Day in a Life: Commander 'Hap' Day Remembers War, Radar and Submarines

U.S. Navy Commander (Ret.) Robert S. “Hap” Day is a Falls Church institution. He served 14 years as executive director of the Greater Falls Church Chamber of Commerce until his departure in 1997. He was also president of the Chamber and a recipient of its esteemed Pillar of the Community Award. Since 1991 he has teamed with the News-Press’ Nicholas F. Benton to co-host weekly radio and TV Falls Church news commentary programs, the latest version being the weekly half-hour “Falls Church News-Press Live” telecast broadcast on the Falls Church Cable Access channel.

But Hap Day was born in 1920 into a different world than the one he would come to inhabit. Raised in Pennsylvania, son of an engineer who fabricated specialized steel for electric furnaces, Day grew up in the midst of the Great Depression, chances were few and the country seemed to be drowning.

Rather than sink, though, the young Day took on his uncertain future and through courage and fair chance, helped the U.S. through a war and himself into a new life, as commander in the U.S. Navy.

It was more by chance than forethought that Day ended up joining the Navy. While his father had been able to find work during the difficult Depression years, it was still not enough to save for college.

“I had no idea I would ever get to college. We couldn’t afford it, plain and simple,” Day told the News-Press in a lengthy interview this week.

When Day reached his final years in high school, despite being an Eagle Scout, having excellent grades and a strong sports career as tackle for his high school football team, he decided that the only way to get a college education was to get into one of the service schools where tuition wasn’t a factor.

West Point was on the forefront of Day’s mind until, on a visit about a scholarship, a Navy alum recommended the Naval academy in Annapolis. The idea appealed to Day. “I said, ‘Well, hell yes,’” he laughed.

The alum, a member of the class of 1924, worked with Day to get him appointed to the school. At the time, congressmen were each given three appointments to the Naval Academy, so Day and several other young men traveled to Washington, D.C. to talk with a congressman about getting into the Academy.

Instead of meeting a congressman, though, he met with the line coach for Navy, a graduate of Notre Dame, and former roommate of a congressman from Sioux City, Iowa. The coach was able to get the congressman’s appointment for Day, and for the entire time that he was in the Navy, his records showed him coming from Iowa despite having never been in the state and to this day, never to Sioux City.

But that was the little help that Day needed. He excelled at the academy, getting high marks and performing well at guard for the Midshipmen. During his three years on the football team, Navy beat Army for three straight years, a feat not replicated until this past season.

Although part of the Naval Academy Class of 1942, his time at the academy was abbreviated because World War II created an increased need for junior officers. As a result of the war, Day’s graduation was pushed from June of 1942 up to Dec 19, 1941, just 12 days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Day was ready to add his efforts to the forces facing off against Germany and Japan, but as many of his fellow graduates were being assigned to naval ships, Day found himself assigned to in a project that would have an even more profound impact on the war; the development of radio detection and ranging (radar).

Ironically, Day never could have foreseen that he would take part in developing radar technology. Although a good student at the academy, he was not specifically adept at the sciences, and never showed a particular interest. Nevertheless, days prior to graduation, while sitting in a small cafe with a group of fellow students, Day was joined by an excited student who told him that he and 24 others were volunteered to go to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in order to assist with a secret project.

At MIT, Day and the other men helped conduct research on how to produce and harness radio waves to use in tracking the movements of troops and vehicles on the ground and in the air.

The concept behind radar is quite simple, closely related to sonar, a tracking and ranging technology that had been used in submarines for years. In sonar sound waves are emitted and then bounce off an object before being picked up by a receiver. By measuring the time from release and changes in frequency the receiver can detect how far something is and how fast it is moving.

While the technology worked in water, where sound travels well, it was ineffective through the air. Instead, radar technology, developed by British scientist Sir Robert A. Watson-Watt, sends electromagnetic radio waves through the air. More powerful, more easily analyzed, and much quieter than sound waves, radio waves made the concept of airborne sonar possible.

It was on perfecting the transmission and reception of radio waves that Day and his fellow officers worked. The MIT scientists would come up with different ideas and then the officers would help implement them, setting up different types of emitters to find the ideal configuration to control the radio waves.

All the work was done in a large cement block warehouse that was split down the middle by double doors. The naval officers would go through one door and army officers the other, neither group knowing what the other was doing.

Later, Day remembered running into one of the Army officers in a bar. After recognizing each other, the first thing out of both of their mouths was, “What the hell were you doing in your half of the building,” Day said.

While the Navy group was working on ground based radar, the Army was working with airborne radar that could be carried by planes to improve navigation and bombing accuracy in varied and often difficult conditions, like fog and rain.

After three months of constant work, Day’s group was with was able to come up with a working system that could be used in the field. The technology was to have a profound impact on the direction of the war. With Germany’s radar technology still in its infancy, being able to sense aircraft and ground troop movements gave the Allies a distinct advantage. It wasn’t until the final years of the war that Germany was able to catch up in the technology.

After the work in radar Day was assigned to the battleship Arkansas. He was stationed deep below decks in shaft alley, where he kept parts of the ships engines oiled and working.

One time when he was first down there with his commanding officer, he heard the metal, water tight doors close behind him. He asked with a little trepidation how he would get out in the case of an emergency. “’You don’t’, he said” Day chuckled. Working over 25 feet below the surface of the water with no way out, Day decided he might as well be working on a submarine and at least get paid time and a half. Day applied and was sent to submarine school in New London, Connecticut.

The submarines Day worked in were significantly different than those of today. The vessels were only 300 feet long with just six torpedo tubes, and ran on diesel fuel. Inside the space was extremely tight. The crew slept in bunked beds throughout the ship, including some beds in the torpedo bays. Day remembers sleeping on the top bunk with a fuel pipe inches above his chest, not even allowing him to roll over. Years later, Day still found that he never rolled over in his sleep after years of being unable to.

But the claustrophobic conditions were the least of the difficulties Day faced as part of a submarine crew. A specialist in radar and communications, Day remembers how his boat would patrol areas along the Japanese coastline, picking off Japanese ships. It was ticklish work because ships would travel in groups in order to protect themselves against submarines, which always worked alone.

Day remembers how submarines would stake out an area ahead of a ship and then try to torpedo the ship before being seen by one of the ships in the group. After the explosion, the submarine would use the chaos to slip away without detection.

While easily said, the doing was much more difficult, and dangerous. It was a deadly game of cat and mouse. The sub would have to avoid being picked up by the ship’s sonar and had to find ways to view ships without being seen. Although subs were outfitted with sonar, radar, and periscopes, they had had to be near the surface for radar and the periscope, and sonar because of the noise it made would immediately signal the sub’s location.

If the sub was detected, ships would start dropping depth charges. Day can remember at times tensely waiting in silence as ships would pass above them, and then waiting for the sound of the depth charge as it was dropped. One could hear the click right before the charge would explode, and Day remembers listening for that click wondering whether it mean the end for him and his fellow sailors.

While working in a sub, listening is a major part of assessing the environment, because of how well sound travels under water. Day said he could easily hear the sound of boat engines, and he’ll never forget the terrifying pinging sound of sonar bouncing off the ship, telling you that you were seen. “Once you could hear the sound of the shrimp, you know you were getting pretty good,” he joked.

Even if the sub was able to go undetected and get a torpedo off, there was still a chance of failure. At the beginning of the war, American torpedoes were poorly made and often wouldn’t explode on contact.

Day said there were times when they would set up an ambush on a ship and fire the torpedo, only to hear a thud as it impacted the side of the boat and failed to explode. When that happened the submarine had to run for its life, with no explosion for cover. Soon, torpedo technology became more trustworthy and the success of sub strikes improved. Day said that during World War II, submarines sunk over 52% of all Japanese ships, and were able to effectively shut down large parts of their navy.

Along with sinking ships, submarines were also used to place land mines, drop off espionage teams, and rescue aviators from plane crashes. But they were required to stay in certain areas, mapped by the military command. With no way to identify subs, any submarine found outside of the planned areas was considered an enemy sub, and was fired upon. Day said that at least two subs were destroyed through friendly fire. While it was dangerous work, Day said that not everything was bad. Every six weeks, the sub would return to Hawaii to refuel and give the sailors a break. While ashore, all the officers had weeks’ worth of liquor rations saved up, and would often organize large parties with their fellow sailors.

When the war finally ended, Day took on the leadership of a training sub for a period of time, and then was sent to intelligence school for 18 months, where he was taught to speak Russian.

He was married in 1948 and went to Moscow with his wife the next year, where he was assigned to do intelligence work, under the guise of a naval attaché.

Day enjoyed his time in Russia, although he was constantly being followed and surveyed by the Russian government. Everywhere he went, he was tailed by a KGB agent and hardly ever had an opportunity to talk with Russian citizens.

The only occasions to talk with Russians were during celebrations at the Finnish embassy. Friendly with both U.S. and the Soviet Union, Finland provided a venue where people from many countries could connect.

When Day tried to travel around Russia he was made constantly aware of how suspicious the government was. One time he wanted to take a boat down the Volga River to see the progress the government was making in building a canal between the Volga and another body of water. Every time Day went to purchase a ticket for the boat ride, the kiosk would suddenly shut down, announcing that there were no more rides that day.

Day went back three days in a row, waiting for the kiosks to open, and each time they would be closed for the rest of the day. During those three days, he almost single-handedly shut down passenger traffic on that area of the Volga. Later, when he traveled by train to visit Stalin’s birthplace in Georgia, he was accompanied by a member of the KGB. On the train Day and a Russian couple got into a conversation and started to drink. The KGB agent joined them, and was shortly passed out from scotch in his seat. While sleeping, Day remembers taking photos of boatyards they passed, steadying the camera on the stomach of the sleeping agent.

When Day and his wife returned home, he attended War College for a year and then took command of a destroyer in the Atlantic. For Day, command of a ship was the ultimate position, working to make his men both efficient and keeping them safe. Though no war was going on at the time, life on the open water was still dangerous. “It’s a way of life,” Day said. “You have to respect it.” Day would command two destroyers before retiring from the Navy in 1962.

Following his retirement, Day moved to Falls Church, where he started a life in insurance. Known as Bob Day in the forces, he decided to take on his father’s nickname “Hap” and worked to raise his four children.

Since then he has remained a pillar in the community, as a businessman and later as the president and executive director of the Greater Falls Church Chamber of Commerce, and for the last 14 years as a radio and TV commentator on News-Press-sponsored programs. Through it all, he has remained, as truly as ever, a commander.

You can catch Hap on TV Mondays at 7 p.m. on Cox Cable Channel 12 or Starpower Channel 2. Or you can catch him Monday afternoons at the Ireland’s Four Provinces, the most recent location where he and Nicholas F. Benton have lunched every week for 14 years, usually drawing a crowd of influential friends to enjoy and solve the region’s problems in what has become yet another Falls Church institution, the Monday power lunch.