Posted on 11/11/2019 8:42:20 PM PST by csvset
Explorers find long-lost USS Grayback submarine after 75-year mystery Nicholas Sakelaris Nov. 11 (UPI) -- Undersea explorers said they have found a long-lost U.S. submarine off the coast of Japan that sank during World War II.
The USS Grayback was carrying 80 U.S. sailors when it sank in the waters south of Okinawa in February 1944. The ship is credited with sinking 14 enemy ships before it was torpedoed.
Private explorers Tim Taylor and Christine Dennison found the Grayback in June and made the announcement Monday, on Veterans Day. The search ended when they spotted an anomaly on the ocean floor five months ago and high-definition cameras subsequently confirmed the vessel's identity when they captured a gold plaque with the words USS Grayback.
"It was amazing. Everyone was excited," Taylor told The Washington Post. "Then you realize there are 80 men buried there, and it's a sobering experience."
The husband and wife duo said they are trying to find all 52 submarines that have sunk and were never found, as part of the Lost 52 Project. They said they've found five submarines so far.
"We do not tell people that we're looking for these because we don't want to disappoint people, and we don't want to blast it across the Internet until its done properly through the Navy," Taylor told ABC News. "With the technology that we're using, and the ability to cover large swaths of ground, we're looking at the potential to find several more."
Part of the reason the submarine was lost for so many years, officials say, was because Japanese records on the sinking were not translated correctly. Researchers eventually found one digit was off, which had sent explorers 100 miles in the wrong direction.
"It's vital that we remember [the sailors], and that they feel that they haven't been forgotten," Dennison said. "The most important thing is, they're here, now they can be celebrated again, they can be honored again, and we know where they are."
Man! Being a submariner was hot, dangerous and scary.
The sub service was not very aggressive early in the war. As peace time commanders were replaced with hard nose skippers things got going. USS Wahoo, USS Tang and others took a heavy toll in spite of faulty torpedoes and alerting the Japanese to the boats diving capabilities by idiots in Washington. Service in subs took a different sort of mindset, especially in our diesel boats. RIP Grayback.
Well, the early POS torpedos would not detonate, so why risk going in hot just to watch duds and then get the hell depth charged out of you?
The USS Tang sunk herself with a runaway torpedo. It blew the men topside into the water and they ended up as POWs. The Captain wrote the book Clear The Bridge. He was an exec on the Wahoo before it was lost. A good book. It was a risky business.
RIP.
The history of US torpedo development from the 20s all the way through 1943 is quite probably the most embarrassing collection of abysmal and continuous failures ever assembled by mankind.
+. Disheartening story.
Imagine what results could have been attained, if we would have had something comparable to the Japanese Long Lance torpedoes.
Our WW1 torpedoes were better.
My dad served in the Navy stateside (he was 17)Their mission on a tugboat was to test torpedoes. The Navy knew the problem and worked it during the war.
The Navy’s poor torpedo performance led Charles Momsen to have torpedos fired into a cliff in Hawaii until he got a dud. He then dove to retrieve the dud. They discovered the firing pins were faulty.
War has some strange twists. One surprise from the Battle of Midway was Japan providing a pristine sample of a Zero up in the Aleutians .
That is about 20% of The pathetic Story of US torpedo development. I am not ordinarily a big fan of Wikipedia, But if you lookup “Mark 14 torpedo” there you will get an idea of the total clown show it was.
The Bureau of ordinance going into World War II had quite the depression mentality, and the total number of actually fired torpedo tests that occurred going into World War II was probably well under half a dozen.
And might have been as low as two.
After all, Torpedoes were about $10,000 each, very expensive. And the Navy was unwilling to sacrifice any ships despite the fact that numerous ships were being sold for scrap all the time. At the beginning of the war they were being produced at a rate of between one and three Torpedoes a day despite being produced in a factory with 3,000 people in it. The explosive charge in the torpedo was increased sometime early in the game, with no consideration of the influence of the greater weight on the Travel of the torpedo. The port in the torpedo that allowed water pressure to come in that allowed the depth measuring mechanism to work was moved, and it created a difference in the hydrostatic performance of the port. All of the faults in these torpedoes covered each other. It wasn’t until maybe spring 1943 that the US had anything resembling a functional torpedo.
I saw a news vid about it, not sure if it was on broadcast TV or on YT, pretty moving.
’’...quite probably the most embarrassing collection of abysmal and continuous failures ever assembled by mankind...’’
Are you talking about the dimocrat party?
John Anderson Moore (January 12, 1910 – February 26, 1944) was a United States Navy submarine commander of the USS Grayback and was killed in action during World War II with its sinking. He assumed command of the submarine USS Grayback (SS-208) on its last three patrols during 1943-1944. Under the overall command of innovator Charles “Swede” Momsen, Grayback, USS Cero (SS-225) and USS Shad (SS-235) launched the U.S. Navy’s first attack against enemy shipping using “wolfpack” tactics. Moore was credited with multiple events of “extraordinary heroism” in repeated forays against Japanese vessels in the East China Sea before being killed during the last of the Grayback’s patrols.
“Are you talking about the Democratic party?”
This was their contribution.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_J._May
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