USO Canteen FReeper Style..Battle of Midway Tribute....June 4,2002

FRiends of the USO Canteen FReeper Style and Snow Bunny

[lodwick]

Good morning bump!

[larryjohnson]

Congrats!

[Colt .45]

Question: Why don't Coast Guardsmen like to go to MacDonalds?

Answer: Because the salt on the french fries scares them off.

Do you know what a Coastie fears the most?

Blue water!

Written by a regular Navy "Blue Water" Sailor.

[lodwick]

Excellent Midway link - thanks. If anyone has the opportunity to hear Dr. Robert Ballard lecture about all his explorations, DO NOT MISS IT - the man is an excellent speaker and story teller.

[Poohbah]

Captain Waynes Hughes, USN (Retired), wrote the book Fleet Tactics in 1986, and revised it in 2000. He discusses the carrier battles of the Pacific and lays out Midway in some detail.

Basically, in 1942, one deck-load strike (all offensive aircraft based on one carrier) could be expected to sink one enemy carrier. Finding the enemy was the critical factor. Allocate too few aircraft to search, and the odds are that the enemy will elude you; allocate too many, and your firepower will be diluted (the Dauntless was a scout-dive bomber).

The Japanese had four carriers; the US had three. Whoever attacked effectively first would win.

More to follow later.

[lodwick]

Great link - thank you.

[lodwick]

Good job Tonk! Salute.

[Jen]

Good morning Tom! I've had that conversation with men! hahahahaha Good one (and true!).

[Bahbah]

You must have heard about my new job.

[g'nad]

Good mornin' Snow Bunny! Great post!

To all the old warriors, Thank you for your sacrifices. We can never fully understand the personal cost of your service. Via con Dios, my brothers.

[Jen]

Good morning LJ and happy anniversary to you and your dem wife! (When are you going to turn that woman around? You should get her to visit the Day in the Life of President Bush threads - that'll turn her into a Bush Babe! hehehehe) Jen

[g'nad]

Congrats Tonk, good on yuh! If only more of our citizens were as patiotic and selfless as yourself, imagine what this Republic could do!

Keep 'em locked on there, yuh durn Coastie! Semper Fi!

[aomagrat]

Today's classic warship, USS Yorktown (CV-5)

Yorktown class
Displacement. 19,800
Lenght. 809' 6"
beam. 83' 1"
Draft. 28' 0"
Speed. 32.5 kt.
Complement. 2,919
Armament. 8 5", 22 .50-cal mg.
Aircraft. 81-85
Commissioned on 30 September 1937
Sunk by Japanese sub on 7 June 1942

USS Yorktown, a 19,800 ton aircraft carrier built at Newport News, Virginia, was commissioned on 30 September 1937. Operating in the Atlantic and Caribbean areas until April 1939, she then spent the next two years in the Pacific. In May 1941 Yorktown returned to the Atlantic, patrolling actively during the troubled months preceding the outbreak of war between the United States and the Axis powers.

Two weeks after the 7 December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Yorktown transited the Panama Canal to reinforce the badly damaged Pacific Fleet. The carrier's first combat operation was the Marshalls-Gilberts raid in early February 1942. Yorktown then steamed to the South Pacific, where she participated in a series of raids and other operations that climaxed in the Battle of Coral Sea in early May. In this action, in which she was damaged by enemy bombs, her planes attacked two Japanese aircraft carriers, helping to sink Shoho and damaging Shokaku.

Quick repairs at Pearl Harbor put Yorktown into good enough condition to participate in the Battle of Midway on 4-6 June 1942. Yorktown was flagship of Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher's Task Force 17, which operated independently from the other two U.S. carriers throughout the battle. At dawn on 4 June, she launched ten scouting aircraft to search for Japanese ships. At about 0840, Yorktown launched a striking force of seventeen SBD-3 scout-bombers and twelve TBD-1 torpedo planes, accompanied by an escort of six F4F-4 fighters. These aircraft later attacked the Japanese aircraft carrier Soryu, fatally damaging her. Before noon, Yorktown launched another scouting group, which succeeded in locating the enemy carrier Hiryu about three hours later, making possible the attacks that destroyed the final element of the Japanese carrier striking force. Yorktown also maintained an airborne combat air patrol of other F4Fs throughout the morning and recovered two planes from USS Enterprise that had earlier attacked the Japanese carrier Kaga.

However, successive strikes by dive bombers and torpedo planes from Hiryu seriously damaged Yorktown, causing her abandonment during the afternoon of 4 June. Two days later, while salvage efforts were underway, the Japanese submarine I-168 torpedoed both the damaged carrier and the destroyer Hammann (DD-412), sinking the latter immediately and Yorktown shortly after daybreak on 7 June 1942. USS Yorktown's wreck was discovered and examined in May 1998, in surprisingly good condition after fifty-six years beneath more than three miles of sea water.

[SAMWolf]

Douglas Dauntless Divebombers

[g'nad]

I did you butt-jammies for you!

butt-jammies?!?...oh...never mind...had this mental image flash thru my head...pay no attention to the man hiding in the corner...

[SAMWolf]

Battle of Midway, the Setting Sun by Ivan Berryman showing US naval torpedo and bomber aircraft, Dauntless and Devastators attacking the Japanese fleet aircraft carrier Akagi during the Battle of Midway. Dauntless and Devastator aircraft played a major role in the Battle of Midway.

[DoughtyOne]

Thanks for the comments.

[DoughtyOne]

The thread looked very nice today. Good job.

[Billie]

I'll Be Bach" :)

[SAMWolf]

Day 4 - The Phantom Menace

Tha last of the rye bread is gone. Kodi had grabbed the last heel, after a fierce srtuggle I managed to retrieve about a quarter of it. Wih the rye bread gone it can't be long before the dark side of the family begins to show.

After predicting a beautiful week for Rose Festival, we woke this morning to overcast and rain, they say there should be 2 days of this. Coincedence? I think not, even Oregon weeps for my family.

My youngest daughter (Jackie)graduates from 8th grade tomorrow. I'm pretty sure that I can get off of work, but when I mentioned that depending on how much work has to be done to recover from yesterdays problems, the MIL launched into her "Family comes first" lecture. I won the bet, major arguement before the end of the forth day.