Gilmore, Howard Walter “Gil”.

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Gilmore, Howard Walter, born 29-09-1902, in Selma, Alabama, United States, to Walter M Gilmore (1876–1943)   and his wife Vernon, born Howard Gilmore (1877–1929). Howard had one sister Francis Vernon Gilmore (1905-1925)

Howard enlisted in the Navy on 15-11-1920. In 1922 he was appointed to the United States Naval Academy by competitive examination. Standing 34th of a class of 436, Gilmore was commissioned in 1926 and reported to the battleship USS Mississippi (BB-41). USS Mississippi BB-41 was a New Mexico class super dreadnaught battleship launched in 1917.

His Naval Academy classmates included Clarence Wade McClusky, “Max” Franklin Leslie , Lofton Russel “Joe” Henderson, and Carlton Barmore Hutchins.   Carlton was killed in the collision of two patrol planes during fleet exercises on 02-02-1938, age 33, off the coast of Southern California. Lieutenant Hutchins remained at the controls after the collision, enabling some of his crew to escape by parachutes.”

Commander “Max” Leslie, survived the war and died 26-09-1985 (age 82) in San Diego, San Diego County, California, USA and his ashes scattered at sea.”Joe” Henderson on 04-06-1942 (age 39) was courts of the Missing (Lost at Sea)

Gilmore underwent submarine training during 1930 and in the years that followed served in various submarines and at stations ashore.  Gilmore served as the executive officer of the submarine USS Shark (SS-174), and in a near-fatal incident during the submarine’s shakedown cruise, narrowly survived an assault by a group of thugs in Panama, who cut his throat during an excursion ashore. He had to deal with several other instances of tragedy in his life, including the death of his first wife from disease, and at the time of his Medal of Honor action his second wife was still in a coma from a fall she had taken down a flight of stairs. In 1941, he assumed his first command, USS Shark (SS-174), only to be transferred the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor to command the still-unfinished submarine USS Growler (SS-215). Lieutenant Arnold Frederick Schade was named his executive officer. Their mission was to see the boat finished, put it into commission, hone a cohesive fighting crew, and take the sub to war. Each day en route, Gilmore drilled his crew hard in diving, gunnery, and torpedo-firing exercises. The 311-foot, 1,500-ton Gato-class boat was the culmination of a decade of effort to ensure the navy had a modern, long-legged submarine capable of working independently in Pacific waters. It carried 24 torpedoes, had a top surface speed of 21 knots, and a range of 11,000 nautical miles. Arnold Schade died of Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 91.

 By early 1942, when this shot of the 4th Command Class at the submarine base at New London, Connecticut, was taken, Gilmore (top row, far left), at almost 40, was an old salt in the service.

Gilmore commanded his submarine skillfully during four Pacific War patrols. During his first, on 05-07-1942 Growler attacked three enemy destroyers off Kiska, sinking one and severely damaging the other two, while narrowly avoiding two torpedoes fired in return, for which Gilmore received the Navy Cross. During his second patrol, Growler sank four merchant ships totaling 15,000 tons in the East China Sea near Formosa for which the Navy awarded him another Navy Cross.

During October 1942, Growler patrolled off Truk in the Caroline Islands as part of a repositioning of submarine assets on the way to Brisbane, Australia. No significant action occurred.

Death and burial ground of Gilmore, Howard Walter “Gil”.

 

The submarine continued to take a heavy toll on shipping on its fourth war patrol, and during the night of 6–7 February 1943, it approached a convoy stealthily for a surface attack. Suddenly a convoy escort named Hayasaki, a food supply ship,closed and prepared to ram. As the small ship charged out of the darkness, Gilmore sounded the collision alarm and shouted, “Left full rudder!” — to no avail. Perhaps inadvertently, Growler hit the Japanese adversary amidships at 17 knots (31 km/h; 20 mph), heeling the submarine 50 degrees, bending 18 feet (5.5 m) of its bow sideways to port, and disabling the forward torpedo tubes.

Simultaneously, the Japanese crew began a burst of machine gun fire at Growler’s bridge, killing the junior officer of the deck and a lookout, Ensign William Wadswhorth. Williams age 23, and Fireman Wilbert Fletscher Kelley, age 39,  , had been killed outright in the fusillade, leaving the captain the only living soul topside., while wounding Gilmore himself and two other men. “Clear the bridge!” Gilmore ordered as he struggled to hang on to a frame. As the rest of the bridge party dropped down the hatch into the conning tower, the executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Arnold Schade — shaken by the impact and dazed by his own fall into the control room — waited expectantly for his captain to appear. Instead from above came the shouted command, “Take her down!” Realizing that he could not get below in time if the ship were to escape, Gilmore chose to make the supreme sacrifice for his shipmates. Schade hesitated briefly — then obeyed his captain’s last order and submerged the crippled ship.

Surfacing some time later in hope of reattacking the Hayasaki, Schade found the seas empty. The Japanese ship had, in fact, survived the encounter, but there was no sign of Gilmore, who apparently had drifted away during the night. Schade and Growler’s crew managed to control the ship’s flooding and voyaged back to Brisbane on February 17.

For sacrificing himself to save his ship, Commander Howard Gilmore was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, “the second man of the submarine force to be so decorated.”

   In a ceremony in New Orleans on 13-07-1943, Rear Admiral Andrew Carl Bennett, commandant of the Eighth Naval District, placed the medal around the neck of Gilmore’s wife, Jeanne, as their children, Howard Jr. and Vernon Jeanne, looked on. That September, Jeanne sponsored the launch of a new submarine tender, the USS Howard W. Gilmore, which served with distinction in the Pacific Theater.   five months after Gilmore’s death, his widow passes her husband’s Medal of Honor to their son, Howard Jr. Other honors included a new sub tender (below), the USS Howard W. Gilmore,    launched on 16-09-1943. Rear Admiral Andrew Carl Bennett survivd the ear and died 29-01-1971 (aged 81).

Over the course of the war Growler racked up an impressive score of 15 Japanese ships sunk and 7 damaged. The boat’s luck finally ran out on 08-11-1944, during its 11th war patrol, when it was sunk by a Japanese destroyer southwest of Manila Bay. There were no survivors.

But Gilmore’s courageous order took on a life of its own, joining proud U.S. Navy slogans like “Don’t give up the ship,” “I have not yet begun to fight,” and “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.” Any midshipman pausing outside Bancroft Hall’s Room 7046 can read the words of Gilmore’s Medal of Honor citation: “For distinguished gallantry and valor above and beyond the call of duty.” In the armed forces of the United States, there is no higher calling. .

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