Posted on 07/12/2020 9:24:25 AM PDT by Rebelbase
Outstanding movie. Look beyond the actor to the character and plot.
From google:
"U.S. Navy Cmdr. Ernest Krause is assigned to lead an Allied convoy across the Atlantic during World War II. His convoy, however, is pursued by German U-boats. Although this is Krause's first wartime mission, he finds himself embroiled in what would come to be known as the longest, largest and most complex naval battle in history: The Battle of the Atlantic"
The convoys across the Atlantic during WWII were shooting galleries for German submarines in the early part of the war.
Did some reading on the convoys and found out that one sending supplies from Scotland to Russia lost 24 out out of 35 ships. .
Duck Duck Go search returns: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=greyhound+movie&va=z&t=hc&ia=news
Most certainly in 1940; and just as certainly, not in 1944.
Read “The Good Shepherd” by C S Forester.
It would have been interesting; if you see maps showing the dwindling areas the U-boats were safe from airplanes, it really looked pretty bleak.
I guess it is a question of what makes the “best soldiers”; while the Japanese typically didn’t think outside the box, they were tough - and a few held out until the 1970s in the Philippines.
They’d burn haystacks at night to signal Japan they were ready to assist with new landings whenever Japan decided to re-take the Philippines.
AppleTV. Was free.
I have a great book called “Atomic Accidents” and they describe the accident with their nuclear program that pretty much killed it. (I would cut and past that account, but have to paraphrase it because I only have the audiobook version...)
I have experience working with radioactive materials, so this subject matter was interesting to me.
The Nazis (led by Heisenberg) decided to use deuterium as the neutron moderator in their reactor (We ended up using pure synthetic graphite) because they had captured a heavy water production plant in Norway.
They had an odd spherical layer cake type of contraption about a meter in diameter, a series of concentric aluminum spheres containing alternately spheres of uranium metal and spheres of deuterium, with a chimney through which they could lower a neutron source composed of a mixture of radium and beryllium to the center of the sphere, the core of which was deuterium.
As the neutron source entered the center of the sphere filled with deuterium (which would slow down the neutrons flying out of the neutron source) they would hit the inside of the metal uranium shell from all interior directions, setting up a chain reaction and achieving a criticality (a state of sustained fission).
This whole layer cake was nearly submerged in a pool of water to keep it from melting.
Well, they had been working with the setup for several weeks, and nothing had been happening. Heisenberg’s top assistant walked in, and saw, for the first time, some bubbles coming out of the sphere. When he struck a match above one of the bubbles, it popped with a bang, indicating hydrogen gas. Something, either water or deuterium, was getting out of its box and interacting with the uranium metal producing hydrogen gas under pressure, which was being forced out of the hermetically sealed layer cake sphere.
His assistant figured out the gasket holding the two halves of the sphere together had failed, so they winched it out and began to loosen the bolts holding the halves together.
As soon as the seal broke, there was a hiss since there was a vacuum that had been created inside the sphere, air rushed in, combustion occurred, and flames and spitting pieces of molten uranium began to fly out of the sphere. The assistant got the bolts tightened back down, and the flames seemed to subside.
They summoned Heisenberg, who was puzzled. A nuclear reactor had never caught fire before, so Heisenberg thought it wouldn’t burn underwater, it would cut off the oxygen and keep it cool. That was in the morning.
Early that evening as Heisenberg was running his weekly nuclear physics seminar, his terrified assistant burst in, interrupting the seminar, and Heisenberg was for the first instant furious, but immediately saw how terrified the guy was, and they ran back to the lab.
As they looked at the sphere in the pool, steam was pouring off of it, and they could actually see it expanding. They both lunged to the door before the thing exploded covering the entire place with radioactive uranium and setting the building on fire. It burned for two days before it petered out on its own, and that was the end of their nuclear program.
Apparently, the project was secret but the explosion wasn’t, so many of his colleagues thought he had done something successful and had people coming up to him for some time congratulating him.
On the Allied side, they had heard a whole room of Nazi physicists had perished in the explosion. But in any case they were done. And their problem was that unlike the Americans who were taking multiple approaches to things, competing with each other, the Nazis had one person working on it.
>>>I enjoyed him in ‘Sully.’ But, Sully is from my home town, so there was that! :)<<<
Sully is a Trump hating Obama Fanboy.
I was basing "best" on who produced more casualties for the other side for each casualty on their side.
There were some interesting statistics on that from WWII.
The Japanese did well, when they were up against foes they had the technological edge on, such as the Chinese.
They only did reasonably well against comparable foes.
The Germans did the best, then I believe it was the British, then the Americans, (Brits and Americans were close).
Russians did horribly. They just threw men at the problem.
It is one of the reasons they had so many casualties. Then again, they were mostly up against the Germans.
I see.
The Japanese did very well early in the war against Western powers at well (defeating British, US, and Dutch forces).
The Soviet figure is a bit skewed because some of those included in their tally died fighting for the Axis (especially in Ukraine).
its an Apple production
And which prodigious unrivaled industrial might is what China replaced, first by obtaining most-favored-nation (MFN) status in 1980 and later accession to the World Trade Organization.
The issue [of trade]surfaced most notably during the 1992 presidential election campaign. Then-candidate Bill Clinton said President George H.W. Bush “coddled” the Chinese government, which Clinton also referred to as the “butchers of Beijing.”..Once he took office, President Clinton backed off his campaign trail rhetoric. Clinton signed the trade bill into law, which paved the way for China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001.
China’s trade with the world skyrocketed after it became a member of the WTO. - https://www.chinabusinessreview.com/40-years-of-us-china-commercial-relations/
Back in the '50s I was attending surface craft sonar school at Key West, FL. One day we were on a DE, making test runs. At one point, we lay dead still on a calm, glassy sea. The loudspeaker said the watch for a torpedo from a sub on bearing such and such. Strained my eyes and saw nothing until a flash of yellow on my left (dummy, water-filled warheads were painted yellow.) . About 20' behind was the wake of the torpedo, fired about 30' deep to miss us.
It hit me then why the U-boats were so successful. Here we were in a dead calm sea, and no one saw the scope, or the fish until it was just feet away. Imagine trying to spot one in the gray, choppy sea of the North Atlantic.
Will plan on seeing it.
some interesting backgroundhere:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-submarine_warfare
During the Second World War, the Allies developed a huge range of new technologies, weapons and tactics to counter the submarine danger. These included:
Vessels
Allocating ships to convoys according to speed, so faster ships were less exposed.
Adjusting the convoy cycle. Using operations research techniques, analysis of convoy losses over the first three years of the war showed that the overall size of a convoy was less important than the size of its escorting force. Therefore, escorts could better protect a few large convoys than many small ones.
Huge construction programmes to mass-produce the small warships needed for convoy defense, such as corvettes, frigates, and destroyer escorts. These were more economical than using destroyers, which were needed for fleet duties. Corvettes were small enough to be built in merchant shipyards and used triple expansion engines. They could be built without using up scarce turbine engines and reduction gears, thus not interfering with larger warship production.
Ships that could carry aircraft, such as the CAM ships, the merchant aircraft carrier, and eventually the purpose-built escort carriers.
Support groups of escort ships that could be sent to reinforce the defense of convoys under attack. Free from the obligation to remain with the convoys, support groups could continue hunting a submerged submarine until its batteries and air supplies were exhausted and it was forced to surface.
Hunter-killer groups, whose job was to actively seek out enemy submarines, as opposed to waiting for the convoy to come under attack. Later hunter-killer groups were centered around escort carriers.
Huge construction programmes to mass-produce the transports and replace their losses, such as the American Liberty Ships. Once shipbuilding had ramped up to full efficiency, transports could be built faster than U-boats could sink them, playing a crucial role in the Allies winning the “Tonnage war”.
Aircraft
Air raids on the German U-boat pens at Brest and La Rochelle.
Long-range aircraft patrols to close the Mid-Atlantic gap.
Escort carriers to provide the convoy with air cover, as well as close the mid-Atlantic gap.
High frequency direction finding (HF/DF), including shipborne sets, to pinpoint the location of an enemy submarine from its radio transmissions.
The introduction of seaborne radar which could enable the detection of surfaced U-boats.
Airborne radar.
The Leigh light airborne searchlight, in conjunction with airborne radar to surprise and attack enemy submarines on the surface at night.
Magnetic anomaly detection
Diesel exhaust sniffers
Sonobuoys
Weaponry
Depth Charges, the most used weapon, were improved during the course of the war. Starting with WW1 vintage 300-pound (140 kg) depth charges, a 600-pound (270 kg) version was developed. Torpex explosive, which is a 50% more powerful explosive than TNT, was introduced in 1943. Y-guns and K-guns were used to throw depth charges to the side of the escort vessel, augmenting the charges rolled off the stern and letting the escort vessel lay a pattern of depth charges
The development of forward-throwing anti-submarine weapons such as Hedgehog and the Squid. This allowed the escort vessel to stay in contact with the submarine during an attack.
The FIDO (Mk 24 ‘mine’) air-dropped homing torpedo.
When the German Navy developed an acoustic homing torpedo, torpedo countermeasures such as the Foxer acoustic decoy were deployed.
Intelligence
One of the best kept Allied secrets was the breaking of enemy codes including some of the German Naval Enigma codes (information gathered this way was dubbed Ultra) at Bletchley Park in England. This enabled the tracking of U-boat packs to allow convoy re-routings; whenever the Germans changed their codes (and when they added a fourth rotor to the Enigma machines in 1943), convoy losses rose significantly. By the end of the war, the Allies were regularly breaking and reading German naval codes.
To prevent the Germans from guessing that Enigma had been cracked, the British planted a false story about a special infrared camera being used to locate U-boats. The British were subsequently delighted to learn that the Germans responded by developing a special paint for submarines that exactly duplicated the optical properties of seawater.
Tactics
Many different aircraft from airships to four-engined sea- and land-planes were used. Some of the more successful were the Lockheed Ventura, PBY (Catalina or Canso, in British service), Consolidated B-24 Liberator (VLR Liberator, in British service), Short Sunderland, and Vickers Wellington. As more patrol planes became equipped with radar, U-Boats began to be surprised at night by aircraft attacks. U-Boats were not defenseless, as most U-Boats carried some form of anti-aircraft weapon. They claimed 212 Allied aircraft shot down for the loss of 168 U-boats to air attack. The German naval command struggled to find a solution to the aircraft attacks. ‘U-Flak’ submarines, equipped with extra anti-aircraft weapons, were tried unsuccessfully. At one point in the war, there was even a ‘shoot back order’ requiring U-boats to stay on the surface and fight back, in the absence of any other option. Some commanders started charging batteries during the day to gain more warning from air attack, and perhaps gain time to submerge. One solution was the snorkel, which allowed a U-boat to stay submerged and still charge its batteries. A snorkel made a U-boat more survivable and losses to aircraft went down. However the low snorkeling speeds of 5 to 6 knots (9.3–11.1 km/h; 5.8–6.9 mph) greatly limited the mobility of the U-Boats.[11]
The provision of air cover was essential. The Germans at the time had been using their Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor long range aircraft to attack shipping and provide reconnaissance for U-boats, and most of their sorties occurred outside the reach of existing land-based aircraft that the Allies had; this was dubbed the Mid-Atlantic gap. At first, the British developed temporary solutions such as CAM ships and merchant aircraft carriers. These were superseded by mass-produced, relatively cheap escort carriers built by the United States and operated by the US Navy and Royal Navy. There was also the introduction of long-ranged patrol aircraft. Many U-boats feared aircraft, as the mere presence would often force them to dive, disrupting their patrols and attack runs.
The Americans favored aggressive hunter-killer tactics using escort carriers on search and destroy patrols, whereas the British preferred to use their escort carriers to defend the convoys directly. The American view was that defending convoys did little to reduce or contain U-boat numbers, while the British were constrained by having to fight the battle of the Atlantic alone for the early part of the war with very limited resources. There were no spare escorts for extensive hunts, and it was only important to neutralize the U-boats which were found in the vicinity of convoys. The survival of convoys was critical, and if a hunt missed its target a convoy of strategic importance could be lost. The British also reasoned that since submarines sought convoys, convoys would be a good place to find submarines.
Once America joined the war, the different tactics were complementary, both suppressing the effectiveness of and destroying U-boats. The increase in Allied naval strength allowed both convoy defense and hunter-killer groups to be deployed, and this was reflected in the massive increase in U-boat kills in the latter part of the war. The British developments of centimetric radar and the Leigh Light, as well as increased numbers of escorts, reached the point of being able to support U-boat hunting towards the end of the war, while earlier on, the advantage was definitely on the side of the submarine. Commanders such as F. J. “Johnnie” Walker of the Royal Navy were able to develop integrated tactics which made the deployment of hunter-killer groups a practical proposition. Walker developed a creeping attack technique, where one destroyer would track the U-boat while another attacked. Often U-boats would turn and increase speed to spoil the depth charge attack, as the escort would lose sonar contact as it steamed over the submarine. With the new tactic, one escort vessel would attack while another would track the target. Any course or depth change could be relayed to the attacking destroyer. Once a U-boat was caught, it was very difficult to escape. Since Hunter-Killer groups were not limited to convoy escort, they could continue an attack until a U-Boat was destroyed or had to surface from damage or lack of air.
The earliest recorded sinking of one submarine by another while both were submerged occurred in 1945 when HMS Venturer torpedoed U-864 off the coast of Norway. The captain of Venturer tracked U-864 on hydrophones for several hours and manually calculated a three-dimensional firing solution before launching four torpedoes.
Sorry, no sympathy here. Worked with a USN vet who served as the Armed Guard on the merchants ships. The gun crew got $70 a month, exposed to all kind of danger from aircraft and shell fire from surfaced subs while the merchant crew headed below decks - except for the shop steward.
Said it was the damndest thing he ever saw - right in the middle off an attack, the shop steward is running about yelling "Torpedo! That's $100! Bomb! That's $50!" and so on. He was adding up the extra pay the crew got.
After the voyage was over, the crew passed the hat for the Navy crews. Sometimes they got good bucks, sometimes they didn't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_John_Walker
Another hero. sunk the most u boats during the war.
Hanks is a kiddie-diddler.
I read that marvel went from an idea to production in an unheard of nine months.
The tactic was that, if attacking multiple U-Boats on the surface, they could not drop Fido until they all had submerged, to keep the secret. They were driven by batteries and made circles, homing in on the propellers sound and were only designed to last an hour.
One PBY in the Mediterranean dropped one on a submerging sub and then unloaded sono buoys to monitor the attack. Nothing was heard until TWO HOURS LATER when an explosion was picked up. All I could think of was the crew feeling they had eluded the attacker, only to hear a blast back aft and then blackness.
Two points, please.
1. The Merchant Marine crews suffered a per capita casualty rate greater than those of the U.S. Armed Forces. Let that sink in for a minute. This article notes that their percentage losses were even higher than the Marine Corps. It’s a good read.
https://www.wearethemighty.com/history/merchant-marine-worst-losses-wwii?rebelltitem=5#rebelltitem5
2. I don’t doubt the story your USN vet friend told you. But there are also stories of Army infantry guys who spent the whole war sleeping in some depot in Alabama. So anecdotal stories often don’t tell the whole picture.
By the way, I don’t know anyone personally who was in the WW II Merchant Marine. So I’m not defending anyone I know. But I have read about their service, and I am by and large impressed. It took a bit of courage to voluntarily climb aboard a merchant ship headed for the Atlantic, especially in 1941 and 1942.
So I will give credit were credit is due.
Thank you
They could not fight on two fronts, overwhelmed by sheer numbers in The East, and us and the Brits in Africa, Italy, and finally France.
They also had no amphibious capability. They took Crete with a massive airborne effort.
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