Crossbill (AMc-9) was a coastal minesweeper converted from a fishing boat. The Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships entry, by Thomas Sheppard and dated 7 September 2017, gives her a standard displacement of 190 tons, a length of 81 feet 6 inches, a beam of 22 feet, a draft of 9 feet, and a speed of 9.5 knots. She had been the North Star, built by the Watchorn Yacht and Boat Works at San Pedro, California, in 1937. The Navy bought her for $41,000 on 31 October 1940 from the North Star Fishing Corporation, and the conversion began the same day. Renamed Crossbill and designated AMc-9, she was placed in service on 21 March 1941. Lieutenant (junior grade) Robert W. Costello, D-V(G), USNR, was officer in charge. A caption in that entry describes Naval History and Heritage Command photograph NH 78611, Crossbill underway about March 1941.
She entered service at San Diego, assigned at first to the Eleventh Naval District. On 1 April 1941 she was assigned to the Fourteenth Naval District. She left San Diego on 16 May with other coastal minesweepers, escorted by the oiler Tippecanoe (AO-21), and reached Pearl Harbor on 27 May. For the rest of 1941 her work was an occasional one-day sweep of the waters around the base.
Before dawn on 7 December 1941 she went out for a routine sweep alongside Condor (AMc-14). They found no mines. Condor's executive officer, Ensign Russell G. McCloy, D-V(G), USNR, was certain he had seen a submarine periscope. Condor alerted Ward (DD-139), on patrol at the channel entrance. Ward searched, at first found nothing, and stayed alert. The sweepers turned back. At 0508 Crossbill approached the entrance and the guards opened the submerged gate. DANFS says the standing practice was to leave that gate open until every ship of the group had come in, because reopening it could take ten minutes. It was still open when Condor passed minutes later. What Condor had seen was one of five Type A midget submarines. Ward later attacked a Type A boat and sank it, and reported the action to Fourteenth Naval District headquarters. DANFS says the warning moved slowly through the channels that had to confirm it.
The crew learned of the air attack at 0753, when they saw Japanese planes bombing Hickam Field. They opened fire and expended 236 rounds. The account records no hits. The ship was not damaged, and none of her sailors was wounded. The caliber of those 236 rounds is not in the account. Later that day she began the local sweeping that filled the rest of the war.
She stayed in Hawaiian waters. She rotated among Pearl Harbor, Bishops Point, and Honolulu on Oahu, and Port Allen on Kauai. On 23 and 24 April 1942 she searched with the tug Vireo (AT-144), the former minesweeper, for airmen down in the water. Crossbill's history calls that search unsuccessful. Vireo's history says the same two days were spent off Pepeekeo Point with Crossbill and Sacramento (PG-19), and that one body was found. Both sentences are left as the two entries print them. The rest of her routine was fire, collision, and man-overboard drills, and shore leave. On 1 September 1945 members of the Honolulu Police Department came aboard with a warrant for one of the crew on a charge of burglary. DANFS does not name him. Her last deck-log entry is dated 30 September 1945. She then sat idle at Pearl Harbor for four months. She was placed out of service on 15 January 1946, struck from the Navy Register on 7 February 1946, and transferred to the Maritime Commission on 25 March 1947.
The DANFS officer roster gives only the day each man assumed charge. The next date in that roster is used here as the relief, and the roster does not say in words that the new man relieved the old one on that morning. Lieutenant (junior grade) Robert W. Costello, USNR, from 21 March 1941. Lieutenant (junior grade) Chester M. Sturgeon, USNR, from 16 October 1942. Lieutenant (junior grade) Edward J. Foley, Jr., USNR, from 3 September 1943. The Edward J. Foley, Jr., in this roster is a reserve officer. James Louis Foley, Naval Academy class of 1929, who had Bobolink that morning, is a different man. Ensign William T. Reilly, USNR, from 20 May 1944. Lieutenant (junior grade) Robert C. Johnson, USNR, from 28 July 1944. The roster gives Johnson no relief. She went out of service on 15 January 1946. Costello is the officer in charge of record on 7 December. The morning account speaks of the crew and of McCloy, who was Condor's executive officer, and it does not say whether Costello was on deck.
A note on sources. The career, the morning of 7 December, and the officer roster are Sheppard's 2017 DANFS entry. No separate action report for Crossbill was on the Navy's ships-present page. The April 1942 search is also in Vireo's DANFS entry, which adds Sacramento and one body. The photograph NH 78611 is named in a caption and is not attached. Birth, academy, and later lives of the five officers were not in the entry.