My father and I discussed Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT) extensively when it was first introduced. He thought it is among the dumbest ideas he ever heard of.
I naturally asked him about how things were in WWII, when he served in the US Navy aboard the USS Markab. He first remarked that nobody cared whether one was straight or gay, and then commented that his ship had so many gay sailors on it that the crews of other ships called it the Mar-queer. According to my old man, there were certain parts of the ship in which straight sailors did not go, except when their duties required it. As a result, many of the gay sailors felt very comfortable being out, even in front of their straight friends.
I then asked him about the common argument against the repeal of DADT, namely that gay servicemen and -women would impact unit cohesion. He then remarked "That is a queer thing..." (We laughed.) He claimed that the only thing the straight sailors had against the gay sailors was that they could get sex aboard the ship, but the straights could not.
Now I realize that some surviving members of my father's ship may remember things quite differently, or had different shipmates.