National Home Front Project - Meet Frank Adams

04/12/2024Library and Archives Team

The National Home Front Project is a major grassroots initiative under the leadership of historians at Washington College. Our innovative oral history program partners with individuals, communities, and organizations across the United States to record, preserve, and share audio interviews with civilians who experienced World War II.

By pulling together in the spirit of wartime Americans, we can ensure that future generations hear their voices, and that our country never forgets its past. For this short entry, we’d like to share the story of Frank Adams.

Frank George Adams was born in 1925 to a French mother and an American father on the island of Manhattan, New York. He was 17 when the war broke out and immediately decided to enlist himself in the Navy with permission from his father. He worked as a page boy for Radio City Music Hall when he enlisted and attended high school. His services in the Navy include being named a 3rd class petty officer upon finishing boot camp and air technical school to become a pilot. Right before his 18th birthday, he recalls learning to fly for the first time. During the interview, Frank relays his work in the “Midnight Mariners’ keeping the U-boats at bay:

The reason we were down there, this squadron, was to keep the submarines down. The submarine threat in 1943-1944 was terrible. They were sinking oil tankers right over Cony Island in New York. People on the shore could see the tankers burning out there where they have been torpedoed. This was happening all up and down the coast. And the Germans were sending their submarines down into the South Atlantic, through the central there in order to intercept convoys that were bringing supplies up to the States and into Africa and possibly into Europe. So, our job was to keep the submarines down. And the way they did that is our squadron was labeled a night flying squadron; we were known as the ‘Midnight Mariners.’ Our one plane would go out every night, we took off at dusk, we came back at dawn, that’s a ten-hour stretch. Our average flying time was 10 hours on every one of our patrols.

Immediately after the war, he returned to work at the music hall, but this time, he escorted VIPs, such as John D. Rockefeller and Cary Grant. Later, he was called back to service in the Korean War, significantly impacting his life. Log book

Frank Adams

Listen to this account, and much more here:

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