Posted on 03/13/2019 8:31:12 AM PDT by Coronal
On July 1, 1942, the U.S.S. Wasp, an aircraft carrier holding 71 planes, 2,247 sailors and a journalist, sailed from San Diego to the western Pacific to join the battle against the Japanese. On board was a naval officer named Lt. Cmdr. John Joseph Shea. Two days before he left San Diego, Shea wrote his 5-year-old son a letter.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The oxygen-fueled Long Lance was also deadly to the Japanese destroyer & cruiser crews that carried them. If an allied strike aircraft managed a significant hit near the torpedo launcher or the hanger containing the re-loads... b-bye!
It wasn’t uncommon for torpedo equipped surface combatants to simply dump their torpedoes over the side if they were expecting air attack. The USN knew this and it’s the chief reason US cruisers were not equipped with torpedoes.
“Makes you wonder how they lost so bad at Leyte Gulf with a weapon like that Long Lance”
Leyte Gulf was actually 3 battles. One was a carrier v. carrier battle. The second was US Battleships “crossing the Tee” of a Japanese battlegroup emerging from a narrow strait (not much of a chance to deploy torpedoes there). And the 3rd battle was a run & gun affair between another Japanese battlegroup and Taffy-3 — a group of Jeep Carriers guarded by destroyers & destroyer-escorts. The only ones shooting torpedoes in that last engagement were the US DD’s & DE’s.
I’ll have to check that out...thanks! Last book I read along those lines was “Tin Cans and Greyhounds”
Sigh. I know. Funny, most Americans know about Midway or even Coral Sea, but you get blank stares on Leyte Gulf from most.
I think a five part HBO series would be pretty good...
Japanese destroyers also fired torpedoes at the carriers, Johnston helped to mess up their attack. I believe it was her last action before sinking.
Right click on the article URL and copy the link then paste it into the link below and you’ll be able to read it without touching the NYT.
A few destroyers and destroyer escorts going toe to toe with Japanese heavy cruisers at Leyte was near unimaginable heroism.
Those early naval battles in the Solomons were essentially bar room brawls and the Japanese usually got in the first hits because as you said they were exceptional in night time naval battle. The USS Washington showed the USN how to fight with radar controlled firing when she and the South Dakota got into a night action with the IJN and she tore the IJN a new one.
My recently departed uncle was a young SBD pilot who was in the last flight to land on the carrier before the torpedos hit. He was just back from a successful raid by SBDs and Wildcats on some merchant ships near a Jap controlled island.
He said the explosion of the aviation gas tank was a horrendous thing to behold. He was a competitive swimmer before enlisting and put that to good use after he was in the water by gathering wounded and disabled men (many of whom were injured in the fall from the carrier while wearing life vests) and pulling them to a float where they could hang on. In some cases He had to swim under flames to get to them.
After gathering 7 guys he started to pull the float away from the carrier (falsely believing that the sinking carrier would pull them under as it sank). He kept swimming and looking back and the carrier was still there above him.
Finally after about 2 hours a destroyer came back and launched rescue boats. When one approached him he worried that he didn’t have enough strength left to get abord. But they had a big sailer who pulled each of them out of the water one by one by their belts like so many sacks of potatoes.
He ended up with a silver star.
Absolutely. And it is even more egregious when the politician is still alive and working the government teat.
Perfect WWII Navy. American aviation, Japanese destroyers and German submarines.
For the most part Jap weapons sucked
Sub skippers complained to Washington and were basically told to ‘git gud.’ Eventually a demonstration convinced some pencil pusher and the problem was resolved.
I gotta admit, I never had that enter my mind before, but...kind of true.
If you read Neptune’s Inferno, then you probably read The Fleet at Flood Tide. And you MUST read Shattered Sword.
Everyone on this thread needs to put on their bucket list a trip to the Pensacola National Naval Aviation Museum. We went last fall and spent the morning there.
Two or three days would have been much better, which I intend to do next trip.
The USS Enterprise (CV-6) exhibit will make the goose bumps rise. Artifacts and mementos from the ship.
https://www.navalaviationmuseum.org/exhibits/uss-enterprise-cv-6-exhibit/
I read all three, and I think you recommended “Shattered Sword” to me! That was an interesting read. I learned a lot from that one, particularly about IJN damage control design and techniques aboard their warships.
(basically...they sucked!)
Your post reminded me of that old joke:
Heaven is where the cooks are French, the police are British, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian and everything is organized by the Swiss.
Hell is where the cooks are British, the police are German, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, and everything is organized by the Italians.
Maybe shipboard damage control was a subtle reflection of the how they perceived their troops, ie, so much fodder. I’m thinking of how they didn’t armor protect the seats on the Zero. Or the whole kamikaze thing, for that matter.
It weird because some of their(IJN) ships were heavily armored and some not.
Their mindset was that a warrior should always be on the offensive, always attacking and not worrying about their own lives. Supposedly following this philosophy would invariably lead to victory. No armor on planes, no parachutes for pilots, and little regard for shipboard damage control.
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