Thursday, July 3, 1997

Bell tolls history of sea battle

By AUDREY PARENTE | News-Journal Staff Writer

ORMOND BEACH — Fireworks above the beach will commemorate the Fourth of July, but some area residents recall that a different kind of explosive display clouded the horizon during World War II.

Aerial bombs, torpedoes and depth charges exploded along the Florida coastline when German U-boats hunted American ships.

As a youngster during the early 1940s, Don O´Lone, 62, of Ormond Beach, lived with his parents in a three-floor apartment building east of the Boardwalk in Daytona Beach.

The building has since been razed but, in those days, from the balcony of his apartment, O´Lone could gaze out over the ocean.

One morning from the balcony, he noticed a lot of activity. Neighbors were on their balconies peering at the ocean.

“Two destroyers were coming from the south and obviously chasing something,” O´Lone recalls.

He had a look through the neighbor´s telescope.

“I saw the conning tower of a German U-boat,” he says.

Pretty soon, four King Fishers flew overhead. O´Lone said he recognized the seaplanes from photos and newsreels he had seen.

“The planes dropped depth charges. I saw the bombs blowing up and the waves and speculation was, they disabled the sub,” he said.

“We swam in oil and debris and the police patrolled the beach on horseback. The destroyers stayed out there a day or so trying to determine something,” O´Lone said.

He never learned anything definitive, but says he never forgot the incident.

Bob Barker, Holly Hill, owns a reminder of offshore enemy activity, a bell he salvaged from the oil tanker Gulfamerica before it sank off the coast at Jacksonville after being torpedoed.

The Stuart native was in his early 20s when he joined the Navy in August 1941. At the time, he carried a captain´s license, since his job was piloting tourist fishing boats. He was assigned to a 50-foot shrimp boat commandeered by the Navy to help patrol and participate in rescues five to eight miles off shore, he recalls.

“The boat had been outfitted with 50-caliber machine guns fore and aft and loaded with depth charges that were radio-controlled,” Barker said.

A call came for his boat to report to Jacksonville Beach, where the Gulfamerica had been torpedoed.

The bridge was awash, but the bow was sticking up out of the water when Barker´s vessel arrived.

He asked for permission to salvage the ship´s bell.

“The sea was over it and the ship was about to go down, but I hung on as the swells came by and got it back on board,” he says.

He asked permission to keep the bell as a memorial.

Another remnant of war-time coastal action is a watchtower on a sand dune in Ormond Beach.

Observing the ocean from the watchtower were Gigi Butts, a recognition officer, and her mother, Eileen Butts, chief observation officer.

During the graveyard shift, the women saw flashes on the ocean.

“One night, mother and I were sure there had been a ship torpedoed. We saw red flashes go up and down, so we got the coffee boiling and blankets and called Jacksonville to get help down here,” she said.

They learned it was a false alarm, but continued the vigil.

“One evening, we were walking the beach at twilight by the Coral Sands Motel when a man approached us with something in his hand and said, ‘You are supposed to be off the beach by dusk.’ He was very bossy,” Butts recalled.

On a hunch, she reported the man to the National Guard. He wasn´t found, but Butts says a room with a secret transmitter was discovered at the Coral Sands.

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