Posted on 07/12/2020 9:24:25 AM PDT by Rebelbase
I enjoyed him in ‘Sully.’ But, Sully is from my home town, so there was that! :)
Admiral King deserves recognition as one of the worst military decision makers of all time for not adopting the convoy system or following the hard-won advice of the Brits regarding the U-boats. How many lives were lost and wealth squandered because of his arrogance?
On top of that, navy planners did not heed the advice of the Brits regarding air power against the U-boats. The use of aircraft would have been far more successful early had U.S. planners committed far more assets to hunting the U-boats and keeping them submerged during the day. We had many 4-engine bombers that were suitable for anti-submarine warfare, but we did not dedicate nearly enough of them to the purpose until later.
The “happy days” for the U-boats would likely have been much shorter had it not been for Admiral King. His arrogant rejection of convoys was not his only mistake. The failure of the US to fully utilize aircraft (including float planes on tenders) against the U-boats was just as damaging to the cause.
The learning curve with air-power was steep for the Allies and Germans alike.
On a side note, but somewhat related, Bloody Omaha could have been prevented with two squadrons of fighter/bombers dropping napalm and strafing on the cliffs during the landing. Instead, the bomber brigade launched a massive and ineffective bomb drop that missed (unless you count destroying French farms and civilians) and they sent the fighter bombers behind the beachheads. Most of the casualties on Omaha came from machineguns on the cliffs and German artillery that was allowed to pound the beach for hours. A total failure of close air support.
There was a U-boat that sank a ship off the coast of Florida close to the beach early in the war; as I recall, it surfaced between the beachgoers and the ship to use the deck gun (the primary means of sinking ships early on, with shots below the waterline - not the torpedo, they couldn’t carry enough of them).
The German submariners knew the war was over when convoys started launching their own planes (without aircraft carriers); they knew the “happy time” was over.
Brits were upset about the U-571 movie, as they had already captured an enigma machine.
Where did you see it? Theater, streaming, DVD/Blueray?
Yep. The airplane was most feared by the U-boats because they could not submerge fast enough in most cases to avoid being damaged. The presence of aircraft also greatly disrupted the U-boats ability to traverse the oceans to position themselves for attack.
The graphite they used to moderate the reactions for the test data for their calculations contained just a tiny whisper of boron. Boron absorbs neutrons, and that reduced the reaction rates just enough to convince the Germans that an atomic bomb would be too heavy to deliver by any practical means.
You wonder what those German sailors felt watching that; must have been the worst feeling knowing it was over. Their pilots must have felt the same way the first time they watched escort fighters drop their wing tanks and engage German fighter planes rather than turn around because they couldn’t carry enough fuel to get Allied bombers to the targets and back...
That movie’s complete crap. It’s a ripoff (right down to individual scenes) of the infinitely better “Das Boot”, mashed up with the actual capture (by the British) of an Enigma machine from the sinking U-110.
They could have told the *actual* story of the U-505 capture and made a far better film.
“”Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, commander of the German Luftwaffe during the war, was quoted as saying, “When I saw Mustangs over Berlin, I knew the jig was up.””
From wiki on the P-51.
Wait till Pizzagate comes out
I love some of his work he was great in Dragnet
Same guy: “No enemy bomber can reach the Ruhr. If one reaches the Ruhr, my name is not Göring. You can call me Meyer.”
I have a naval atlas that shows pretty much all recorded vessels sunk in WW2 by theatre.
Between roughly St. Augustine and the Hampton Roads area, about a 100 ships were sunk 1942-43, about 50% were laden tankers (the Germans would not waste a torpedo on a empty ship).
And people today freakout when a couple of hundred gallons of oil get spilled in the ocean.
It was this specific incident that encouraged Mr. Gannon to write Operation Drumbeat. He had been working on an historical piece about Florida and several people had described this incident to him; IIRC, one had a birds-eye view from a Ferris wheel.
After the seventh or eighth person described this U-Boat attack in detail, Gannon decided that what he really wanted to write about was the U-Boat commander who got his boat that close to an American coast and sank a ship in full view of hundreds of people watching on the beach. He reached out to the Bundesmarine, who put him in touch with Reinhard Hardegen, the commander of U-123, which was one of the five U-Boats in the initial raid.
Reinhard described to him how they were using the lights to backlight their targets but he realized that because of his proximity to the shore, there was a chance that the deck gun could put a round into the crowd of people on the beach at the amusement park. He didn't want to use a torpedo on the ship, so he took a chance that he could simply run at a high rate of speed between the surf and the ship; the lights from the amusement park were bright enough to light the ship from behind him.
As the U-Boat raced up along the beach firing its deck gun on the hapless freighter, the crowd on the beach were treated to the sight of a burning ship and the silhouette of a U-Boat firing away at it, its men on deck and in the conning tower visible to all.
It was fantastic. It’s been a looong time since I’ve seen anything this good and well done.
Yup. Going back to the U-boats as this thread appeals to my WWII history nerd, can you imagine if they had unleashed the B-25’s on the U-boats early in the war? The B-25 made a great gunship. They could have replaced the bombs with a few thousand pounds more of fuel and both the range and ability to observe U-boats would have been very effective. One strafing run from those and a U-boat would likely be done if they had gone with a faster firing “main gun” (40mm range) than the 75mm (? I think that is right) cannon.
Don’t know if it will be. It’s on appleTV.
“” “” Did some reading on the convoys and found out that one sending supplies from Scotland to Russia lost 24 out out of 35 ships. .”” “”
A nice video on salvaged cargo from the convoy:
Restoration of the M4 Sherman Tank in Russia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wCG0nYeBYQ&t=195s
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