visit to Newport Harbor during World War I started with pleasantries and ended with mayhem just south of Nantucket.

Though it may have been a means to gather intelligence, the sudden U-boat visit on Oct. 7, 1916, turned out to be an unexpected publicity stunt, planned or unplanned. It also created an international uproar.

Newspaper photo of the surprise U-boat visit to Newport Harbor.

The Surprise U-Boat Visit

The sub, skippered by Kapitanleutnant Hans Rose, was first spotted near Point Judith, R.I.

As it approached the Brenton Reef Lightship, it requested permission to enter Newport Harbor, which was granted. From there, she sailed into port escorted by the American submarine D2 (Hull designation SS 18). The U-boat anchored near the U.S. Naval War College. among the Atlantic destroyer squadron near the USS Birmingham (Hull designation CS/CL 2), the flagship of Adm. Albert Gleaves.

World War I had been raging for two years, but the United States, officially neutral, had not yet entered the conflict.

Arriving about 2 pm, Capt. Rose rowed ashore and paid a courtesy call on the local naval officials. He invited them, their wives and the press to tour his vessel while in port. Several took advantage of the invitation and inspected the boat. Those who did reported the U-boat was neat and clean with little odor of fuel oil.

Hans Rose

While ashore, Capt. Rose spoke with a reporter about the U-boat visit and asked the reporter to mail a letter to the German Ambassador in Washington, Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff. While ashore, the captain also purchased several newspapers.

It ought be borne in mind that there was no press censorship because the United States was still a neutral nation. It was also common practice to print shipping news, the times of the coming and going of cargo vessels – a nice piece of intelligence for a commerce raider on the prowl.

During the few hours of the U-boat visit, the crew whiled away its time waving to people and playing phonograph records on deck.

The Submarine

The U-53, a super sub, was 212-feet long and displaced 715 tons. She could make 15 knots on the surface and 11 knots while submerged using two 1200 horsepower engines.

Her armament included four 18-inch torpedo tubes, two fore and two aft with a complement of 10 torpedoes aboard. The sub also had two deck guns, again fore and aft for surface attacks; one was a three-inch gun and one a four-inch.

An interesting aspect to the super sub was a design change altering the location of its ballast tanks. That enabled it to carry more fuel, giving it a range of about 7,500 miles. It also had a third periscope for use by the chief engineer.

Albert Gleaves

The boat included a radio capable transmitting and receiving signals for a range of 2000 miles.

The crew included the captain and three officers, the radio/electric officer, the chief engineer, and the executive/navigator, as well as a crew of 33 enlisted men.

At about 5:30 that same afternoon, the boat and crew departed Newport while the crew on the deck waved and saluted people along the shoreline. So ended an unexpected and unusual U-boat visit.

The next day, however, would bring a turn of events that precipitated a diplomatic firestorm and the demise of several ships, perhaps caused by intelligence from the free press of a neutral nation.

Unmitigated Gall

The U-53, a commerce raider, then did what a commerce raider does. It proceeded to score hits and sink several ships off the Massachusetts coast. The ships sank south of the Nantucket Lightship, clearly outside American territorial limits.

Sixteen destroyers led by the flagship Birmingham quickly came to pick up survivors of the sunken ships. So quickly did they arrive on the scene of the first victims, that they witnessed the nefarious activity and continuing mayhem. Indeed, the submarine almost collided with one destroyer. And, in an example of unmitigated gall, U-boat Capt. Rose requested that a destroyer get out of his way so he could sink yet another ship. Those were different times.

A total of six ships were sunk of British, French and Danish registry. American ships didn’t interfere because the U.S. was neutral. The sinkings also happened outside of U.S. territorial limits and the German captain acted entirely within the rules of the international prize court law.

Following those rules, the Germans notified their ship victims they were about to be sunk. They allowed everyone aboard to disembark via lifeboat. Thus there was no loss of life. So much for ‘the courtesy of war,’ as the Newport Daily News put it.

U-Boat Visit: A Warning

Needless to say, the U-boat visit alarmed the British because it demonstrated the extent of its threat. They were also angered by the U-boat attack in the presence of American destroyers.

Diplomats eventually smoothed over the so-called ‘row’ over the incident.

However, as historian Brian Wallin has written, “The incident demonstrated the destructive power of German U-boats and served as a warning of what would come if the United States entered the war on the side of the Allies.”

USS Jacob Jones

Before the war ended, U-boat 53 racked up 80 sinkings, including one American destroyer, the USS Jacob Jones (Hull designation DD 61). It was the first American ship sunk by the Germans after the U.S. declared war in April 1917.

U-boat 53 successfully evaded the British blockade, having changed its hull number to U-boat 61, and returned to Germany.

At the end of the war, U-boat 53 surrendered to the Allies on December 1, 1918. Capt. Rose no longer commanded the sub when it was scrapped at Swansea, England in 1922. He retired, highly decorated, after 15 years of naval service. Rose finally passed away in 1969 at the age of 84.

Leo Caisse, the author of this story, passed away in 2020. He published the book, The Civilian Conservation Corps: A Guide to Their Works in Rhode Island. He also published a number of historical articles, including Ears On the World in America in World War II Magazine, October, 2017. Leo earned a B.A. and M.A. in American History from Providence College and he lived in East Providence, R.I.

If you’re interested in U-boat warfare in the Atlantic, you may be interested in this story about U-boats in World War II here. This story was updated in 2022.

Images: Hans Rose By Unknown photographer – [1], CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4770712.

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