EASTERN SEA FRONTIER
WAR DIARY
FEBRUARY 1942
  
     
 
CHAPTER V
  
 
 
 
SS INDIA ARROW
  
     
 
        When the tanker INDIA ARROW was torpedoed about 1845, February 4, 1942, the sound of the explosion woke the radio operator in his bunk. He rushed to the radio room and sent out the message "SOS - KDHP - torpedoed." Chatham, Massachusetts, replied a moment or two later with a request for the ship's position. The Captain, on the bridge, shouted the information to the radio operator, but before it could be sent out the radio went dead. Then six well aimed shells plunged into the bow of the INDIA ARROW setting off a fire that spread over the whole ship. The radio operator tried to set up his auxiliary set but could not do so. He ran to the rail, jumped overboard, swam to a floating hatch cover and turned to watch the INDIA ARROW go down. It was then 1900.
  
     
          The sinking of the ship was in no way unusual. It followed a pattern familiar to everyone concerned with the protection of shipping within the Frontier in the last month. The incident is noteworthy only for what followed.  
     
          When the Fifth Naval District received the message from the INDIA ARROW at 1858, the owners of the vessel, the Socony-Vacuum COmpany, were consulted in an attempt to obtain an approximate position for the ship. At 1920 when Eastern Sea Frontier received word of the sinking, Merchant Ships Plot estimated the location as between Barnegat and Sea Girt. At 1300, February 5, the Socony Company advised the Fifth Naval District that the ship, at the hour of torpedoing, should have been about fifteen miles south of the Winter Quarter Shoals Lightship. A patrol vessel was immediately dispatched to this area and a telephone call was put through to Langley Field, asking the Army to send a plane, or planes, to search for survivors. Authorities at the field  
     
 
 
 
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  replied that they could not send out planes without the permission of the Commanding General of the First Air Force in New York. The Fifth Naval District then instructed the Naval Air Station at NOrfolk to send two planes to the location suggested by the Socony - Vacuum Oil Company. Four were immediately dispatched. Twenty-five minutes later the Fifth Naval District was notified by Langley Field that one plane would be sent out. In a short time word was received at Norfolk that the bow of the INDIA ARROW was found floating in the water about thirty miles from the estimated position.  
     
 

  The Fifth Naval District then asked Langley Field whether they were patrolling the waters of the district north of Latitude 37 N. This area had been assigned to the Army in the division of the sea lanes that had been determined upon in Operation Plan 31. (This plan was considered at some length in the January, 1942 War Diary). The authorities at the Field refused to tell what area they were patrolling and said that such information would have to be obtained from Commander, North Atlantic Naval Coastal Frontier.

  
     
          The Army Liaison Officer on duty in the Fifth Naval District was sent over to Langley Field to see if he could obtain the information desired. "This officer", in turn "was very cordially refused this information and told he would have to obtain it from Commander, North Atlantic Naval Coastal Frontier." It was apparent that the system of communications upon which the success of Operation Plan 31 rested, had broken down.  
     
          In January, arrangements had been made by the Commandant of the Fifth Naval District and Commander, North Atlantic Naval Coastal Frontier to  
     
 
 
 
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  divide the sea lanes in the Fifth Naval District in 3 segments, one to be patrolled from the air by the Coast Guard, one by the Navy, and one by the Army. To facilitate communications, Commander, North Atlantic Naval Coastal Frontier had further arranged that information received at Langley Field from patrolling planes would be transmitted immediately, by a direct wire from the Field, to Fifth Naval District. In the course of the discussions after the sinking of the INDIA ARROW, it developed that the authorities at Langley believed they could only report to Fifth Naval District via Commander, North Atlantic Naval Coastal Frontier, and that, by order of the Commanding General, the direct wire between the Naval District and the Army field had been disconnected.  
     
 

        Two other significant things were discovered in the negotiations between the Fifth Naval District and Langley Field. The Commander of the Inshore Patrol would receive word of enemy activity sighted by Army planes only after the information had passed through three telephones en route to New York and back. In addition, the Army Information Center at Norfolk received from the Army Direx and the civilian air raid observers any information about enemy planes, but reports from patrolling Army bombers dealing with enemy activity at sea came only from New York. In commenting upon this cumbrous system of communications, the Commander of the Inshore Patrol gave it as his opinion that information received in such roundabout fashion would be "stale" before it arrived.

  
     
          There are three aspects of this communications tangle that deserve attention. In the first place the weakness of the forces attached to the Frontier and the Fifth Naval District had made it necessary for the Commander, Eastern  
     
 
 
 
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  Sea Frontier and the Commandant to fit together available forces of the Army, Navy and Coast Guard for the protection of the sea lanes. The effective cooperation of these separate entities depended to a surprising degree upon effective means of communication. Cooperation failed when the system of communication failed, and the failure can perhaps be traced to lack of experience and understanding on the part of the air arm least aquatinted with submarine warfare.  
     
          In the second place, the whole incident of the INDIA ARROW reveals the tremendous importance, for the prosecution of anti-submarine warfare, of accurate and rapid communication of information. Successful attack and rescue depend frequently on the speed with which reports are relayed to the fighting forces.  
     
          Finally, a good system of communications can, in a very real sense, take the place of additional forces. It is a device for reducing the weakness inherent in numerical deficiency by insuring that available forces are used in time in the proper place. This point was not lost on the Commander of the Inshore Patrol who informed the Commander, Eastern Sea Frontier that unless the direct wire between the Fifth Naval District and Langley Field, which Commander, Eastern Sea Frontier had previously arranged for, were installed, he would need extra reinforcements to protect the integrity of the coast.  
     
 
 
 
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