page_title: Charles L. Carpenter
section_title: USS Gold Star – 1934
hierarchical_section_title: Charles L. Carpenter / US Navy career / USS Gold Star – 1934
caption_attribution_description: English: USS Gold Star (AG-12), at anchor off Sitka, AK. in September 1922.
context_page_description: Rear Admiral Charles L. Carpenter was a Naval officer, holder of the Navy Cross, Purple Heart and whose career encompassed combat action in Nicaragua. He was involved in all three Theaters of Operations in World War II and naval combat in the Pacific. He commanded attack transports during the war and commanded an animal research vessel in the post-World War II era Operation Crossroads series of atomic bomb tests. He earned nine Service Bars, the U.S. Navy Combat Command Insignia, and foreign decorations from the governments of Nicaragua, Peru, and Spain. Of his 30 years of active military service, 22 years were spent at sea or on foreign shores serving his Country.
context_section_description: Going back to sea duty he served on USS Gold Star a civilian cargo ship purchased in 1922. During the 1920s and 1930s Gold Star became a familiar sight in the ports of Asia. Though assigned as flagship at Guam she made frequent voyages to Japan, China, and the Philippines with cargo and passengers. Prior to World War II, much of her crew was made up of Chamorro, natives of Guam with American non-commissioned officers and commissioned officers like Carpenter. Strangely Carpenter's records of what he did on the "Gold Star" is absent from the spring of 1934 into early 1936.
  In 1934 Gold Star was a veteran Q-Ship dealing with communications intelligence as she moved from port to port and while in port. As a station ship she was assigned to monitor 1) Internal Japanese Fleet frequencies 2) Frequencies measurements and DF or direction finder azimuths. She had three intercept operators and one chief radioman supervised by an officer. This all started in 1933 during the reconstruction of the Japanese fleet by Tokyo. Gold Star along with ground stations at Guam, Olongapo and Beijing provided significant intelligence before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
  As a side note – Carpenter had married Dorothy Gertrude Hanna on August 8, 1931 and had a child, Charles Lorain Carpenter, Jr. on August 31, 1934. His wife "Dottie" had the unique experience of sailing in Gold Star with her husband and their infant son – who was named "Skipper" while on board the ship. The ship, with Carpenter's new family, conducted seven loops of about seven weeks each around the Orient. Some of the other officers and senior Petty Officers were permitted to have their families with them for much shorter times when the ship sailed from Guam. It appears that the Carpenter family received the most benefit from this unique window dressing distraction. It is unknown if Carpenter's wife was ever aware that while the ship visited various ports like in Japan like Miki-Ko, Nagasaki, Kobe, Nagoya, and Yokohama that part of the ship was spying on the Japanese.
caption: USS Gold Star, at anchor off Sitka, Alaska in September 1922 before her partial conversion into a communication intelligence ship in 1933.
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