SURVIVED  1937  SINKING  OF  USS  PANAY

In 1937 duty aboard U.S. Navy ships in the Yangtze Patrol was considered one of the most comfortable assignments in the Navy.  Treaty rights to patrol Chinese rivers had been won by several nations, including the United States, in 1858.  Duties of the Yangtze Patrol were simple – to watch over the safety and protect the rights and property of American businessmen and missionaries in China.  Involvement in a war seemed highly unlikely but it was sneaking up fast as Japan invaded Manchuria and then southern China where they sent approximately 500,000 invading troops.  By late 1937 Japanese forces had overrun much of China and by December air raids were coming almost daily in Nanking, then the Chinese capital, which caused liberty ashore to be curtailed for the U.S. sailors.  The river gunboat USS PANAY, with then Ensign Denis Harry Biwerse aboard, was one of the ships assigned to the Yangtze Patrol.

On Saturday, December 11, 1937, a group of Standard Oil river tankers were anchored close together in the Yangtze River just above Nanking when Japanese artillery shells began exploding in the city and in the river near the ships.  The following morning intense shelling began again with a number of shells again landing in the water near the anchored ships.  So, PANAY instructed the Standard Oil ships to accompany it away from the scene for safety.  The group traveled roughly twenty-five miles above Nanking to a spot where the river is about a mile wide where they anchored with the expectation that they were away from the Japanese action.  Shortly after lunch the Navy’s traditional Sunday dinner had started when a bridge lookout passed the word that a flight of planes was approaching from high overhead, coming from upriver.  At 1:38 PM the planes were seen to commence power diving toward the PANAY and bombs were dropped.  PANAY was severely damaged by several bombs and immediately the crew commenced firing toward the planes which were clearly seen as Japanese. 

The following excerpt from the book “The Panay Incident, Prelude to Pearl Harbor,” authored in 1969 by Hamilton Darby Perry, briefly describes ENS Biwerse’s experience aboard PANAY.

“There were four officers assigned aboard PANAY that day.  Ensign Denis Biwerse of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, would be communications officer, navigator, educational officer, intelligence officer and commander of PANAY’s landing force whenever one was put ashore.  Biwerse, the junior in rank, was senior in the time he had been on board.  He had reported to PANAY in April 1937.  Biwerse had graduated from the Academy in 1934.  A quiet disposition had let him in for considerable “running” from upperclassmen during his plebe year and he was often the target for practical jokes.  But as his yearbook noted, he invariably “came up smiling.”  Biwerse was a likeable midshipman, often ready to stand a weekend watch for a classmate who had a date coming down in Annapolis.  He made a mark for himself in Academy wrestling and boxing.  And in his final year he began to get interested in radio.  Aboard PANAY he would take special interest in the efficiency of the radio gang.  He left the Academy an All-American soccer player, having excelled in the sport in each of his four years and captained the team when he was a senior.  Practical knowledge was what he seemed to have.  Academics were not his strong point.”

“The first bomb had hit the water next to the side of the ship near the bridge.  Probably the man best qualified to say he had seen the first bomb actually hit was Ensign Biwerse.  This young officer stepped out onto the port deck forward, glimpsed aircraft, thought he heard a burst of machine gun fire and then the next thing Biwerse knew he was sitting dazed on the deck, his uniform and tie completely blown off and his shirt in rags.  The first reactions aboard PANAY were shock.  Then disbelief.  Then anger.  Ensign Biwerse, with most of his clothes blown off in the first blast, was momentarily in no good position to make observations of any sort.  But, one of the first things he remembered was looking aft to see if the American flag had been aloft.  It was still there.  ‘I could not believe that we were being attacked when American flags were painted and plainly visible to aircraft on the canvas awnings both forward and aft, as well as one flying at the gaff.’  Ensign Biwerse, recovering from the concussion of the first bomb, was heading topside toward the radio shack and had reached the top deck where the radio room was located just in time to see the blast of another bomb.  The mast above the radio room went completely over the side and Biwerse was knocked back down the ladder to the main deck.”

“Later, when the order to abandon ship was given, the Executive Officer who was unable to talk because of injuries to his neck, scrawled on his blood-stained chart one more reminder: ‘Confidential Publications.’  And now Communications Officer Biwerse was making a last search of the shambles to see if he had overlooked anything.  The table that held the safe with the code books had collapsed and the safe was wedged between the table and a bulkhead.  Biwerse thought of trying to heave the whole safe over the side but then figured he couldn’t budge it.  He was right, even allowing for the incredible strength man can muster in emergencies.  Later, there would be some concern about the safe at the Board Of Inquiry as long as the Navy couldn’t be certain all the confidential publications were safely beyond recovery.  Several important Navy and State Department codes would have to be considered compromised.  Around this time a crew member spotted Biwerse still without his pants.  He remarked that it was going to sort of cold on the beach without them.  Biwerse nodded and when seen again he had put them on.  Later, when the survivors reached the river bank a number of the men were seriously wounded.  Bowerse was up but suffering from concussion and wounds in the back and legs.”

“A few of the PANAY veterans had one more rude surprise coming from Japanese naval aviators.  Four years later Denny Biwerse was aboard USS PHOENIX, one of only three cruisers and a dozen destroyers that were able to sortie out of Pearl Harbor that day in a futile search for the attackers.”

NOTE:  Biwerse continued to serve in the Navy until August 1947 when he left with the rank of Lieutenant Commander.  He died on October 24, 1994, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.  When PANAY sank of December 12, 1937, with American flags still flying, she became the first ship of the U.S. Navy ever lost to enemy aircraft.  And, in a sense, the first American naval casualty of World War II.

Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)