The Midshipmen's Story USS Lakatoi's Desperate WW II Mission to Relieve Guadalcanal (eBook, ePUB)

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In 1842 Midshipman Phillip Spencer, USN, son of the Secretary of War, was hung for inciting the crew of USS Somers to mutiny. Since then U.S. Navy midshipmen have not been crew members of any commissioned U.S. Navy ship at any time, but especially in combat. That is, until 1941, when the needs of the oncoming war required a small change in the U.S. Navy's century-old policy. That summer, fifty students at what would become the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, known as Cadet/Midshipmen, were assigned as midshipmen to U.S. Navy amphibious transports. The assignment, as with all midshipmen in history, was originally for training. However, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor changed everything. On August 7, 1942 six of these midshipmen were on duty at Guadalcanal for America's first amphibious offensive against the Japanese. Two of them, Edward S. Davis and Robert H. Dudley, were ordered to abandon their ship, USS George F. Elliott, after a Japanese bomber crashed into it, starting an uncontrollable fire. In the aftermath of the Navy's defeat at Savo Island that night, the transports, and their midshipmen, were forced to retreat to safer waters, leaving the Marines with just half of their supplies and equipment to carry on the fight. But, the Marines couldn't just be abandoned to their fate. Unable to return to Guadalcanal in force, covert plans were hurriedly improvised by the Navy to resupply them. One of these plans was to slip a former inter-island freighter, M/V Lakatoi, past the watchful Japanese into Guadalcanal. Commissioned USS Lakatoi, the ship and its volunteer Navy crew, including Midshipmen Edward Davis and Robert Dudley, set sail on a desperate, impossible mission from which none of its crew believed they would return. In summing up their remarkable story, Vice Admiral William F. Halsey wrote, "The Commanding Officer and members of the crew of the U. S. S. LAKATOI displayed fortitude and heroism in keeping with the best traditions of the service."

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Thomas F. McCaffery is a lifelong sailor, retired naval officer (Commander) and senior merchant ship officer (Chief Mate, Unlimited Tonnage; Master, 1600 Gross Tons). He graduated with Honors from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in 1976. His other major published work was Braving the Wartime Seas, for which he was the primary researcher and a contributing author. The book is a tribute to the students and alumni of the U.S. Merchant Marine Cadet Corps who died during World War II. He has also published several magazine articles in the U.S. Naval Institute's "Proceedings" and the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy Alumni Association's "Kings Pointer."

For over twenty years his business has been researching the history of the U.S. Navy and Merchant Marine from the 1930s to the 1970s. As a merchant marine officer, he sailed aboard nearly every type of ship that flew an American Flag, as a licensed deck officer, up to and including Chief Mate. In 1981 he, along with other crew members of the T/T Williamsburg, was awarded the Maritime Administration's Gallant Ship Unit Citation for his participation in the rescue of the survivors of the M/S Prinsendam. This was the largest and most successful maritime rescue in history.
He was later employed as one of the U.S. Navy's leading strategic mobility and sealift analysts before, during and after Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm. Other academic credentials include graduation from the College of Naval Command and Staff of the U.S. Naval War College and Master of Business Administration from Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. He is one of only a handful of the the U. S. Merchant Marine Academy's alumni to have been honored with the Alumni Distinguished Service Award, twice.

Tom, and his wife Celia A. Booth (Captain, USN, ret.) live in Ponte Vedra, Florida. His son, James, will soon graduate from the Virginia Military Institute while his daughter, Grace, is in her third year at the U.S. Naval Academy.