Posted on 06/19/2022 3:32:30 AM PDT by Bull Snipe
1864. Off the coast of Cherbourg France, the USS Kearsarge sinks the Confederate CSS Alabama. The Alabama had captured or sunk 55 American ships before going to the bottom.
Roll Alabama Roll
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fXHSRx3M5o
A great contemporary version of the sea chanty that honours the ship, done by the descendants of the classes that built and manned her.
BTW-—The point has been made that both the Alabama and the Shenandoah did more against the whaling industry than Greenpeace ever managed. The Confederate Naval Jack is a sign of being Green.
While all of the officers aboard Alabama were Confederate citizens, most of the crew were British citizens.
The song makes that point—Bellowhead is a British working class band. Deplorables.
thanks.
Kearsarge was ordered from Portsmouth to Spanish waters with her journey taking her to Gibraltar where she served in containing the CSS Sumter naval raider. With no better option, the Confederate Navy released her crew and sold off the ship. Her acting commander, Captain Raphael Semmes, made his way to Britain where Confederate agents had obtained the ex-British sloop “Enrica” and recommissioned her for service to the South as the CSS Alabama. The CSS Alabama would go on to claim some 65 Union ships and become one of the most successful raiders of the war. She displaced at 1,050 tons, featured twin steam engines driving a single screw with a three-masted sail arrangement not unlike the Kearsarge. She was crewed by 145 persons and fielded 6 x 32lb cannons, 1 x 110lb gun and 1 x 68lb gun. Dimensions included a length of 220 feet, a beam of 31 feet, 8 inches and a draught of 17 feet, 8 inches. She was launched into Confederate Navy service on July 29th, 1962 and commissioned on August 24th, 1862. The Kearsarge, now under the command of Captain John Winslow, was charged with hunting down the problematic Alabama and found her in neutral France at Cherbourg on June 14th, 1864. Winslow waited the Alabama out, positioning himself at the mouth of the harbor, careful to not violate French territorial waters. The French Navy itself positioned their Couronne ironclad warship to ensure national security. The Kearsarge lay in wait until June 19th when the Alabama set sail for what would become her final voyage, meeting the Kearsarge in international waters.
Source: https://tvd.im/naval-warfare/3885-uss-kearsarge-1862.html
June 19, 1944 : “Marianas Turkey Shoot”
Japan lost 480 planes and 3 carriers in one day.
Many if not most of us know about the Battle of Midway.
The Marianas Turkey Shoot battle is often lost in recounts of WWII.
1944 June 19
United States major victory against Japanese in Battle of the Philippine Sea
On June 19, 1944, in what would become known as the “Marianas Turkey Shoot,” U.S. carrier-based fighters decimate the Japanese Fleet with only a minimum of losses in the Battle of the Philippine Sea.
The security of the Marianas Islands, in the western Pacific, were vital to Japan, which had air bases on Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. U.S. troops were already battling the Japanese on Saipan, having landed there on the 15th. Any further intrusion would leave the Philippine Islands, and Japan itself, vulnerable to U.S. attack. The U.S. Fifth Fleet, commanded by Admiral Raymond Spruance, was on its way west from the Marshall Islands as backup for the invasion of Saipan and the rest of the Marianas.
But Japanese Admiral Ozawa Jisaburo decided to challenge the American fleet, ordering 430 of his planes, launched from aircraft carriers, to attack. In what became the greatest carrier battle of the war, the United States, having already picked up the Japanese craft on radar, proceeded to shoot down more than 300 aircraft and sink two Japanese aircraft carriers, losing only 29 of their own planes in the process. It was described in the aftermath as a “turkey shoot.”
Admiral Ozawa, believing his missing planes had landed at their Guam air base, maintained his position in the Philippine Sea, allowing for a second attack of U.S. carrier-based fighter planes, this time commanded by Admiral Mitscher, to shoot down an additional 65 Japanese planes and sink another carrier.
In total, the Japanese lost 480 aircraft, three-quarters of its total, not to mention most of its crews. American domination of the Marianas was now a foregone conclusion.
Not long after this battle at sea, U.S. Marine divisions penetrated farther into the island of Saipan. Two Japanese commanders on the island, Admiral Nagumo and General Saito, both committed suicide in an attempt to rally the remaining Japanese forces. It succeeded: Those forces also committed a virtual suicide as they attacked the Americans’ lines, losing 26,000 men compared with 3,500 lost by the United States. Within another month, the islands of Tinian and Guam were also captured by the United States.
The Japanese government of Premier Hideki Tojo resigned in disgrace at this stunning defeat, in what many have described as the turning point of the war in the Pacific.
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