American Heroes: Torpedo Squadron 8 (Battle of Midway,67 Years Ago Today)

Fox News ^ | 05/29/09 | Steven Tierney

[packrat35]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Laffey_(DD-724)

[FreedomPoster]

The LAFFEY (DD-724) was named in honor of the first LAFFEY (DD_459), sunk at the Naval Battle of Guadacanal in November 1942. Both ships were named in honor of Seaman Bartlett Laffey, a Civil War Medal of Honor recipient.

http://www.patriotspoint.org/exhibits/fleet/laffey.html

Link also details the kamikaze attacks.

[csvset]

Bump for later , thanks for posting.

[FDNYRHEROES]

Sorry, you are wrong. John Ford was on the island of Midway, not the USS Hornet during the battle. He grabbed his 16mm film camera and used it to shoot most of his Academy Award winning 1941 semi-documentary The Battle of Midway That same year he also did the Torpedo Squadron documentary.

Sorry you are wrong. The attack on Pearl Harbor occurred in December 1941. The Battle of Midway was 6 months later in 1942.

[Bender2]

RE: Sorry you are wrong. The attack on Pearl Harbor occurred in December 1941. The Battle of Midway was 6 months later in 1942.

Gadzooks! Is there something in the water... or worse, in the BEER, making us all wrong????

[SwinneySwitch]

Lord, Guard and Guide the Men Who Fly

Lord, guard and guide the men who fly
Through the great spaces in the sky.
Be with them always in the air,
In darkening storms or sunlight fair;
Oh, hear us when we lift our prayer,
For those in peril in the air!

Aloft in solitudes of space,
Uphold them with Thy saving grace.
Thou Who supports with tender might
The balanced birds in all their flight.
Lord, if the tempered winds be near,
That, having Thee, they know no fear.

— Mary C. D. Hamilton (1915)

[SunkenCiv]

This Day in World War II History June 4, 1942 Battle of Midway Begins
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=6474
Posted on 06/04/2009 6:04:53 AM PDT by mainepatsfan
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2264554/posts

[SunkenCiv]

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[Stonewall Jackson]

There is a National Geographic Explorer program about the USS Laffey, which originally aired back in the 1990's. At the time, the ship's captain was still alive (he has since passed away) and he and some of his crewmen led the camera crew on a tour of their ship.

The original Laffey was part of the task force under the command of Admirals Callaghan and Scott that went up against a Japanese fleet off Guadalcanal on the morning of November 13, 1942 (Friday the 13th). In the whirlwind battle, the US mortally wounded the Japanese battleship Hiei (she was scuttled the next day) and two destroyers, but suffered the loss of two light cruisers and four destroyers, with two heavy cruisers and three destroyers suffering severe damage.

During the fight, Laffey got so close to the Hiei that the battleship could not depress her guns low enough to shoot at the destroyer, which raked the battlewagon's bridge and superstructure with her 5-inch cannon and machine guns. As she slipped away from the battleship, Laffey was struck by a 14-inch shell from the Hiei that caused severe damage. She then encountered three or four Japanese destroyers, one of which hit her in the fantail with a Longlance torpedo, starting a fire that eventually ignited her magazines.

[FreedomPoster]

Those longlances were ugly business. They put a lot of the iron in Ironbottom Sound. We didn’t have anything like them at the time.

[Stonewall Jackson]

I had a great-great-uncle who commanded several different destroyers in the Pacific during World War Two, and he had several close calls with the Longlance. Fortunately for him, none of the torpedoes ever connected.