(This short
sketch appeared in the NOAA Corps Bulletin)
Ector B. Latham, Charles Schanck, and
Eli Packer
|
I passed through
Louisville, Kentucky in July and stopped to talk with Charley Schanck.
He had just finished mowing his lawn and looked like he would do
better on our physical readiness tests than some of our junior officers.
During conversation with him, I found a man who had one of the remarkable
careers that was so commonplace with the Coast and Geodetic Survey
in the first half of the Twentieth Century. RADM Schanck began his
career as a hand on a geodetic field party on July 9, 1924, and
was commissioned as Aid with relative rank of ensign on February
5, 1927.
What RADM Schanck
recalls with most pride during the time before the Second World
War was being Chief-of-Party on a triangulation crew with a hundred
men, forty trucks, and twenty brand new Bilby steel observing towers
in the mid-1930's working across the upper Midwest and the Southeast.
That was as a Lieutenant (j.g.) with close to ten years service.
He moved with his wife and brand new baby about 50 times during
those years. Actually, most of Charley's career up to this point
had been in geodesy throughout the United States working with triangulation,
astronomic, traverse, leveling, and baseline measurement parties.
For a man born on a ranch outside of Red Lodge, Montana, field life
was natural to Charley. His brother still runs the family ranch.
He talked of
duty in the Philippines from 1936 to 1938 on the FATHOMER with Robert
Studds, commanding, and then "Runt" Warwick. He completed the triangulation
tieing the southern Philippines to Borneo across Sibutu Strait.
Charley was on the FATHOMER when it was blown aground during a typhoon
at Cape San Vicente at the very northern tip of the Philippines
completing his circuit from one end of the islands to the other.
His job during this blow was to watch the glass for signs of lessening
intensity. The barometer didn't rise until bottoming out at 26.77".
The record low ever observed at sea level was 26.35" by comparison.
The FATHOMER was salvaged and survived to survey another day with
help from the Philippine Coast Guard. They dynamited the reef underneath
the ship, drove pilings offshore from the reef, and then used steel
cable to winch the ship into deep water.
RADM Schanck
loved the jokes and the fun times inherent in our work. He was on
the HYDROGRAPHER when Ensign John Tribble inserted a radio-acoustic
ranging bomb down a shark's mouth, released the shark, and then
watched in horror as the shark circled back to the ship and exploded
next to the hull. The concussion woke up Captain Parker who stormed
up on deck to determine the cause of the explosion. Ensign Tribble
was forcefully reminded of the necessity to maintain proper safety
procedures when handling explosives.
If you liked
that one, you'll love the old funnel down the pants trick. A few
of Schanck's wardroom cronies on the HYDROGRAPHER chose to educate
a new ensign who had just returned to the ship after a night on
the town. It was suggested that this individual was incapable of
projecting a coin that was placed on his forehead into a funnel
which was inserted between his belt and his pants. When the ensign
threw his head up to get the proper trajectory, a member of the
wardroom poured a glass of water down the funnel. Upon reflection,
the new ensign decided this was such a wonderful joke that he had
to try the same thing on another unsuspecting soul. In walks Charley
who had been aware of the original prank. Charley played so dumb
that the ensign was reduced to demonstrating the procedure. Upon
launching his head back for the proper aim, down the funnel went
a second glass of water. Lightning does strike twice in the same
place. Perhaps it was no accident that RADM Charles Schanck retired
on April Fools' Day 1958.
In geodesy, Charley
had a survey crew that was working in the vicinity of a University
of Wisconsin summer survey field camp outside of Baraboo, Wisconsin.
The students had formed the Baraboo Rattlesnake Club that required
bringing a live rattlesnake into camp for entry into the club. Unfortunately,
Charley's crew decided this was a great idea and chose to form a
sub-chapter of the club. After weeks of finding rattlesnakes in
tool boxes, cement sacks, and water cans RADM Schanck was only too
glad to pack up and leave the Baraboo Rattlesnake Club.
In 1943 Lt. Charles
Schanck was 39, a veteran of eighteen years in the Coast and Geodetic
Survey. He had been designated personnel officer for the Aeronautical
Charting Branch and was responsible for hiring, firing and monitoring
500 civilian employees in the high pressure environment of war time
chart production. Keeping old ladies who wanted to help the war
effort but couldn't draft off the drafting tables and keeping young
men who could draft but needed critical skills deferments on the
drafting tables was the gist of Charley's job. After a year of this,
he started grumbling about going where the "action is". Within a
month, Charley was transferred to the army and sent to Fort Sill,
Oklahoma. On March 25, 1944, he graduated from the sixteenth Officer's
Sound and Flash Ranging Course and then headed up to Fort Riley,
Kansas, to complete his transformation to a field artillery survey
officer.
In mid-December
1944, Major Schanck landed at LeHavre, France, and by December 20
he had found the "action" as he was transported to his unit at Dohlem,
Luxembourg, right in the middle of what came to be known as the
Battle of the Bulge, the last great German offensive of WWII. Charley
Schanck survived his baptism of fire and described his experiences
in the following letter to Rear Admiral Leo Otis Colbert, then Director
of the Coast and Geodetic Survey.
Somewhere in
Luxembourg
1 Feb. 45
"To: The Director,
U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey,
Washington, D.C.
From: Major Charles
A. Schanck, K100034
288th F.A. Obsn. Bn. A.P.O. 403
% Postmaster, N.Y. N.Y.
Subject: Personal
Report.
I guess the Germans
have learned that my unit is in action for we are not permitted
by the censors to tell that we are in the 3rd Corps of the 3rd Army.
That information plus the newspaper reports for the past month plus
my location should give you some idea of what my work has been lately.
We have tried hard to forget many things they taught us at Fort
Sill and learned a number they didn't mention. As you know any comparison
with the quality of the work we do and Coast Survey work is out
of the question, but so are the conditions under which we do it.
We have been working in about 2 feet of snow with the temperature
in the teens and low twenties. One day we ran 12 kilometers of traverse
in a snowstorm into a city that had been encircled three or four
days earlier, and counted numerous interdiction shell holes along
the road en route home that hadn't been there when the survey was
made. I have seen range poles cut in half and tripods slivered and
have watched an 88 shell burst within 60 feet of myself, instrument
man and recorder, leaving us all unscathed but spraying the ground
generously two hundred feet beyond us. Yes, it is quite different
from C&GS work.
I feel that I
am doing my unit far more good here than I did in the States. There
I was pretty discouraged when countless other phases of training
interfered with my efforts at surveying training. I don't feel that
I am bragging when I say that this Corps has been well satisfied
with my unit's surveying work and I doubt if it would have without
a C&GS officer to direct it...
Before leaving
the States I took part in a test that has, so far as I know, been
untried in similar units. It consisted of locating targets with
sextant angles from a Piper Cub liaison plane that could not be
seen from ground observers. The plane was located from surveyed
positions with flash observing instruments, all pointing on it upon
a radio signal from the plane. At the same instant I took an angle
at the plane from the target to a surveyed initial or base point.
As the plane flew past the flash observers a series of such cuts
gave an intersection at the target's location. Future survey showed
that one of the targets had been located to within 15 yards of its
actual position. The others were not surveyed in but the cuts on
them gave equally small triangle of error. My commanding officer
wrote the test up and it appeared in the Field Artillery Journal
-- which month I cannot recall. We have not attempted this here
and I am willing to let sleeping dogs lie. Taking angles from a
Cub is not easy at any time and certainly nothing to ask for in
the kind of weather we are having.
I have seen Lushene
a number of times and am not far from Johnson but haven't met up
with him to date.
My apologies
for a hand written letter but no typewriter is available at my present
location and the opportunity to write might not be as good for some
time as it is tonight.
Respectfully
yours,
Charles A. Schanck"
Schanck fought
through southern Germany with the III Corps of the Third Army until
the end of WWII. He came home unscathed in spite of many close calls.
He received the Bronze Star Medal for his service during this period.
Curiously, he
didn't even remember writing the letter from Luxembourg to the Director.
He doesn't talk that much about his wartime experiences but instead
chooses to recall his fellow colleagues from the Survey who also
served with him during the Battle of the Bulge and the sweep through
Germany.....Deily, Lushene, Thorson, Deane, Johnson, Bryant.....
most of them decorated for gallantry in action. Of these men and
the other C&GS officers assigned to other theaters of operation,
General Jacob Devers, Commanding General Army Ground Forces, wrote
to RADM Colbert:
"...I wish to
express to you and to the officers of your splendid organization
my appreciation for the great contribution made by these officers
to the success of the sound and flash ranging phase of artillery
action in the operations in all theaters of war.
"...their value
was immediately recognized in the resulting increase in efficiency
of the units, particularly in regard to their survey functions.
"...the accomplishments
of these officers while so assigned reflect great credit on the
United States Coast and Geodetic Survey."
Following WWII
RADM Schanck was assigned to the EXPLORER in 1946 conducting surveys
in the Aleutians with the electronic navigation system known as
Shoran. This system was used for aerial bombing navigation during
the war. These surveys and 1945 work by the EXPLORER were the first
to use shore based electronic control for hydrographic surveying.
1948-1950 saw a stint in the Kansas City Field Office and then a
tour on the PATTON as commanding officer. This tour involved work
in remote uncharted regions of Alaska. RADM Schanck remembers this
work as one of his most rewarding assignments. The ship was engaged
in combined operations and working in an area that was a blank spot
on the charts. Charley helped fill up the blanks.
Charley finished
his career with a tour in aeronautical charting. Somebody finally
managed to break him out of the field for a few short years of office
work. As mentioned above, he retired on April 1, 1958, after 31
years of commissioned service. In talking with RADM Schanck, the
most striking thing I noticed was his vivid recollection of and
respect for the people with whom he had worked and lived from one
end of the United States and its territories to the other. The closest
Charley came to bragging was buried in an address he delivered to
the University of Wisconsin Engineering Institute for Surveyors
in 1957. In stating that there were 128,000 triangulation stations
in the United States at that time, Schanck went on to inject "a
wee personal plug here --- my party established about two-tenths
of one percent of those stations in Wisconsin." Pride in having
been a small part of the whole. That's the essence of Charles Armstrong
Schanck. He would probably have his bag packed tomorrow if someone
called him up and asked him to run a survey crew....
