From: Chris Owen <chriso@lutefiske.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology,alt. clearing.technology,sci.military.naval

Thanks to the Freezoners for this one - I've discovered two juicy new porkies from L. Ron Hubbard about his accident-prone service with the US Navy during World War II.

In December 1941, Hubbard had been ordered to Australia aboard the transports President Polk and President Coolidge, loaded with pursuit planes and ammunition for transport to Australia. Their ultimate destination was to be the Philippines, accompanying a large supply convoy led by the USS Pensacola. However, the Japanese advance into the Philippines was so rapid that the supplies never got there; none of the Pensacola convoy got further north than Brisbane. This didn't stop Hubbard from claiming otherwise, in a lecture of 21 July 1958, "The Key Words (Buttons) of Scientology Clearing":

And I'd sent, on my own authority, four cargo ships loaded to the gunwales with machine gun ammunition, rifle ammunition and quinine up to MacArthur.

Always - I always, right up to the time I managed to resign from the Navy expected some day to get a bill for four ships.

Male voice: Did they get there?

Hubbard: Oh, yeah, two of them got there just as nice as you please.

If this had actually happened, he really would have been "Ron the War Hero". It didn't, of course, as the US Navy's official history of the war makes abundantly clear. The lack of supplies was a major (perhaps *the* major) reason why MacArthur's forces on the Philippines were forced to surrender to the Japanese.

In the same lecture he also describes the circumstances in which he left Australia. In reality, he left under a cloud. The US Naval Attaché to Australia described him in a cable as "not satisfactory for independent duty assignment. He is garrulous and tries to give impressions of his importance. He also seems to think that he has unusual ability in most lines." However, in the lecture "The Story of Dianetics and Scientology" (also given in 1958), Hubbard claims to have been "[flown] in from the South Pacific in the Secretary of the Navy's [personal] plane ... I was the first [US] casualty returned from the South Pacific," having apparently suffered a broken ankle. It's entirely characteristic that within a few months of making that claim he also provided a second, completely different explanation of his return to the US:

By that time [April 1942] there were enough troops in the area so the danger was over, so I went home. I wrote myself some orders and reported back to the US ... I picked up a telephone, called the Secretary of Navy. See, and I said, "I'm tired of this place. I'd like to leave." And he said, "Yeah."

I said, "Yeah, I've got some important dispatches. As a matter of fact, we've got enough dispatches here to practically sink the Japanese navy if they had to carry them. There's a lot of traffic and stuff like that, and so forth."

So he sent his plane down and picked me up and flew me home. You think I'm just talking through my hat but that is exactly what happened.

(Source: "The Key Words (Buttons) of Scientology Clearing" - Hubbard, lecture of 21 July 1958)

I really don't think I need to pass comment on the likelihood of the Secretary of the Navy effectively taking orders from a Lt (jg) of one year's service.

I'll be updating "Ron The War Hero" (see my .sig for URL) with these further examples of Hubbard's mendacity about his wartime career.

...... --

"If I saw a man beating a tied up horse, I could not prove it was wrong, but I'd know it was wrong." - Mark Twain

Cheerful Charlie

Go Back