USS Cumberland Sound: Seaplane Tender and Operation Crossroads

From Wikipedia.

In the last post, I mentioned that Pearl Harbor survivor Ludwig "Lou" Radil was on this ship during the nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll.

Was a Kenneth Whiting-class seaplane tender  launched 23 February 1944 and commissioned 21 August 1944, Captain E. Grant in command.492 feet long, 69.6 beam, crew 1,077.

In October it sailed to Pearl Harbor and then to Enitowek and Ulithi where she tended the seaplanes of the  Patrol Bomber Squadron 22.  Then, the Cumberland Sound rendezvoused with the 3rd Fleet at Okinawa and sailed to Tokyo Bay, arriving 28 August 1945.  returned to the United States in November and was converted to carry returning U.S. military home.

She departed Seattle 28 December 1945 and embarked returning servicemen at San Pedro, California,  12 January 1946.

The Cumberland Sound was then assigned to "Operation Crossroads" nuclear testing. and on 19 January entered Long beach  Naval Shipyard for conversion to a laboratory ship.  She served during the atomic tests until 12 September 1946 when she returned too San Diego.

Placed out of commission in naval reserve 27 May 1947.

--GreGen

Pearl Harbor Survivor Ludwig Radil Dies in Nebraska

From the May 8, 2018, Omaha (Neb) World-Herald  "Navy veteran among last of Pearl Harbor survivors in Nebraska, dies at 98"

Ludwig "Lou" Radil was in the Navy for six years.  He was a yeoman on the USS California when the Japanese attacked and later he witnesses the nuclear testing after the war.

Joining the Navy in 1941, he arrived in Pearl Harbor in August and was the ship's librarian on the California. At the time of the attack he was setting up deck chairs for church services and remembered, "We got a torpedo hit, then another, and then a bomb hit.

"We started listing to one side.  We got word that the ship was sinking and might capsize.  So, the captain ordered a call to abandon ship.."

He jumped into the water and swam 200 yards to Ford Island, soaked with oil but uninjured.  The next day he helped remove bodies of the nearly 100 who died on his ship.

After the war he was assigned to the USS Cumberland Sound, a seaplane tender and was at Bikini Atoll in the spring of 1946 and observed the first of two post-war tests of nuclear weapons.

He was buried at Graceland Park Cemetery in South Omaha.

--GreGen