Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "Drachinifel"
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@michaelsanderson6968 I can make a more or less reasonable defense of most of King's actions, even though some of those turned out to be clearly wrong. What we knew about U-Boats attacking an area as large as the whole Atlantic coast and into the Caribbean all the way to he Panama Canal was quite different in early 1942 compared to mid-1944. The technology, number of escorts, and indeed the whole strategy of coastal convoys had yet to be worked out. His idea of single ships traveling at speed being less exposed to attack by individual U-Boats, compared to large, slow convoys with inadequate escorts along the coast may have seemed like it had some merit in early 1942. Contrary to what has been written about King, he gladly accepted a group of ten Flower class corvettes from the RN in early 1942 under reverse lend-lease, followed by another ten built for the USN in Canadian yards. Once King felt he had enough escorts from the USN, RCN, and RN, he started convoys with alacrity. As it turned out, any convoys, even lightly escorted, incurred less losses than lone ships, but we didn't know that in January, 1942.
What I can't forgive him for was the court martial of Captain Charles B. McVay III, commander of the USS Indianapolis . He was the driving force behind the trial, even as his other senior officers urged him not to go ahead with it for the good of the service. It now seems pretty clear he was so insistent on a court martial that would essentially drum McVay out of the service to get back at McVay's father, Admiral Charles McVay II, for a reprimand given to him and two other officers in 1921 for sneaking women onboard a ship. This only resulted in a letter of reprimand being placed in King's file that would have zero effect on the rest of his career, but King was known as never forgetting a grudge, and now he had his chance for revenge on McVay's father through his son. He never admitted he was wrong and never apologized. Captain McVay never got over the shame and humiliation of being court martialed nor some relatives blaming him for the deaths of their loved ones. The depression after his wife died of cancer and constant harassment from relatives finally drove Captain McVay to step out onto his back porch on the chilly morning on November 6, 1968 and shoot himself with his Navy issued .45 pistol, ironically while clutching a toy sailor he had received as a child from his father, a toy sailor he used as his good luck charm. No, there is no forgiveness for King for such an evil and despicable act. It showed more about his character than any other act in his career. If there were such a thing as a posthumous court martial for murder of a fellow officer, I'd be all in favor of it.
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The Germans would have done much better relying on merchant raiders, as they had during WWI. The Merchant Raiders used in WWII were cheap to put in service since it was just a matter of adding equipment to existing ships. They had the advantage of surprise since they were merchant vessels to begin with, not warships, and became masters of disguising their ships as neutral vessels. They had the ability to far outrange warship like the Graf Spee dueto their very large bunkerage, and a major warship would attract the attention of a large part of the RN. Merchant cruiser only attracted a major fleet effort as individual ships became too successful. The Germans were able to put 13 merchant raiders in service over the first three years of the war compared to two ships of the Graf Spee class. If the Graf Spee's had a role at all, it was as part of the fleet as large cruisers. Sailing the seas alone in such a large and distinctive vessel just made it that much more likely they would be tracked down and destroyed.
The raider Atlantis, for example, sank more than 162,000 long tons in her 602 days at sea while the Kormoran sank over 100,000 tons of enemy shipping before sinking the cruiser HMAS Sydney in a mutually destructive battle. Merchant raiders were often commanded by officers who enjoyed the role of legal pirates operating far from the formal oversight of the Kriegsmarine. These raiders tied down far more RN forces that the two ships of the Graf Spee class ever could, and sunk far more tonnage. If the Germans had 20 merchant raiders in service at the outbreak of war, they would, along with the U-boats, have put Britain's survival in serious doubt. [Edited for typos]
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@michaels.5878 Not very good. The were set up for power operation, but the turrets proved to be not watertight, so the systems shorted out whenever there was water over the turrets, and even very heavy rain. The basic concept, with the turret and gun stabilized in four axes, but the actual operation showed the concept was too advanced for 1940. The ROF was low compared to, for example, the US 5"/25 or 5"/38, and the Italians didn't have a good light AA gun to back it up. The same 90mm gun was developed for use by the Italian Army, and it performed well on land, where all that stabilization wasn't needed.
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Queen Mary had quite a heavy armament added during her refit in during January, 1942 in Boston. She was stripped of her sparse British armament except for two of the questionable Unrotated Projectile rocket launchers mounted near the aft funnel. The rumor is Churchill himself wanted the UP mounts retained, so orders were dutifully followed. Otherwise, she was outfitted along the lines of a merchant cruiser, albeit a very large merchant cruiser. She mounted four 6" guns, two forward and two aft, six 3"/50 DP guns singly mounted fore and aft, five twin 40 mm mounts sited along the superstructure, and rounded off with twenty-four 20 mm cannon mounted wherever space could be found in typical USN fashion. Unusually for a merchant cruiser, she was fitted with directors for all her guns excepting the 20 mm cannon. Roosevelt and Churchill both realized what a catastrophe the sinking of Queen Mary would have been, both to the thousand of troops onboard and to British morale. She was actively hunted by German U-Boats and the German surface fleet, and escaped several close calls with shadowing U-Boats. Queen Mary mostly relied on her speed to evade attack when sailing unescorted, but the Admiralty wanted her to have the ability to fight it out with attacking aircraft or surface ships if it came to that.
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While there were no dedicated PT boat carriers I'm aware of, the story of the SS Stanvac Manila, a tanker that was torpedoed with six PT boats from the second division of Squadron (RON) 10 being carried as deck cargo, may be as close as the USN got to a PT boat carrier, albeit from a ship never designed for such a role. Stanvac Manila was torpedoed May 24, 1943, off Nouméa, New Caledonia. While the merchant crew abandoned ship, the senior PT officer, and senior officer onboard, Lt. (jg.) Russel W. Rome, belayed the abandon ship order, and the PT crews started to free the boats from their cradles. The naval armed guard remained aboard, and they, plus the PT crews, fighting from their boats, were able to keep Japanese planes at bay while the tanker slowly sank. I won't write another book here, but check out the story at http://www.pt171.org/PT171/writeups/stanvac.htm. RON 10 was my dad's squadron, and he was aboard the Stanvac Manila that day. Amazingly, my dad's boat, PT-172, was able to motor into Nouméa harbor under its own power, and three of the remaining five boats floated free and were towed into harbor. No better example than this of the fighting spirit of green PT boat crews encountering their first taste of combat.
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The RN, USN, and, I believe, the French used range clocks, large clock like round structures with a pair of hands, generally mounted high up on the main and fore masts. They could communicate the range when found by the lead ship, or indeed any ship, in the line, allowing the following or leading ships to use that range without resorting to all the tables. There were still some small adjustments made to compensate for their place in line and any variation in direction, but range (or concentration, in RN terms) clocks allowed all the ships in the line to set their guns to a known range and get into action rather than each ship having to find their own ranges.
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My dad joined the Navy in July, 1942, and had no idea how to swim. He went through basic at Great Lakes and they had no time to teach men how to swim. As you said, the assumption was you'd have a life jacket, and that would hold you up until you got into,a raft and were then rescued. Luckily for dad, he decided to volunteer for PT boats, and the staff at Melville were under no illusions that crewman could depend on the normal naval precautions once a man was in the water. Every crewman was taught to swim or had their swimming ability improved. This probably saved his life, since he was thrown overboard on one occasion, and had to tread water for about half an hour before his boat was able to find him in the gathering dusk, thanks partially to his ever present, ever reliable Zippo lighter.
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Of the 2,710 Liberty ships produced, only 10 sank due to brittle cracking propagating enough to cause the hull to break in two, or nearly so, typically in hogging seas, as the maximum stresses were being experienced amidships. A major cause of the propagating cracks was the decision to use square hatches to speed production, and make welding easier for the army of inexperienced welders swarming the Kaiser shipyards. Cracks formed right at the junction of each hatch corner, and there were enough hatches on a Liberty that it didn't take many cracks to cause catastrophic damage. The answer in later Liberties and subsequent Victories was the use of rounded hatch corners. Ten years later, the catastrophic failures of Comet airliners tragically taught the lesson again.
My dad, who used the GI Bill after he mustered out of the Navy to later become a mechanical engineer, drilled into my head that only four professions can kill you as a result of their normal duties. Those are doctors, police officers, architects, and the various permutations of engineers, and all four needed to keep that awesome responsibility foremost in their minds while doing their work. He became one of the leads on the design team for the main landing gears for the Boeing 747. I vividly recall as a kid seeing a light coming from the den late into the night . I would peek in to see him hunched over his desk with his slide rule and stacks of specs, checking and rechecking the calcs. Things like that taught me ot practice what I preach. I was a lucky kid to have a dad like him.
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