March 28, 2024

Piney Point Torpedo Testers Return to Annual Reunion

by Viki Volk

Plank holders aboard the Naval Torpedo Testing Center and Range in Piney Point built housing for a year before World War II threw them into a 24-hour testing schedule.

In August 1940, sailors came down the Potomac River from Alexandria, Virginia to a largely empty stretch of beach just below the last deep water of the river, Piney Point, Maryland.

For more than a year they built a neighborhood of dozens of homes and a row of officer quarters along the beach. They danced with the local girls, missed the liberty boat back to their barge, stayed for 50 cents a night at Swann’s Hotel and got “Guntherized” on the popular Gunther Beer brewed in Baltimore. So recalls Warren Winch, still of Piney Point, and a plank holder aboard the U.S. Navy Torpedo Test Center and Range.

Sidney Flynn of Lafayette, Louisiana was a 19-year old hospital corpsman stationed at Piney Point and of his time recalls most of his work involved monitoring the regular maternity visits of the sailors’ wives.

The neighborhood these sailors built stands in full use today and is listed among notable historic housing in Southern Maryland. The quarters were built for married enlisted men stationed at the range. The first 10 of them, said Mr. Wince, and the officers’ quarters along the shore were completed in three months.

“Everything changed,”Mr. Wince said of  December 7th, 1941 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II.

The base went onto immediate, 24-hour testing of the torpedoes being produced in the torpedo factory in Alexandria, Virginia. The sailors worked 12 hour shifts, testing 50 torpedoes a day. They tested aerial, submarine and PT boats. A second barge testing the same number was added to the north as the war progressed.

Mr. Wince, like many others, did not remain stateside but saw action in different theaters of World War II.

Mr. Wince is the last living plank holder from the torpedo testing center. He will be joined by a handful of other men, widows and descendants of the Piney Point Torpedo Testers in Piney Point this week.

The Paul Hall Center, home of the Lundeberg School of Seamanship, hosts a portion of the reunion each year. The Paul Hall Center’s campus is located on the former naval base and retains a few original buildings in current use.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyav3Pb6UaI]

Comments
6 Responses to “Piney Point Torpedo Testers Return to Annual Reunion”
  1. Thanks for sharing. Can we get copies of all of this. Would love to have it.

  2. Mike Evans says:

    Interesting story about my home town.

  3. Publisher says:

    Hi Sheila !
    Please feel free to copy, forward, share, twitter or print. A mention that you saw it here would be nice. Thanks!

  4. John Szalay says:

    series of photos in the LIFE archives.. more , but links to a few

    Retriever Boats At Piney Point Torpedo Proving Grounds
    Date taken: 1941
    Photographer: Thomas Mcavoy

    http://images.google.com/hosted/life/94737b14a3acd930.html

    http://images.google.com/hosted/life/03afc9567e53ab99.html

    http://images.google.com/hosted/life/1bdaea92c0c81b15.html

    http://images.google.com/hosted/life/1043a3a218eec9b0.html

  5. Beverly Brown McDonald says:

    I grew up in a white Cape Cod style house immediately next door. Played on the base, went to the movies even the dispensary once when I cut my finger nearly off. I grew up with Revely (sp) and Taps at night. Lived in base housing after the base closed and when I was just married.

  6. Angelo Monteferrante says:

    I served at Piney Point Torpedo Naval base 1952 till late 1953. The retreiver boats where different from those picture in the 1941 photo.

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