In the spring of 1945, thousands of Soviet sailors arrived at one of the most remote corners of North America. Cold Bay, a windswept harbor at the tip of the Alaska Peninsula, was about to host one of the most unique military partnerships of World War II.
American and Soviet sailors were going to train together aboard the same ships against a common enemy. Almost no one on either side of the world was supposed to know about the operation as the Americans helped train the Soviet sailors to conduct amphibious operations in preparation for their entry into the war against Japan.
The program was officially designated Hula-2. In a 1997 monograph published by the Naval Historical Center, historian Richard A. Russell called it "the largest and most ambitious transfer program of World War II."
A Diplomatic Bargain at Yalta
By early 1945, American war planners had arrived at a grim realization. Japan would not surrender short of a full invasion of its home islands. The planned operation, code-named Downfall, projected Allied casualties in the hundreds of thousands.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt believed Soviet participation in the Pacific theater was the surest way to shorten the war and spare American lives. At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Roosevelt officially secured a commitment from Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin to enter the war against Japan within three months of Germany's defeat.
Stalin's price was steep. He demanded southern Sakhalin, control of the Kuril Islands, and a dominant position in northern Manchuria. To give the Soviets a fighting chance in the North Pacific, Washington agreed to dramatically expand Lend-Lease transfers to include warships and amphibious assault craft.
In fact, the United States had already agreed to supply naval vessels to the Soviets two months before Yalta in an effort to entice them into conflict with Japan. The Hula naval transfer would become part of a larger logistical program codenamed MILEPOST, the U.S. stockpile of supplies and equipment for Soviet entry into the Pacific War.
On Dec. 20, 1944, the Soviet Main Naval Staff chief, Adm. V.A. Alafuzov, and the head of the U.S. Navy mission in Moscow, Rear Adm. Clarence E. Olsen, agreed to a single list of roughly two dozen ship and aircraft types. That list produced the 180-ship transfer plan.
The transfer program was planned to deliver all 180 ships to Soviet custody by Nov. 1, 1945, the original target date for Operation Olympic, the invasion of Kyushu.
The arrangement also had a profound diplomatic risk. Since April 1941, the Soviet Union and Japan had been bound by a neutrality pact that, on paper, remained in effect. Soviet sailors drilling on American warships in an Alaskan harbor, in preparation for operations against Japan, could not be allowed to become public knowledge.
Cold Bay, Alaska
A directive from Fleet Adm. Ernest J. King officially established the transfer program on Feb. 15, 1945, about a week after Yalta. King designated Cold Bay as the transfer site with the approval of Fleet Adm. N.G. Kuznetsov, the Soviet navy's commander in chief.
Navy Detachment 3294 was created specifically for the project. Commander William S. Maxwell received orders to take charge of it on March 7. His training officer and second in command was then-Lt. Cmdr. John J. Hutson Jr. of the U.S. Coast Guard.
Hutson knew the ships better than almost anyone the Navy could have assigned. The Coast Guard had been manning Tacoma-class patrol frigates, the central vessel of the transfer program, since 1943. Hutson had spent most of the war working on the same hulls Soviet sailors were about to be trained to operate.
Maxwell, newly promoted to captain, arrived at Cold Bay on March 19 and assumed command of the base the next day. He found a site that had been decommissioned in November 1944 and needed substantially more work than his orders had indicated.
His team repaired piers, barracks, classrooms, and fuel depots. They procured radars, minesweeping gear, training films, and gyrocompasses. Interpreters were brought in to bridge a language gap that would ultimately define the entire operation.
Beginning April 10, several Soviet merchant ships each carrying roughly 500 men began arriving at Cold Bay. Rear Adm. Boris D. Popov came ashore from the steamer Sevastopol on April 11. He commanded the 5th Independent Detachment of Soviet Navy Ships, the official designation of the Soviet contingent at Cold Bay.
By April 14, 2,358 Soviet sailors had disembarked. Formal instruction began on April 16.
Soviet crews had to learn from scratch how to operate American radar and sonar, handle 3-inch and 40-millimeter guns, sweep mines, and coordinate amphibious landings. Demonstration usually substituted for explanation when language fell short.
Manuals were translated on-site, and the best-performing Soviet trainees were kept behind to help instruct later arriving crews. In his final report, Maxwell described the working relationship between the American and Soviet staffs as cooperative throughout.
149 Ships for the USSR
The fleet handed over to the Soviets covered nearly every vessel type needed for sustained offensive operations. The 28 Tacoma-class patrol frigates, displacing roughly 2,100 tons apiece and armed with three 3-inch dual-purpose guns, were the program's most powerful ships. Each measured 304 feet in length and had a design speed of about 20 knots.
Alongside the frigates were 24 Admirable-class minesweepers, 30 large infantry landing craft, 32 submarine chasers, and 31 auxiliary motor minesweepers. Four floating repair workshops were also handed over, allowing the Soviets to maintain their new fleet far from established ports.
Transfers accelerated after Germany's surrender on May 8. By the end of July, about 100 vessels out of the original planned 180 had been turned over and steamed out of Cold Bay flying the Soviet naval ensign.
On Aug. 8, 1945, three months to the day after Germany surrendered, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov informed Japanese Ambassador Naotake Sato that the two countries were now at war. Red Army divisions crossed into Manchuria at one minute past midnight on Aug. 9.
The Test in the Kurils
On Aug. 15, Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky, commander of Soviet forces in the Far East, ordered the occupation of the northern Kuril Islands. Responsibility for the operation fell to Maj. Gen. Aleksei R. Gnechko of the Kamchatka Defense Zone and Capt. 1st Rank Dmitri G. Ponomarev of the Petropavlovsk Naval Base.
Gnechko had 48 hours to put a landing force on Shumshu, the northernmost island of the Kuril chain. He assembled two reinforced rifle regiments and a naval infantry battalion, a total of 8,824 officers and men.
Soviet intelligence identified 8,500 Japanese defenders of the 91st Infantry Division on Shumshu, with up to 15,000 more available on nearby Paramushir. The Japanese also had 77 tanks. The Soviets had none.
The first wave, roughly 1,000 naval infantrymen, waded ashore at 4:30 a.m. on Aug. 18. The landing caught the defenders by surprise, but the attackers were inexperienced in amphibious operations.
Small units pushed inland without first consolidating the beach. Within an hour, Japanese machine gunners in well-sited pillboxes and foxholes were inflicting heavy casualties on the exposed waves coming behind them.
A second wave spearheaded by 16 American-built large infantry landing craft from Cold Bay hit the beach by 9 a.m. Japanese shore batteries destroyed five of the LCI(L)s. A Japanese tank counterattack later that morning committed roughly 20 tanks against the pinned-down naval infantry. Soviet troops destroyed 15 of them but were repulsed from the heights above.
The situation steadied in the afternoon. Soviet naval infantry finally established radio contact with gunfire support ships and the four 130 mm coastal guns at Cape Lopatka on Kamchatka.
Accurate shelling broke up Japanese counterattacks. Air support arrived as the weather improved, and by nightfall the Soviets held a beachhead roughly four kilometers wide and five to six deep.
Organized Japanese resistance on Shumshu ended with a surrender agreement signed on the evening of Aug. 19, though scattered fighting continued until Aug. 23. The Soviet force suffered 1,567 casualties on Shumshu, including 516 men killed. Japanese losses totaled 1,018.
It was the only engagement of the entire Soviet-Japanese war in which Soviet casualties outnumbered those of the enemy.
Soviet ground forces also launched their assault on southern Sakhalin, four days before the Kuril operation began. By Aug. 25, they had overrun the Japanese garrison and secured the entire island.
With success on Sakhalin also assured, Soviet planners started seriously weighing plans for an invasion of Hokkaido. The Soviet Politburo first took up the subject as far back as June. Foreign Minister Molotov warned that such an operation would be seen as a violation of the Yalta agreements. Marshal Georgy Zhukov opposed it as well.
Stalin, however, favored the plan. Merchant ships had already begun embarking troops and supplies. However, with the Soviet blitz into Manchuria and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan had already signaled its intention to surrender.
On Aug. 16, Stalin sent President Harry S. Truman a letter formally requesting Soviet occupation of northern Hokkaido along a line running from the city of Kushiro to the city of Rumoi. He wrote that Russian public opinion required a Soviet zone on Japanese home territory.
Truman refused in writing on Aug. 18. He declined to include Hokkaido in the Soviet area of surrender, leaving the Japanese home islands to Gen. Douglas MacArthur's command. Stalin halted preparations on Aug. 22, the day before organized resistance on Shumshu finally collapsed.
In the aftermath of the disappointing Soviet operations in the Kurils and Southern Sakhalin, many American and Soviet officials expressed doubt that an Invasion of Hokkaido would have succeeded.
The Cold Bay Shutdown
On Sept. 2, the day of the surrender ceremony aboard USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, Soviet crews accepted two frigates at Cold Bay, the former USS Bayonne and USS Poughkeepsie. Four more went over on Sept. 4, the former USS Gloucester, USS Newport, USS Bath, and USS Evansville. They were the last ships the program would officially transfer over.
Soviet forces completed their occupation of the southern Kuril Islands on Sept. 5. Hours later, Maxwell received an information dispatch from Washington ordering an immediate halt to Lend-Lease deliveries of arms, ammunition, and ships in connection with Japan's surrender.
Popov and his remaining staff departed Cold Bay aboard the steamer Carl Schurz on Sept. 27. Maxwell decommissioned the base at the end of the month. In 142 days, Navy Detachment 3294 had trained approximately 12,000 Soviet sailors, including around 750 officers, and transferred 149 warships.
The United States moved quickly to recover the vessels under Lend-Lease terms. The Soviets were not so eager to give the ships back. In 1948, after years of negotiations, the Soviet government finally agreed to return the frigates.
In October and November 1949, the Soviet navy handed over 27 of the 28 patrol frigates. The 28th, the former USS Belfast, had nearly sunk in a storm off Petropavlovsk and was reported a total loss.
The Navy reactivated 13 of the returned frigates for duty in the Korean War. Several later served in the navies of South Korea, Thailand and Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force.
By 1955, the Navy had recovered 42 Project Hula ships in total, the 27 frigates plus 15 of the transferred landing craft. That year it paid roughly $250,000 to take possession of 89 more vessels from the Soviets, which were then sold for scrap for $6,537.
The Navy later accepted a Soviet procedure called "witnessed destruction." In 1956, Soviet crews deliberately sank 59 Hula-era vessels in the Barents Sea and another 20 at Nakhodka near Vladivostok with the approval of American officers. By 1957, the Office of Naval Intelligence reported that only 18 of the original 149 remained serviceable in Soviet hands.
The territorial disputes that made Project Hula necessary never went away. Soviet control of the Kuril Islands, seized in operations that the American vessels helped carry out, remains one of the longest-running territorial disputes in the postwar world. Japan and Russia have still never signed a formal peace treaty with each other since WWII.
The United States and the Soviet Union reached a comprehensive Lend-Lease settlement on Oct. 18, 1972, in an attempt to settle many of the remaining disputes. The full story of Cold Bay remained known only to the participants and a handful of historians until Russell published his monograph in 1997, drawing on archives in both the United States and the Russian Federation.
Today, the secret operation marks one of the few times the United States and Soviet Union directly cooperated during WWII, made even more remarkable by the fact they became bitter enemies only months later.
