Shipmates, 

One of our oldest members Joe "Jumbo" Secl is a bit sick, and is in a local nursing home.

Jumbo was born Jan 29 1915, making him 88 years old. Jumbo qualified onboard the USS S-38 (SS-143) in 1938, and was put in the Holland Club in 1988. He has been a long time member of USSVI. Jumbo also served onboard other boats like S-32 (SS-137), USS CREVALLE (SS-291), SUBDIV 161 engineering staff, Portsmouth Naval Shipyard staff, USS SENNET (SS-408) and USS NEREUS. when Jumbo qualified he was a MoMM2C, and advanced through the ranks to CDR.

Any way, like I said, Jumbo is in a home and could use some cheering up.

One of Jumbo's old Shipmates George Jones passed on to me the following EMAIL:

"His Daughter tells me that Jumbo really looks forward to receiving get well cards, says he reads them completely. She and Anne were talking about getting a card shower going for him, where he would get lots of cards. I thought I would do my part by asking all the VFW, Legion and Sub Vets Members that I have address's on to send him a card. It would be greatly appreciated."

If any of you guys and gals could be part of the card shower and send him a quick card to say hi, and that you are thinking of him, it would mean a lot to him.

Jumbo's address is:

Joe "Jumbo" Secl
Mariner Health Rehabilitation
23 Liberty Way
Niantic, CT. 06357

Oh yeah. One more thing...

Jumbo is no ordinary SUBVET WWII, or U.S. SUBVET. Joe Secl is a recognized hero and Bronze Star recipient.

Below is a story about Jumbo that Bob Hamilton ran on Jumbo some time ago.

So if you weren't thinking about sending Jumbo a card, hopefully this story will help convince you.

Thanks in advance for taking the time to make a Shipmate's day.

John C.

gumba700@comcast.net

By ROBERT A. HAMILTON
Day Staff Writer

Montville — It has been 60 years, but survivors of the sinking of the British destroyer HMS Electra still mark the anniversary by remembering the efforts of a submariner, a 27-year-old machinist's mate, who swam through shark infested waters to rescue them.

Joseph "Jumbo" Secl of Chesterfield CT, who earned a commission during the war and retired in 1957 as a commander, shrugs off talk about heroics. He jokes that he only learned about the sharks when he read the citation for the Bronze Star he earned, and perhaps he wouldn't have jumped into the water if he had known.

"What the hell, they were out there in the water, and somebody had to do something," Secl said. "You don't think in a situation like that."

The crew of the S-38 pulled 54 men from the water during the pre-dawn hours of Feb. 28, 1942,

He seems a little surprised at all the attention it has brought him over the years. On his first trip to England in 1977, for instance, he was at a luncheon when someone told him a retired British sailor was looking for him, wondering if he was the same "Jumbo" who had been on the S-38 so many years earlier.

"He came walking up with his wife and she looked at me and threw her arms around my neck and hugged me," Secl said. "She said, ‘I'm so happy to meet you. If you hadn't saved him I never would have met him.'"

And as the 60th anniversary approached this week, Secl received a letter from Phil Perkins, who was a 33-year-old British sailor on the Electra that night, who on that 1977 visit presented him with a painting of the Electra that still hangs in his bedroom.

"Seems like it only happened yesterday," Perkins wrote. "Am now still well and alive and living a peaceful and happy life with my Olive, although our activities are very few … my own status is I am the oldest survivor alive. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, and I do my best to honour the Electra's loss."

Secl had joined the Navy in 1934, and after serving aboard a two submarine tenders, received orders to the S-38 in October 1937. Walking aboard another sailor from Connecticut spotted him and said, "Hey, Jumbo, good to see you aboard."

He didn't know the sailor, who apparently was making an allusion to his size, at that time about 280 pounds. The nickname stuck.

A powerful man, Secl found out years later the captain had once won a bet that Secl would be able to haul a piston and connecting rod from one of the diesel engines out of the submarine by himself. He had simply tied one end of a line to the gear, which weighed at least 200 pounds, and the other around his waist, then climbed out the hatch.

Commissioned in 1923, the S-38 was one of the older submarines in the fleet during World War II, less than half the size of the fleet submarines that the Navy shipyards were turning out at the time.

On one occasion the submarine was attacked by a Japanese warship when it was operating on just the forward battery, having lost the after battery to an explosion. Out of control, the S-38 settled to the bottom 354 feet down.

"Our test depth was 220 feet," Secl said. "Hitting bottom was probably what saved us."

After a few hours more pounding by depth charges, the submarine limped out of the area.

Though it was not allowed, a lot of submarine sailors kept diaries of their war patrols, and Secl still maintains the thin green volumes that log his own eight patrols on S-38.

He wrote on Friday, Feb. 27: "Bridge reported flares, rockets and flashes of gunfire ahead of us, then a large, blinding flash, then silence and darkness."

According to the Electra sailors, a force of Dutch, British and American ships had come upon a much larger Japanese force, and a battle had broken out. The first salvo passed over the Electra, but the second hit its boiler room, which slowed the ship from 30 to 10 knots.

Unable to maneuver, the Electra became an easy target for the Japanese guns, and was torn to shreds. One sailor belowdecks, unable to get to the top deck because of the damage, escaped through a large hole in the side of the hull.

The S-38 knew only that a battle had taken place, and the captain, Lt. Henry L. Munson, ordered the submarine to head in that direction. The submarine surfaced at 2:35 a.m. on Saturday, Feb. 28, and soon the captain called down for a flashlight and a .45-caliber pistol. The deck watch had heard voices in the water, and they weren't sure what to expect. Five men, including Secl, headed topside.

"We started hearing cries all over the sea, and so started easing up on one, and finally spotted him and many more right behind him," Secl wrote. The captain ordered the boat to take on a bit more ballast so it would ride low in the water, and Secl and the others were reaching in and grabbing the British sailors.

"We'd put out our hands and they'd get a vise-like grip, and wouldn't let go for no reason," Secl wrote. "It made it a bit easier to get them aboard."

Soon the lookout spotted a raft with about 20 men aboard, man of them seriously wounded, and other groups in the area. The captain was reluctant to drive the boat into the area for fear of running someone down, so Secl and another crewman known as "Sinks" tied lines to themselves, dove in, and went out to bring the survivors aboard.

They pulled 54 survivors out of the water, out of a complement of 138. At one point the crew spotted a single sailor in the water, who waved them off and told them to pick up a group of men a short distance away. Secl said the captain knew the suggestion made sense, "but he said, ‘we're coming back here to rescue him, no matter what.'"

One wounded man had to be helped on board, and he went limp when he got on deck. Secl thought he might have died and reached under his life preserver to check for a heartbeat; he found a fist-sized hole in the sailor's chest, and an exit wound out his back.

He was brought belowdecks, where he asked for a shot of brandy and a cup of tea. He downed the shot first, smacked his lips, pronounced it good, and reached for the tea.

"We handed him the cup, and he grabbed hold of it, dropped it, and was dead," Secl said. "Help so near, and he held out until he found out that he was in friendly hands."

By 5 a.m., with no more men to be found, Munson ordered the S-38 to dive. They got hot coffee and food into the survivors, and put as many up in bunks as was possible. About 20 sailors had to sleep on the floor of the torpedo room, but no one complained, Secl said.

Later that morning, the captain shot at a Japanese cruiser, and some destroyers spotted the wake of the torpedoes and honed in for a kill. As the submariners and their destroyer-sailor guests rode out a depth charge pounding, "I told them, ‘see that, you guys are used to dropping those things? That's what they sound like from down here.'"

Late on March 1, the Electra survivors were transferred to a surface ship in the Madoera Strait, and the S-38 went back on the hunt for Japanese shipping.

Secl served on the S-38 for one more patrol, then earned a commission and went for officer training at Submarine School in Groton. He would serve in the Navy until 1959, advancing to commander and the position of ship's superintendent at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine.

After leaving the Navy he worked 10 years at Electric Boat in Groton as a ship superintendent, then 17 years in the East Lyme water department, before retiring in 1987 at the age of 72.

But he still hears from the Electra sailors on occasion. Some of the British sailors attended a reunion of the "38 boat" in Atlantic City several years ago, and asked the captain to read aloud from a book about the sinking, and their salvation, that had been written by a warrant officer on the Electra.

"He started to read it, and when he couldn't go any further, he handed it to me, but I couldn't either and I handed it to my wife," Secl said, his eyes misting up a bit at the memory. "I guess it still gets to me."