Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "The Drydock - Episode 083" video.

The USN's fleet train was the thing most responsible for the more varied and palatable food served on most USN ships. Whole ships were devoted to refrigeration and freezers, and those fresh foods were broken up into ship size loads for everything from minesweepers up. My dad's PT base in New Guinea and Solomons was visited every several weeks by these supply ships, who offloaded the food package to their tender. They would then be distributed to the individual boats. He'd get fresh milk, eggs, and frozen meat of all kinds, including turkeys for the holidays. His tender, the USS _Mobjack_, had added refrigeration space to hold all this food, but each PT also had a refrigerator. Not very big, but enough for five days of refrigerated food before they had to visit the tender for another load, generally needing to rearmed anyway. Each boat had a tiny galley, with one member of the crew being designated as the cook. This was pretty good duty on PT boat since they didn't have to do all the repetitive tasks like swabbing the deck and cleaning out the below decks spaces. A good cook was second only to a good skipper in terms of fighting effectiveness and morale. My dad's boat's Cookie (they were all called Cookie) was particularly good, turning out bread, pies, and even breakfast cinnamon rolls. He remembers his hams, steaks, and turkeys as being particularly good. When the boats were at base for heavier repairs and general shore duty, they had to eat at the base mess, and his memory of the food at these messes was nowhere near as good as they ate on the boat. Cookie and the skipper were both good horse traders, and they almost always ended up with a couple cases of cokes, a couple cases of beer, five or so gallons of ice cream, and some fresh vegetables. When they were at advance bases, they were stuck with C and K rations and whatever fish they could catch from the back of the boat. The best day he remembers from advance bases was when his boat sailed over a reef with about a foot of water under the keel. The sharp eyed lookouts didn't see just the reef but also a huge lobster colony! The boat immediately dropped anchor, and a couple of the good swimmers (my dad couldn't swim at all) dove down to start grabbing them. They managed to snatch about twenty of them before the squadron commander called on the radio and wanted to know why they were stalled in the lagoon. They "fixed" the engine problems and got underway again. That night they had the lobster feast to end all feasts. Cookie was even able to work some kind of magic with margarine to make it kinda taste like drawn butter. He said he didn't know if it was all the lobster or just being exhausted after having no nights off for almost three weeks, but he said it was the best night's sleep he ever had while in the Navy. :-)
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Design work on the North American AJ Savage series had begun just after the atomic bomb attacks on Japan. The Savage was a considerably larger aircraft than the B-25. Wingspan was 75 feet over tip tanks, measuring 50 feet with the wings folded compared to 67 feet for the B-25. Empty weight for the Savage was 27,558 with maximum loaded weight of almost 51,000 pounds compared to 19,480/35,000 pounds for the B-25. The outstanding difference for the Savage was a bomb load of 12,000 pounds compared to 4,000 pounds for the B-25. The Savage was operated successfully from modernized Essex class carriers, but it an aircraft rushed into service to preserve the Navy's role in the atomic era, that large size and load carrying ability due to the 10,000 pound weight of early atomic bombs. The Navy had even larger bombers built in the 50's as the A-3D Skywarrior and huge A-5 Vigilante to defend their role as a nuclear deterrent, but all carrier aircraft were knocked out of that role by the ballistic missile submarine.
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@therealsenorisgrig Thanks. I got about 50 hours of interviews with my dad in his last year of life, when he was finally willing to talk about the war. Before that, he just want to live a normal life and not think about it.
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Good thing gI was in bed before this episode was posted. I would have passed out at the computer trying to stay awake. Youtube is so messed up. I was about to whine because there was no time stamped list with this episode, but I thought Drach wouldn't do that to us with a three hour plus episode. I refreshed Youtube and, sure enough, there was the list. I hate Youtube sometimes.
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@HighlanderNorth1 The Navy had the advantage of being able to prepare food for their men most of the time rather than resorting to prepared rations. Submariners did get the best of foods available, and the skipper was generally able to modify some of the standard Navy menus if he was able to find things like fresh beef or frozen chickens in the stocks ashore. PT boats had some of the same advantages, as each boat was able to use pretty much any food they could find or scrounge. The Navy realized early in in WWII that their procurement was a hopeless mess of different bureaus. The Secretary of the Navy established a new department, the Office of Procurement and Material, and put Admiral Samuel Robinson in charge. He became the czar for all procurement and ruled with an iron hand. Decisions came through is office instead of seven different bureaus. He was one of the primary reasons for the fleet train, and was vitally interested in procuring the best food the budget would bear. He standardized the Navy cookbook and how galleys were set up on new and refurbished ships. For the first time, cooks became an occupational specialty rather than just the newest guys in the crew. Every ship had an officer designated as in charge of the mess budget and food quality, and the medical officer was in charge of mess inspections for cleanliness. The best food combined with standard menus and trained cooks is why the Navy got (and has kept) the reputation as best fed of the services. Robinson ordered that all officers had to eat only the food that came for the enlisted mess. They could eat in their own wardrooms, but they were eating the same food as the rest of the sailors. As you might imagine, the captain and other officers gained a rapid appreciation for serving the best prepared food the ship could provide.
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@jballaviator One of the reasons why my dad joined the Navy was he heard the food was good, and he loved food! The guys flying the Hump lived on K and C rations for sometimes months at a time and lost an average of 25 pounds. There weren't enough calories in the earlier rations like the C ration, and some of the food just didn't taste good, so they didn't even finish the inadequate meals they were given. Things started to improve about mid-1944 when rations started to include a greater variety of food (K rations expanded to 12 different menus, four each for breakfast, dinner and supper, the military terms for the more common lunch and dinner.) The greatest morale boost for the troops wasn't food, even the much loved hot chocolate drink. It was the four cigarettes that came with each meal. For smokers, it was a familiar way to finish off a meal. For non-smokers, it gave them something to trade for food they liked. I'm not aware of any other military that included cigarettes with each ration. Not PC today, but it was a big lift for soldiers right up until 1975, when the busybodies and pearl clutchers got them removed.
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@HighlanderNorth1 That sums it up. I don't think the war in the Pacific would have gone so well without Admiral Robinson in charge. When it comes to fishing, that worked on ships with relatively low freeboard and ones that spent a lot of time dead in the water. It was hard to catch much from a cruiser making way at 25 knots. :-) PT boats were ideal for fishermen since they had the freeboard of a cabin cruiser and spent a lot of time at idle waiting to jump Japanese resupply barges. My dad said they even fish on moonlit nights when they could see their lines and the fish swimming by made luminescent wakes. The skipper was an inveterate fisherman. He'd spend time at the stern tending a couple lines while the XO kept an eye on the radar and yelled for him if there were any hits. By late 1943, there were only the occasional Japanese floatplane around so they didn't much have to worry about air attack. The old man was a motor machinist mate, so he spent a lot of his time with the engines. The heat was suffocating in the engine room so he'd come up on deck to spell gunner's mates so they could get some chow. He was manning the stern 20mm one time when one of those floatplanes came right up over the hill at them with no radar warning. He just happned to be watching that part of the sky when it happened, and he had it in his sights in a heartbeat. He opened up on it and tracked it right across the boat, the safety rails saving him from shooting up the bridge. The plane burst into flames and splashed a couple hundred feet off the bow. One of the other guys had to light his cigarette afterwards because he was shaking too much to hold the match. It was the one and only time he ever fired a weapon in anger during the war. It was also one of two planes the boat was credited with during the war. I still have the picture of him standing behind a piece of the vertical stabilizer they had fished out to make sure they got credit for the kill.
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@fortusvictus8297 Firstly, thanks for your service. The US has always been the best fed country in the world, in war or peace. One hand, it's a matter of luck that we can grow about any kind of food the exists on the face of the earth, but is also something that many successive governments have understood - that a well fed people are also generally contented people. A full belly tends to quench a lot of revolutionary thoughts. When my dad's squadron was in New Guinea, many of the advance bases were run by the Australian Navy. I don't know if it was a matter of wartime shortages or just the need to ship as much food as they could to the mother country, but Australian rations tended to be less in quantity and calories than what the Americans got. The rations were also less diverse and more monotonous, with many of the Aussie complaining they were right sick of a constant diet of canned lamb, bully beef, and biscuits. The K rations generally had some small cans of fruit, usually peaches or pears. By 1943, it had been years since the average Aussie had seen canned fruit except maybe for the holidays. Tobacco of any kind, and cigarettes in particular, were not only had to get, but Australian sailors had to buy their own at the canteen, when there was one at a base. They were eating dinner with sailors from an Australian minesweeper, and they refused to believe American sailors got free cigarettes withe every meal until one of our guys opened up a K ration and showed them. Now, one thing the Aussies tended to get in abundance was beer, something US sailors were only rarely allowed to get in the war zone. As you might imagine, that set up some pretty active bartering for cigarettes, canned fruit, and beer. The Aussies did have two other things Americans wanted - tea and blackcurrant jam. US rations never had tea, amd Australian rations almost never had coffee. Those that favored the non-available drink on either side set up a pretty active bartering market. Some sailors seem to develop an almost unnatural craving for Australian blackcurrant jam. I've never had it, but my dad described as the best thing on a biscuit he ever had. He didn't smoke much, so he bartered away many a pack of smokes for some of that jam.
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How about the Russian icebreaker Arktika? 173.3 m (569 ft) long and a gargantuan 33,540 tonnes. Nuclear power so no worries about fuel, 22 knots top speed, and thrusters all over the place for quick turns. It could even chase ships into water as shallow as six meters after deballasting. She'd probably happily sail around all day crushing any wood hull that got in her way at the cost of some scratches to the paintwork.
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I can only imagine the effect on German morale seeing these weird looking airplanes coming into cities and blowing up with no idea where the heck these things were coming from or what they were. Goring would have been in trouble with Hitler a lot sooner.
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@Wardads1 I think the soldiers and sailors in the south Pacific certainly appreciated the food from Australia that could be spared for shipments to Britain. The US also had rationing, but not as stringent as that seen in Britain and the Dominions. The US shipped over massive quantities of dried, canned, and dehydrated food, dried eggs from the US being almost the total supply of eggs in Britain by 1941. Spam was the big S contribution to the south Pacific. Not only did service members from all countries prefer it to things like Brazilian corned beef, civilians were able to get tons of it from US stocks. To this day, you can accurately estimate the number Pacific Islanders living in the trading area of a grocery by observing the different flavors of Spam on the shelf. The more kinds of Spam, the more Pacific Islanders trade there.
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@jballaviator K-rations had undergone some improvement by late 1943, with the much hated pork loaf being replaced by a pork and beef somewhat similar to Spam, and replacing the even more hated bitter lemon drink powder with fruit drink powders like grape and orange drink powder, and substituting a chocolate bar for the tasteless dextrose tablets, and a couple of pieces of candy coated chewing gum were added. They increased the calorie count and palatability of the K-rations, but men weren't supposed to subsite on them for more than 15 meals. Unfortunately, that could easily last a month or more in places like Burma, and men lost 20-30 pounds a month on them.
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The war order sent to Kimmel emphasized defense against sabotage as the most important criteria with not causing panic among civilians as the second. The biggest failing that was under his control was not expanding the range of his maritime patrol further north and west. He had enough PBY's and B-17's on hand to do that, and the chances of discovering the Japanese task force would have been much better. In his defense, lamost no one believed the first blow would be against Hawaii and Pearl in particular. The expected first strike was against the Philippines, Guam, or Wake. There were some strategists who thought a strike against the NEI and Mayla would happen first so Japan could get their resources in line before they moved against the US. Some in the Navy actually thought Pearl was just too far away for the Japanese to get close without detection. Most believed the Japanese didn't have the resources after being worn out by the war in China to attack all three countries at once. If there was one person really responsible for Pearl Harbor, it was Yamamoto.
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@nosretep1960 Thank you. One of my uncles was a very young jg and staff member for Rear Admiral Carter in the Pacific from 1943 to 1946. Carter was the commander of the justly famous Service Squadron 10 during that period, and became one of the great organizers of logistics for the Pacific Theater. Uncle Fred gave mea copy of Admiral Carter's book, "Beans, Bullets, and Black Oil" when I was an 11 year old in 1957 after asking him "What did you do in the war?". That insight into his role in the war and how logistics was a major factor in our winning the Pacific campaigns started an interest in how a fleet could be kept at sea for months at a time, an interest I still hold today.
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@soulsphere9242 Yess, the B-66 was the heaviest aircraft to operate regularly from a carrier, although A-5 was a close second depending on the loaded weight of each plane. It was the Savage that operated from Essex class carriers, not the Skywarrior. There was no operational reason why the F-4 couldn't have operated from an Essex class. The RN operated F-4s successfully from HMS Ark Royal_, a ship roughly equivalent in length and deck area to a modernized _Essex . The Navy chose not to because they had plenty of larger carriers, so there was no need to subject their pilots to the nail biting experience of operating from the smaller carrier.
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The Japanese had samples of the 20mm Oerlikon gun as early as 1935, before the US started to evaluate them. About 45 40mm Bofors fell into their hands at Singapore and Hong Kong in early 1942. The had enough time to produce the 20mm for sure, and the 40mm with some work. The IJN didn't want either weapon. They believed, quite wrongly as it turned out, that the home produced 25mm gun was superior. The staggering losses of Japanese warships to air attacks was at least partially due to their weak antiacraft defenses. The 25mm may have been at least passable if the IJN had developed radar gunfire control earlier, but very few of those systems were deployed before the surrender. I just don't think the Japanese understood that fighting the US would be a series of overwhelming aircraft and submarine attacks, so the Japanese didn't prepare well for those eventualities.
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@bkjeong4302 Take a look at the US Naval Technical Mission to Japan report O-47(N)-2, available online at the Navy Historical Center. They interviewed some Japanese gunnery officers in this report or another of the Mission reports about the effectiveness of the 25mm gun. I don't have the exact link, but it's all there in the Mission reports. The Japanese compared the triple 25mm mount to the twin Bofors, the only multiple mount they had access to at that time. Although there were things about the Bofors that were superior, particularly weight of fire and better ammunition supply, the conclusion was it wasn't enough better to interrupt production of the 25mm, and the Japanese just didn't have the industrial capacity produce both. Except for some experimental attempts to reverse engineer the Bofors gun, the Japanese didn't put any serious effort into making it into a standard weapon. The best they managed was 5-10 guns a month by the end of 1944 for evaluation purposes, and then only single air cooled guns and single mounts. In addition to industrial capacity, they found they didn't have the machine tools to meet the fine tolerances demanded by the gun, so a lot of hand fitting was required. Given the heroic efforts of the US to convert the Bofors plan to inch measure and then get the guns into mostly automated production in a little less than a year, it's doubtful Japan could have ever produced an workable gun. The samples examined by the Mission postwar showed many flaws in machining and quality control, causing numerous instances of jamming and failure to feed. It's not like the USN couldn't have followed Japan's path with the 1.1" gun. It was broadly similar to the 25mm, already in production in quad mounts, and was slated to become the main AA armament on US ships by 1938. Take a look at the armament of the Erie class gunboats. They were one of the first USN vessels designed with at least the space and weight for the 1.1" quad, four of which were to serve as the AA armament of the ships when they was commissioned in 1936. While the USN was fully invested in the 1.1" gun, tests against the Bofors showed it was such a superior gun that work on correcting the initial problems with the 1.1" was ordered halted in 1940, with all efforts put to the design and production of the Bofors. The Japanese could have done the same but chose not to.
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