Let's Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky: Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology (16 page)

A Scientology press release claims that Hubbard was “flown
home in the late spring of 1942 in the Secretary of the Navy's private plane as
the first US returned casualty from the Far East.”
¹⁶
Another
Scientology account adds that Hubbard “was relieved by fifteen officers of rank
[no longer “junior officers”] and was rushed home to take part in the 1942
battle against German submarines as Commanding Officer of a Corvette serving in
the North Atlantic.”
¹⁷
Yet another Scientology account says he “rose
to command a squadron.”
¹⁸

In reality, after his return by ship to San Francisco at the
end of March 1942, Hubbard was hospitalized for catarrhal fever,
¹⁹
which he had contracted aboard ship. Being the “first U.S. returned casualty
from the Far East” seems to have consisted of having a bad cold. A doctor noted
that he was “somewhat preoccupied with himself.” Upon recovering from his cold,
Hubbard was posted to intelligence duties at Naval headquarters in San
Francisco. He immediately requested transfer to New York. After two weeks, he
was sent to the Office of the Cable Censor in New York. A dispatch written in
April says: “The Chief Cable Censor is cognizant of the letter from the Naval Attaché,
Australia, dated February 14, 1942, and has considered the suggestion made
therein. It is therefore recommended that no disciplinary action be taken.”

In New York, Hubbard went on the sick list almost
immediately, suffering from conjunctivitis for a few days.
²⁰

During World War II, junior US Naval Officers were promoted
in batches, and in June Hubbard became a Lieutenant senior grade. This was the
highest rank he achieved, which was unusual, as he continued in active service
for more than three years beyond this date. When Hubbard was transferred to New
York, cable censorship had just ceased to be a function of Intelligence, so
Hubbard ceased to be an “intelligence officer.” His designation for work in
Intelligence was amended to that of a Deck Officer. He requested sea duty in
the Caribbean, but was posted to Neponset, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston,
at the end of June 1942. There he was to oversee the conversion of a trawler,
the
MV Mist
, into a Navy yard patrol craft, the
USS YP-422
.

A Scientology press release says that the Mist, under
Hubbard's command, served with British and American anti-submarine warfare
vessels in the North Atlantic.
²¹
The truth is less heroic. The Mist,
or
YP-422
, put to sea from the Boston Navy Yard on training exercises in
August. The exercises lasted 27 hours, in which time
YP-422
fired a few
practice rounds, but it saw no action against the enemy under Hubbard's
command. Once again Hubbard managed to antagonize his superiors. In a dispatch
to the Vice Chief of Naval Operations, the Commandant of the Boston Navy Yard
wrote: “Lt. L.R. Hubbard is in command of
YP-422
completing conversion
and fitting out at Boston, in the opinion of the Commandant he is not
temperamentally fitted for independent command. It is therefore urgently requested
that he be detached and that order for relief be expedited in view of the
expected early departure of the vessel. Believe Hubbard capable of useful
service if ordered to other duty under immediate supervision of a more senior
officer.”

On October 1, Hubbard was summarily detached from the
YP-422
and ordered to New York. So ended his only command in the Atlantic. Although
his record shows no service in the eastern Atlantic, a photograph shows Hubbard
wearing the “European and African campaign” ribbon nonetheless. The Scientology
tale, doubtless inspired if not written by Hubbard, about his command of a
squadron pursuing German submarines is entirely fanciful.

Back in New York, Hubbard wrote to the Bank of Alaska, who
had finally caught up with him, explaining that he could not repay the $265 he
had borrowed during his 1940 “expedition.”
²²
This is only one of a
number of unpaid debts recorded in his Navy file.
²³

Hubbard again requested sea duty in the Caribbean, but in
November 1942 was ordered to the Submarine Chaser Center, in Florida, for
training. In a lecture given in 1964, Hubbard talked about his time there:

“Fortunately, it was a lovely, lovely warm classroom, and I
was shipped for a very short time down into the south of Florida ... and, boy was
I able to catch up on some sleep.”
²⁴

A Scientology publication claims that in 1943 Hubbard became
a Commodore of Corvette Squadrons.
²⁵
Whatever else he was, Hubbard
was certainly never a Commodore (the rank between Captain and Rear Admiral) in
the US Navy; at least until he appointed himself to that rank in his Sea Org,
nearly 25 years later.

After two months in the warm classrooms of Florida, Hubbard
was posted, on January 17, 1943, to the Albina shipyards, in Portland, Oregon.
There he was to assist with the fitting out of the
PC 815
, and to assume
command when she was commissioned. The
PC 815
was a patrol craft, a
“sleek hulled submarine chaser of approximately 280 tons full load,” according
to Jane’s Fighting Ships.

Hubbard asked Thomas Moulton, with whom he had studied in
Florida, to become his executive officer when the
PC 815
was commissioned.
Moulton was posted to Portland in March 1943. He arrived to find Hubbard
recovering from another bout of catarrhal fever in the care of his wife, Polly.
²⁶

Hubbard's eyes troubled him and he wore dark glasses
constantly. At a dance at the Seattle Tennis Club, he took off the glasses, and
Moulton says Hubbard's eyes reddened and began to water in a matter of minutes.
He told Moulton his difficulty was due to the “flash from a large caliber gun
... on a destroyer he had been on.”
²⁷
During a medical examination
in 1946, Hubbard attributed his visual trouble to “excessive tropical
sunlight.” The real problem was a recurrence of his conjunctivitis.

Moulton added: “he frequently complained of pain in his
right side and the back in the area of the kidneys which he said was due to
some damage from a Japanese machine gun ... And from that he had considerable
difficulty in urination. And upon at least one occasion I saw him urinating
bloody urine.”

Attorney Michael Flynn later suggested that Hubbard's
difficulty might well have been a “social disease,” mentioned in Hubbard's private
papers.
³⁰
Bloody urine can result from an excess of sulfa drugs,
commonly used at that time as a treatment for venereal disease. Hubbard later
complained about the amount of sulfa drugs he had been fed in the Navy.

When the
USS PC 815
was commissioned on April 21,
Hubbard became her Commanding Officer. The next day, a remarkable article was
printed in
The Oregon Journal
. The text is headed with a picture of Hubbard
in dark glasses and Moulton, and reads in part:

Lieutenant Commander Ron (“Red”) Hubbard, former
Portlander, veteran sub hunter of the battles of the Pacific and Atlantic has
been given a birthday present for Herr Hitler by Albina Hellshipyard ... Hubbard
is an active member of the Explorers Club, New York city. He has commanded
three internationally important expeditions for that organization. In 1934
Hubbard had charge of the Caribbean Motion Picture Expedition and took the
first underwater films. He was the first to use the now famous bathosphere
[sic] or diving ball [sic!, read “bell”] for this work. In 1935 Hubbard headed
a cartographic survey in West Indian waters and in 1939 and 1940, for the navy
hydrographic office, led the noted Alaska Radio Experimental Expedition.

Hubbard comes from a long line of naval men: His
father is Lieutenant H.R. Hubbard; his grandfather, Captain Lafayette
Waterbury; his great grandfather, Captain I.C. De Wolf, all of whom helped to
make American naval history.

We are then told that Hubbard spent his youth in Portland,
and given his statement about the “Albina Hellships”: “Those little sweethearts
are tough. They could lick the pants off anything Nelson or Farragut ever
sailed. They put up a sizzling fight and are the only answer to the submarine
menace. I state emphatically that the future of America rests with just such
escort vessels.”

In the
Journal
, Hubbard has been promoted and his
father demoted. There is no mention elsewhere of “Captain” Waterbury's naval
career, and “I.C. De Wolf” was the maiden name of Hubbard's maternal
grandmother, Ida Corinne. As usual the story was tailored to fit the
circumstances. Hubbard had cut his cloth to fit a man of greater stature than
himself.

In mid-May 1943, the newly refitted
USS PC 815
sailed
from Astoria, on the Oregon coast, into the Pacific on a “shake-down” cruise.
Her destination was San Diego. Shortly after leaving Astoria, sonar readings
indicated the presence of a submarine; at least according to Hubbard and
Moulton in the Action Report they filed at the time.
³²

Strangely enough, Hubbard does not seem to have recounted
this story to his followers. Despite many remarkable tales about his naval
career, this was the only action which even approached a “battle” in which he
took part. Hubbard's report runs to 18 typewritten pages. It was written two
days after the
PC 815
had returned to Astoria, amid “considerable
skepticism,” as Hubbard admitted, so he backed it up with several other reports
from the crew.

Admiral Fletcher, Commander Northwest Sea Frontier who reviewed
Hubbard's report found it was “not in accordance with ‘Anti-Submarine Action by
Surface Ship’.” Fletcher had a point, the action report reads strangely like a
short story.

The “battle” took place off Cape Lookout, some 50 miles south
of the mouth of the Columbia River. The
PC 815
was in the steamer track,
10 or 12 miles off the Oregon coast. After an echo contact had been checked,
the
PC 815
laid three depth charges, just before 4:00 a.m., on May 19.
Shortly before 5:00 am, Hubbard gave orders to fire on an object that had
appeared in the early morning light. In his report, he admitted that it was
probably a log, but justified the attack as a means of checking the
PC 815
’s
guns.

In the first hour, the PC 815 made three runs, using nine
depth charges. Hubbard had to be more sparing with the remaining three, which
were laid one at a time on three successive runs. Hubbard said that his object
was to force the submarine to come up, so it could be attacked with the guns.

The
PC 815
was joined by two anti-submarine “blimps”
(non-rigid airships) at nine that morning, by which time she had no charges
left. The submarine had failed to respond in any way to these attacks. By
midday, eight hours into the battle, Hubbard had decided that the submarine
could not fire torpedoes the
PC 815
would have provided an easy target,
as, according to Hubbard, the sea was calm (Moulton later contradicted this,
saying the sea was sometimes “quite rough”).

Hubbard complained that his requests for more depth charges
were acknowledged but not answered. For at least four hours, the
PC 815
,
which had no depth charges, kept the purported submarine in place. No oil or
debris from the submarine had been sighted, so there was no indication of
damage. The submarine made no attempt to retaliate or escape. The
PC 815
was joined in the afternoon by the
SC 536
(SCs, or Sub Chasers, were
slightly smaller vessels than the
PC 815
). The
SC 536
seems to
have had inadequate detection equipment, so had to follow the
PC 815
over the target, and lay her depth charges at the signal of a whistle. Hubbard
said the Lieutenant commanding the
SC 536
“showed brilliant judgment and
seamanship.”

Later that afternoon the
PC 815
's soundman found a
second submarine. Hubbard said the blimps saw air bubbles, oil and a periscope.
The blimps' own reports do not seem to have mentioned this. Throughout the
“battle” several oil boils appeared, but the
PC 815
failed to take
samples.

The
SC 536
had made three attacks by 4.36 p.m., when
a Coast Guard patrol boat delivered 23 new depth charges to the PC 815. That
evening, the
USS CG Bonham
and the
SC 537
arrived. They could not
locate a submarine with their detection equipment. Hubbard castigated them for
their lack of co-operation, suggesting that the commander of the
Bonham
was afraid he would damage his ship if he fired a depth charge.

On the second day, the “battle” continued at a slower pace.
Hubbard was officially given command of the assembly that afternoon. On the
third day of this one-sided contest, a periscope was allegedly sighted, but
rapidly disappeared when the
PC 815
's gunners opened fire.

They were joined by the larger
PC 778
, which carried
50 depth charges. She found no indication of submarines, so refused either to
lay depth charges, or to supply any to Hubbard. Indeed, Hubbard had such
difficulty obtaining more ammunition that Moulton sent a message to the
Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet, in Pearl Harbor, “asking why in
thunder we couldn't get any help.”

At midnight, on May 21, the
PC 815
was ordered back
to Astoria. According to Hubbard's report, the action had lasted for 55 hours,
27 minutes. The
PC 815
had remained in the area searching for a further
13 hours. They had used a total of 35 depth charges, and despite the failure of
either of the submarines to respond, they had sustained three minor casualties
and shot away their own radio antenna.

In a personnel report attached to his Action Report, Hubbard
congratulated his crew without exception for their part in the “battle.”