How a World War Changed an Alabama Family, Part 28

by Glenn N. Holliman

The Winter of 1943....

Below, H. Bishop Holliman of Irondale, Alabama at the Bunker Hill Monument, winter of 1943, while on a weekend pass from his Naval base in Maine.

 January 1943, my father, H. Bishop Holliman, was assigned to the U.S. Navy radio school in Casco Bay, Maine, an island near Portland.  Until May 1943, he was instructed in Morse code but also introduced to one of the secrets of World War II - the ability to listen to German U-boats radio signals and obtain an accurate bearing on their locations.  

That bitter winter of 1943, German submarines were inflicting havoc on North Atlantic shipping as convoy after convoy was devastated by the deployment of over 100 U-boats.  Unless the Allies could stop this destruction there could be no Allied invasion of the European mainland in 1944.

Below, a U-Boat under air attack.  

"The program at Casco was called High Frequency Direction Finding (HF/DF) to detect when Germans subs sent out signals to other subs.  This was a highly classified, secretive operation, and we were sworn to secrecy.  Even the scrap paper at the end of the day's school would be burned under supervision.  We could not tell anyone about what were were studying or what we would do.  

We were learning to detect the German code signals the U-boats sent out when they spotted a convoy of allied ships.  The operation I learned later was highly instrumental in wiping out the threat posed by the submarines up to that time.  

When home in Irondale, I recall evading my Daddy's questions about the nature of the school.  We were admonished to say nothing - tell no one - of what we were doing.  If the Germans discovered we'd stolen their secrets, why, the whole war would be lost!" 

Historians report that the winter of 1942/43 was the high tide of German successes at sea.  By the late spring, a combination of HF/DF, more destroyer escorts and importantly, air coverage from escort carriers, led to the demise of the threat.  The Germans began to lose more submarines than ships sunk by the summer of 1943, just in time for the Allies to launch the Invasion of Sicily.

 Admiral Carl Doenitz, the U-boat genius, at the head of a naval inspection force.

For additional information on Casco Bay Naval Station during World War II, please go to this link:
http://www.navyhistory.org/2014/05/going-ashore-naval-operations-in-casco-bay-during-world-war-ii-part-i/


Have questions about Holliman family history? You are invited to join the Hollyman Email List at Hollyman-Subscribe@yahoogroups.com and the Hollyman Family Facebook Page located on Facebook at "Hollyman Family". Post your questions and perhaps one of the dozens Holyman cousins on the list will have an answer. For more information contact Tina Peddie at desabla1@yahoo.com, the list and Facebook manager for Hollyman (and all our various spellings!).

There is also a massive Ancestry.com Holyman and Associated Families Tree available for review.  For an invitation to this collection of over 20,000 individuals, please write glennhistory@gmail.com.  

Also one will find additional Holliman history at http://hollimanfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/ .

I also have a collection of associated family manuscripts and research collected by the late Walt Holliman, Cecil Holliman and Rhodes Holliman.  Happy to send these materials by email and to insure their research is available.  The surnames: Alexander, Baldwin, Barham, Bass, Beall, Blakeney,  Baker, Bond, Bostick, Brewer, Bryan, Bryant, Bullock, Calvert, Carter, Champion, Chew,Cofer, Cole, Crafford, Crockett, Curtis, Dale, Daniel, Davidson, Davies, De Mallpas, Douglas, Duckett, Edwards, Edgerton, Emerson, Fitzhugh, Fowlehurst, Fox, Gains, Garrison, Gonson, Graves, Gray, Guyton, Guins, Hall, Hamby, Hawkins,Hendrix, Hill, Hogg, Holliman, Holt, Howard, Jackson, Jones, Judkins, Love, Lucas, Maget, Mansfield, Manwaring, McBee, McComas, McCurdy, McNewsome, Nicholson, Norsworthy, Noyall, O'dell, Oliver, Pearce, Peerce, Pettigrew, Petway, Pitman, Plow, Plyler, Porten, Prather, Petite, Ridgely, Riggan, Roberts, Smith, Spencer, Sprigg, Standley, Stanyard, Swan, Strother, Thompson, Thornton, Thrope, Trelawney, Turpin, Underhill, Underwood, Wallace, Walters, Weedon, Whitherspoon, Whitten,Williams,Wilmot,Wilson, Whitaker and Yerby.  These are mainly Alabama families and their ancestors from the Carolinas and Virginia. Materials vary from one page to 200. - GNH at glennhistory@gmail.com.