Photo #2 looks like the USS Belleau Wood, an 11,000-ton Independence class small aircraft carrier.
She saw a lot of action.
Posted on 11/15/2010 8:08:42 PM PST by rlmorel
I was at my in-laws some time ago, and they brought out a bunch of boxes with images in them. We were looking over the family pictures, and I saw this small stack wrapped in brown paper. When I opened it, I found prints of the six images below. When I asked my mother-in-law where they came from, she said that she had worked at a drugstore in East Boston as a teenager in the mid to late forties. People brought film in to be developed all the time, and never came back to pick it up. They held onto some of them for years before they threw them out. She said she grabbed them with a bunch of other pictures as they were being thrown in the trash during an long-needed cleanup at the store. These were prints from what were probably original negatives I would guess.
What I found most interesting was the surrender scene. All this time I had it, I just assumed it was another angle from the Missouri Surrender ceremony, but when you really look at it, it isn't. There are no civilians, the weather is wrong and the ship looks older than the Missouri. Has anyone ever seen any of these images? Comments? I am very well versed on WWII history particularly in the Pacific Theater, and I don't recall ever seeing these pictures in any books I have ever read.
Whether you are working aloft, over the side or being transferred from ship to ship the problem is suspending a person by ropes. The answer is a bosun’s chair.
Boy, isn’t that the truth!
I had a friend (an aviation buff) on an aviation forum somewhere else on the Internet, talking about military aircraft.
A woman (so she said) came on and was talking about how air shows were like the Nuremburg Rallies in Germany, and she called the “phallic shaped” airplanes “the Death Sex Object”.
I kid you not! This is the honest truth!
Thanks to your dad, and those like him. We sure could use them today...
Thought you might be interested in this discussion...
Wonder what she thought about the Obama rally in Denver where he was surrounded by thousands of weeping and fainting disciples while he stood in the center of several large vertical columns? Probably say something like this:
"I'll go so far as to say it was transcendent political theater from start to finish. It was a singular and historic experience created by perfect timing and tempo, just enough of every ingredient, a smashing main entree and a magical crescendo of an ending -- all happening within a massive, thundering bowlful of Democrats ready to celebrate, and to rumble."
But it's the airshow that is like Nuremburg.
Ugh! That sounds completely disgusting, “...a thundering bowlful of Democrats...”
If that doesn’t make you throw up just a little in your mouth, nothing will.
quite an ordinary occurance during vietnam. I was lucky enough to be transferred from USSChemung to the USS Hornet CVS12 my actual duty assignment after boot camp. Boarded the Chemung (oiler) in Subic Bay and rode it til the 2 ships met and replenished at sea. Damn cool experience. (at 18)
bttt
And definitely a Martin B-26 at the extreme aft end. No other aircraft had a tail like that. The Navy did have a few, used for target tows, that were painted yellow. Could be one of those judging by the light color in the photo.
Should add that, given the fact that all the other aircraft on the deck are USN, the C-47 would be carrying the R4D designation used by the USN/USMC.
It’s from Leyte Gulf’s Taffey 2
One more trivia item regarding the Nehenta Bay and the Casablanca class CVEs. They were powered by two 5-cylinder reciprocating Skinner Unaflow steam engines, probably designed for Great Lakes steamers. I don’t know of any other class of combat ships that used these, but they were probably a good choice, being more efficient than typical steam turbines of similar horsepower. They could propel the CVEs at 19 knots. Fast enough to trap and recover the FMs and TBMs used in their typical missions.
“Was it, or is it, common practice to setup a freaking zip line between 2 moving ships???”
LOL! Pard that’s called a “highline” and it’s an everyday special sea and anchor detail.
How else do you unrep or rearm? I know we sometimes used vertrep or vertarm where choppers shuttled the stores/arms tween the supply ship and us. But that was more dangerous but more easy on the ship’s company.
Same with personnel transfer.
No big deal. we did it in the dark under red working deck lights, we did it in storms, we did it in the heat we did it in the ice.
As long as the ships can make way and keep station and the decks are not completely awash we could and did do it.
Usually we HAD to. Don’t want to run out of arms, or beans, or fuel do we?
Sailor power pard, sailor power.
Did six active, four on a Seventh Fleet destroyer Vietnam.
I was always very impressed with the professionalism and expert execution of these events, and I saw many as well. I never saw a highline transfer...I think they were using helicopters all the time by then.
Of course, the one I DIDN’T see was when the JFK and the USS Bordelon ran into each other in the middle of the night right BEHIND me as I slept in the cockpit of my plane! The guy in the silver fire-fighting suit banged on my canopy with a fire extinguisher nozzle to wake me up, and told me I better report in for General Quarters...
Man, you didn’t want to be on a small ship around the Big John, that is for sure.
I never saw a highline transfer of a man, that is. Saw plenty of the other stuff, though...:)
Photo #2 looks like the USS Belleau Wood, an 11,000-ton Independence class small aircraft carrier.
She saw a lot of action.
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