Program, which made possible the B-29 high level bombing of the Japanese mainland was one of
the major contributions to the early defeat of the Japanese Empire. Thomsen, a Coast Guard Warrant Boatswain, temporarily promoted to Lieutenant, became Commanding Officer of the U.S.S. MENKAR (AK-123).
As a prelude to his election for this important Coast Guard secret military assignment, the author
takes the reader back in time to 1942 in Southeastern Alaska. As Senior Officer Present (SOP)
Commanding a 95 foot wooden halibut fishing boat converted to the U.S. Navy Patrol Vessel
U.S.S. YP-251, Thomsen and his teen-age Coast Guard crew engage in the destruction of the
Japanese submarine RO-32. Two weeks later the author is transferred to the South Pacific as
navigator of the Coast Guard manned Combat Transport Flagship U.S.S. HUNTER LIGGETT
APA-14 where he takes part in the invasion of Guadalcanal and Bougainville in the pivotal role of
Staff Navigator and Chief Pilot to the U.S. Navy Commander of the Third Amphibious Force of
twelve attack transports, Commodore Laurence Fairfax Reifsnider, USN.
Volume
Two is a war diary, which chronicles these Alaskan and South Pacific periods
of service.
Also contained therein is MEN of the U.S.S. MENKAR (AK-123), a story of Loran. Now in his ninety-second year, Thomsen, after 55 years, reveals this elaborate and graphically detailed true
World War Two saga of the MENKAR for the first time.
Volume One of this two volume set of Memoirs, The Voyage of the Forest Dream and Other Sea Adventures, takes the reader back to 1925 to the voyage of the sailing ship Forest Dream, a fourteen month long ill-fated voyage in a five-masted Barkentine from Puget Sound to the Island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, a self published best seller. A limited printing of Volume Two of Captain Thomsen's MEMOIRS, consisting of 400 pages including over 80 combat area photographs is being offered first to readers of his first volume of memoirs, Voyage of the ForestDream and Other Sea Adventures.
