Posted on 05/14/2015 4:44:42 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
I thought that said, “Churchill Bars New Trannies.”
Winston S. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy
http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/4/14.htm
May 14th, 1945 (MONDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Submarine HMS Springer launched.
ITALY: Trieste: Britain and the United States are taking a firm line with Marshal Tito over the occupation of Trieste - a territory long in dispute between Yugoslavia and Italy. Marshal Tito has protested vigorously against the presence of Allied troops, claiming that his partisans captured the territory and that he would settle the matter with Italy in due course.
JAPAN: The Japanese Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, agrees to enlist the USSR to assist with obtaining peace. The SCDW is known as the Big 6 of the Japanese Cabinet. PM, FM, War Minister, Navy Minister, Army CofS, Navy CofS.
About 2,500 tons of incendiary bombs are dropped on Nagoya by 472 US B-29 bombers and 20 Japanese fighters are shot down.
The USAAF Twentieth Air Force in the Mariana Islands flies Mission 174: 472 B-29s bomb the urban area of Nagoya, Japan; 8 others hit targets of opportunity; they claim about 20 Japanese fighters; eleven B-29s are lost. This is the XXI Bomber Command’s first four-wing raid as B-29s of the 58th Bombardment Wing (Very Heavy) join bombers from the 73d, 313th, and 314th Bombardment Wings (Very Heavy) in a single mission.
Okinawa: US forces capture Yonabaru airfield.
Off Okinawa, a kamikaze damages the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CV-6). The suicide plane destroys the ship’s forward elevator, killing 14 and wounding 34 men, forcing Enterprise to retire to the U.S. for repairs.
Jim Verdolini notes in his diary:
May 14, 1945 (Mothers Day)
Again today, heavy attacks. Where do the Japs get all the planes, and men.
Seems we’ve shot down 10 million, but they keep coming. They come low on the water, now. One plane kept coming at us low on the water.
We fired everything at it, but we thought sure she would hit us just forward of the 5” gun mounts, but she went right over the flight deck and exploded in the water to port.
They come from any direction. Saw one dive into the Enterprise. The plane hit the forward elevator and blew it about 400 feet into the air. Admiral Marc Mitscher, Flag, Task Force 58, after having moved his Flag from the Bunker Hill, three days ago, to the Enterprise, now is moving his Flag to Randolph.
AUSTRIA: The concentration camp at Ebensee, “more horrible than Buchenwald”, is liberated.
CANADA: Submarines HMCS U-190 and U-889 commissioned.
U.S.A.: Off Delaware, U-858 became the first German warship to surrender to US forces.
Admiral H. Kent Hewitt begins a “further investigation of facts pertinent to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.” Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal asks the admiral to review the proceedings of the Hart Inquiry and the Navy Court of Inquiry to determine if “errors of judgment” were made by “certain officers in the Naval Service, both at Pearl Harbor and at Washington.”
Destroyer USS Perry laid down.
Submarine USS Spinax laid down.
Submarine USS Irex commissioned.
Escort carrier USS Siboney commissioned.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: Frigates HMCS Matane, St Pierre and Monnow detached from Convoy JW-67 to escort 14 surrendering U-boats from Trondheim to Loch Eriboll.
The Irex was Commissioned 70 years today. My Dad was on thr Irex, he was on the Marlin previously.
In the summary of the European war (P12) I see (at least for me) one of the first references to the German atomic bomb plans—although it is very late in the story and would have been somewhat obscure to the average reader.
Its interesting the assessments of the Allied and Axis failures are pretty much still applicable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Irex_(SS-482)
An irex is a fish; I’d never heard of it. I assume a “spinax” is also a fish.
The kamikaze hit knocked Enterprise clean out of the war.
Of all the ships in the USN she’s the one that should have been in Tokyo Bay for the surrender, but wasn’t.
One of my favorite books as a kid was “The Big E,” the story of the Enterprise. I thought of it when the next, nuclear powered Enterprise was commissioned and again when the first Star Trek debuted in the sixties.
Yup, and they all tie in together. CVN-65 being named Enterprise was a gesture to CV-6’s crew after their ship was scrapped. It might have even been a condition for the CV-6 crew to cease efforts to preserve her as a museum. The Navy didn’t want the ship on their books and while there was enough political leverage to make the Navy keep her in mothballs, there wasn’t enough to generate the funding necessary to save her as a museum.
NCC-1701 was supposed to have been named Yorktown. But CVN-65 was the “it” ship of the mid-late 1960s. Roddenbury, a former sailor, decided to capitalize on that.
Fortunately for the Allies the German nuclear research was poorly focused and for the most part going down the wrong paths.
Doubly fortunate most of the leading European physicists had fled to Great Britain or the United States because of the NAZI’s Jewish policies.
Regards
alfa6 :>}
How do “secret” atomic-energy weapons get discussed in the New York Times in May 1945, months before Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The IRex was originally a Fleet boat like you see on TV. After examining the last German design’s from the end of the way it was the first US sub to be outfitted with the ‘Sail” type conning tower.
When there were off Cuba the sub was sinking by the stern. Electricity went off battery problems, they went down to 800 ft + somehow they were able to blow out the ballast tanks and made it back to the surface. They were in the Panama canal going to the Pacific when the war ended.
Certainly sounds like mutiny to me.
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A month ago there was one of these old articles. It was just a snippet, and it was quoting some guy (like a plumber or something that worked for the government!) that talked about a “super weapon” that would end the war.
They portrayed the guy as nuts. And maybe he was. Or....
I suspect that the “idea” of atomic energy was not that far fetched in the spring of 45. Now as to what was meant by atomic energy was probably rather nebulous.
For an example see the story Waldo by Robert Heinlein published in August of 1942. Here is the Wikipedia article on the story
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldo_%28short_story%29
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
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