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| USS YMS 472--a model with a story |
| My near neighbor, Mr. Elmer Renner, of Aurora, Illinois, built a model of his ship, YMS 472--built it on that ship in 1945. This model, with the ship’s cat, was fortunately put ashore before the ship left for the Far Eastern Theater. On September 17, 1945, after the end of the Pacific war, YMS 472 and three sister ships were sunk in a hellacious typhoon. The epic of the raft of 472 is one of the great stories of survival at sea. The Renner model is a at a scale of 3/16 inch to the foot, because those were the scale of the plans carried on the ship. The hull was made from a laminated block of pine, prepared by a carpenter in New York harbor. It is a sailor’s model, a bit rough from handling. But it is an extremely valuable model because it can show the story of the last minutes of 472. Mr. Renner, former engineering officer, can use this model to show you events of that typhoon. The 472 model raises many historical questions. This typhoon, the Makurazaki typhoon, happened just after World War II ceased, so why did it take so long to find the survivors? Why did YMSs carry only two rafts and a twelve foot dinghy for 30 men? Why was there no preparation for the typhoon? This happened less than a year after Admiral Halsey’s learning experience in December 1944. The story was buried except for a New York Times paragraph almost a month later: “The Navy announced today that eighty-nine officers and men were dead or missing after a typhoon in the Okinawa area Sept. 16-18, which sank four motor minesweepers and a submarine chaser.” To read more of this exciting story get the book by Elmer Renner "Sea of Sharks" published in 2004 by Naval Institute Press. This is available from Amazon along with other book stores. There is a good book called Typhoon: The Other Enemy, but it is about the earlier storm. This model raises questions of how history is written. See other books: Warship International, numbers 1 and 2, 1997. “History of the BYMS,” by Patrick Griffiths. Wood: A Manual for its use as a Shipbuilding Material, Navy Department, 1945-1962, reprint by Teaparty Books, Kingston, Mass. |
