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.
Wow! Cool stuff!
fascinating!
Bookmarked!
Thank you for sharing. My guess would be the surrender was of an outlying island or territory or perhaps part of a Japanese fleet.
Thanks for sharing
A quick Google search shows that the ship in the background was the USS Capps, a Fletcher class destroyer that went in service in 1943.
That is what just occurred to me...maybe China or something.
Some one missed the Tail hook arresting wire.
I’d consider Googling images of the surrender ceremony on the USS Missouri to see if that last picture is from the same event.
It could be...
I’d love to know the stories behind the photos.
DD550 is the USS Capps - link to her history is here:
http://www.navsource.org/archives/05/550.htm
WWII ping
Some one missed the Tail hook arresting wire. Looks like Pacific Theater, with a Jeep carrier in the photo. Task Force Taffey???
My uncle was on one of those carriers. A flaming aircraft on deck like that was a threat to turn the whole ship into a torch, especially if they had bombs and refuelling lines on deck. Must have been very scary for them. Brave, brave men.
Any recognize the downward pointing arrowhead insignia on the vertical stabilizer of the Wildcats?
LOL! Of course, I wasn’t thinking...I couldn’t figure out the dynamics of that, but of course it is looking towards the BOW...:)
Funny how I just didn’t get that originally...
I take it there is no way to survive a fireball like that? Do you know anything about that sort of crash?
Hard to imagine how someone could survive that.
I know. I just hate the thought of someone being in the cockpit in a crash like that.
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