Fessenden

The Story of The U.S.S. Fessenden (DE-142)

Friday, October 6, 2006 was Reginald Fessenden's 140th Birthday (born 1866)

Without Fessenden's sonar 'ASDIC', the depth sounder, carbon tetrachloride, the 'beeper'/radio-pager, the voice-scrambler, the radio compass (known as LORAN), the tracer bullet, electrical insulating tape and many other of Fessenden's inventions, the outcome of World War II might have been very different.

Mrs. R.K. Fessenden, daughter-in-law of Professor Reginald A. Fessenden,
Lt.Cdr. William A. Dobbs, first captain of the U.S.S. "Fessenden"
and Fessenden's son, Colonel Reginald Kenneley Fessenden, USA (Retired)

The U.S. Navy's "Fessenden (DE-142)" - an Edsall-class destroyer-escort, launched at Orange, Texas on March 9, 1943 and commissioned on August 25, 1943 - was named in honour of Reginald Aubrey Fessenden (1866 � 1932), who coincidentally had worked as Thomas Edison's head chemist at Edison's East Orange Laboratories in New Jersey and it was indeed the extremely creative Fessenden who had invented the very first sonar device - developed as the ASDIC - which had now sealed the fate of the German U-Boat "U-1062" off the Cape Verde Islands.

The U.S.S. "Fessenden (DE-142)" was an Edsall Class Destroyer Escort. Displacing 1490 tons, she was 306' long, 36' 7" in beam, 12' 3" in draught and driven by twin, geared, diesel engines with Fairbanks Morse reverse gear drive, had a speed of 21 knots and was crewed by 216 men.

On an April night in 1944, when the "Fessenden" was escorting convoy USG 38 to North Africa, a surface radar contact was made, about ten miles in front of the convoy, the "Fessenden" on the left front comer of the convoy, the Task Force Commander directed the her to leave the convoy and investigate the contact.

As the "Fessenden" closed the distance to the target, it broke into two radar blips, the radar also indicating that, as the contacts were going away at a high rate of speed, they were probably German torpedo-boats.

The "Fessenden" was not fast enough to gain on them so she turned 90�, slowed down and, bringing all her main batteries to bear, fired a star shell pattern to illuminate the targets - Nothing was seen, so "Fessenden" turned on her search lights, but still nothing was seen and, after a short search she returned to a different position in the convoy, the destroyer-escort which had closed up in to her previous position being attacked and sunk just hours later !

The story might have ended there but for a chance 1960 meeting in a Frankfurt beer cellar owned by an ex-German Navy man who introduced the visiting son of an ex-U.S. Navy man to a gentleman called Horst-Arno Fenski, an ex-U-Boat man, captain of the "U-371".

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