1937 Solar Eclipse on Canton

[Sheila Shigley]

One more tidbit, just in case any names or details in this post-expedition article mean anything to the more seasoned researchers here (or if anyone, like me, still gets a small thrill seeing anything dated "July 1937").

This is a pdf of "Sun Eclipse Observations Are Released" from the Evening Times, Cumberland, MD, July 9, 1937.

[Ric Gillespie]

Oh...thank you Ric...so Avocet wasn't refueling Lexington at all, correct, just giving her aircraft fuel?

That's right.  Battleships burned fuel oil, known as bunker fuel, and they refueled from large barges. Avocet was a small (187 ft)  "bird class" minesweeper commissioned in 1918.  In 1925, she and her sisters Swan and Pelican were converted to seaplane tenders.  They could carry one floatplane on their after-deck, plunking it in the water and retrieving it with a crane, but they often operated as general purpose vessels with no plane aboard.  Avocet had no plane aboard for the solar eclipse trip in 1937 and Swan had no plane aboard when she acted as plane guard for the Earhart flight later that year. Pelican was at Gardner Island in April of 1939 with a Grumman J2F Duck aboard to take aerial photos as part of the U.S. Navy's survey of the Phoenix Group.

[Sheila Shigley]

Beaut pic of Kanton (6 Feb 2000)

http://ia600507.us.archive.org/24/items/kanton_etm_2000037/kanton_etm_2000037_lrg.jpg

[Monty Fowler]

Tiny bit of useless trivia - Avocet had an interesting life. Was at Pear Harbor (appearing in several of the more-famous photos of the attack), then spent most of the war the the Aleutian theater of operations before being sold for scrap in December 1946.

There ... now it's stuck in your head for the rest of the day!

LTM,
Monty Fowler
TIGHAR No. 2189CER

[Sheila Shigley]

One more bit of odd (and tragic) Avocet trivia:

At about 0745 [sic] on Sunday , 7 December 1941, Avocet's security watch reported Japanese planes bombing the hangars at the south end of Ford Island, and sounded general quarters. Her crew promptly brought up ammunition to her guns, and the ship opened fire soon thereafter. The first shot from Avocet's starboard 3-inch gun scored a direct hit on a Nakajima B5N5.  [Much else transpired, and] that night, at 2105, Avocet again went to general quarters as jittery gunners throughout the area fired on aircraft overhead. Tragically, these proved to be American, a flight of six fighters from the Enterprise (CV-6). Four were shot down; three pilots died.

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/ships/dafs/AVP/avp4.html

But back to her more admirable accomplishments:



USS Avocet Finds Samoan Clipper, 1938

And: